Communities and invites

Invite people

Mods, admins and the owner can create invite links in Settings → Invite people. Each link has:

• Uses: no limit, or 1, 5, 25 or 100 people.
• Expires: in a day, a week, 30 days, or never.

Copy the link and share it. Revoke a link with the trash button. A link stops working once it expires or runs out of uses.

Public communities

Admins can make a community public in Settings → Community. Anyone signed in can then open /c/your-link and join without an invite. Private communities (the default) are invisible to anyone who isn't a member: their rooms, messages and members can't be seen or searched from outside.

Requests to join

A private community can let people ask to join. Admins and the owner turn on Let people ask to join in Settings → Community. Then anyone signed in who opens /c/your-link sees the community's name, image, cover and description (nothing else: no rooms, messages or members) and can choose Request to join, with an optional message of up to 500 characters. Signed out, they're asked to sign in first and come back to the same page.

Admins and the owner see new requests in Settings → Join requests, with a count on the settings button next to the community name. Each request shows the person's name, photo, message and when they asked. Approve adds them as a member; Decline doesn't. The person sees the community in their list the next time they open Ctrl Room, and if this Ctrl Room can send email, they also get a short "You're in" email.

A few rules:

• One pending request per person per community, and at most 5 requests an hour per person.
• Banned people can't ask, and banning someone declines their pending request.
• Members can't ask (they're already in), and nobody can ask to join a community that was taken down.
• You can cancel your own request from the same page. Joining with an invite instead closes the request.
• Mods keep their invite and moderation tools but don't see or answer requests.

Turn the setting off to stop new requests. Requests already waiting stay in the list until someone answers them.

Change the name or icon

Admins and the owner can change the name, icon and description in Settings → Community.

Community image and cover photo

Admins and the owner can upload a community image (square) and a cover photo (a 4:1 banner; 1600 × 400 works best) in Settings → Images. Pick any photo: you crop it to the frame (drag to move, pinch, scroll or use the slider to zoom), and Ctrl Room shrinks it in your browser to fit (512 × 512 for the image, 1600 × 400 for the cover). The image replaces the icon in the community list; the cover shows at the top of the room list and on the public join page. Replace or remove either at any time. Images are public files: anyone with the link can open them, including people who aren't members.

Leave a community

Open Settings and choose Leave community. You'll need a new invite to come back. The owner can't leave their own community.