Groups

Hub groups are communities that users build inside the hub. A group has its own address at /groups/<alias>, its own pages, and its own forum, wiki, blog, calendar, file space and member list. Users create and run groups themselves; from the administrator interface you approve them, configure how they behave, correct their membership and delete the ones that should not exist.

What you actually do on this screen

Groups largely run themselves. Users create them, users manage their own membership, and a hub can go months with nobody opening this screen. You come here for four things, in rough order of how often:

• Approving a group somebody created, when automatic approval is off.
• Rescuing a group whose only manager has left the hub, by promoting somebody else on its membership screen.
• Deleting a group that should not exist — a duplicate, an abandoned test, something a spammer created.
• Creating a group that users cannot create for themselves: a super group, a group on somebody's behalf, or a group that has to exist before its members do.

Everything else on the screen — the type, the join policy, the discoverability — is a group's own setting that its managers control from the site. Changing one from here is an intervention in somebody else's group, and it takes effect without telling them.

What a change here does, and who notices

• Membership changes take effect immediately. Someone removed from a group loses the group's pages, forum and files on their next page load. They are not told, and they will read it as the hub being broken.
• Unpublishing is the reversible way to take a group out of circulation. The group and everything in it survive; publish it again and it comes back. Use this while you work out whether a group should really go.
• Deleting is not reversible and takes the content with it. See Deleting a group before you use it, and prefer unpublishing.
• Approving and unapproving are both reversible and change only whether the group is listed and usable.

Reach the screen at Users → Groups, or directly at /administrator/index.php?option=com_groups. Within the component the sub-navigation offers:

Entry	What it manages
Groups	The group list, the default screen
Import	CSV import of groups and members, with import hooks. Super User only
Custom Fields	Extra fields shown on the group form. Super User only

The group list

The list shows Group ID, Name, Alias, Type, Published, Approved, a member count and a page count. The alias is the segment used in the group's URL. Selecting the name or the alias opens the group for editing; the member count opens the membership screen for that group; the page count opens its page list.

Filter with the search box and the Type, Discoverability, Join Policy and State menus.

The toolbar carries Publish, Unpublish, Archive, New, Edit, Delete and Options. Update Groups Code appears as well when GitLab repository management is switched on. Each button is gated on the matching permission from config/access.xml, so a manager without core.delete does not see Delete.

Published and Approved are also togglable in place: select the icon in either column to flip that group's state.

Group types

The Type column and the type menu on the group form use these values, set in admin/views/manage/tmpl/edit.php:

Type	Meaning
Hub	An ordinary group, the kind users create for themselves
Super	A group with its own web space, template and code. See Super Groups
System	Created and owned by the software. Offered only to a Super User
Project	Backs a project in com_projects
Course	Backs a course in com_courses

Only Hub and Super groups render on the site. com_groups returns a 404 for any other type.

Creating a group

1. Go to Users → Groups.
2. Select New.
3. Fill in the form. Type and Alias are required, and the alias may contain only lowercase letters, digits and underscores. The alias cannot be changed once the group is saved.
4. Select Save & Close.

The form has two tabs. Details holds everything about the group; Files is a file browser into the group's own directory and is empty until the group has been saved once.

The Details tab is divided into these areas:

Area	Contents
Details	Type, Published, Approve, Alias, Title, Group Logo, and any custom fields
Page Settings	Trusted content, page comments, page author display, and a template override
Membership	Membership Control, Join Policy, and the credentials text shown to applicants
Access	Discoverability, Plugin Access, and whether system users appear in the member list
Email Settings	Discussion email auto-subscription. Shown only when the component's email option Forum Outgoing Email is on

Join Policy is the group's own setting, not a site setting, and its four values are:

Policy	Effect
Public	Any site member can join
Restricted	The user must request membership, and a manager approves it
Invite Only	The user must be invited by an existing group member
Closed	Membership cannot be changed from the site

Discoverability is either Visible — the group is listed and searchable — or Hidden, in which case only members find it.

Creating a group is safe. Until it has members and content it is an empty shell, and unpublishing it puts it out of sight without losing anything.

Worked example: a group for the workshop cohort

Continuing the scenario from the section introduction, the forty visiting participants need somewhere to work together for the two weeks of the workshop.

1. Go to Users → Groups and select New.
2. Set Type to Hub. A super group is only needed if the workshop wants its own web space and code; see Super Groups.
3. Enter an Alias of workshop2026 and a matching Title. Get the alias right the first time — it becomes the group's address and cannot be changed afterwards.
4. Under Membership, set Join Policy to Invite Only, so that nobody outside the cohort can add themselves.
5. Under Access, set Discoverability to Hidden, so the group does not appear in the site's group listings.
6. Set Approve to Approved and Published to Published.
7. Select Save & Close.

The group now exists and is empty. The cohort's accounts are put into it by the groups column of the member import, which is the one place that column is genuinely the right tool — the accounts do not exist yet, so there are no memberships for it to overwrite.

Note what this group does not do. It gives the cohort a shared space; it does not give them access to restricted material elsewhere on the hub. That is a viewing level built on an access group, and it is set up separately.

When the workshop ends, unpublish the group. Its discussions and files stay readable to you and recoverable; deleting it destroys them.

Editing a group

1. Go to Users → Groups.
2. Select the group's name or alias.
3. Change what you need and select Save & Close.

The alias field is read-only for an existing group.

Publishing, unpublishing and archiving

1. Go to Users → Groups.
2. Tick the box beside one or more groups.
3. Select Publish, Unpublish or Archive.

Or select the icon in the group's Published column to toggle it directly. An archived group stays readable but its toolbar drops the management actions.

Approving a group

Automatic approval is on by default, in the manifest and in the data a hub is installed with, so out of the box a user's new group works the moment they create it and nothing reaches you. That is the right default for a hub whose groups are its own community, and the wrong one for a hub that gets unsolicited signups: turn it off under Options → General and a group waits for you instead. Turning it off does not affect groups already approved.

When automatic approval is off, a group a user creates on the site is saved unapproved and an email goes to the site administrator plus everyone listed in the Group reviewers option. To approve it, select the icon in the group's Approved column. Selecting it again unapproves the group.

Deleting a group

1. Go to Users → Groups.
2. Tick the box beside one or more groups.
3. Select Delete and confirm.

This is the most destructive button in this section, and there is nothing to distinguish it from any other delete button in the interface. What goes is not the group but years of somebody's discussion. If a group is dormant, unpublish it; if it is a duplicate, check which of the pair holds the content first; if somebody has asked you to delete their group, ask them whether they want the forum archived somewhere first, because you cannot get it back for them afterwards. Reserve Delete for groups that were never used — spam, tests, mistakes made minutes ago.

Membership

Select a group's member count in the list to open its membership screen. The list can be filtered by status — Manager, Applicant, Invitee — and, when membership expiration is available, by term.

What the toolbar offers depends on the filter:

• Managers and members: Promote, Demote, Membership (set or clear an end date) and Delete.
• Applicants: Approve and Deny.
• Invitees: Uninvite.

New adds a member, and Assign role attaches a role to the selected members.

Membership end dates are enforced by a cron job, not by the page. The screen prints a banner naming the last run, and an error banner if the job has not run in the last 24 hours; until it runs, an expired membership keeps its access.

Two of these actions are worth pausing over.

Delete here removes somebody from the group, not from the hub. The account itself is untouched — this is the screen to use when a member has left a project but stays on the hub.

The two ways of removing a manager do not behave alike. Demote refuses to act on the last remaining manager: it answers Cannot remove all managers. A group must have at least one manager. and does nothing. Delete carries no such check, so ticking the last manager and pressing Delete succeeds and leaves the group with nobody able to run it. The site gives a group's members no way out of that; promoting somebody from this screen is then the only route back. Check the Managers filter before you delete anybody from it.

Roles

A role is a named set of extra permissions inside one group. A role carries a name and any of three permissions:

• Invite New Members
• Edit Group Settings
• Create/Edit Group Pages & Categories

Members holding a role can do those things without being made a manager.

Configuring groups

1. Go to Users → Groups.
2. Select Options.
3. Change what you need and select Save & Close.

The dialog has these sections:

Section	What it sets
General	Whether groups users create are approved automatically, and the reviewer addresses notified when they are not
Intro Page	Which lists the group landing page shows: my groups, interesting groups, popular groups, featured groups
Membership & Access	The default join policy and discoverability for new groups, system user display, the invitation message, and membership expiration
Email	Incoming comment processing, forum outgoing email, auto-subscription, and the forum digest
Upload	The group file path and whether uploads are virus scanned
Pages	Page approvers, page depth, comments, author display, and whether groups may use modules
Super Groups	Super group components, the filesystem owner for group assets, and GitLab repository management
Permissions	The com_groups access rules for each access group

Every parameter, its type and its default are listed in the generated Groups configuration reference.