Champ › Guides › Moderation

Moderation

Moderating means keeping your forum clean and friendly. You do not have to do it all yourself. Champ lets trusted customers help, right on your store.

Who can moderate#

To make a customer a moderator, add the tag champ-moderator to them in your Shopify admin. The steps are in making someone a moderator.

Moderators work on the forum itself, not in the Champ dashboard. When they read the forum while signed in, they see extra buttons on topics and posts. They can:

  • Approve or reject posts that are waiting for review
  • Edit any post
  • Hide a post or topic
  • Lock a topic, so nobody can reply
  • Move a topic to a different forum
  • Pin a topic to the top of the forum
  • Delete a post or topic

None of this needs access to your Shopify admin. So you can make a helpful customer a moderator without giving them anything else. Often, customers make the best moderators.

Holding new posts for approval#

You can make a forum hold new posts until a moderator approves them.

  1. In the Champ dashboard, open Forums and open the forum.
  2. Tick New and edited posts require approval.
  3. Click Save.

New posts and edited posts now stay hidden until approved. When posts are waiting, moderators see a Posts are waiting for moderation link at the top of the forum. You can also approve posts in the Champ dashboard.

When to turn approval on:

  • Turn it on for public forums, forums that attract spam, and forums where a wrong answer causes support tickets.
  • Leave it off for members-only forums, where signing in already filters people. Also leave it off for busy chat forums, where a delay kills the conversation.

A middle option: leave approval off, but keep the anti-spam settings on.

Note A rejected post can still be approved later. Rejecting is not permanent, so a moderator can change their mind.

Getting an email when posts need approval#

Champ can email your moderators when posts are waiting. Then nobody has to keep checking.

  1. First, set up email notifications. This does not work without them.
  2. In the Champ dashboard, open Settings.
  3. In the Moderator notifications section, tick Notify moderators of posts requiring approval.
  4. Click Save.

Champ checks every 10 minutes, so an email can arrive a little late. This feature is in beta.

Edit a post instead of deleting it#

Moderators can edit any post. This is often better than deleting it. For example, you can fix a broken link, or remove a phone number someone posted by mistake. The conversation stays whole.

Hide a post instead of deleting it#

If something has to go, choose Hide rather than Delete. A hidden post is out of sight, but you can bring it back with Unhide. A deleted post is gone for good.

Lock a finished argument instead of deleting it#

When an argument has gone on too long, lock the topic. Do not delete it.

Locking stops new replies. The useful answer stays in the forum for the next person with the same question. Deleting removes the answer too, and upsets the person who was right.

Slowing down people who post too fast#

You can set a minimum wait between posts from the same person.

  1. In the Champ dashboard, open Settings.
  2. In the Anti spam section, set Minimum seconds between posts by the same user. We suggest 30 to 60.
  3. Click Save.

Real members will not notice a 30 to 60 second wait. Spam robots are badly slowed down. A value of 0 means no limit.

Champ also has built-in limits you do not need to set. They are covered in the anti-spam guide.

Putting a password on the whole forum#

While you set up your forum, you can hide it behind one shared password. This is handy for a quiet launch, when you want a few people to look before everyone else.

  1. In the Champ dashboard, open Settings.
  2. In the Password protect section, type a password in Site-wide password. Use letters and numbers only.
  3. Click Save.

Everyone must now enter that password to see the forum, including signed-in customers. To remove the password, clear the field and click Save.

Next#