Communities

What is the “communities” feature?

Communities is a new feature in development, currently in beta testing. Our hope is to empower everyone on Tumblr to create new, dedicated spaces to connect with people over shared interests. It’s a bit like using tags but more contained, it’s a bit like having a shared blog but with more options, and it’s a bit like a group chat except it’s slower. 

Communities currently have incomplete support across the Tumblr mobile apps. You can read more about the idea of communities in our announcement on the Labs blog, and our beta test announcement.

Here’s an example of what a community looks like! You’ll notice that communities have two @ symbols in front of their name, like @@communities-feedback. This is intentional, and is meant to provide a way to distinguish between communities and regular blogs.

Current functionality of a community

The beta test version of communities is in active development, but here’s what’s available so far:

• Communities have a URL/handle, a title, description, About page, tags, and their own community guidelines that new members must agree to before joining.
• Communities can have admins, moderators, and members; you can learn more about roles here.
• Communities can be public or private.
• Admins can invite anyone on Tumblr to join, but each community has a population limit.
• Members can post directly into a community, or reblog posts from anywhere on Tumblr into a community they’re a member of (currently only supported in web browsers).
• Posts and reblogs inside communities can be reacted to by other members.
• Posts and reblogs inside communities also have a new “comments” section of the notes view, that is only visible inside the community.

How can I create a community?

Logged-in users can request a new community. The request will be added to our waitlist for new communities. When we’ve reviewed the request and approved it, you’ll be notified via a direct message from Tumblrbot, and you’ll have access to the communities feature and your new community. From there, you’ll be able to invite whomever you’d like.

How to provide feedback and report bugs

During the beta testing phase, we’re looking for as much feedback as possible, big or small! We’re still actively building the feature, so it can and will change based on the feedback we receive from all of you.

There are a few primary ways of providing feedback and reporting bugs about the communities feature:

• Regardless of whether you’re in the beta test or not, you can send feedback and bug reports through the Support form. Please use the “Feedback” category, and provide as much detail as possible.
• If you’re in the beta test, you can also post your feedback, questions, and bug reports to the public Communities Feedback community. If you’re an admin of a community during the beta test, there’s also a private feedback community for admins. (If you’re not in one or both of these communities, but you are in the beta test, please reach out to us via the Support form, and we’ll sort it out.)
• We’ll be reaching out to people across Tumblr with surveys and questions about the feature for direct feedback. These will be on an opt-in basis.

Communities limitations during beta

At the time of this writing, there are several known limitations to the beta test version of the feature. For the latest on these limitations, please check the Communities Feedback community.

Mobile apps

The official Tumblr mobile apps support a basic version of communities, but lack some of the same functionality as the web browser version. Most notably, the native post editor in the apps doesn’t support reblogging to communities yet.

Population limits

All beta test communities have a population limit of some kind, which includes pending invitations. This is to help us contain the size of the test, but this population cap can be altered on a per-community basis. If your community is growing and you’d like a higher cap, please feel free to reach out to us, either on the Feedback community or via the Support form!

Known bugs

There are rough edges and known bugs. For the latest on these, please check the Communities Feedback community for “known issues” posts.

Secondary blogs

It’s currently only possible to join and participate in communities using your primary blog. You won’t be able to join, post, or reply using a secondary blog.

Promoting members to the admin role

If you’d like to have multiple admins in your community, please contact Support and let us know which user you’d like to promote, and we can take care of it for you.

Not receiving community invites

Currently, invitations to communities will appear in your blog’s activity if you’re on web or if you’re on version 35.0+ of the mobile apps. Invites are sent via DM by Tumblrbot if you’re using a version of the mobile app before 35.0. If you’ve blocked Tumblrbot, you won’t receive the invite. As a workaround, you can directly visit the community you’d like to join, and you should be prompted to accept the invite there.

Settings

You’ll find the “Community Settings” link in the right-hand sidebar for your community on desktop, or in the context menu on mobile.

On this settings screen, admins can change the name, handle, tagline, avatar, header image, tags, description, and guidelines for their community. Admins can also change a public community to private.

Roles: admins, moderators, members, and non-members

Each community has a few different potential roles:

• Admins can invite users, see (and cancel) pending invites, and delete posts and comments inside the community.
• Moderators can delete posts, and we’re still building out the feature, so expect to see things change in the next few weeks!
• Members can interact with the community, react to posts, leave comments, make new posts inside the community, and reblog posts into the community.
• Non-members cannot interact with the community, but may be able to see parts of the community if it’s public.

Access: private versus public communities

Each community can be public or private. There are important caveats to each:

• Public communities can be seen and visited by non-members, logged in or logged out. However, only the feed of posts in each community tab, and the About page, are accessible. Non-members cannot view the member list, see who reacted with what, or see community comments. Non-members with an invite can see everything a member can see, but cannot interact with anything until they accept the invitation.
• Private communities cannot be seen or visited by non-members at all. The existence of a private community is not hidden, however, if someone has the URL (they’ll see a message like “this is a private community”). Non-members with an invite can see everything a member can see, but cannot interact with anything until they accept the invitation.

Posting to a community

Reblogging

It’s currently only possible to reblog on the web — it’s not yet possible to reblog in the mobile apps. Additionally, it’s not possible to reblog posts that have been posted within a community, even if it’s your own community. You can only reblog regular Tumblr posts in order to share them with your community.

To reblog on the web, follow the normal process you’d follow to reblog a post, then click on the blog switcher at the top left corner, where you’d typically go to switch between your primary blog and secondary blogs. A new tab has been added there, labeled “Communities”. Select that, and then you’ll be able to select the community you want to reblog to.

Original posts

On the web

On the web, there are two ways to post to a community. You can follow the process in the section above to post to your community from anywhere on Tumblr, or you can visit your community and click the “Create” button at the bottom left, which will post to your community by default.

In the mobile apps

Visit your community, then click the pencil icon at the bottom right corner to create a new post.

Inviting new members to your community

Only admins have the ability to invite new members to a community.

Visit your community, then look for the icon with a person’s silhouette and a plus sign. You can click on that icon to send a community invite.

Once you click the invite button, you’ll see a modal appear:

In this modal, you can invite new members directly, or you can copy the invite link for your community. This invite link can be shared with anyone and will keep working forever, until your community reaches its population limit.

If you’d like to refresh the invite link, which will make the former link invalid, you can click the refresh symbol.

Removing members from your community

To remove a member:

1. Click “Members” to view the list of community members.
2. Click the three dots icon next to the member you’d like to remove.
3. Click “Remove @user”.

Please note that removing a user isn’t the same as permanently banning them. It will still be possible to invite and add the user to your community again in the future, if desired.