A group is organized like a "neighborhood," with users, applications, and some common characteristic or point of interest such as Milking related questions or blogging about your feeding. There are different types of groups, which makes it possible to control degrees of visibility and access. Please see the next section to learn about these types.

What group types are there?

There are five group types of levels. Its type governs the way a group behaves regarding membership and visibility. Below, we describe them in terms of joining. The types include:

Private Unlisted - The group name doesn't appear in the group list. The only way to join it is to receive an email invitation from an owner.

Private Listed - The group's name appears in the group list; however, its content is not visible to non-group members. Click Join Group to trigger a Request membership dialog box. Here, you type a message to the group owner(s) for your request and then click Request membership.

Public Closed - With this kind of group, clicking Join Group triggers a Request membership dialog box. Here, you type a message to the group owner(s) for your request. You then click Request membership.

Public Open - You can join this group by clicking the group home page's Join Group link and immediately become a member.

Joinless - Membership isn't tracked (that is, there are no group members, per se). Site-level roles control the group's permissions. Joinless groups are managed by system administrators unless an administrator creates a special role for managing this type of group.