Last updated on July 27th, 2026 at 01:16 pm

This document describes the activities needed to perform when adding a new learning community. We continually try to simplify this process.

Setting Up a New Tablet Cohort

This document will provide a basic outline for setting up a new tablet learning community/cohort with references to other documentation that provides additional detail.

Flexible Mission

The organization of the site changed during the first year. Two changes are most prominent.

We needed flexibility so topics are now modular which allows each cohort to have a different learning path depending on the group’s learning and progress. Topics can be assembled to match the interests and abilities of each cohort.
Each learning community/cohort has their own learning community page. with their own schedule and topics. The page will write a cookie to direct the user to their specific home page.

Steps to Set Up a New Cohort

There are six steps for the setup. The steps below are followed by a video demonstration and more details about the setup.

Name the Cohort with a concise name indicating location.
Create a new learning community post by cloning/copy to draft from the “Community Post Template” found under All Posts, category Community.
Edit the new Learning Community Post. See details below. Publish the post.
Edit the post Learning Communities to edit/add one of the buttons and its target URL to the URL of the new Learning Community Post.
Set up a site Redirections (found under tools in the WP Dashboard) that will read the cookie to redirect/direct the tablet user to their Learning Community page.
Run on a tablet. (You can test on BlueStacks if desired) From the tablet main page, select Go to your Learning Community and then on the Learning Communities page, select the button for the new Learning Community in order to write the cookie. I recommend doing this before the course.

From this point, when the user taps on “Go to your Learning Community” they will be taken directly to the custom Learning Community page with their news, schedule and standard session topics.

Video Demonstration

This video will walk through the steps of this process.

New Learning Community Post

Every learning community/cohort get a custom community page that will contain their news, announcements, schedule, and most importantly, their own lesson plan. The unique lesson plan allows you to change the course to match the progress and interest of the group.

To get started, you will copy the template post titled Community Post Template by clicking on New Draft in the post listing in the WordPress dashboard.

You are then presented with a new draft of a post for your Cohort. Edit this post with the following:

Edit the title of the post to reflect the new cohort.
Plan to add a new photo image after the first class.
Edit the Shortcode block by replacing “orgtest” with the short name of the cohort. Spaces and upper case are fine.
Change all dates and times under schedule for the actual planned schedule.
Change the lesson plans if needed. Usually you will start with the standard plan we have used.
Click Publish to publish the post. Display the published post to check it.

Adding a Redirection.

More on the Community Cookie

With the implementation of cookies, we can remember which Community the student belongs to, there are a couple of additional steps needed during onboarding. This shows how this is implemented; first here is the short code that sets the cookie.

The code block is inserted after the Post name and before the picture of the Community. It calls Code Snippet “2305”, “tfs_setcookie” and passes the token (“Riverview” in our example above) to use in the Cookie “tfs_group”. This cookie is then stored on the students tablet to automatically route them to the appropriate Community Link post. We currently keep the cookie for 90 days or until the cookie is cleared on the tablet application. Note that the Community LInks/Landing post should be assigned to ONLY the Community Category, since it is a node in the URL. The Cookie is then use dby the Redirection Plugin to transfer to the appropriate Community Links page.

Set Up the Redirection

Now that we have assigned the Community a cookie value, we need to add a redirection rule to the system. Here is what Sabathani’s rule looks like.

The 2 major pieces to change are the value of the cookie (Sabathani in this example) and the “Matched Target” which is the “slug” of the Community Post you just created.

That’s it! So clone; insert new community name/token/schedule; and add redirection rules.

Updating the Learning Communities Page

We have to change the “Learning Communities” WordPress Post to include the new communities. When editing a Post, be sure to turn on the outline view (the icon on the upper left of the menu bar next to the”Design Library”. We need to move the previous learning communities from the upper area to the lower, older section and change the names and links in the top 2 buttons to the new communities you just created.

First drag the sub-buttons the upper right area (#1) and to be on top of the second button group (#2); this has already done in the picture below. Next add 2 new sub-buttons to the first button group (#1) also shown below. Then click on the button itself and type in the name of the new community.

Finally, we need to add the “stub” (or URL) to the Community Post you created earlier (#4). You can get the “slug” from the Community Post you created earlier as shown below.

On the upper right hand side of the Post, select POST, you will see the “Slug” for your new page, select the slug (#1) and a new prompt will appear, select the copy option (#2). Now that you have the address, return to the Learning Communities page and associate it with the correct button (see #1 and #4 in the previous screenshot).

Save your work and test using the “View Post” function -see diagram below. Be sure to test all the buttons to assure that they are pointing to the correct posts.

Fixing Cookie Problems

There is a post that will reset the cookie to Null if a mistake was made in selecting the Learning Community. Find it in the app under:

Menu>Links>Your Tablet> **Reset Community to Null

After resetting cookie, clear the storage for the app on the tablet. Find it under:

Settings > Apps & Notifications > See All Apps > Student App > Storage & Cache > Clear Storage

For more information see: Resetting the Student Cookie Post.

Attaching the new communities to the apps

We have removed the need to change any of the Pages associated with the Student App (fire-learn) or the Links for Seniors App (Links-App).

Homework

Refer to post DOC – Customizing a Community Lesson Plan for a discussion on customizing lesson plans and homework.

Summary

Basically the flow is to first create a new learning community WordPress Post for each community by cloning a current one. Then updating it with the information for the new learning community. Finally, update the Learning Center Post.

And of course…..

*Always test things after making changes. Review Resetting the Student Cookie Post.