Home Members, Roles & Moderation

Members, Roles & Moderation

How members join, and the roles you can assign.

By Faizan Shaikh

• 5 articles

How members join and onboard

Status: Available Understand exactly what a new member goes through, from sign-up to their first post, so you can support them when they get stuck. Joining your community is a few short steps: sign up, verify the email, then complete a 3-step onboarding. Here's each part and where members can get held up. Step 1: Sign up Members sign up with an email and password. There's no "log in with Google" or other social login, so everyone creates an account this way. Anyone can sign up on their own; there's no approval queue. Step 2: Verify the email After signing up, the member gets a verification email. They can't log in until they click the link and verify. Until then their account stays unverified. If a member says they never got the email, they can request it again from the sign-in screen, and they can reset a forgotten password from there too. Step 3: Complete onboarding (3 steps) Once verified and logged in, the member is walked through three short steps before they can take part: 1. Welcome: a short intro screen that shows your welcome message. 2. Profile: they add their first and last name, an avatar, and a short bio. These are required. 3. Community guidelines: they read and accept your community guidelines with a checkbox. You set the welcome message and the guidelines yourself in Community Settings > Community Content (/admin/content/cs_content). If your guidelines are empty, every new member gets stuck on step 3 and can't finish onboarding, so make sure they're filled in. What onboarding does and doesn't gate Onboarding gates taking part. It does not gate looking around. - Before finishing onboarding, a member can still browse freely: the feed, public content, your landing page, and so on. - After finishing onboarding, they can post, comment, react, message, join groups, and the rest. So if a member can read but can't post or comment, the usual reason is they haven't finished onboarding yet. There's no plan selection in onboarding Onboarding does not ask members to pick a plan or pay for anything. Choosing a product or plan is a separate purchase step, not part of these three onboarding screens. Related - Member roles explained - Managing your members - Welcome message & community guidelines

Last updated on Jul 28, 2026

Member roles explained

Status: Available Learn the 5 roles you can give people, what each one can do, and how to assign them. Everyone in your community has a role. The role decides what someone is allowed to do beyond being a regular member. There are five roles. The 5 roles | Role | What they can do | |---|---| | Member | The default for everyone. Join groups, buy products and plans, post, comment, react, run polls, and send direct messages. | | Community Admin | Everything. Edit community settings, run commerce (products, plans, orders), manage all content, and assign roles to other members. | | Community Moderator | Moderate content everywhere (remove posts and comments, handle reports). They cannot touch settings or commerce. | | Course Manager | Build and manage all courses. | | Blog Manager | Write and publish blog posts. | A few things to keep straight: - Member is the baseline. The other four roles add powers on top; they don't take away a person's normal member abilities. - Moderators are not admins. They keep content clean but have no access to your settings or your money. - Course Manager and Blog Manager are content-only. They manage their area and nothing else. How to assign a role You set someone's role on their member record: 1. Open Members (/admin/users). 2. Open the member you want to change. 3. Set the Role field to one of the five roles. 4. Save. The change takes effect for that member. As an admin, the only roles you can assign are these five. Good to know - There is no per-group leader or per-group moderator role. A Community Moderator moderates across the whole community, not one group at a time. - Roles are about powers, not about what content someone has paid for. Whether a member has bought a product or plan is separate from their role. Related - Managing your members - How members join and onboard - The newsfeed & moderating posts

Last updated on Jul 28, 2026

Managing your members

Status: Available Find your members, see their details, and change someone's role from one screen. Everyone who has joined your community shows up in Members (/admin/users). This is where you look people up and manage their roles. Viewing your members 1. Open Members (/admin/users). 2. You'll see the list of everyone in your community. 3. Click any member to open their record. What you can see On a member's record you can see their account details: name, email, avatar, bio, their Role, and whether their account is verified and active. You cannot see auth secrets like passwords. Those are never shown to anyone, including admins. Changing someone's role To promote a member to a moderator, course manager, blog manager, or admin (or move them back to a plain member): 1. Open the member in Members (/admin/users). 2. Set the Role field. 3. Save. For what each role can do, see Member roles explained. A note on member counts Member counts around your community are precomputed and update shortly after a change rather than the instant it happens. A brief lag is normal. Related - Member roles explained - How members join and onboard - Connections, follows & blocking

Last updated on Jul 28, 2026

Connections, follows & blocking

Status: Available Understand how following, connections, and blocking work so you can answer members' questions about them. Members build their own social graph inside your community. There's nothing for you to configure here; members manage all of this themselves. But it helps to know how each piece works so you can support them. Follow: one-way and instant A follow is one-directional and takes effect right away. When someone follows another member, no approval is needed and the other person doesn't have to follow back. It's like following an account: you start seeing their activity, and that's it. Connection: a two-way request A connection is mutual, and it has to be accepted. One member sends a connection request, and it only becomes a connection once the other member accepts it. Until then it's just a pending request. A follow happens instantly and is one-sided. A connection needs both people to agree. Note that sending a connection request also starts a follow — so connecting and following overlap; a connection is effectively a mutual follow that both people opted into. Blocking: mutual and effectively permanent When one member blocks another, the block applies both ways: neither can interact with the other, including direct messages. Blocking is effectively permanent. Unblocking does not restore the relationship that existed before. If they want to follow or connect again, they start over from scratch. One important limit: admins, moderators, and course managers can't be blocked. This keeps your team able to moderate and support every member. What this means for you as an admin You don't set up or change any of these. Members decide who they follow, connect with, and block on their own. If a member asks you to "block someone for them" or "undo a block," explain that these are theirs to manage, and that a block can't be cleanly reversed. Related - Managing your members - Direct messages (chat) - Member roles explained

Last updated on Jul 23, 2026

Moderating content & handling reports

Status: Available How you keep your community clean: removing posts and comments, and what happens when a member reports something. Keeping your community healthy comes down to two things: taking down content that breaks your guidelines, and responding when members flag something. This guide covers both, and who is allowed to do them. Who can moderate Only two roles can moderate content: - Community Admin: full powers, including moderation. - Community Moderator: moderates content across the whole community, but has no access to your settings or commerce. Everyone else (regular Members, Course Managers, Blog Managers) cannot moderate. There is no per-group moderator or per-group leader role: a Community Moderator moderates everywhere, not one group at a time. For the full breakdown, see Member roles explained. Removing posts and comments As an admin or moderator you can take down a post or a comment that breaks your community guidelines. Removing a comment sends the comment's author a notification letting them know it was removed by a moderator, so the action isn't silent. Removal applies across the community, not just within a single group. What members can report Members can report content they think breaks the rules. A report doesn't remove anything on its own: it flags the content so you can review it and decide whether to take it down. When a member files a report, a notification goes out so the report doesn't get missed. You then review the reported content and either remove it or leave it up. Notifications around moderation Moderation activity generates notifications so nobody is left guessing: - When a member reports content, a report notification is raised for review. - When a moderator removes a member's comment, that member gets a removal notification. Like other counts and activity on the platform, notification delivery is handled in the background, so there can be a brief lag. Related - Member roles explained - Managing your members - Connections, follows & blocking

Last updated on Jun 26, 2026