Examples of space access configuration for private communities

Last updated: August, 2026

While your private community is only accessible to community members, you have several options to customize the visibility and access of the spaces and space groups to cater to your preferences. This article walks you through some common community access scenarios, with example configurations for each.

For a private community, this article covers two key configurations:

• Offer members free access to all spaces in your private community: Members can access the community and all space content as soon as they join. Ideal for private communities that are entirely free for members.

• Offer customized access with a mix of open, private, or secret areas in your private community: Offer customized access with a mix of open, private, or secret areas in your private community: Give members free access to some space content while restricting other spaces behind a paywall. This setup works well for communities that offer free introductory content to new members while reserving premium content for paywall purchasers or admin invites.

❗Important: To ensure that your community is configured according to your preference, we recommend testing the setup by setting up a test member account and making a test transaction for paywalls (if applicable) before onboarding community members.

You can also configure Custom sign-up and Feed options for your members:

• Custom sign up: Set up a custom sign up link on the login page to direct them to your preferred custom page, invitation link, or paywall checkout.

• Welcome banner: Personalize the Feed banner exclusively for community members.

• Default landing page: Set a separate default page for existing and new members, to which they’ll first be taken when visiting the community URL. You can set up the Feed or any space as a default page.

• Default space access: Provide new members with automatic free access to a default set of spaces once they join the community. To set up default access, see Automatically grant free access to spaces when members join your community.

Let’s explore both example setups for your private community.

You can take this approach if you prefer the following type of access in your private community:

• View community content: All community content within spaces is freely available to members once they sign up and set up their member accounts.

• Join and participate: Members can join any space within the community. Once they join the space that interests them, they can participate by creating posts, leaving comments, and RSVPing to events.

💡 Tip: Want a space that only admins or specific team members can see and participate in? You can create a space with access set to Secret. It's visible only to admins and any members you grant access to. This is ideal for exclusive, hidden spaces in your community. If you add a member to a space group, it grants access to all of the spaces within that group. To be extra cautious, we strongly recommend creating a separate space group for these secret spaces, to avoid accidentally granting access. See the Secret access space group example in the following section.

To achieve this, check out the following table with various space and space group settings and their suggested configurations.

📚 For a detailed guide on managing these settings, see Managing space access and visibility.

You can take this approach if you prefer to offer a blend of free and restricted content within your community.

Here are three different ways you can set up a space group depending on your preferred visibility:

• Open access space group: Spaces within this group contain free content accessible to all community members.

• Restricted access space group: Spaces are listed in the sidebar to all but accessible only to specific members or paywall purchasers.

• Secret access space group: Completely hidden spaces, visible and accessible only to specific manually added members or paywall purchasers.

💡 Tip: You can use these example configurations for multiple space groups to achieve your preferred setup. For instance, you can opt to keep all space groups private, granting access via paywalls (Restricted access space group). You could also have an introductory space group with visible open spaces for all community members. Here, you can offer information about paywalls alongside any free introductory content.

This setup provides free access to space content and is visible to all members of your community.

This type of space and space group access setup is ideal for premium content:

• Spaces are accessible only when you manually add a member to spaces using your admin account or when a member purchases a paywall that provides access to space.

• Non-space members can see the spaces listed in the sidebar but encounter a lock screen when they try to access these spaces within the space group.

• This configuration is great for gating spaces behind paywalls and promoting your paywall membership via the lock screen.

This type of space and space group access setup is ideal for exclusive access:

• Only members who are manually added by the admin or members who purchase paywalls can see and access the spaces within this group.

• Members can only see the space group in the sidebar if they are part of at least one space in the space group.

• Members can only see the spaces that they are part of in the sidebar.

• Non-space members cannot see the space group or any spaces within it in their sidebar.

In addition to managing visibility settings for your spaces and space groups, you can enable an optional setting to automatically grant members access to new spaces within a space group.

Turn on the Automatically add members to new spaces within group setting to automatically add all space group members to any newly created spaces in that group, regardless of the new space's access settings.

ℹ️ Note: This setting is only available to communities created before January 29, 2025. if you are using access groups, this setting will grant manual space access to members separate from the access group.

📚 For a detailed guide on managing this setting, see Managing space access and visibility.

• Different ways to configure community access and visibility

• Set up a private community

• Preview your community as a member