Getting started

Your site has just been installed (Installation): here, in order, is what turns it from an empty page into a site you can open to your community. Allow an hour. Each step points to the guide that covers it in detail.

1. Enter the administration

Log in with the account created at the end of the installer, then open /en/admin (or the Administration link in the member bar). The sidebar sorts modules into sections — Content, Community, System… —; Ctrl + K opens the quick search. The full tour is in The administration panel.

2. Name your site

System → Settings: the site name, its description, the contact address, the time zone. The name shows in the theme's header and in the browser tab; the description is used by search engines as long as a page does not give one of its own (Search engines).

3. Choose your theme and colours

System → Themes & Addons: each theme shows its home page as a thumbnail. Enable the one that looks like your community, then open its settings: the colours page shows the change live, and refuses a colour that would make text unreadable. What a theme is, its zones and its regions: Concepts.

4. Build the home page

System → Live Editor: the site is shown as visitors see it, with its regions outlined. Drop widgets into them — the latest news, the forum, members online, a slideshow — and set each one in a click. A layout applies to one page or to the whole site.

5. Build the menu

Content → Menus: add the links of the navigation bar — home, the forum, the news, a page. A link to a module is picked from a list; an external link is pasted.

6. Publish a first news item

Content → News → New news item: a title, an image, the text. It appears on the home page if you placed the news widget there, and readers can comment on it if comments are open.

7. Open the forum

Community → Forum: create a category (“General”), then its forums (“Introductions”, “Help”). Prefixes (“Question”, “Solved”) help sort topics. Who reads and who writes is set per category, with the padlock button.

8. Welcome members

System → Settings → Registrations: open, by invitation or closed, with or without a captcha (Registrations). Roles decide what each person can do: create a “Moderator” role, tick its rights in the matrix, and give it to trusted members (Permissions).

9. Add what is missing

The site was installed with a profile — gaming, community, association. A missing module (the calendar, donations, collectives, the Discord bot…) is added from System → Themes & Addons or the marketplace, without reinstalling.

10. Keep it safe

System → Monitoring: create a first backup, and note the address of the scheduled task. Hand it to your host (a cron task, every hour): it is what publishes scheduled content, sends reminders and collects what external services do not announce (Monitoring).

Does your site speak several languages? Read A site in several languages next.