Community setup
The everyday configuration your community admins own: the categories, channels, event types, and colors your community runs on. Separate from the platform-level Site settings.
On this page
What setup covers
Setup is where community admins shape who the community is and the everyday vocabulary of the portal. The first card, Community identity, holds the community name, phone number, the Reply-To address on community email, the time zone, the logo (PNG, JPG or SVG, up to 4 MB), and the appearance (theme, colors, and any color combinations you save). Below it are the categories residents pick from, the chat channel groups, the calendar event types, and the colors the app uses to label things. It is deliberately separate from Site settings, which holds platform-level configuration (billing, domains, integrations) reserved for whoever owns the account.
Dates on notices, certificates and emails print in the community’s time zone, which starts as Eastern. If it is still Eastern and your property addresses place the community in a state on another time zone, the card suggests that zone beside the picker. Nothing changes until you choose it and save.
Opening Setup takes a full community admin: the admin or system_admin role. Taxonomy and branding are community-wide settings that no single committee owns (many of these category lists have no matching scoped role at all), so they sit with the people who run the whole community, not a scoped committee admin. An Architectural Chair who wants a new review category asks a full admin to add it. Platform-level settings stay one level up in Site settings, reserved for the account owner.
Listing in Find your community
A listing lets people search for your community on neighbors.fyi/find and sign in from there, in case they forget your web address. Communities are private by default, so yours appears there only after a board member with the Settings admin permission turns on List (your community) in Find your community in the Public listing section of Setup and presses Save listing. You can also add your city or state, which people can search by too.
A listing shows only the community name and that area, with links to sign in or request access. No residents, addresses or content are shown, and turning the listing off removes it. Being listed changes nothing about who gets in: a new resident still needs an invite code or board approval to join.
Categories
Most features that ask a resident to "pick a type" read their options from here. Community issues, architectural review, resident services, documents, vendors, and violations each have an editable category list: you add a row, name it, reorder it with the arrows, and save the whole list at once.
Architectural categories go a step further. Each one can carry its own instructions and a list of documents to request, so a resident filing under "Fence" sees exactly what the committee needs (a survey, a material sample, whatever you specify) before they submit.
Channels and event types
Chat channel categories are the group headers in the chat sidebar. You can rename the built-in groups and add your own; the defaults can be renamed but not deleted, so the sidebar never ends up empty.
Calendar event types are the labels events get tagged with: board meeting, social, maintenance window, and so on. Each type has a display name and a color that shows on the event's badge across the calendar.
Colors
Two color sections, both a fixed set you tune rather than add to. Topic colors set the accent for each kind of content (announcements, events, dues, chat), which is what you see on the feed pills and the little notification dots. Banner colors set the background for the system banners, with a reset button to put any one back to its default.
Payment settings on the Community plan
On the Community plan, a board that issues violation fines or service fees still has to tell residents how to pay them. Setup has a Payment settings card for that. Choose None if residents pay by check or in person, or External to give them your bank’s payment portal link (it must start with https://) and instructions, which residents see next to a fine or a service fee. Collecting payments online through Stripe is part of the Operations plan, so on the Community plan the Stripe option is shown but cannot be chosen.
Jumping to the right section
You rarely come to Setup cold. Most feature pages show full admins an "Edit categories" link that drops you straight onto the matching section here, already expanded and scrolled into view. Fixing a wrong category is a two-click trip from where you noticed it. (Like Setup itself, that shortcut is a full-admin affordance.)
What lives elsewhere
On the Operations plan, payment settings (including Stripe) and the estoppel certificate fee are on the Dues admin page, next to the rest of the treasurer's work. Anything that touches the plan or the platform stays on Site settings and is limited to the account's system admin: plan and billing, the account owner, the custom domain, the Google Meet connection, turning features on or off, and site modes. Setup is the community; Site settings is the platform.