In order to create a Community, you must first have an Organization. Business and Enterprise accounts will automatically have an organization added to your Home.

To learn more about Organization management, visit this page.

1. Within your Organization, click the + button and select “Community”.
   
2. Name your community and click “Create”. You can also customize the cover & background.
   
3. Community spaces are indicated by the icon in the upper-left corner.
   
   

Create a Custom Brand

1. Click on “my info”, then select “my brands” and choose “create a custom brand”.

2. Upload an image, enter your brand URL, and add a brand name. Note that entering a URL will make your brand image a hyperlink. Then click “save”.

  

Note: The branding for a folder will apply to rolls you create, emails, group folder invitations, and shareable links that you send from that folder. Custom branding allows you to create visually impactful, branded experiences whenever you share content from a Bublup folder.

3. Add more information by using the 3-dot (…) menu on your brand and selecting “edit”.

This information will be displayed in any branded roll footers:

Now that you have created a brand you can easily apply it to a folder:

1. Enter the folder which you want to have branded.

2. Click the (☰) menu and click “Folder Settings”.

3. Select “Folder Brand” and then click on “edit”.

4. Toggle off the “auto-assigned” option, then click the dropdown menu to open your list of brands. This will always include the “Bublup” and “No Brand” options. When you have selected your brand, click “save”.

5. Notice the folder now has a header that includes your brand image.

Pro Tip: You can create up to 3 brands in your account. This may be useful to you if you are associated with multiple organizations, or if you want to have different versions of your favorite logo.

On desktop, open your Community Space. Then click the “settings” icon in the upper-right corner and select “Custom Onboarding”.

• Skip intro screens for new users
  • When enabled, new users who join your Community will not see the Bublup onboarding screen or example content.
• Show custom message on sign-up screen
  • Display a custom message on the sign-up screen for new users joining your Community.

Provide a customized welcome message the first time a new member enters your community.

On desktop, open your Community Space. Then click the “settings” icon in the upper-right corner and select “Welcome Message For Community”.

On desktop, click the “settings” icon in the upper-right corner and select “Community Access”.

Require admin approval for all community members prior to being admitted as a member of the community.

1. Open your Community’s settings and enable the toggle.
   
   
2. Add approval questions for the members. These can be optional or required and can be open-ended or pre-defined.
   
3. To review and approve membership requests, go to the community ☰ menu and click “Membership Requests”.
   
   

Community admins can enable and customize community profiles. 

Enabling Community Profiles 

1. On desktop, click the “settings” icon in the upper-right corner and select “Community Member Profile”.
2. Customize the descriptive text that will appear when members are prompted to create their profile.
   
   
3. Specify which fields are required or optional.
   
   
4. (Optional) Add user roles for members to choose from.
   
   For example, if you have a medical community for a rare disease support group, you may want to know whether a member is an “advocate”, “donor”, “researcher”, etc.

Adding Custom Fields

(Optional) Add additional custom fields for your members to fill out.

1. Click “custom fields”.
   
   
2. Click “add custom field”.
   
   
3. Add a name and description for your field, and choose between predefined values or free form text. If you select “predefined value”, enter the values members can select from.
   
   
4. Edit an existing field or add new ones. To return to the standard fields, click “Standard fields”.
   

Managing Community Teams & Members

• Click “Teams” at the top of the Community to view & manage your teams.
  
• Click on a team to view its members and click the “edit” icon to modify the team name, description, or avatar.
• Hover over a team or a member and click “X” to delete them.
  

Note: Community teams are separate from Organization teams. Org teams can only contain direct members of your Organization. You can still reference Org teams within a Community.

Auto-Assign Teams

1. On desktop, open your community folder, and click the “Settings” icon in the upper-right corner.
2. Go to the “Auto-Assign Teams” tab, and click the toggle to enable the feature.
   
3. Click “Add rule”. Then enter your rule and click “save”.
   The syntax must use the following convention:
   

On desktop, click the “settings” icon in the upper-right corner and select “Custom Actions”.

• Display a custom “call to action” button
  • Add a custom button at the top of your folder. Customize the text and colors, as well as the URL that it will link to.
    
    

Creating Forums

Only admins can create new Forum spaces. Within your Community, click the + Menu and select “Forum”. Forum spaces will have this icon in the upper-left hand corner.
 

Member Permissions:

• Only Owners or Admins can create forum spaces.
• All members can create new posts, as well as comment and react to existing posts.
• A post can only be edited by its original author.
• An admin can “lock” a post to disable new comments and reactions.
• If a post has no comments, the author can delete it. Once there are comments, only the space owner or admin can delete it.

Creating Posts within a Forum

Inside a Forum, tap on “Start a post…” or use the + button to create a new post. Give your post a title and write your thoughts. You can also optionally include an attachment or add a cover image. Tap “post” in the upper-right corner to publish.

Track how many views, comments and reactions your post receives. Use the 3-dot menu to edit your post.

Interacting in Forums

Tap on a post to open it. View and react to existing comments and attachments, or add your own. Use the @ symbol to tag users in your comments. Use the paperclip symbol to include attachements of your own.

Locking a Post:

An admin can “lock” a post to disable new comments and reactions. To do so, open the post and go to the lock icon in the upper right-hand corner. Then tap “proceed”.

Once a post is locked, members will not be able to add new comments or reactions. Existing comments and reactions will still be visible. To unlock the post, simply tap on the lock again to re-enable commenting and reacting.

On desktop, go to community ☰ menu  and click “Community Analytics”.

View your most popular topics, active users, and community engagement (page views, comments created, posts created, device type).

Select which forums to view, the date range, and the aggregate method (day, week, month).

Bublup’s interactive Community Directory & Map feature lets you see where community members and entities are located around the world—bringing people together.

Privacy note: Users must opt-in to share their approximate location. Exact addresses are never displayed, and locations are generalized for safety.

How to Access the Directory & Map

1. Click the map icon at the top of your community.
   
   
2. This will open a separate tab with the community directory & map dashboard.
   
   

How It Works

• Zoom & Pan: Use your mouse or touch gestures to explore different areas of the map.
• Member Clusters: In areas with many members, pins will group together. Click on a cluster to zoom in and see individual members.
• Item Location Tags: Any items with location information set will also appear on the map.
• Click on Pins: Tapping a location pin reveals either a member’s community profile or an entity’s location information.
  
  

How to Search the Directory & Map

You can search based on a location, entity category, or person. In directory view, choose between searching “people” or “entities”. In map view, enable “people”, “entities” or both.

How to Share Your Location

In order to share your location, Community admins must first follow these steps to turn on the community profiles feature.

To appear on the map:

1. Open your Community’s folder in Bublup on the desktop app.
2. Click the ☰ menu, then select “My Community Profile”.
   
   
3. Add your city of residence.
   
   

How to Add Location Info to Items

1. Go to the item’s 3-dot menu and select “Set Location”.
   
   
2. Type an address and select from the dropdown menu of verified addresses. Then click “save”.
   
   
3. The item’s location information can be found in item details view under “Location”.
   
   

Learn how to bulk import items with location information here.

How to View Items in the Community Directory & Map

In order to see items and their locations on the Community Map, admins must first enable the feature in Folder Settings.

Note: This setting needs to be enabled on a per-subfolder basis within the Community. Each subfolder will have it’s own Entity category name.

1. Open a folder within your Community and go to ☰ menu > “Folder Settings” (or click the gear icon).
   
2. Navigate to the “Community Directory & Map” tab and click the toggle to enable the feature.
   
3. Assign a category name to apply to all the items within this folder. Optionally, assign an emoji and background color to these items.
   
   
4. These entities will now appear in the directory and on the map.
   
   

Restricted Community Access

Require admin approval for all community members prior to being admitted as a member of the community.

1. Open your Community’s settings and enable the toggle.
   
   
2. Add approval questions for the members. These can be optional or required and can be open-ended or pre-defined.
   

Add your community map to your website to showcase entities and resources.

1. Open your Community space settings (gear icon in the upper-right corner).
2. Navigate to the “Community Embedded Map” tab and click the toggle to enable the feature.
   
3. Enter your website url.
   
4. Copy the HTML snippet and paste that code into your website in your desired location.
   
5. You wil now see the embedded map on your website.
   

Automatically populate your folders with new links from RSS sources of your choice. 

Setting up your folder’s RSS feed:

1. Open a folder and click on the “Settings” icon in the upper-right corner.
2. In the “RSS Feed” tab, click the toggle next to “Activate RSS feeds” to toggle it on.
       
3. Give your feed a name. Then copy and paste a link to the RSS feed source of your choice. Add (optional) tags and click “save”.
   
   You can find many RSS feeds across the internet. Check out this link for some examples of popular feeds.
4. To add multiple RSS feeds to the same folder, click “Add RSS feed”. To edit or remove an existing feed, click “edit”.
   
5. You will begin to see your folder automatically populate with links from the feed.
   

Managing your RSS feeds:

Bublup will update your space throughout the day as new content is added to the feed. The total number of RSS feeds allowed (across all spaces) depends on your plan:

• • Basic: 1 feed
  • Premium: 3 feeds
  • Pro: 5 feeds
  • Business: 10 feeds
  • Enterprise: 100 feeds

The number of most recent RSS items stored in your space also depends on your plan:

• • Basic: 25 items
  • Premium: 50 items
  • Pro: 100 items
  • Business: 200 items
  • Enterprise: unlimited (older items will be moved to an “Archive” subfolder)

To disable RSS feeds in a folder, open “Settings” and toggle the feed off.
    

Setting up RSS Feeds via Google Alerts:

1. Go to www.google.com/alerts.
2. Create an alert for your phrase of interest (e.g. “cricket world cup”).
3. Click “show options”. Under “Deliver to”, select ‘RSS Feed’.
4. Click “Create Alert” to generate a custom RSS feed link.
5. Copy the RSS feed link and add it to your Bublup folder using the steps above.