Module · Community
A members' space on your own site,
not a group on somebody else's.
Posts, comments and reactions between the people who have paid to be there — at your address, under your rules, with the archive still yours if you ever stop.
Third week on the programme and the calf thing has finally stopped. Whatever was in that Thursday change, it worked.
Example post, on your own domain
Why not a group
The archive is the asset, and on a social platform it is not yours.
Three years of questions and answers is the most valuable thing a paid community builds. Where it lives decides who owns it.
It is on your domain
Members sign in to the same account they use for everything else with you. No second app, no phone number required, no algorithm deciding who sees a post.
Access is an entitlement
Membership is a thing on the person, granted by an order or by you. When it lapses they stop seeing the space — you are not removing anybody from a group by hand.
You can export because it is yours
The posts are rows in your project's data, not content held by a platform that can change its terms in an email.
Example points ledger
Points
A number with a reason attached to every part of it.
Members earn points, and every movement is a row with a reason on it. Not a number that goes up for opaque cause — you can look at why somebody has 240.
Which matters the day somebody asks. A points total nobody can explain is a support ticket; one with a ledger behind it is an answer.
Example — the four things you can do
Keeping it civil
Four controls, which is usually all it takes.
Moderation is deliberately small: pin a post, remove a post, remove a comment, see who is a member. Four controls rather than a permissions system.
A community of people who paid to be there does not usually need more than that, and every extra control is one more thing to configure before you can start.
Before you start
What this does not do, said now rather than later.
No direct messages between members
Posts and comments in the open. There is no private inbox, which is a smaller product and a much smaller moderation problem.
No live chat or presence
It is a forum, not a chat room. Nobody is shown as online and nothing is real-time.
No notifications to members
Helm does not email your members when somebody replies. People come back because the space is worth coming back to, or they do not.
How you get it
It is already on when you get the dashboard
This one is not on a checkout page, and you do not have to ask for it. Module flags are set while your dashboard is being built — if the site needs it, it is switched on before you ever log in. Nothing extra on your plan, and nothing to request.
If your site has a members' area, community is switched on during setup with user accounts and the offerings catalogue alongside it — a members' space needs members and something deciding who is one.
Getting started
It is one switch, and the archive belongs to you from day one.
Switched on per account rather than bought. Plans start at $20 a month.