🚢Hylo Steward Guide
How to set up your community up for success on Hylo for Group Stewards and Coordinators
1. The One Question That Drives Every Decision
Before you create your group, it's essential you ask yourself -
What do you want people to actually do here?
What actions, exchanges, conversations, and contributions do you want to see happening in this space?
This question is the foundation of every good setup decision on Hylo. The answer shapes your navigation, your post types, your chat rooms, your spaces, your onboarding flow, your agreements, and your moderation approach. Groups that skip this step end up with cluttered menus, confused members, and low engagement — not because Hylo doesn't work, but because the setup didn't reflect a clear intention.
Come back to this question at each step in this guide. When you're not sure whether to add a view, create a space, open a chat room, or write a new agreement, ask: does this serve what I want people to do here?
Common Answers to This Question
Different communities answer it differently. Here are a few examples and how they translate into setup choices:
"I want members to share resources and support each other." → Prioritize Requests and Offers. Seed the space with your own requests and offers first. Make mutual support visible in your navigation and turn off post types you don't need so the menu stays focused.
"I want members to show up for events and stay connected between them." → Put Events front and center. Use chat rooms for between-event conversation. Use posts for follow-up and reflection.
"I want members to participate in decisions." → Set up Governance early. Write clear agreements. Use proposals for real decisions, even small ones, to build the muscle.
"I want members to learn and develop skills together." → Build Tracks (a type of space) and structure your onboarding as a learning journey.
"I want members to know each other and build relationships." → Prioritize the Member Directory, the Skill Map, and profile completeness. Use discussion posts for introductions and storytelling.
"I want to hold several projects, teams, or cohorts under one roof." → Use Spaces to give each one its own home inside your group without fragmenting your community into separate groups.
2. Creating Your Group
To create a group, click on the (+) icon in the bottom left corner of Hylo and then on Group. The group creation flow walks you through the essentials first and then offers more advanced options for the initial setup of your group. Everything you choose here can be changed later in Group Settings.
If this is your first group, a guided tour will offer to walk you through the menu, stream, chat, map, settings, and space creation. You can replay any tour later from the Help menu, which lists the full tour catalog.
Basic Setup
When you create a group on Hylo, you'll set up the following:
Name. Choose something clear and recognizable. This is how people will find and identify your community.
Purpose statement. A short, single-sentence description of why this group exists and what it's working toward. This appears prominently on your group's About page and in the Group Explorer. Make it specific: "A community of regenerative farmers in the Willamette Valley sharing knowledge and resources" is more useful than "A group for farmers."
Description. A longer description with more context — who this is for, what members can expect, how to get started. This is a good place to include your community's values and any context a new member would need.
Location. Add a geographic location if your group is place-based. This makes your group discoverable on the map.
Avatar and banner image. Visual identity matters. Even simple, clear images make a group feel intentional and distinct.
Image ratio for Group Avatar: square (between 512×512px and 1024×1024px)
Image ratio for Group Banner: cinema 16:9 (1600×900px)
Related Skills. Set skills relevant to your group. When folks sign up, they will be asked if they have any of these skills. Clicking a relevant skill adds it to their profile, and these skills feed the group's Skill Map in the member directory.
Home View. You'll be prompted to choose the view members land on when they enter your group. This can be changed at any time (see Configuring Your Navigation).
Advanced Setup
Post types. Choose which post types your group supports: Discussions, Requests, Offers, Events, Projects, Proposals, and so on. When a post type is turned off, nobody can create that type of post in the group and the views associated with it are hidden from the menu. Turning off what you don't need is one of the simplest ways to keep your group focused on what you want people to do here. You can change this any time from Group Settings.
Menu layout style. Choose how your group's menu is displayed by default:
Side Menu — the group menu sits on the left with the current view's content on the right. This is the classic Hylo layout and works well on larger screens.
Card Menu (also called one-column layout) — the group menu fills the screen with each view shown as a card. Clicking a view opens its content in full width, and the back button in the header returns to the menu. Clicking a space takes you to that space's menu, where you can drill into its views.
The group's setting is the default; individual members can override it in their own Appearance settings if they always prefer one style or the other.
Set your Privacy Settings
There are two dimensions to privacy: visibility — who can see your group, and accessibility — who can join your group.
Visibility Settings
Public. Anyone can find and see your group's content. Good for communities that want broad reach and discoverability. Public posts also carry link previews (title, body text, and first image) when shared on social media or in messaging apps.
Protected. The group is visible and findable, but content is only visible to members. People can request to join.
Private. The group is not visible to non-members. Access is by invitation only.
Choose visibility based on who you want to find you and what you want them to see before they join.
Access Settings
Open. Anyone can join immediately without approval.
By request. People can request to join and stewards approve or decline. You can add Join Questions to gather information during this step.
Invite only. New members can only join via a direct invitation from a steward or existing member.
Note: Spaces inside your group have their own access settings, so you can have an open group with invite-only or paid spaces within it (see Spaces).
3. Setting Up Your Welcome Page
The Welcome Page is one of the most valuable tools available to stewards. It's a dedicated view that new members see when they arrive, and that any member can return to for orientation and guidance.
Think of it as your group's front door: it sets the tone, explains what this space is for, and tells people what to do first.
What to Include
A warm welcome. Acknowledge that someone new has arrived and express genuine enthusiasm for having them here. This doesn't need to be long — a sentence or two goes a long way.
What this community is. A brief description of who this group is for, what it's working toward, and what makes it distinct. New members should finish reading this and feel clear about whether they're in the right place.
Community agreements and norms. A brief summary of how members are expected to show up, or a link to your full agreements. Setting expectations early prevents confusion later.
How to get started. The two or three most important first steps for a new member. Be specific: "Introduce yourself in #introductions," "Fill out your profile including your skills and location," "RSVP to our next community call." Don't give them ten things, give them three.
How to navigate the group. A brief orientation to your Group Menu, what the main sections and spaces are, and where to find things. This is especially helpful if your navigation has been customized significantly.
Who to contact with questions. Name a steward or point of contact so new members know who to reach out to if they're confused or need help.
Editing the Welcome Page
The Welcome Page is a view in your group menu. Add it from Edit Menu if it isn't already there, then open it and use the view's settings to edit the content. You can use rich text, include links, and embed media.
By default, anyone joining a group (or a space) that has a Welcome Page lands there first. If you'd rather members land on your Home view, you can turn this off in the Welcome view settings.
Because it's a view, the Welcome Page stays in your Group Menu so folks can refer back to it at any time.
Note: Spaces have their own Welcome Pages. A Track's Welcome Page always shows a Begin button that takes members to the Track's Actions, and a Funding Round's Welcome Page always shows the round's details
4. Configuring Your Navigation
The Group Menu is your community's front door. Stewards can fully customize what appears there — which views, which spaces, which chat rooms, which links, and in what order.
To edit your Group Menu, scroll to the bottom of the left-hand menu and click Edit Menu.
Views and Spaces
Your group menu is built from two kinds of things:
Views are single screens of content: a chat room, a stream of posts, the events calendar, the map, the member directory, a custom view, or a link. A view is either in the menu or deleted — there is no "hidden" state for views.
Spaces are fully nested areas inside your group that can hold their own views and their own menu. Tracks and Funding Rounds are types of space, and you can create general-purpose spaces for teams, projects, cohorts, regions, or anything else that deserves a home of its own. A space with a single view opens that view directly when clicked. A space with more than one view opens its own menu, with a header at the top showing the parent group so people can get back. Spaces are the only things that can live off the menu (see More Spaces below). Spaces are covered in depth in the next section.
The Setup Guide
When you first create a group, you'll see a Setup Guide widget in your Group Menu. This displays remaining setup tasks and disappears section by section as you complete them. Use it as a checklist for getting your group ready to launch.
Choosing Your Home View
The Home view is the first thing members see when they enter your group. By default this is the main chat room, but you can change it to any view: a stream of posts, an events calendar, the Welcome Page, or a specific chat room.
To change the Home view, click the Home icon on whichever view you want members to land on first. Whatever you choose as Home cannot be moved or reordered in the menu.
Ask yourself: What's the first thing you want a new member to see and do when they arrive?
What to Include in Your Navigation
Less is more. A cluttered menu signals that you haven't made decisions yet. Show only what's relevant to your community's core activities. You can always add more later as your community grows into it.
Always include:
Your primary communication channel (main chat room or All Activity)
Whatever drives your community's core activity (Events, Requests & Offers, Governance, etc.)
Members directory
Welcome Page
Include if relevant:
Secondary chat rooms
Spaces for teams, projects, cohorts, tracks, or funding rounds
Custom views for filtered content your community uses regularly
A Space Collection or Post Collection that curates what matters most right now
Leave out (initially):
Features you haven't activated yet
Views that don't serve what you want people to do here
Post types you've turned off (their views are hidden automatically)
Some menu items appear on their own for stewards when there's something waiting on you: a Join Requests item with a badge showing how many people are waiting for a response, and a Flagged Posts item with a badge showing how many moderation decisions are pending. These disappear when the queue is empty.
Adding and Rearranging Menu Items
In Edit Menu mode:
Click the (+) icon to add a view, a space, a text header, or a separator
Drag items using the drag handle to reorder them
Remove a view by dragging it to the top of the menu where it says "Drag here to remove" (removing a view deletes it; removing a space moves it to More Spaces)
Click Done Editing to save
Headers and Separators
Menu items can no longer be nested inside containers. Instead, add text header items and separator items to visually organize your menu into sections — for example a "Get Involved" header above Requests & Offers and Events, and a "Working Groups" header above your spaces. This keeps drag-and-drop reordering simple: every item is on a single flat list.
If you previously used container views to group related content, consider whether that content belongs in a space (if it needs its own menu and membership) or simply under a header (if it just needs visual grouping).
Custom Views
Custom views let you create filtered lenses into your group's content: a stream filtered by topic or post type, a collection of specific posts, or an external link. Add them by clicking (+) → Add New View in Edit Menu mode. (The Custom Views tab in Group Settings has been removed — everything happens from the menu now.)
Custom Views
Custom views let you create filtered lenses into your group's content, a stream filtered by topic, a collection of specific posts, or an external link. Add them by clicking Add New View in Edit Menu mode.
Post Collections
A Post Collection is a custom view that holds a curated list of posts. Add or remove posts using the three-dot menu on any post, and reorder them by drag and drop from the collection view. Use collections for a resource library, a "start here" reading list, or the key decisions of the season.
Space Collections
A Space Collection is a view that holds a steward-curated list of spaces in the menu. People with the Manage Content responsibility can add spaces to a collection and drag-reorder them. Use a collection to feature the active cohorts, this quarter's working groups, or the funding rounds currently open — without cluttering the top level of your menu with every space in the group.
Pinning Posts to Views
You can pin up to three posts to any view, and they appear at the top of that view. Pin an orientation post to your main chat room, the current call for proposals to your Requests & Offers view, or this month's schedule to Events. Pin from the post's three-dot menu.
More Spaces
At the bottom of the menu, More Spaces opens a page listing every space in your group that isn't currently in the menu. This replaces the previous All Views, Tracks, and Funding Rounds pages (those old links redirect here). More Spaces is also where you'll find:
Draft spaces — spaces you're still setting up that aren't yet visible to members
Archived spaces — spaces the group is no longer actively using but wants to keep
5. Spaces
Spaces are the biggest change to how groups are structured on Hylo. A space is a fully nested area inside your group, accessible directly from the group menu, with its own views, its own menu, its own access settings, and its own membership.
What a Space Is For
Use a space whenever a part of your community needs its own room without needing to be its own group:
A working group or committee that needs its own chat and its own posts
A project with its own timeline, tasks, and members
A cohort or learning program (a Track)
A participatory budgeting process (a Funding Round)
A regional chapter, a team, or a paid membership tier
Members of a space are always members of the parent group, so a space inherits the group's agreements and stewardship while giving people a focused place to work.
Space Types
General space — a blank space with whatever views you give it
Track — a space built around a sequence of Actions that members complete (see Onboarding Members with Tracks and Actions)
Funding Round — a space built around proposal submission, discussion, and voting (see Funding Rounds)
Tracks and Funding Rounds can have custom menus just like any other space, so you can add a chat room, a resource collection, or a member directory alongside the track's Actions or the round's proposals.
Creating a Space
In Edit Menu mode, click (+) and choose to add a space, then pick its type. Give it a name, purpose, and images, choose its post types, and set its access. You can also create spaces from More Spaces. A guided tour is available for space creation, and there are dedicated tours for setting up tracks and funding rounds.
New spaces can be saved as drafts while you set them up. Draft spaces are not visible to group members and live in More Spaces until you publish them.
Space Access
Each space has its own access setting, independent of the parent group:
Open to all — any group member can enter and join
Request to Join — group members ask to join and a steward approves (pending requests show a Join Requests badge in the space menu)
Invite Only — members join only by invitation
Restricted to roles — only members holding certain roles can see and enter the space
Paid access — members pay to enter (see Paid Groups and Paid Content)
Inviting People to a Space
You can invite existing group members to a space, or invite people from outside the group. If someone is invited to a space but isn't yet a member of the parent group, they're first invited to join the parent group, and once they accept they're automatically added to the space. This means you can share a link to a specific cohort or working group and let Hylo handle the group membership for you.
Space Views and Menu
Add and arrange views in a space the same way you do for the group, using Edit Menu inside the space. A space with a single view opens that view directly from the group menu; a space with several views opens its own menu with a header showing the parent group at the top.
Space members can pin posts, use post collections, and see an active-members widget in the space menu, just as in the group.
Space Post Types
Spaces have their own post-type settings. A working group might only need Discussions and Projects; a cohort might only need Discussions and Events. Turning off post types in a space hides the related views from its menu and keeps the space uncluttered.
Draft, Active, and Archived
Every space has a status:
Draft — still being set up; not visible to members. Publish it when it's ready.
Active — live and visible in the menu (or in More Spaces if you've taken it off the menu)
Archived — no longer in active use. Archived spaces move to More Spaces so their history is preserved without cluttering the menu.
Archive a cohort when it wraps, a working group when its project ends, or a funding round after outcomes are published.
Spaces vs. Child Groups
Spaces and child groups (subgroups) both nest inside your group, and you can convert between them:
Convert a regular space to a child group from the space's settings
Convert a child group that has a single parent to a space from the parent group's About page → Related Groups tab
Choose a space when the sub-community should live inside your group's menu, share your group's membership and agreements, and feel like part of the same community. Choose a child group when it needs its own identity, its own agreements, its own privacy settings, and the ability to be discovered on its own. See Nested Groups and Peer Relationships for more.
Managing Spaces
Anyone with the Administration responsibility can create, edit, publish, archive, and convert spaces. (The former Manage Tracks and Manage Funding Rounds responsibilities have been folded into Administration.) People with Manage Content can curate Space Collections and Post Collections.
6. Setting Up Communication
Hylo supports two primary modes of communication within a group: posts and chat. Understanding when to use each — and helping your members understand this — is one of the most important setup decisions you'll make.
Posts vs. Chat — The Core Distinction
Chat is for real-time, informal, fast conversation. It's great for quick questions, coordination, and the kind of back-and-forth that doesn't need to be found again later. Chat is ephemeral by design.
Posts are for anything that deserves permanence — decisions, resources, events, requests, knowledge, and conversations that the group should be able to search and reference over time. Posts are threaded, rich, and persistent.
A common mistake in new groups is defaulting everything to chat and then wondering why institutional knowledge never accumulates. Cultivate a culture where important things live in posts, not buried in chat history.
All Activity
The view formerly called Stream is now All Activity. It shows every post in the group, and it also shows chat cards summarizing the chat activity that happened in any given hour. Clicking a chat card takes you to those messages in the chat room. All Activity is the best single place for a member to catch up on everything that happened since their last visit.
Creating Chat Rooms
To create a new chat room, click (+) in Edit Menu mode and add a chat room, or use Add New Chat in the Chats section of your Group Menu. Give it a clear, specific name. Chat rooms are denoted with a hashtag (#room-name).
How many chat rooms should you create? Start with fewer than you think you need. One general chat room is enough for most new groups. Add topical rooms as the need becomes evident, not in anticipation of it. Empty chat rooms make a group feel inactive.
Common chat room structures:
#general — the main room for community-wide conversation
#announcements — a lower-traffic room for important updates
#introductions — a dedicated space for new member welcomes
Topic or working-group specific rooms as needed — or, if a working group needs more than a chat room, give it a space
What Chat Rooms Show
Chat rooms show chat messages first and foremost. When someone creates a non-chat post (a Request, an Event, a Discussion) in that room's context, the room shows a compact notice rather than the full post card, so conversation stays readable. If your community prefers a pure chat experience, you can turn off post notices entirely in the chat view's settings. Long chat messages are collapsed with a Read More link.
Each chat room also shows who is currently active in the room and who is typing.
Chat Room Notifications
By default, members receive notifications for all messages in the main chat room and mentions-only in other rooms. Once a member participates in a room for the first time, they're subscribed to all messages in that room. Remind members they can adjust this via the Bell icon at the top of each room.
Announcements
As a steward, you can send a blast announcement from any chat room by clicking the announcement icon. Announcements are promoted to members' inboxes and sent as push/email notifications, regardless of their usual notification settings for that room.
7. Set Group Agreements
Agreements are the written commitments, norms, and codes of conduct that define how your community operates together. They're one of the most powerful and underused features on Hylo.
To set your Group Agreements, navigate to Group Settings → Agreements.
Why Agreements Matter
Agreements do two things. First, they set explicit expectations for members before they join and participate — reducing misunderstandings and making accountability conversations easier. Second, they anchor your moderation. When a member flags content on Hylo, they identify which specific agreement is being violated. Moderation grounded in shared commitments is far more legitimate than moderation based on individual judgment.
Writing Your Agreements
Write agreements in plain language. They should be specific enough to be actionable but short enough to actually be read.
Common agreement types:
Community norms — how members treat each other, expectations for discourse
Purpose alignment — what this space is for and what it isn't for
Decision-making protocols — how the group makes decisions
Participation expectations — what stewards expect of active members
Code of conduct — behavior that will result in removal
Consent Tracking
When a new member joins, they're presented with your group's current agreements and asked to consent before participating. Members can revisit the agreements at any time from the group's About page.
If you update your agreements, members are prompted to review and re-consent. This keeps your community aligned as norms evolve, and gives you a clear record if accountability conversations become necessary.
7. Join Questions
Join questions are asked of prospective members when they request to join a group (or a Request-to-Join space). Their answers are visible to stewards during the approval process.
Setting Up Join Questions
Go to Group Settings and add join questions. You can create as many as you need, though two to three focused questions tend to work better than a long intake form.
What to Ask
Ask questions that help you make a good decision about membership. Useful questions might include:
How did you hear about this community?
What are you hoping to contribute or get from this group?
Are you based in [region]? (for place-based groups)
What's your relationship to [topic/mission]?
Avoid questions that could be answered with a simple yes or no unless you're using them as a genuine filter (e.g., "Do you agree to our community agreements?").
Join Questions as Onboarding
Join questions also function as the first step in onboarding; they prompt the prospective member to reflect on their intentions before they enter the space. Well-crafted join questions set a tone of intentionality from the very beginning.
Note: Join questions are great content to use when introducing new members to your community!
Responding to Join Requests
When someone requests to join, a Join Requests item appears in the group menu for stewards, with a badge showing how many requests are waiting. Click it to review answers and approve or decline. The same happens inside a space that uses Request to Join. Try to respond within a day or two — a slow approval is often the first and last impression a prospective member gets.
Once approved, the member is taken straight into the group; they won't be asked to re-answer join questions or re-consent to agreements they already completed.
9. Inviting Members
You can invite people to your group, or to a specific space, from the group's About page → Members tab or from the invite option in the group menu.
Invite by email. Enter one or more email addresses. Invitees receive a standard Hylo invitation email. (Customizing the invite email message is no longer supported, to prevent spam — put your personal welcome on the Welcome Page instead.)
Invite existing Hylo members by name. Search for people already on Hylo by name and invite them directly. This is the fastest way to bring in people you already know on the platform.
Invite link. Share a link that lets anyone join (subject to your access settings).
Inviting to a space. If you invite someone to a space and they aren't yet in the parent group, they're invited to the group first and added to the space automatically once they join.
10. Roles and Responsibilities
Roles let you recognize and organize the different kinds of contributors in your community. To distribute stewardship of your group, assign members to roles!
Default Roles
Every group comes with three default roles:
Coordinator — administrative powers. Can manage group settings, members, spaces, and content.
Moderator — content management powers. Can remove posts, act on flagged content, and manage collections.
Host — welcoming and inviting powers. Can invite new members and help orient them.
Custom Roles
You can create roles specific to your community — Garden Coordinator, Outreach Lead, Finance Steward, Elder, Council Member. Custom roles can carry platform responsibilities (like moderation powers) or simply name real-world functions without granting additional platform access.
To create a custom role, go to Group Settings → Roles and click Add Role. Give it a name, description, and any platform responsibilities you want to attach.
Roles can also gate access to spaces: set a space to be visible only to certain roles, and only members holding those roles will see it in the menu.
Role Badges
Roles display as badges on member profiles and next to member names throughout the platform. When another member hovers or taps a badge, they see the role description and responsibilities. This makes visible who does what in your community, reducing the "who do I ask about X?" friction that slows down new members.
Platform Responsibilities
The platform responsibilities you can attach to a role include Administration (group and space settings, membership, and creating, publishing, and archiving spaces of every type, including Tracks and Funding Rounds), Manage Content (moderating posts, curating Post and Space Collections, pinning posts), Add Members (inviting and approving join requests), and Remove Members. The former Manage Tracks and Manage Funding Rounds responsibilities have been folded into Administration.
Custom Responsibilities
Beyond platform-level powers, you can create custom responsibilities that represent work members do outside of Hylo — facilitation, coordination, outreach, technical maintenance. These can be attached to roles and displayed publicly so everyone can see who holds what responsibility.
Note: When you remove someone from a group, all of their group-related roles and permissions are removed with them.
11. Onboarding Members with Tracks and Actions
Tracks are a type of space, and they make a powerful onboarding tool. A well-designed track walks a new member from "I just joined" to "I know what this community is, why I'm here, and what to do next," without requiring steward time for every new person.
What Tracks Can Do
Guide new members through a structured orientation sequence
Deliver content, prompts, and tasks in a specific order
Gate access to certain spaces until a member has completed orientation (role-restricted spaces plus a badge awarded on completion)
Award badges on completion that unlock roles or permissions
Run structured learning programs, courses, and cohorts
Hold their own chat room, resources, and member directory alongside the Actions, since a Track is a space with a customizable menu
Designing a Welcome Track
A good welcome track typically does the following in order:
Orient — explain what this community is, who it's for, and what the norms are
Connect — prompt the member to introduce themselves, fill out their profile, or join a relevant chat room
Activate — invite the member to take their first meaningful action (post a request, respond to an offer, RSVP to an event)
Belong — help them understand how to stay connected and what to expect going forward
Keep it short enough to complete in one sitting. Four to six steps is a good target for a welcome track. Save deeper content for follow-on tracks.
Creating a Track
In Edit Menu mode click (+) and add a space of type Track, or create it from More Spaces. A guided tour walks you through track setup. Build each Action with content, media, prompts, and tasks. Order them intentionally — each step should build on the last.
A new track starts as a draft, invisible to members, so you can build it out completely before publishing. Set the track's access (open to all, request to join, invite only, role-restricted, or paid) and choose which post types it supports.
Track Actions
Actions are individual checkpoints within a track that members complete as they progress. An action might be: "Post an introduction in #introductions," "Add your location to your profile," or "RSVP to the next community call." Completion is tracked per member so you can see who is progressing and who might need a nudge.
Tracking Progress
Open the member directory inside the track to see which members have completed the track and which have not yet. Use it to send a nudge, celebrate completions, or award roles.
Archiving a Track
When a cohort finishes, archive the track. It moves to More Spaces with its history intact, and you can create a fresh track (or reuse the archived one) for the next cohort.
Paid Tracks
Tracks can be gated behind a payment, handled via Stripe integration. Paid tracks are simply spaces with paid access, so the same setup applies to any paid space (see Paid Groups and Paid Content).
11. Activating Mutual Support through Requests and Offers
Requests and Offers are the trust-building engine of Hylo. Every fulfilled exchange is a visible deposit in your community's social fabric. But this feature requires activation by group stewards.
Make sure the Request and Offer post types are turned on for your group (Group Settings → post types) and that the Requests & Offers view is in your menu. Request posts are marked with a heart icon.
Seeding the Space
he single most effective thing a steward can do to activate Requests and Offers is to post the first ones yourself. Members take cues from what already exists. If the Requests and Offers view is empty, it feels like a feature that isn't used here. If it has five or ten well-crafted posts, it feels like a living practice.
Post a request — something you actually need. This models vulnerability and signals that asking for help is welcome here.
Post an offer — something you actually have to give. This models generosity and shows members what a good offer looks like.
Pin your best example request and offer to the top of the Requests & Offers view so new members see them first.
Completing Exchanges
When a request or offer has been fulfilled, mark it as complete and select the people who helped. This creates a visible record of mutual support and helps the community see its own generosity over time. Stewards should model this behavior — close out your own requests and offers promptly.
Stewards can also mark a post as fulfilled (or unfulfilled) on behalf of the post creator. Use this to tidy up old requests and offers whose authors have moved on, so the view reflects what's actually still open.
Cross-Posting Requests and Offers
Requests and Offers can be cross-posted to parent or peer groups to extend their reach across your network. This is especially powerful for bioregional or networked communities where the right person to help might be in a connected group. When posting, the To field lists groups with their spaces nested underneath, and only shows destinations that accept that post type.
13. Governance — Setting Up Proposals and Decision-Making
Hylo's governance tools support communities at every stage — from simple temperature checks to structured consent-based decisions with quorum tracking and formal outcome records.
When to Use Proposals
Use proposals any time you want to:
Make a group decision with a visible record
Gather structured input before committing to a direction
Check the group's sense of a proposal before full implementation
Ratify agreements, policies, or commitments
Even small decisions, when run through proposals early on, build your community's governance muscle. The goal is to normalize participatory decision-making before high-stakes decisions arrive.
Voting Options
When creating a proposal, choose the voting format that fits the decision: a simple poll, a consent process, a temperature check, or a multi-option vote. Stewards choose the format that best fits their community's process and goals.
Quorum Settings
Set a minimum participation threshold for a vote to be valid. If quorum isn't reached by the deadline, stewards are notified. Quorum settings help ensure decisions reflect genuine community participation rather than a small vocal minority.
Voting Timeline
Set start and end times for voting periods. Proposals move through phases automatically, or you can manage timing manually. Give members enough time to participate — at least 48 to 72 hours for asynchronous communities; longer for communities spread across time zones. Proposals, like all posts, can carry a timezone so deadlines are unambiguous.
Outcome Tracking
When a proposal closes, document what was decided and what happens next in the Outcome field. This is one of the most important and most skipped steps in community governance. A proposal without a documented outcome is a conversation without a conclusion. The Proposals view shows completed proposals with their outcomes, creating a searchable record of your community's decisions over time.
The Governance View
The Governance view shows active proposals at the top and completed decisions below. It also displays your group's purpose, values, and agreements — making it a useful reference for the community's commitments and decision history. For allocating money rather than making decisions, see Funding Rounds.
14. Using the Map for Your Community
The map is more than a geographic display — it's a coordination layer that helps members understand and organize around the places they share.
Setting Up Your Group's Location
Give your group a geographic location in your group settings. This places your group on the platform map and makes it discoverable by members searching by region.
Encouraging Members to Share Their Location
A member directory with locations visible on the map is one of Hylo's most distinctive features for place-based communities. Encourage members to add their location during onboarding — even at neighborhood or city level. Emphasize that location precision is their choice and that obfuscation is built in to protect privacy.
The Map Drawer
The map's drawer shows posts, groups, and members together in one list, so a member can see everything happening in a region at a glance. Filters let you narrow it to just posts, just members, or just groups. Members can also create a post directly by clicking a location on the map.
Ecological Map Layers
Hylo supports watershed and catchment basin layers on the map. For bioregional and ecological communities, enabling these layers helps members understand and organize around their actual landscape rather than arbitrary political boundaries. Access map layers via the Base Layers icon in the lower right.
Native Territories Layer
Hylo displays indigenous territories as a map layer using data from native-land.ca. This is available to all groups and can be a meaningful addition for communities working with land, place, and ecological stewardship.
Saved Map Views
Stewards can create saved map views — a specific geographic area with specific filters applied — and add them to the group menu as custom views. This is useful for communities that organize around a bioregion or watershed and want members to see activity within a defined territory.
Embedding the Map
You can embed a Hylo map view on your organization's website using a custom iframe code block. This brings the living community map to wherever your audience already gathers. Find the embed code in your group settings.
15. Moderation — Keeping Your Community Healthy
Hylo's moderation system distributes responsibility to the people closest to the community while providing clear escalation paths. Moderation is anchored in your written agreements — not arbitrary judgment.
How Community Flagging Works
Any member can flag a post they believe violates a group agreement. When flagging, they identify which specific agreement is being violated. Flagged content is blurred for other members while under review. Other members can agree or disagree with the flag, creating community input before stewards act.
This distributed model means moderation isn't the sole burden of stewards — it's a community responsibility. Your agreements do the heavy lifting; stewards make the final call.
Where Moderation Happens
When posts are flagged and waiting for a decision, a Flagged Posts item appears in the group menu for stewards with a badge showing how many are pending. You can also review moderation activity at any time from the Moderation tab on the group's About page. Spaces have their own flagged-post queue and moderation tab.
Steward Moderation Powers
As a Moderator role holder, you can:
Remove content that violates agreements
Remove members from the group (their group roles and permissions are removed with them)
Review flagged content and make final decisions
Mark requests and offers as fulfilled on behalf of members
All moderation actions are logged.
Setting the Right Tone Early
The most effective moderation is preventative. Groups with clear agreements, a strong welcome track, and early steward presence in the first weeks of launch have far fewer moderation issues than groups that set up agreements and disappear.
Show up in the first few weeks. Post regularly, respond to members, model the behavior you want to see. Your presence sets the tone more than any written policy.
Platform-Level Enforcement
Hylo's platform stewards monitor the public commons and handle cross-group or platform-level violations. Hylo's code of conduct applies everywhere. If you encounter something that rises to a platform level issue — harassment, illegal content, threats — flag it for the Hylo team.
16. Nested Groups and Peer Relationships
One of Hylo's most distinctive architectural features is its ability to connect groups — creating networks that mirror how communities actually organize in the world. With Spaces, you now have two ways to nest: spaces inside a group, and child groups related to a parent group.
Spaces vs. Child Groups
Spaces live inside your group's menu, share your group's membership and agreements, and are managed by your group's stewards. They're the right choice for working groups, projects, cohorts, and programs that are clearly part of your community.
Child groups (subgroups) are full groups in their own right, with their own identity, agreements, privacy settings, stewards, and discoverability, connected to your group as a parent. They're the right choice when the sub-community needs autonomy — its own front door, its own rules, its own stewards — while staying connected to the network.
You can convert between the two: a regular space becomes a child group from the space's settings, and a child group with a single parent becomes a space from the parent group's About page → Related Groups tab. Start with a space when in doubt; you can always promote it to a child group later.
Child Groups (Subgroups)
Create groups within your group to any depth. A bioregional hub can contain neighborhood groups. A network can contain member organizations. Each child group has its own space, agreements, and stewards while remaining connected to the parent.
When to use child groups:
When a portion of your community needs a distinct identity with different privacy settings or agreements
When member organizations need to be discoverable on their own
When you're building a network architecture with a hub group and multiple member communities
To create or connect a child group, go to the group's About page → Related Groups tab.
Content can flow between parent and child groups through cross-posting, and members can see the full network structure in the Related Groups tab. Members who prefer a nested view can turn on Group Nav Stacking in their Appearance settings, which shows a parent group with all its child groups nested in the global navigation menu, with a quick jump to any child.
Peer-to-Peer Group Relationships
Peer groups are two independent groups that choose to share a relationship — without hierarchy. Peer groups can see each other's public content and members, enabling coalition-building across organizations.
When to use peer relationships:
When two allied organizations want to share visibility without one being "inside" the other
When building a coalition of equals
When you want members to discover and connect with a partner community
To add a peer group, go to the group's About page → Related Groups tab.
Cross-Group Posting
Members can post content to multiple groups and spaces simultaneously. A single post lives in all selected destinations with no duplication or drift. The post editor's To field nests spaces under their parent group and only shows destinations that accept that post type. This is the primary way information flows across a network; stewards should model and encourage it for content that's relevant across multiple communities.
17. Paid Groups and Paid Content
Hylo supports group monetization — allowing stewards to sustain their communities through member dues or premium content offerings. Stripe handles all transactions.
Paid Group Membership
Set up a paid membership tier for your group. Members pay a recurring subscription to join or maintain access. Stewards manage membership and access from group settings.
Paid Spaces
Any space can be set to paid access. This covers paid tracks (courses, learning programs, structured onboarding), paid working groups, premium member tiers, or a paid funding round. Set the price and billing (one-time or recurring) in the space's access settings. Paid offering descriptions are shown to buyers as plain text in Stripe Checkout, so keep them short and skip formatting.
What This Is Not
Hylo's monetization tools are designed for community sustenance — member dues, program fees, cooperative resource management — not for brand marketing or audience monetization. Hylo will not be building advertising tools or audience conversion features. If your primary goal is brand building or customer acquisition, Hylo is not the right platform.
18. Funding Rounds
Funding rounds let groups pool resources and collectively decide where to direct them. This is participatory governance made real: communities allocating actual money through democratic process. A Funding Round is a type of space, so it has its own menu, welcome page, member directory, and access settings.
When to Use Funding Rounds
Funding rounds are designed for communities that want to:
Run participatory budgeting processes
Distribute grants or pooled funds democratically
Allocate collective resources across proposals
Make resource decisions visible and accountable to the whole community
Allocation Models
Hylo supports two allocation models for funding rounds: co-budgeting, which uses real currency, and priority voting, which uses distributed tokens. Stewards choose the model that best fits their community's process and goals.
Setting Up a Funding Round
In Edit Menu mode click (+) and add a space of type Funding Round, or create it from More Spaces. A guided tour walks you through setup. Configure:
Total amount available, and whether the budget field is shown to participants
Timeline (submission, discussion, voting, and outcome phases)
Submission criteria — what a valid proposal must address
Allocation model — how members distribute the pool across proposals
Whether submissions are visible during the submission phase or hidden until voting begins
Whether people who join during the voting phase receive tokens and can vote
Whether real-time vote totals are shown during the voting phase
Who can submit and who can vote (by role, if you want to restrict either)
Access to the round itself (open, request to join, invite only, role-restricted, or paid)
Draft and Publish
A new funding round is created as a draft. On the Manage Round page you'll see a Draft step with a Publish Round button. While in draft, the round is only visible to stewards, so you can finish the settings, write the welcome page, and prepare your call for proposals. After you publish, the Draft step disappears and the round shows as "Round has not begun" until the submission phase opens.
The Round's Welcome Page and About Page
The round's Welcome Page always shows the round details (amount, timeline, criteria) so participants can orient themselves, and the same details appear in a tab on the round's About page. Add your own framing above the details: why this round exists, what a strong proposal looks like, and how decisions will be honored.
Seeing Who Can Participate
Open the member directory inside the funding round to see, and filter by, who can vote, who can submit, who cannot submit, and who cannot vote. Use this before the round opens to confirm eligibility is set the way you intend, and during voting to nudge eligible members who haven't voted yet.
Guiding Your Community Through a Round
Submission phase. Communicate clearly what kinds of proposals you're looking for. Send announcements to prompt submissions before the deadline.
Discussion phase. Encourage members to engage with proposals — ask questions, offer feedback, surface concerns. This is where the quality of the final allocation is built.
Voting phase. Send reminders. Participation drives legitimacy. Showing real-time totals can build momentum; hiding them can reduce bandwagon effects. Choose deliberately.
Outcome phase. Publish results transparently and document the rationale. Completed rounds become part of your group's permanent decision history. Archive the round once outcomes are published so it moves to More Spaces with its record intact.
19. Export Data
Navigate to Group Settings and click on "Export Data" to create a CSV file of all member data.
Note: only the information entered by members in their profile will display in the CSV file.
Quick Reference — Steward Decisions at a Glance
Visibility setting
Who do you want to be able to find you?
Access setting
How much control do you need over who joins?
Post types
Which kinds of posts serve what you want people to do here?
Navigation structure
What do you want members to do first?
Menu layout style
Do members mostly use large screens (Side Menu) or phones (Card Menu)?
Spaces vs. views
Does this need its own menu and membership, or is it one screen of content?
Spaces vs. child groups
Should this live inside your group, or stand on its own and stay connected?
Number of chat rooms
What conversations need their own dedicated space?
Posts vs. chat
Does this content need to be findable later?
Agreements
What do members need to commit to before participating?
Join questions
What do you need to know before approving someone?
Welcome track length
How much context does a new member need before they can contribute?
Voting format
What decision-making culture does your community practice?
Funding round vote totals
Does visibility build momentum or create bandwagons in your community?
Draft or publish
Is this space ready for members, or still taking shape?
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