A badge is a mark on a member's profile. Some you give by hand, most you let the rules give out for you.
Badges live in the interactions section of your community settings.
Creating a badge
A badge needs a name, an icon and a colour. That is all it takes, and it is worth doing properly: this is a thing members will display, so a badge that looks like an afterthought will be treated as one.
Badge groups
Badges are organised into groups, and groups are ordered. Groups keep the badge wall readable once you have more than a handful.
Group by what earned them: participation, learning, milestones, events. A member scanning the wall should be able to tell what a group is for without reading every badge in it.
Awarding by hand
Any badge can be given to a member directly from their profile. That is the right route for the things a rule cannot see: helped somebody, ran a session, was there at the start.
Rules
A rule watches for something and awards a badge when it happens. Seven triggers are available.
| Trigger | Awards when a member |
|---|---|
| Posts created | Has written this many posts |
| Comments created | Has written this many comments |
| Likes received | Has received this many reactions |
| Days as member | Joined this many days ago |
| Activity streak | Reaches a streak of this length |
| Course completed | Completes a course, or any course |
| Lesson completed | Completes a lesson, or any lesson |
Each rule has a threshold: the number that has to be reached. Course and lesson rules can point at one specific course, or at any of them. Days as member counts from the join date, whether or not the member has done anything since.
Quick start templates
The rules editor offers templates for the common cases, so a first set of badges is a few clicks rather than an afternoon. Add them, then adjust the thresholds to your own community.
Rules can be paused
A rule is active or paused. Pausing stops it awarding without deleting it, which is what you want while you decide whether a threshold was too generous.
Badges already awarded stay awarded. Changing a rule never takes a badge back.
Set thresholds against what your community actually does. A badge at 100 posts in a community where the busiest member has 30 will never be awarded, and nobody will ever know it exists.
A set that works
Three tiers of the same thing beat twelve unrelated badges. First post, ten posts, fifty posts is a ladder a member can see themselves climbing. One badge at fifty is a wall.
Keep a few rare ones for real achievement, and hand a couple out by hand for things no rule can measure. The hand-given ones tend to be the ones members mention.
The badge wall
Members get a badge wall showing what exists and what they have earned, and it can be shown as its own tab. Seeing the unearned ones is most of the motivation: a badge nobody can see is not a reward, it is a database row.