How do I add users to my community?

When you create your community, one of the settings you select determines whether membership for your community should be open, moderated, or closed. If you would like to adjust these settings, you can do so at the Manage Communities page. Other settings determine who will have posting access to your community.

Open Membership

If your community has open membership, users can join your community freely.

Moderated Membership

With moderated membership, users cannot join your community freely — they must request membership by attempting to join. You can manage membership requests manually or you can choose to be notified by email when somebody tries to join your community by selecting the appropriate option under "Administrative Options" on the Manage Communities page. To accept or reject pending members, click on the "Pending" link for the appropriate community on the Manage Communities page, then accept or reject each pending member.

Closed Membership

The only way to add members to a community with closed membership is for you to invite them specifically. Users cannot submit a membership request as they would for a community with moderated membership.

Inviting Users to Join Your Community

You can invite users to join your community via the Manage Communities page. Select the "Members" link for the community you wish to invite users to. If your community has more than one page's worth of members, navigate to the last page of members.

At the bottom of your last "Members" page, there are several rows where you can fill in the information and settings for the potential new members you would like to invite. For each potential member, fill in their username under "Account," then select the privileges you would like for them to have (Member, Posting Access, Unmoderated (can post without going through the moderation queue), Moderator (can approve posts from the moderation queue), Administrator). Select "Update settings" when you are finished.

You can view existing invitations for your community on the Manage Communities page via the appropriate "Invitations" link. Should you change your mind about inviting a specific user to your community, you can also cancel their invitation from that page.

Users who have been invited to join a community can respond from the Manage Community Invitations page, either accepting or declining an invitation.