General Info

I noticed some of our members have set their profiles to private which means they can't be seen by or interact with other members and they can't be added to the group(meaning the group listed on the groups tab.) So that caused me to wonder exactly how 'public' is a public profile. I contacted tech support and they responded today. I thought I would share the response so everyone is aware so here it is:

"I can see that the group you created is private, so only members of this group can see the content. Since, you have added a checkbox, so people can join a community, please note it makes all new profiles public automatically.

When using groups, the differences between public and private profiles are:

Public profiles:

• Member profiles are visible to other site members

• Members can follow and be followed by other site members

• Members can post, leave comments, and react to posts and activity

Private profiles:

• Only the members names and profile picture are visible to other site members

• Members cannot follow or be followed by other site members

• Members cannot comment, post or react to site content

• Members cannot be added to any groups

I completely understand your concern, though in any case, their profiles are not visible to the public or people that have not become members."

The only place for member interaction that is actually public is the blog and I try to make that distinction whenever I describe this site. If you post a blog or comment/react to a blog your user id is visible to anyone reading the blog including the general public.

I hope that information is helpful to everyone. You can, of course, continue with a private profile if you wish but you will be missing most of the benefits of joining including interaction with other members, ability to post in the forum and access to a group that we comment in and some of us have uploaded pictures, etc.