PeerBoard is a feature-rich, intuitive platform. Once you know how everything works, you'll be able to organize your community to your exact specifications.
In this guide, you'll learn how to get the most out of PeerBoard in five easy steps:
1. Post Feed
The post feed is the landing page for your whole community. It shows a list of posts that have been sorted by our algorithm, and is similar to what you'd experience on Reddit, Hacker News, Indie Hackers, and many other popular community platforms.
The PeerBoard algorithm uses a combination of karma and recency (publish date) to prioritize the most engaging and recent posts. As time elapses, posts move down, while higher karma resists this. The same sorting principle applies to the first level of comments on a post, while the second level is sorted chronologically to maintain a logical conversation.
The Post Feed has three sections:
- Pinned Posts - Admins can pin posts to the top of the feed. Pinned posts are sorted by pin date, so it's possible to customize their order.
- Trending Posts - Posts that were created or received comments in the last three days will appear in the "Trending" section, allowing admins and community members to stay up-to-date with recent activity.
- Recent Posts - All other posts appear in the "Recent " section. Both "Trending" and "Recent" posts are sorted by our algorithm according to recency and karma.
💡 Quick Tip: While there's no limit to the number of posts you can pin to the top of the main feed, we've found that either one or two is ideal. If you need to pin more, we recommend creating a new space and pinning posts to the top of the space page (which has its own feed).
💡 Quick Tip: Spaces have two functions. First, they help you organize the different parts of your community. Second, members can use them to customize their feeds and notification settings. Spaces have unique links that allow you to share specific post collections with your members.
2. Spaces and Space Editor
There are two ways to create spaces in PeerBoard:
- Quick space creation - Select "Write a post". Open the "Select a Space" drop-down and choose "Add a space". A field will appear where you can enter the name of your new space. Finish by hitting "Create". This method is a good option if you want to create spaces on the go as you create content for your community.
- Rich space editor - Select "Spaces" from the main menu on the right of the home page (alternatively, open the drop-down menu on mobile). You will be taken to your community's master dashboard. From this interface, you can create new spaces, change ordering and nesting, and set emojis, descriptions. and flags.
💡 Quick Tip: Only admins can create new spaces.
The PeerBoard space editor is optimized for desktop, so we strongly suggest using it on a computer. Don't drive your Ferrari in your backyard. 😁
Our spaces editor lets you change the following properties:
- Spaces name - Just start typing to change the spaces name.
- Description - Select the description area underneath the spaces name to create a short block of text that will be visible to users.
- Emojis - Click on the emoji next to the spaces name and description to access the emoji library. To remove an emoji, use a three-dotted button on the right side.
- Ordering and nesting - Use the six-dot button to the left of an emoji to move a space. Drag and drop to reorder spaces, move them between top-level and second-level positions, and define top-level spaces.
- Lock icon - When you select the lock icon, only admins will be able to create posts within the space. The post editor will be disabled for normal users.
- Feed icon - When you select the feed icon, posts from the space will not be visible in the main feed. Users will need to open the space with a direct link or through the menu. This is useful if you have a noisy space or a space that you don't want all your members to see, such as bug reports.
- Mail icon - When you select the mail icon, the space will be hidden from digests. This feature is similar to the feed visibility flag but applies to email digests. It is a useful control for improving the noise-to-signal ratio.
- Archiving and deleting - Archiving lets you hide a space from the main page and the post editor while preserving it in historical posts. Generally speaking, it is best practice to first attempt to rename a space, then archive it if it is no longer relevant, and finally delete it if you no longer need it (posts will become uncategorized).
💡 Quick Tip: You can check the number of posts in each space (including top-level spaces). All spaces are clickable so you can jump to them quickly.
💡 Quick Tip: Don't forget to hit the "Save" button at the bottom of the page to make sure your changes were applied.
3. Post Editor
Our post editor is a complete WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) solution that supports the following features:
- Text formatting (bold, italic, hyperlinks, headers)
- Images and gifs (including uploads)
- Video previews for Youtube and Vimeo links
- Lists
- Quotes
- Code snippets
- Markdown snippets
💡 Quick Tip: You can upload images or use external links. If you use an external link, remember that the image won't display if the third-party host is offline.
Markdown snippets allow you to expand the post editor's basic functionality, which is useful for creating nested lists and tables. Just mark a block of text as markdown by highlighting it and hitting "MD" on the formatting menu. A syntax field will appear.
To create a nested list, input the following formatting:
* First item
* Nested item
* Nested item
* Second item
1. First item
1. Nested item
1. Nested item
1. Second item
And you'll see the following result:
- First item
- Nested item
- Nested item
- Second item
To create a table, input the following formatting:
| Header 1 | Header 2 |
| ----------- | ----------- |
| Element 1/1 | Element 1/2 |
| Element 1/2 | Element 2/2 |
And you'll see the following:
| Header 1 | Header 2 |
| ----------- | ----------- |
| Element 1/1 | Element 1/2 |
| Element 1/2 | Element 2/2 |
4. Membership management
PeerBoard has a comprehensive membership management system. You can access it by selecting "Members" from the right-hand menu on your community homepage.
From the member's dashboard, you can view all members, admins, and blocked members of the community. You can sort them by name or registration date.
You can also change member roles. Admin roles give users access to settings, members, and rich features such as space creation and post pinning. Blocked users lose access to the community completely.
You can also invite new members. This is especially useful for private communities. Invited members will get access to the space upon accepting your invite.
💡 Quick Tip: You can also block members contextually when removing a piece of content they wrote.
5. Settings
You can access the Settings page from the right-hand menu on the community homepage. Here is a quick overview of the available features, some of which you'll find on the main settings page, and others that you access through the menu on the right of the page.
- General - Your main settings, including key access flags. Here, you can set rules to determine how users will interact with the community. For example, you can allow anonymous users and search engines to see your content, which is good from an SEO perspective.
- Hosting - Embed your PeerBoard communication in different online environments, including custom websites, WordPress, domains and subdomains. Read more here.
- Integrations - Here you can find quick links to enable powerful integrations such as Zapier.
- Widgets - You can use simple js embeds on your web pages to add interactive previews of your PeerBoard content.
- Copy - Set the main pieces of text copy for your community, including the name, description, posting guidelines, language (English, German, French, etc.), and so on.
- Customization - Set the theme colors and fonts.
- Email - If you'd like to use your custom email instead of noreply@peerboard.com for all outbound emails we send, you can change it here.
- Billing - See your current plan, usage, and past charges.
Other guides
We recommend reading PeerBoard's other guides, especially the one about access settings and user groups.
Please share your feedback!
Think we've missed something? Check out our roadmap, send your questions, and post feature requests. You are our priority and we want to hear from you!