Build a Community on Your Site With Cardel

The conversation around your work is already happening. The question is whether that discussion is happening on your site, or somewhere else. Readers debate the next chapter in a Reddit thread you do not own. Clients send location ideas by text. Buyers ask the same question by email, one at a time, and every answer disappears with the reply.

Community moves those conversations onto your own website. It is a public discussion page at /community that uses your theme, your channels, and your rules. People can ask questions, compare notes, share ideas, and reply to each other. It is included on every plan.

What is the Community?

Community is a built-in page, like Blog or About. It has channels down the side and posts in the middle. Anyone can read. Signed-in people with a verified email can post, comment, and reply. You and your Admins run the channels on the page itself, with no separate Admin tab. It is your own site’s Community, not the Cardel Community on cardel.io/community.

Why put it on your site instead of somewhere else

A group chat or social thread is easy to start and easy to lose. It belongs to another platform, it is hard to search, and it does not help the next person who arrives with the same question.

A Community on your own site does three things a discrete chat or external post cannot:

• Answers stay. A public reply to a common question is still there months later, for the next reader, and search engines can find it.

• It carries your brand. Same theme, same header, same domain. A visitor never leaves your site to join the conversation.

• You can manage the conversation. Channels, Admin only spaces, archives, and guidelines are yours to manage.

What your visitors see

Community opens on Welcome, not a feed. Welcome shows the guidelines: respect the craft, join in, honor ownership, protect privacy, keep it civil. Then the visitor picks a channel.

On a large screen the channel list stays open beside the posts. On a phone it sits behind a Channels button and opens without leaving the discussion.

Each channel has its own search and a sort: Newest, Updated, Comments, or Likes. Updated means a post was edited or received a comment. A like does not move it.

Opening a post keeps the Community panel and adds a breadcrumb: Community, the channel, the post title. Comments sit directly under the post. Share is one control.

Who can do what:

• Guests can read everything.

• Signed-in, verified accounts can post, comment, and reply.

• Signed-in visitors can like.

• The author can use View Likes to see who liked their post.

What you control

Everything below happens on the Community page while you are signed in as an Admin.

Channels. Add, rename, reorder by dragging, archive, and restore. Drag order is the public order. Check cardel.io/pricing to see the number of channels available on each plan.

Admin only channels. Only Admins can create posts on these channels. Anyone can still see it, and users signed in can comment and like. Use one for dates, links, and announcements so they do not get buried under discussion from your community.

Archive. When a project or season ends, archive its channel. It leaves the sidebar and the Site map and stops accepting new posts. Existing post links keep working, so nothing you shared breaks. Restore it later from Add with a confirmation.

Posts and comments. New Post opens at the bottom of the panel and grows in place; nobody is sent to a separate editor. Authors can edit a post for 24 hours, then only Delete remains. People can delete or hide their own comments. Deleting a post asks for confirmation and removes its comments and likes. The author or an Admin on that site can delete.

Potential Use Cases

• Authors. A channel per book. Readers discuss what they just finished and tell you what they want next.

• Video and photo creators. Clients pitch the next location or subject in one place instead of five threads.

• Makers and artists who sell. A buyer asks about a piece, sizing, or shipping. The answer is public, so the next buyer finds it before asking.

• Anyone with a recurring question. Answer it once in Community. Link to it from then on.

• Announcements without noise. An Admin only channel holds dates and links while the open channels carry the talk.

The goal is not activity for its own sake. It is instead a permanent home for conversation about your work that provides value to you and your community.

Turning it on

New Cardel sites already show Community in the header with Home, Blog, and Newsletter by default. This can be fully customized as part of the setup process in guided mode. Existing sites start with it hidden so a live header does not change on its own.

1. Open Page Builder and Unhide Community, or manage it as part of the guided setup.

2. If the header has a free slot, the link appears automatically. If the header is full, add the link in Editor Mode.

3. Open /community, rename General if you want, and post a first welcome so the room is not empty.

4. Add additional channels and discussion topics.

5. Optional: add an Admin only channel for your applicable use case.

If /community sends visitors to Home, Community is still hidden.

Building a new site? As noted above, the Community is also configured in Guided Mode, so you can decide this while you shape the rest of your site.

Public and searchable

When Community is on, it is part of your public site. The Site map lists Community and each live channel. /sitemap.xml also includes published Community posts, so search engines can index useful public answers along with the rest of your pages.

Because it is public, posts, comments, and likes are visible to anyone. Your site’s Privacy policy and Terms already describe this, and their Community language refers to Community on your site, separate from the broader Cardel Community.

The short version

Your website does not have to be a one-way publishing tool. Turn on Community, if it makes sense for you, give each conversation topic a channel, and let your readers or clients become participants. The conversations build content on your site, the conversations stay in line with the work, and all of it lives on your own site.

Create a site of your own with Cardel.