The "Groups / Communities Plugin" enables creation of engaging groups on your website and provides intuitive, attractive user interface. We have released some great enhancements in this plugin which will be very useful for your websites:

1) Integration with "Advanced Events Plugin": If you have the robust "Advanced Events Plugin", then you can have events for Groups / Communities of your website without needing the "Groups / Communities - Events Extension". After enabling this integration, Group Admins will be able to create events for their Groups.
If you have the "Groups / Communities - Events Extension", then you can import with a single-click all Group Events into "Advanced Events Plugin", thus getting more feature-rich and attractive events for your website’s Groups / Communities.

2) Email Notifications & Notification Updates: Group admins and Group members can now get email notifications and notification updates for various actions on their Groups like: new members, new followers, new posts, etc. Group admins and Group members will be able to manage these notifications from Notification Settings tab available in their Group Profile Options Menu.

3) Multiple Membership Roles: Group admins and Group members can now choose multiple Membership Roles in the Groups that they are member of, while becoming member of a Group.

4) Many new Widgetized pages: Many pages of this plugin have been made widgetized. You can now configure the layouts and widgets for these content pages from the Layout Editor as per your requirements: Create New Group, Edit Group, My Groups, Groups I Admin, Groups I Liked, Groups I've Joined.

5) Many new Global Settings:

• ~ Hide Left / Right Column on Group Profile: If you have "Advertisements / Community Ads Plugin" installed, then this setting allows you to choose whether you want the left / right column on Group Profile to be hidden when users click on Group’s Content tabs, to display Community Ads.
• ~ Enable Sliding Effect for opening Tabs on Group Profiles.
• ~ Show Tabs on Group Profile that have no content and where user is not permitted to create content of that type in the Group.
• ~ Displaying Groups in widgets and "Browse Groups" based on Privacy: Only those Groups which are available to users based on privacy will be shown in widgets and "Browse Groups" if this setting is chosen as "No". Else, all Groups will appear and users will see a "permission denied" message when they go to view such Groups.
• ~ Publishing Posts on Groups to Facebook: Site Admin can choose where the updates posted on Groups and selected for Facebook sharing will be published on Facebook: User's Facebook Timeline, OR Facebook Page linked with that Group, OR both. If Site Admin chooses both, then user will have the option to choose which one of the two to publish on, while posting. (requires latest version of "Advanced Activity Feeds / Wall Plugin")
• ~ Alert site moderators by email on new Group creation: Site Admin can choose email addresses which will receive automatic notification emails upon creation of new Groups. Enables easy monitoring and approval of new Groups on site.

6) Random, un-sequential display of Groups in Featured Groups Slideshow.

7) Displaying "Approximate distance in miles" in search results for Groups within a certain distance from a location (in cases where Groups are location based).

8) Displaying selected Group Profile Fields on "Browse Groups" and in Search Results: For all custom Group Profile fields, site admin can enable / disable this.

9) Improvements and bug fixes in the Group Layout customization feature for Group Admins.

10) Performance Improvements and other Optimizations: We have done code optimizations for speed improvement of this plugin:

• ~ Database Table Indexing: Improves speed of data retrieval operations on the database tables.
• ~ AJAX based loading of widgets: We have given a new setting in the widgets of this plugin using which you can choose for these widgets to be loaded via AJAX.
• ~ Caching implemented in the Category Widgets to speed up their loading.

11) New "Show / Hide Default Albums" setting allows site admin to choose whether default, auto-created albums of Groups and their various extensions (like 'Overview Photos', 'Note Photos', 'Discussion Photos', etc) should be shown on the site at various places.

12) Groups / Communities - Multiple Listings and Products Showcase Extension:

• ~ This useful extension now enables Group Admins to add / link / associate related Stores (from "Stores / Marketplace - Ecommerce Plugin") to their Groups / Communities. Such stores will be displayed on Group profiles.
• ~ "Apply Group / Community View Privacy" setting allows site admin to choose if a Group's view privacy should be applied on its associated Listings.

13) Groups / Communities - Form Extension:

• ~ Default Form Questions: Site Admin can now create default form questions that will appear in the Forms of all Groups.
• ~ New "Allow Adding Custom Fields / Questions" setting: In some cases Site Admin might want fields of Forms of all Groups to be same, and would not want to allow Group Admins to add their own fields / questions for their Group Forms. This setting allows this.
• ~ New "Allow Editing Form Tab's Name" setting: This enables Site Admin to allow Group owners to edit the name of their Group's Form tab from the "Apps" section of their Group Dashboard. Group Admins can have names of their Form like, Contact, Enquiry, Booking etc.

Note: To get these enhancements on your website, please upgrade this plugin on your site to its latest version available in your SocialEngineAddOns Client Area.

Clients who have subscribed to our "Basic" or "Plus" subscription plans can send us a request for upgrading this plugin on their website by creating a new Support Ticket from their SocialEngineAddOns Client Area. If you have not yet subscribed to any of our plans, then you can do so from here to avail the numerous benefits that come with them.