---
title: Set up your private community
description: Set up FluentCommunity spaces on your own domain and connect them to courses and purchases.
url: "https://schoolyland.com/docs/set-up-your-community/"
updated: "2026-09-28"
category: "Courses & content"
---

# Set up your private community

Your platform includes **FluentCommunity**, a private community that lives on your own domain rather than on Facebook or Discord. The members, the rules and the data are yours.

## Why a community on your own platform

- There is no algorithm between you and your members. A post reaches everyone, and no one's feed buries it.
- Members sign in with the same account they use for their courses, so there is no second platform for them to abandon.
- Member list, conversations and content all stay on your platform. You can export them, and no third-party service can hold them hostage.

## The building blocks

- **Spaces**: themed areas, similar to channels. Use them for announcements, general discussion, wins, Q&A or one space per cohort, whatever fits your business.
- **Feed**: the stream of posts and comments inside each space.
- **Members**: everyone with access; you control who joins which space.

## A sensible starting structure

Start smaller than you think. Three spaces are plenty:

1. **Start here / Announcements**: post-only for you; members read and comment.
2. **General discussion**: open conversation.
3. **Ask anything**: questions about your course topic.

Empty spaces kill communities faster than anything else. Add more only when the existing ones are alive.

## Connecting it to courses and purchases

Community access can be automated like everything else on your platform: a purchase or a course enrollment can add a member to the right space automatically, and a course completion can unlock an alumni space. See [Automations: make your systems work together](https://schoolyland.com/docs/automations-connect-your-systems/).

## Moderation basics

Set the tone in a pinned "how we behave here" post in your Start Here space. You (and any moderators you appoint) can remove posts and members from the admin side. Communities mostly self-regulate when the owner is visibly present. A short weekly post from you does more than any rules page.

## Getting the first members in

Announce it to your email list with a direct link, and make joining part of your course onboarding ("Lesson 1: introduce yourself in the community"). The first two weeks decide whether a community lives: seed questions, reply to everything, tag members who would have good answers.