Trying to make a generic invite

[spdegabrielle (Stephen De Gabrielle)]

I’m trying to make a nice generic invite for my community.

We’ve made a user with a nice username and name to appear on the invite screen.

But the number of invites is limited to 10, and the timeframe is limited to three months.

Is there a way to bypass the limit to create a generic invite with a large number of uses that we can post on our website and other socials so we can drive traffic to our discourse site?

[not-ethan (Ethan)]

Staff users can set the expiration date to anytime and go up to 5000 users with the default settings

[Lilly]

Hi @spdegabrielle if you search “invite” in admin - settings, you should find the required fields you can configure.

[spdegabrielle (Stephen De Gabrielle)]

@not-ethan and @Lilly

Thank you for responding so quickly.

I’m trying to make a generic invite, not tied to a particular user.

So while the staff users can do 5000 with any date limit, the invite is tied to their name. which isn’t very informative on the invite screen,

@Lilly The user limits are restricted to three months - and there doesn’t seem to be a way to change that.

[spdegabrielle (Stephen De Gabrielle)]

@Lilly my mistake - there is an ‘invite expiry days’ setting - but sadly it is global - I’m disinclined to change all users to 5000.

[Lilly]

Do you want all users to be able to invite, or just limit this one particular account or selected ones? If latter, I guess you could set min trust level to allow invite to TL4 then assign those users to that trust level.

[spdegabrielle (Stephen De Gabrielle)]

Good suggestion. It seems reasonable as I’ve never had a user use the invite function. Still, I’d rather not remove the facility.

I’m guessing from your responses the a generic site invite - like many discord servers - is not a feature available in discourse?

[Lilly]

Ok I think I may have figured it out. Use a staff account. The setting shown below: invite link max redemptions limit applies to staff accounts. Also max invites per day doesn’t appear to be limited by staff.

Check out this topic

Configure how users can create and send invites for others to join your community

Discourse allows users with a sufficient trust level to invite new users to the site. Invites can be configured to redirect the new user to a specific topic when they first join the site. Invites can also be configured to add the user to custom Discourse groups when they accept the invite. Related site settings The following site settings can be adjusted to configure how invites work on your site: invite expiry days: the number of days that an invitation is valid for (defaults to 90 days…

In other words, exactly what @not-ethan said, but the settings don’t appear that clear.

Perhaps the setting descriptions could use some more clarity.

[spdegabrielle (Stephen De Gabrielle)]

Yes I’m aware of staff account capabilities. But I’m after a generic invite, not one from one of our staff.

[Jagster (Jakke Lehtonen)]

What does generic mean now?

[Lilly]

I’m confused as to why you don’t just make a designated staff account for this? I think I am just misunderstanding what you are trying to do. My apologies.

[spdegabrielle (Stephen De Gabrielle)]

We only have a limited number of staff accounts. Would need to ‘unstaff’ someone.

[Firepup650 (Firepup Sixfifty)]

Why not temporarily increase the standard invite limit up to say, a few thousand+ uses, make your invite, then set the limit back to normal?

[spdegabrielle (Stephen De Gabrielle)]

Thanks I’ll try that and report back

[spdegabrielle (Stephen De Gabrielle)]

Im sad to say while it was a good idea
Upping the limits seemed to have no effect on the user I created and impersonated.

I also just noticed the regular user invite doesn’t include the ability to set a landing topic.

[supermathie (Michael Brown)]

You might want to create a user for this purpose, e.g. use system or “forum identity”.

You could use the API to generate links as that user, or impersonate.

@spdegabrielle

Upping the limits seemed to have no effect on the user I created and impersonated.

Which limit did you raise?

If it was only max invites per day, that is not the right one.

[spdegabrielle (Stephen De Gabrielle)]

Good point! I missed ’ invite link max redemptions limit users’, but it ultimately failed.

I was able to create an invite with a 14 year lifespan and 5000 uses, but it is non-functional in practice, returning an ‘Validation failed’ error,

It also lacks the ability to set the ‘Arrive at topic’ parameter available to staff users.

Thanks to everyone for their help.

I’m inclined to log a feature request for generic ‘Welcome’ invites that can go to an ‘about this site’ post.

s.

[JammyDodger]

@spdegabrielle

It also lacks the ability to set the ‘Arrive at topic’ parameter available to staff users.

For this bit, I think if you use the invite button from the topic itself it should allow a normal user to have an ‘arrive at topic’ version. Though the topic has to be in a public category:

Create and use Invites

By default, users can start sending invites once they reach Trust Level 2. The invite page can be accessed from the user menu: [user menu - invites] Invites can be created from here, and it will also list any pending invites that have yet to be redeemed: [invites page] An invite can either be limited to an email address (which also gives the added option to include an optional message), or be used as a link that can be shared with up to 10 people. [create invite] In addition to the mai…

[spdegabrielle (Stephen De Gabrielle)]

Thanks
did not realise that

I still have the "validation failed’ error - which I am guessing occurred because I set the user invite settings back to their defaults. (I’m assuming regular users are limited, and new users cannot send invites at all for good reasons)

As it stands my options are; demote a staff user, or create an invite user with the steps

1. relax invite constraints for all users (5000 day, 5000 invites per user)
2. create a special user with the name ‘community invite’,
3. go to the ‘Welcome new users’ topic while impersonating user
4. create the invite with the maximum number of uses (length defaults to 14 years)
   Noting that I must not reset the invite settings to their defaults or the invite will trigger a ‘Validation failed’ error and be unusable.

By comparison Discord communities have generic invites like https://discord.gg/elixir that go straight to their onboarding or nominated channel.

S.

[maiki]

@spdegabrielle

Is there a way to bypass the limit to create a generic invite with a large number of uses that we can post on our website and other socials so we can drive traffic to our discourse site?

Yes, don’t use an invite link.

I’m not being facetious, but invite links, outside of a private, exclusive community don’t provide enough benefits, in my opinion.

If you share how your community is configured, I could give specific advice. Here’s what I’ve done with Discourse in the past:

1. Create a welcome topic explaining stuff, and inviting the public to join the forums, explaining it’s low traffic, no spam, run by whichever org, etc. (the invite page)
2. Take that topic URL and create a permalink for it in Discourse, so https://forums.examples.org/you-are-invited → https://forums.example.org/t/welcome/1234.
3. Share https://forums.examples.org/you-are-invited on social media

In this scenario the forums were public, and user could sign up without pre-approval. That permalink is “evergreen”, because I can change where it points; I can publish it online, in print, as a QR code, etc.

That’s one content-driven approach to inviting new members.