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Set up your coapp community

Use this guide when you are preparing a new community for its first members. Start with the people and activities your community needs, then add the features, content, and access rules that support them. You can return to each step later as your community grows.

1. Decide how people can join​

Choose the sign-up strategy before sharing your community widely:

  • Anyone can sign up lets people start registration when they reach the sign-up area.
  • By invitation only limits registration to people an admin invites or adds.
  • Approval based lets an admin review registrations before accepting them. It is unavailable when payments are enabled.

Open Manage > Community. In the gear menu next to Invite, select Sign-up Strategies to set the strategy. For the complete behavior of each option, see Choose how people can sign up.

2. Configure the community experience​

Open Manage > Settings and review the settings that shape what members see and can use:

  1. Open Features to enable or disable the community features you plan to use.
  2. Open General to review the community's basic settings.
  3. Add your logo and colors so members can recognize the community.
  4. If your community needs a custom address, ask coapp Support for the current setup process before changing DNS records.

Read Enable or disable community features, Customize your community branding, and Manage your community address and custom domain for the detailed steps.

3. Give members useful places to start​

Before inviting members, publish the information they should find first:

  • Create a welcome post with the community's purpose, expected conduct, and the first action to take.
  • Create pages for information that should remain organized, such as rules, FAQs, project information, or contact details.
  • Create upcoming events if members should be able to discover or join them in coapp.

Posts are for updates and conversation; pages are for structured information that should remain available. See Create and configure a page, Create and use posts, and Events in coapp.

4. Invite your first members​

Open Manage > Community > Members and select Invite. You can invite individual email addresses, upload a CSV list, or copy the public registration link to share through your own communication channels.

For every invitation method, including how to monitor sign-ups and resend a personal link, see Invite and add members.

If you are moving from an existing WhatsApp group, use Move your community from WhatsApp to coapp for a communication and follow-up plan.

5. Start the first community activity​

When members arrive, give them one simple reason to participate: reply to a welcome post, introduce themselves, join an event, or read a useful page. Use a clear post or message to tell them where new updates will appear and how they can ask questions.

Adjust the sign-up strategy, features, and structure as you learn what your members need. You do not need to configure every coapp feature before launching your first activity.