Set up your community
The five steps you walk through when you sign up, what each one decides, and which of them you can change later.
- setup
- permanent
- branding
Signing up walks you through five short steps. At the end you have a real community at your own web address, with a home page, a discussion feed, and a place to add courses.
The whole thing takes about five minutes. You can change almost everything afterwards, and this article says plainly which parts you cannot.
Name your community and pick your web address
Four things here: what your community is called, its web address, your own name, and the handle members will see next to your posts.
The web address fills in from the name as you type. You can edit it. It becomes
yourname.drry.com, and it is the one thing on this page you cannot change later, so read the next article before you commit to it.Pressing Continue creates your community for real. It is live from this moment.
Say what it is about
Pick a topic and write one line describing your community. The line shows up on your member home page under the welcome heading.
You can skip this and add it later in Customize.
Choose a colour and a font
Five accent colours and three heading fonts, with a live preview. This is a starting point, not a commitment. The Customize gives you the full set later, including your own logo and a colour picker.
Write your first post
Your community starts with a welcome post already in the feed. Whatever you write here replaces it.
Do not overthink it. Say hello, say what people can expect, and move on. You can edit or delete it any time.
Decide free or paid
Two choices: free to join, or members pay you. If you choose paid, type a whole monthly amount. No cents.
You do not have to decide now. Pick Decide later and set a price in Settings whenever you are ready. If you do go paid, you will also need to connect Stripe before anyone can actually pay, which is covered in its own article.
What happens next
When you finish, you land on a page that asks what you want to build first. It offers to set up a waitlist, a free download that collects emails, or your first course, and it builds the whole thing for you. Pick one or choose to explore on your own. Nothing is locked in either way.
That page disappears once your community gets going, so if you skipped something there, the articles here cover the same ground.
Common questions
Can I change my community name later?
Yes. The name and the web address are separate things. You can rename the community any time in Customize. The address stays as it is.
Can I run more than one community on one account?
There is no way to create a second one from your account: signing up again resumes the community you already have. You can belong to other people's communities, as an admin or as a member, and the switcher at the top of the sidebar moves between them.
Is my community visible while I am still setting it up?
Technically yes, from the moment you finish step one. In practice nobody can find it until you share the link. If you want to be certain nobody wanders in, you can close the doors to new members in Settings while you work.
I skipped some steps. Where do I do them now?
Colours, fonts, logo and your welcome wording are all in Customize. Your price and Stripe are in Settings. Your first post is in the Community tab.