Purpose
The group is most suitable for discussions and associations on interests, it can be made private or even private at any time, you can invite friends to it.
A public page is more convenient for publishing news on behalf of a company or a famous person, it can not be closed and displayed on each of the participants on a personal page (in the “Interesting Pages” block).
But this is only the official position of VKontakte. You have the right to use the type of community that you like best and better suits your needs.
Display on profile
The list of groups is hidden in the general profile information. To see it, click on “Show detailed information”. This list does not display private groups. In addition, users can hide their entire list of groups through privacy settings.
All public pages to which you are subscribed are displayed in the profile under the block with friends, and this list can not be hidden in any way. In part, this has caused the domination of public groups: people see interesting public relations on the pages of friends and subscribe to them too – which creates a natural increase in the audience.
Privacy
There are three types of closure:
– Open. To become a member, just click the “Join the group” button. All content is available even without entry. All participants can invite friends.
– Closed. Applications for accession are approved by administrators. Only administrators can invite friends. Before joining, you can write a message to the community, as well as read the name, description, status, avatar, cover, contacts and list of participants. The rest of the content becomes available only after approval of the application for accession.
– Private. This group can only be reached at the invitation of the leaders. Before joining the community, you can not see anything except the words “This is a private community. Access only by invitations to administrators. ”
Public pages in this plan are equivalent to open groups. All content is available even without a subscription. But no one can invite friends into them.
Wall
In groups, you can enable the “open wall” mode. On such a wall, any user can write a record, and everyone who enters the group will see it. However, such entries do not fall into the newsgroups of group members.
In public, any user can offer a record, and administrators can publish it on behalf of the community with the author’s signature below. Prior to publication, the proposed record is not seen by anyone except administrators, and after – it falls into the news feeds of subscribers.
Custom Content
In groups “open” there can be not only a wall, but also almost all sections. With the appropriate settings, participants will be able to add photos, videos, music and documents, create photo albums, discussions and wiki pages.
In public, administrators can allow users to upload photos to specific albums – that’s all. More than anything, users can not add themselves. There are no documents in public.
Wiki pages
In groups, the wiki menu is included in the “Materials” item and is displayed at the top of the community along with a fixed record and description.
In public there is no formal wiki menu, however, nothing prevents you from creating wiki pages and attaching them to records.
Places and Chekin
You can specify a location in the group management. It will be displayed in the description. People who will be near the specified place, when creating a new record and attaching their location to it, will be able to select your group as a point for marking.
In the public you can specify several places at once. They are displayed in a separate block in the right column on the page. However, unlike groups, it is possible to be noted in these places only through the community itself.
How to prevent commenting
In the group management on the “Sections” tab, make the wall “Closed”.
In the management of the public page on the “Comments” tab, uncheck the “Comments included” checkbox.
Other
The most noticeable visual differences between groups and publikami – on the tab “Sections” of community management: the groups there simply have more settings.
In the list of user communities, the subjects under the titles are subjects. Groups have a group type (open, closed or private).
People in the group are called participants. In the public page – subscribers. The button for joining the public is called “Subscribe”, and to the group – “Join the group” or “Apply” at the closed.
If the community does not have a text address, the link to the group will be written club ###, and public – ###.
When creating a public page, you are asked to specify the type of page: company, organization, person or product.
In managing a public page, you can specify the date of creation of the organization or the date of birth of the person – depending on what type you specified when creating. This information will be displayed below the description – where the group displays the location.
After subscribing to the public, you can immediately add it to a certain list of news.
As you can see, there are not so many differences between groups and public pages. But if you have already created a community, and now realize that you have chosen the wrong type, you can change the solution by clicking on the “…” button and selecting the “Translate to Page / Group” item. It is worth noting that this function is only available to the community creator. If you can not change the type for some reason, contact Support.