163 lines
6.5 KiB
Markdown
163 lines
6.5 KiB
Markdown
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title = "Getting Started"
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weight = 100
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template = "docs/with_menu.html"
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aliases = ["/docs/communities/"]
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[extra]
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emoji = "👪"
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tile = "Create a cozy place on Matrix for your community or organisation"
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updated = "2022-11-18T09:50:00Z"
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meta_description = """
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Everyone can start their community on Matrix by creating a Matrix Space.
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Community Managers can then tweak the Space to their needs.
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"""
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+++
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We strongly recommend getting familiar with Matrix as an individual. It's easy
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to use and to get started, but the amount of clients and providers in the wild
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can make things overwhelming for newcomers. Follow [the users documentation](/docs/chat_basics)
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to get started using Matrix as an individual.
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For this tutorial we're going to assume your provider (homeserver) is
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Matrix.org. You will see later that Matrix's flexibility allows you to start a
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community on Matrix.org and then move to another provider if you want. You can
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also bridge your existing community to Matrix to progressively migrate people
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without a traumatic big platform switch.
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Here are a couple of screenshots to see how a thriving community can look like
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on Matrix.
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We recommend you to set up a dummy community to play around first, and then you
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can move on creating your full community and/or bridging your existing one to
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Matrix.
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The first thing to do whether you are starting a new community or trying to
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bridge one to Matrix is to create a Space for it. You can think of Matrix Spaces
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as equivalents of Slack Workspaces, or Discord Servers. They're a way to group
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people and rooms.
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## Creating & sharing a Space
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Click on the + on the leftmost column of Element to create a new Space
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In this example, we're creating a public space for people who enjoy warm drinks.
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You can add a picture, name and description for your Space to be easier to find
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and for people to have a good idea about what's happening in your community.
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Note there's also an address field. The address of your Space consists of a name
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(sometimes called the local part) and of the domain of your provider. Here the
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provider domain is `matrix.org` because we're creating the space from an account
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that was created on Matrix.org
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People can join your Space if it's public and you give them the address, which
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is much easier to jot down or to memorise than a full [matrix.to](https://matrix.to)
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link!
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Later if you decide to deploy your own provider or to rent one as a service
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(see [the list of providers we're aware of](/ecosystem/hosting) for more
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details), you will be able to add new addresses to this Space and change the
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main one.
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You can then add a couple of rooms to get started with the basics... and voilà,
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you now have a community on Matrix!
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## Adding rooms
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You can play around in the rooms, but look! We forgot to create a room for
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people who enjoy hot cocoas! Click on the Space avatar in the left bar to go to
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the Space's index
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From there you can see the list of all the rooms in your Space. The rooms you
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see in the left panel are the rooms you are a member of, and the rooms you see
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in the main panel are all the rooms in your Space. Since you're the
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administrator of the Space they're the same to you, but that will not
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necessarily be the case for new joiners.
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Click on "Add" then on "New room" to create the room for hot cocoa drinkers.
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Here again, you can give the room a name, a description, an address, and make it
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public or private.
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Note that you can create a private room in a public Space. People who are not
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members of this room will not see it in the Space index, and people who are
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member of this room will see it in their room list when they're in this Space.
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There's a third mode: visible to members of the Space. You can change the room
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visibility at any point in the room settings.
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## History visibility
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The room visibility is not the only important parameter in a room. You can also
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change the _history_ visibility so people can either:
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- Not see what was said in this room before they joined
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- See what happened since the option was selected
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- See what happened since they were invited in the room
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- See what happened since they joined
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To change this setting, click on the `i` on the top right, then on "Room
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settings"
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Alternatively you can click on the room name in the header and click on
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"Settings"
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Finally head to the "Security & Privacy" tab
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There is no best practice here, it depends entirely on your preferences and what
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you want for your community.
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## Basic Moderation
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For a good overview of what are roles, power levels, redactions, and how to keep
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a group safe at the room level, please head to
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[the group chat documentation](/docs/chat_basics/private-group-chat/#keeping-the-group-safe).
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## Advanced moderation
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Basic moderation is enough for small groups, but it tends not to scale too well
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as the number of people and rooms in a community grow. Indeed, the basic
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moderation decisions you take are only enforced room by room. If you wanted to
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ban someone from your entire community, you would have to ban them from all the
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rooms manually. Tedious, and not efficient!
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The Matrix.org Foundation created a bot called mjolnir, which you could consider
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as the security guard of your community. You tell it in a control room to
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perform certain actions against one or a group of individuals, and the mjolnir
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bot enforces it in all the rooms. More information in the [moderation section](/docs/communities/moderation).
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## Moving to another provider
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The community you have just created with an account on matrix.org will have
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room addresses ending with `:matrix.org`. This is not an issue, but if you want
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to get addresses ending with `:your-org.com`, you need to get your own Matrix
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instance for that domain.
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Additionally, moving to your own provider will give your administrators more
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control over rooms and accounts created there. One of the appeals of Matrix is
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its decentralised nature. But some organisations may need to have local
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centralisation of power to stay in control of their official communications.
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Finally, if you get your own Matrix instance, you can deploy your own bridges
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too and you should see a general improvement in performance over matrix.org
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which can sometimes be a bit busy. More information in the [dedicated section](/docs/communities/switching-providers/).
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