While you wait for the email notification that your new group has been officially approved, you can customize the group’s settings. First, display the Settings page:

• Desktop browser: In the left menu that appears on all pages in your group’s website, click Admin and then, in the dropdown menu, click Preferences and then Settings.
• Mobile device: Tap the More icon at the bottom of a page. When the More menu appears, tap Admin, then Preferences, then Settings.

Group settings

The Settings page is organized into panels that contain related settings. Each panel has a gray title bar. Click or tap the panel's name or the arrow at the far right of the title bar to expand or collapse that panel.

In the list below, click or tap a panel's name to see basic information about some of the settings on that panel.

! Important: When you finish customizing settings on the Settings page, make sure you scroll all the way to the bottom of the page and click or tap the Update Group button. Your changes will not take effect or be remembered until you click or tap that button.

• General panel

  The General panel contains the email address and description that you entered when you created your group. You can revise those elements here, if desired. You can also enter a title for your group that will be displayed on the group’s home page as well as in the directory of publicly listed groups (if you opted to list your group there). As with the description, make sure you include appropriate keywords in the title if you want to promote your group.

  In this panel, you can enter a subject tag to be included on the subject line in group emails. You can also enter the URL of a website to be included on the Groups.io home page for your group. The URL will be listed in the Group Information section on the group’s home page and will be a clickable link.

  Additional settings on this panel include an Allow Sponsorships checkbox and an Additional Payment Information field.

  Tip: If you decide you want to change your group’s email address, now is the time. It is possible to rename a group after it is well established, but doing so has some ramifications. See Renaming a group in the Group Owners Manual. 

• Privacy panel

  In the Privacy panel, you can change the visibility setting you selected when you created the group—however, if you selected a “private messages” setting at that time, the “publicly viewable messages” settings will not be available.

  You can also specify:

  • Who can view the group’s member list
    If you want to allow group members to view the member list, you must first scroll down to the Group Type and Moderation panel and select the Restricted Membership checkbox there. Only a group that has restricted membership can allow its members to see the member list. For more information, see Member list.
  • Whether email addresses in the group’s archive are fully visible to group members or are masked (hidden)
    Be aware that even if you selected a “publicly viewable messages” visibility setting for your group, email addresses in the archive will always be hidden from nonmembers who view the archive.
• Group Type and Moderation panel

  Groups.io does not have any setting that will allow someone to join your group without approval and immediately post an unmoderated message, but you still must select at least one of the settings in the Group Type and Moderation panel to help prevent spam. You can select more than one setting. 

  If you want to restrict the membership in your group to only people whose memberships you or designated moderators approve, select the Restricted Membership checkbox. If you want to have a group in which only you and designated moderators can post messages, select the Announcement-Only Group checkbox.

  Tip: If you want to screen prospective members before allowing them to join your group, select the Restricted Membership checkbox. After you save your group’s settings, you can create a Pending Subscription notice that requests prospective members to provide additional information before you approve their membership requests. That notice will be sent automatically to anyone who applies to join the group.

• Message Policies panel

  The settings on this panel that you should be particularly aware of are:

  • Disable No Email: In their individual group subscriptions, group members can select a No Email option if they do not want to receive a group’s messages by email (for example, they prefer to keep up with the group online through its website, or they are going away and want to temporarily suspend email delivery of group messages). If for some reason you want to prevent members of your group from selecting the No Email option, select the Disable No Email checkbox. This setting makes the No Email option unavailable in members’ individual subscription settings. However, be aware that members will still be able to select a Special Notices Only email delivery option in their subscription settings, which means the only messages they will receive by email will be those that are sent as special notices.
  • Hashtag Permissions: This setting controls whether group members can create new hashtags by including them in message subject lines. It also controls how messages are handled if members are not allowed to create new hashtags but include new hashtags in a message anyway. If you do not want anyone other than yourself and designated moderators to be able to create hashtags, select one of the “Messages from members can only be tagged with existing hashtags” options.
  • Reply To: This setting controls who is initially set to receive replies to messages that are posted to the group. Select the option you want to apply. Be aware that members will still see additional reply options in messages on the group’s website and in email digests (if they are using that delivery option) unless you use the Remove Other Reply Options setting to remove those additional reply options.
  • Remove Other Reply Options: When you select this checkbox, links to reply options other than the one you selected in the Reply To list above are removed from messages on the group’s website and from email digests.
  • Storage Limit Reached: Select the option you want to use to handle attachments when the group’s storage space limit is reached. For more information, see Managing a group's storage space.
• Message Formatting panel

  In this panel, you can add some custom text—for example, a disclaimer or a link to the group’s guidelines—to the system-generated footer that Groups.io includes in all email messages automatically.

  In addition, you can select the format that emailed group messages will have as well as how to handle attachments to messages. If you do not select a specific message format option, emailed messages will have the format used by their senders.

  Be aware that the footers in plain text messages look different from the footers in HTML-formatted messages (see Footers in individual email messages). Therefore, you might want to consider selecting a specific message format so the footers in all your group’s email messages will be consistent.

• Premium & Enterprise Features panel

  Restriction: The features listed in this panel are available in Premium (trial or paid) and Enterprise groups. They are not available in Free groups that were created on or after August 24, 2020.

  In the Premium & Enterprise Features panel, you can specify whether these Groups.io features are available in your group and who has access to them (some features have additional settings):

  • Message reposting
  • Member directory visibility
  • Subgroups
  • Calendar
  • Chats
  • Databases
  • Files
  • Photos
  • Polls
  • Wiki

Default email delivery options and other settings for group members

You can set default email delivery options, the default language, and default time and date display settings, including the timezone, that will apply to new members of the group. To display the page that contains these settings:

• Desktop browser: In the left menu that appears on all pages in your group’s website, click Admin and then, in the dropdown menu, click Membership and then Defaults.
• Mobile device: Tap the More icon at the bottom of a page. When the More menu appears, tap Admin, then Membership, then Defaults.

The resulting page contains a Default Subscription Settings panel with email delivery options and a Default User Settings panel with language, time, and date display settings. For detailed descriptions of all the settings, see the applicable help topics.

In the Default User Settings panel, review the Timezone field. The timezone displayed here matches the timezone that is set in your Groups.io account preferences. If you intend to use the calendar in your group and everyone in your group will be located in the same timezone, ensure that the timezone in this panel is accurate so that group members will receive calendar reminders at the correct time.

! Important: Before you leave this page, remember to click or tap the Update Settings button at the bottom of the page to save any changes you made.

Note: Be aware that group members will be able to override the default email delivery and user settings individually by changing their personal email delivery and account settings. Also, the settings in the Default User Settings panel apply to the accounts of people who are entirely new to Groups.io at the time they join your group (that is, they have not joined any other group at the same email address or otherwise set the time and date preferences in their own account settings).

 

Now go to Step 5: Create a Group Guidelines notice and other member notices.