Member profiles: header and protected handles

Every member has a profile page: their photo, name and bio under a wide band across the top. Two settings decide how that band looks, and a third stops people from taking a handle that makes them look like you or your team. All three live in one place, the Community section of Customize. Its heading reads Member profiles.

This is different from the Members section next to it, which decides whether members can browse each other's profiles at all. It is also different from Onboarding, which decides which profile details you ask members for.

Profile header background

What a member's header shows is decided in this order, first match wins:

1. The member's own header image, if you allow them and they uploaded one.

2. Your community-wide colour, if Apply to every profile is on.

3. Otherwise, a soft gradient in each member's own colour, which is what every profile shows until you set anything.

The eight curated colours are a purple, a red, an orange, a green, a blue, a pink, a near-black and an off-white. Pick a swatch or use Custom color to enter any hex value. The colour is only saved once it is a complete, valid value, so a half-typed hex never paints a broken band.

If you switch Apply to every profile off and back on while you are still in the editor, it restores the last colour you picked instead of resetting to the first swatch.

Member header images

With Let members upload a custom header image on, each member gets a Cover photo card on their own Account page, described as the banner behind your avatar. A wide 3:1 image works best, about 1600 by 533 pixels. A member's image overrides your colour on their own profile only.

With it off, the Cover photo card disappears from members' Account pages, uploads are refused, and any cover a member already set stops showing. Every profile then falls back to your colour, or to the member's own gradient. Nothing is deleted from a member's account by switching it off.

Protected usernames

Each member picks a handle when they set up their profile, and it is unique within your community. Protected usernames are handles nobody can claim, so a member cannot pose as you or your team. The field suggests admin, support or your brand name. The list is empty until you add to it.

• Typing. Handles are lowercase letters, numbers and underscores. Anything else is stripped as you type, so @Support! is saved as support. A repeat is ignored.

• Limit. Up to 100 protected handles. The counter under the box shows how many you have.

• What a member sees. While choosing a handle, a protected one shows as unavailable, the same as one already taken. If they submit it anyway they are told it is reserved in this community and asked to pick another.

• The owner is held to it too. If the owner renames a member from the Members page, a protected handle is refused there as well.