The feed is where the community actually happens. You get the same feed your members do, plus the controls that come with running the community.
One feed across all forums
The feed is a single stream of posts from every forum a member can reach. The areas and forums in the sidebar are filters on that stream: pick one, and the feed narrows to it. Opening a forum marks its posts as read.
Because members only ever see the forums they have access to, two members can look at very different feeds. As an admin you see everything.
Writing a post
Pick the forum, write, publish. The forum choice matters: it decides who sees the post and, in a moderated forum, whether a member's post appears at once.
The composer opens on two tabs, Post and Discussion, plus a third tab, Q&A, as soon as a Q&A forum exists. The tab decides both the editor and the forums you can pick.
| Tab | Forums you can pick | Editor |
|---|---|---|
| Post | Feed and announcement forums | The short composer |
| Discussion | Discussion forums | A long-form editor with a Title |
| Q&A | Q&A forums | The short composer, asking "What's your question?" |
The picker only lists forums that accept new posts. Drafts and archived forums never appear, and forums on request appear once the writer has access. Announcement forums are for your team: members do not get them in their picker.
The Post tab has buttons for Images, Video, Audio, Files, Poll and Emoji, and a Background that turns a one-line post into something that catches the eye in a scroll. The Discussion editor adds headings, lists, a Code block, a Divider and an Info element for something that should stand out, plus Link and Poll. Which media buttons appear depends on the media types your post rules allow.
Your team also gets Content linking, which attaches a course, a hub, an event or a place in the community as a card. Members do not have this button.
While you write in the admin area, the composer tells you when the forum's audience is smaller than you might expect, for example "Only 12 of 40 members can see this post." That is the moment to check the forum's access before you publish.
A short post with a question gets replies. A long post with an announcement gets read and scrolled past. Both are fine, as long as you know which one you are writing.
If a post contains a word from your Word blocklist, it is hidden the moment it is published and lands in the reports for review. This applies to your team as well.
Comments and reactions
Members comment, and comments can be replied to. A comment can carry attachments and GIFs, and mention other members. Authors change their own comment with Edit and take it down with Remove comment.
Posts and comments both take reactions, six of them: like, love, fire, funny, wow and dislike. They are worth more than they look: for a member who will never write a post, a reaction is the whole of their participation, and it feeds the points system if you have it on.
Polls, discussion answers and accepted answers in Q&A have their own article.
Sorting
The feed offers Relevant Posts, Newest Posts and Top Posts.
- Newest Posts is the raw chronology.
- Relevant Posts adds up reactions, counts every comment twice and adds a bonus for a boosted post. Ties go to the newer post.
- Top Posts sorts by reactions first, then by comments.
Members can switch at any time. Which order they see first is yours to decide under Default feed sort in the community settings. It starts on Relevant Posts.
Pinning
Pin post keeps a post at the top of the feed in every sort order, above everything else. Only your team can pin. With several pinned posts, the one pinned last comes first. Unpin post releases it.
Use it for the rules, the welcome, or the thing you need everybody to have read. Pin one thing. Pin three and members learn to scroll past the whole block.
Saving
Save post puts a post on a personal list, and Unsave post takes it off. Saved posts live in the community profile under Saved posts, which only the owner can see. It is a better way to keep track of a thread you owe an answer to than remembering it.
The post menu
The menu on a post shows what the person looking at it may do. Everybody gets Copy link and Save post, and can Report post on somebody else's post with a reason: Spam, Harassment, Hate Speech, Violence, Misinformation or Other. Comments have Report comment with the same reasons.
Your team gets more:
- Boost post, when at least one boosting exists.
- Pin post and Unpin post.
- Close comments stops new comments and answers on that post, and Open comments allows them again.
- Add answer places a short, highlighted answer from your team under the post.
- Move post sends a post to another forum. It only offers forums that are visible or on request, and only those the author has access to, so a post never ends up where its own author cannot see it.
- Create event from post turns the post into an event.
Editing and removing
Edit post only exists in discussion forums, for the author and your team. A post in a feed, announcement or Q&A forum cannot be changed once it is out. If something is wrong, remove it and post again.
Remove post is open to the author for their own post and to moderators for any post. It deletes the post together with its comments and attached files, and it does not go to the trash. If you only want to stop the conversation, Close comments is the gentler tool.
Moderation: requests and reports
Drafts and scheduling
Your team can save a post as a draft or schedule it for later, from the arrow next to the post button. Members publish immediately. Both are covered in their own article.