Spaces are a great way to organize your content and discussions in Circle. But keeping up with activity across multiple spaces can quickly become overwhelming for your members.

That's where the Community Home comes in. It's a game-changing feature our team has been refining for the past few weeks, and we're very excited to launch it for everyone today.

🏠 A new home for your members

🤩 A few examples

✅ How to turn it on for your community

• Control how recent a topic must be to appear in the Trending topics list. 
• Set how topics will be sorted on the home feed by default. You can choose from Latest, Oldest, Most Popular, New Activity, or Alphabetical.
• Prevent activity from specific spaces to appear in your Community Home. To do this, head to the space settings → hide from featured areas.

Need a hand customizing your home? Check out this knowledge base article. 

✨ Ready to give your members a new home?









Overview

1. Manage your Home settings





2. Control the Trending Topics list









3. Hide specific spaces and topics from your home

To hide all topics in a space:
Navigate to a space, click the gear icon, and then click "Edit Space". Toggle on "Hide from featured areas" to ensure these topics don't appear on your home page.

To hide a specific topic:
Navigate to a topic, click the "..." dropdown, and then click "Edit Topic". Toggle on "Hide from featured areas" to ensure this topic doesn't show up on your home page.




4. Set the default topic sort





5. Set the default landing page for members







6. Greet your members with a welcome banner




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• What is a Space?
• How do I customize my community?
• What are topics?
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Here's an easy link to download the app or share it with your members: https://circle.so/ios. Alternatively, the app can be found by looking for "Circle Communities" on the App Store.

The app is completely free and available to admins or members of any Circle community.




How do I submit feedback?

What's next for the app?

• Design and UX improvements
• Homepages on iOS
• Member profiles
• More rich text and embed options for posts, comments, and DMs
• Administrative actions (editing posts, inviting members, etc)

Will I be able to white-label the app for my own community?

How can my members find this app?

You can simply point your members to https://circle.so/ios or ask them to look for Circle Communities on the App Store. We recommend making a post in your community or emailing them at large.

Additionally, members accessing your community from an iOS web browser will see an app download banner at the top of the page:



If you want to hide this banner from members, you can do so from Settings -> General:




Can I opt my community out of being accessible from the app?

Yes, you can. You'll find a toggle to do this in Settings -> General which, when disabled, will make your community inaccessible from Circle's iOS app.




When is the Android app coming out?

Thank you









Image cropping





Space-level control

Look out for the Prevent members from creating topics with a cover image toggle in space settings.










Security

• Private topics can only be shared by admins and moderators of the topic space. 
• Anyone you share the unique link with will be able to access your topic, including members outside the space and logged out visitors.
• Non-members will not be able to see or post comments until they sign in, and unless they're a member of the topic space and community.
• The shared links are unique and non-guessable; as a result, they're only accessible by the people you share the link with. Think of these like links to a private Notion or Google Doc.

Layout customization

You can customize the layout of private topic links by turning on Minimal Layout. Since logged out visitors may not have access to the rest of your community, this mode lets your content shine front and center.

Here's an example of a shared private topic in minimal layout mode. (For full effect, make sure to view this in Incognito Mode.)



The Teaser only toggle lets you show just a teaser of the topic, enticing visitors to sign up or sign in with a call-to-action.

Here's something awesome: you can customize the call-to-action from Settings → General and point it to a custom landing page with your own copy.







🚨 If you plan to use a custom domain, set that up first as this will change your Callback URL. Not doing this first can potentially lead to being locked out of your account.

✅ Step 1: Set up Circle integration in Outseta

1. Within Outseta, click on Settings → Integrations → OAuth. Then click 'Add Oauth Client'.




  2. Name your integration, then jump into your Circle account and go to Settings → Single Sign-On to get your Callback URL. Enter the Callback URL back in Outseta, then click 'Add'.




✅ Step 2: Copy Outseta SSO information to Circle

1. Back in Circle, select "Outseta" as the OAuth provider by navigating to Settings → Single Sign-On.
2. Then input the Client ID, Secret Key, and Outseta URL provided in Outseta. Click 'Save Changes'.





✅ Step 3: Enable SSO

🚨  As an admin, you will need to add yourself as a member on Outseta and use those credentials with Circle. We recommend keeping the "Allow members with a Circle account to sign in" toggle enabled to avoid getting locked out of your account while setting up your SSO integration. In the case this happens, you can easily sign in again with your Circle credentials.





• Allow members with a Circle account to sign in: If you have members that have already registered their email with Circle, they can still sign in with those credentials using a separate sign in button.

💡 What happens to Circle member accounts?
If this is toggled ON, Circle members can continue to login using the "Sign in with Circle" button. We will create accounts for Outseta members automatically on our backend if the email doesn't exist within Circle.

If this is toggled OFF, members with Circle accounts will no longer be able to sign in with those credentials unless the email of their Circle account matches the email of their Outseta account, in which case we'll link the two automatically going forward.

💡 What happens to my admin account?
If the email you use to log in to Outseta is different from Circle, we recommend toggling this ON to ensure you don't get locked out of your admin account. Once you grant admin rights to both accounts you can always toggle this off later.

If this is toggled OFF, you will only be able to log in under your email that is registered within Outseta.

• Allow members to sign up via a custom URL: After enabling SSO, members won't be able to sign up via Circle. However, you can keep the sign up button visible and point it to a custom URL.

🏁 If the setup was successful, you will now see your custom Single Sign-On option when trying to log in to your community!





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