Create and Manage Community

This article explains how to create and manage your community.

Overview

The community feature offers a dedicated space for users in your Teachable school to share, discuss, and exchange experiences. The community experience includes:

• A dedicated space for you and students to foster connections
• The ability to categorize sections of your community into different topics
• Tools to moderate content within your community

This feature is available to schools on any paid plan. 

Getting Started

Creating Your Community

1. Log into your school > community. 
2. Select Create your community.  
3. Enter a customized community URL then click on Create.
   
   

1. Once your community is ready, you will receive an email in your inbox. Click Set up your community to finalize set up.
   

Enable/Disable Your Community

After your community has been created, select Enable Community in the top right corner of the page to make your community visible to students. 

You can also disable your community by selecting the same button again. 

Access Settings

Edit Access

By default, all students in your school are set to have access to your community. You can choose to limit access for students in select membership tiers or specific courses by:

1. Clicking Edit Access in the Student Access tab.

2. Select "Members" or "Students enrolled in specific courses" in the drop down menu.
3. If you selected "Members", choose the membership tiers you would like to gain access to your community. Please note: If you would like your students to purchase a membership tier, you will need to set your membership tier to Publish. 

4. If you selected "Students enrolled in specific courses", select the courses with the students that you would like to have access to your community.

 

Sharing Access

A direct link to your community can be shared with students and users. To do so:

1. Navigate to your school > Community
2. Under the "How to Access" section, copy the provided URL. 
3. Share this URL with students via email, DM, social media, etc. 

Upon accessing your community link, students will be prompted to sign into your school to finalize access. 

Editing URL

1. Click on Edit URL in the Student access tab.
2. Enter your desired community url.
3. Click on Save URL.

Categories and Topics

Create/Manage Categories

To create, edit, or delete an existing category:

1. Select the “Categories” tab.
2. To create a new category, select “Add a category”, or the pencil icon to the right of an existing category. From here, you can:
   • Edit the name of your category
   • Edit the category color
   • Select user group access (Entire community, membership, and courses)
   • And permission levels for users with access to this category
3. To delete an existing category, select the trashcan icon to the right of an existing category.

Topics & Tags

Within categories, topics can be posted to encourage discussions. Topics can then be tagged to better sift through existing conversations. To add a topic:

1. Navigate to your community and select a category.
2. In the top right hand corner, select “New Topic”.
3. Title your topic, select or create a new tag, and enter in your topic content.

Manage Tags 

1. Click on View Tags in the Additional settings tab.
2. From this page you can 
   1. Sort your tags by count or name 
   2. View posts within the tag 
   3. Manage tag groups
   4. Bulk upload tags 
   5. Delete unused tags

Branding

Community name

By default the name of your community matches the name of your Teachable school. To update it:

1. Click on Edit name in the Brand tab.
2. Enter your desired community name in the Title field.
3. Click on the checkmark icon to save your new name. 
4. Refresh the page to see the updated name.

Logos

Within your community, you can upload three different logos:

Logo

The logo image at the top left of your site. We recommend using a wide rectangular image with a height of 120px and an aspect ratio greater than 3:1. If left blank, your community name will show.

Logo small

This logo will be used for all messages generated by the system. Use a square 120 × 120 image. If left blank, a gear icon will be shown.

Favicon

Use a square 32 x 32px image saved as a png. If left blank, the logo will be used. 

Uploading a logo

1. Click on Upload logos in the Brand tab.
2. To upload a logo click on the add image icon and select a logo from your device. 
3. Click on the checkmark icon to save your new logo. 
4. Refresh the page to see the updated logo.

 

Brand color

1. Click on Manage themes in the Brand tab.
2. Scroll down the page to Color Palette and click on the color or hex code for Button & Links. 
3. Select a new color and click on Save.

1. Change the Button & Links color to a random color.
2. Click Save and wait 30 seconds.
3. Update it again to your preferred color and click Save.

Users

Community User Roles 

There are three types of users in your community: Admins, Moderators, and Student Users. Each role utilizes specific default permissions to run your community. 

Admin

Admin users are the highest level users in your community. Their permissions include:

• Impersonating non-admin level users
• Change site settings
• Create groups
• Amend site customizations
• Read any personal message
• Create, delete and modify categories
• Ignore category permissions to view private categories

Moderator

Moderators are a step below Admin level users. When granted moderator status, these users can assist in running your community with limited permissions:

• A shield icon is displayed next to their name on posts--to differ from student users.
• Moderators can edit all posts and users
• Moderators cannot add categories or change any site settings.

(Learn more about how to moderate your community). 

Student Users

This is basic level access to post comments and posts in your community.

Updating display names

1. Navigate to Admin on the sidebar.
2. Click on the Users tab.
3. Search for the username of the user you’d like to update. 
4. Click on the pencil icon.
5. Enter in the new display name and click on Save

Notifications

How to turn on your notifications

You’ll receive email and badge notifications (desktop and mobile web) for your community. If you’re not receiving notifications, here’s how to check your settings:

1. Click on your user profile badge
2. Go to profile > preferences

3. Go to notifications in the sidebar. Set your notifications to always, and enable your live notifications

How to check your notifications

1. To check your notifications in community, you can click on your user profile badge 

2. You can also go to profile > summary > notifications

In this view, you can see your notifications broken out by type 

How to be notified of activity in a specific category

If you’re looking to be notified of new posts in one or more categories, you can:

1. Select the category in the sidebar
2. Click the bell icon next to the “new topic” button on the upper right hand corner
3. Select the level of notification you would like to receive.

Globally update your notification preferences

If you’re looking to update your notification settings for multiple categories and/or tags at once, or if you want to adjust your notification default settings, then go to:

1.  User profile badge > profile > preferences > tracking

User Experience

When your community has been enabled, users with permission to view your community can access your space by selecting the Learn with Others button appearing in the course curriculum.

Topics and Replies

Topics are displayed as single posts within each Category of your community space. Users with permission to access community can post topics and reply to existing topics--encouraging engagement with users. (Learn more about posting topics).

Moderating Content

It's moderators' role to help oversee the topics in community, ensuring that users and content are in line with your Terms of Use, FAQ, and other published rules/guidelines. 

Flagging a Post

If a post violates your community guidelines, users are able to flag it for moderators.

To flag a post:

1. Select the topic.
2. Then clicking the flag icon at the bottom of the topic post

The flag dialog provides the following options:

• It's Inappropriate
  This topic contains content that a reasonable person would consider offensive, abusive, to be hateful conduct or a violation of our community guidelines.
• It's Spam
  This topic is an advertisement. It is not useful or relevant to this site, but promotional in nature.
• Something Else
  This topic requires general staff attention based on the guidelines, TOS, or for another reason not listed above.

Selecting the most applicable option will help ensure moderators can determine the next best steps.

Reviewing a Post

The Review Queue is a page that merges all types of reviewable items in your community into one consolidated review queue. Posts that are flagged will appear in the Review Queue.

Admin users can access the review queue by clicking on the “Review” button from the sidebar. From, here, the post can be removed or kept. 

Schedule a post

1. Create a private category that only admins have access to 
2. Click New Topic to compose your post and assign it to the private category. The click create topic 

3. Shield icon > Set Topic Timer

Direct messaging 

Direct messaging allows students within your community to send direct messages to each other. Users can report inappropriate messages and block other students from contacting them. When toggled off, admins and moderators can message students and they can respond, but students cannot start messages themselves.

To toggle on this setting navigate to Additional settings and toggle on Enable direct message for your students. 

FAQ

How do I embed media in my community?

You can embed media by pasting the link directly in your post for images and videos. 

How do I use HTML Markdown in my community?

You can use this guide to use HTML Markdown in your Community.

How do I sell my community with memberships? 

1. Make sure you have a membership tier created up under Memberships on the navigation bar.
   
2. Go to Community, and click “Edit access” to select the membership tier you want to gain access to community.

How do I access my community on mobile devices?

You can sign into your Teachable account on your mobile web browser, go to community, and save the web page as an app.

On Safari

• Tap on the share icon at the bottom of the browser 
• Tap on Add to Home Screen

On Chrome

• Tap on the share icon on the search bar at the very top
• Tap Add to Home Screen

These steps work similarly for all other browsers.