Understanding the Basics: What is the difference between Categories, Channels & Posts?

The IHUBApp content engine is built through the use of Channels and the fuel that revs up engagement is the content that you post directly into a channel. Understanding how all this fits together, will make it easy for you to organize your channels in a way that will help to drive engagement.

Understanding the difference between categories and channels.

Let's take a look at the structure that makes up the IHUBApp.

The structure looks like this:
Categories > Channels > Posts

• Categories
  Are the way for you to organize your Channels by topic. Think of these like a labeling system. You can have as many categories and sub-categories as you need.

  • Channels
    Are where you publish and post your content.

Imagine if you had 100 channels and half of the channels were about dogs and the other half were about cats. To make it easier for your users to find the channels they want to join to receive updates you could make two categories. One for the “Cat Lovers” and one for the “Dog Lovers”.  Let's take a look at how you might use Categories to sort channels:

DOG LOVERS [CATEGORY]

• Dog Treat Offers [CHANNEL]

• Dog Jokes [CHANNEL]

CAT LOVERS [CATEGORY]

• • Purrfect Pets [CHANNEL]

  • Feline Friends [CHANNEL]

Understanding how posts operate inside of a channel.

Posts are the way you communicate information and interact with your members and you do this by adding a post to one or more channels.  

When you add a Post to your channel the following happens:

• Members of the channel will immediately see your post.
• Your post will be automatically added into the channel members newsletter.
• Notifications that a new post has been added will automatically go out. (Note: Your users can decide to mute the notifications in which case this won't happen.) 
• Your post will become automatically searchable across your entire Hub.