A community template is a ready-made starting setup: a theme, starter spaces and categories, onboarding defaults, and sample posts. You pick one when you create a community, and you can apply a template to an existing community later from the creator dashboard. Applying a template fills in what's missing without deleting your spaces or content.
Who can do this: Workspace Owners, Admins, and Members who can manage the community in the creator dashboard. Viewers can browse and preview templates but can't apply them. · Where: Web (creator dashboard at app.mateflow.com). · Plan: Available on every platform plan.
Open the Template defaults page
- Go to Dashboard (app.mateflow.com) → Communities and open the community.
- On its Overview, find the Launch readiness card and click Template defaults.
The Template defaults page lists every template. Filter them with All templates or a community type, and use Refine: to narrow further. Featured templates are marked.
Preview what a template includes
Click a template card, or its Preview details link, to open the preview. Click Show what's included to see:
- Theme: the template's colors (Primary, Secondary, Accent).
- Starter Structure: how many categories and spaces it adds, and their names.
- Recommended onboarding defaults: Welcome message, onboarding steps, Member questionnaire, and Community rules.
- Appearance defaults: Default theme mode, Discover feed, and Sidebar widgets.
- Starter posts: how many sample posts it adds, and how many are pinned.
- Features enabled: each feature and the community settings it affects (Affects: …).
Apply a template to your community
- In the preview, click Apply template.
- Read the confirmation: "Applying [template] will update this community's theme and default settings."
- Click Apply template.
A progress list shows four steps: Settings, Spaces & categories, Onboarding defaults, and Starter posts. Starter posts can take a little longer ("finishing…"). When it's done, you see Template applied. Click Visit site or Go to admin to check the result, or Done to close.
If you see Apply failed, the reason is shown; click Retry or Close. If the template couldn't be applied at all, you see "Template could not be applied. Community state was not changed."
What applying a template changes
Applying a template is non-destructive: existing spaces, content, and your customizations are kept, and only factory defaults and missing items are filled in.
- Theme: your community's theme is replaced by the template's theme. To change it back, pick a theme in Admin → Appearance → Themes.
- Settings: the template's default settings are applied, as listed under Features enabled in the preview.
- Spaces and categories: categories and spaces with the same names as the template's are reused. Only missing ones are created.
- Onboarding: the template's welcome message, steps, questionnaire, and rules are only filled in where you haven't set your own. See Set up new-member onboarding.
- Starter posts: sample posts are added to show how the spaces look.
Applying the same template again doesn't create duplicate spaces or categories.
Remove sample posts from your template
When your template added example posts, a Sample posts from your template card appears on the community's Launch checklist page in the creator dashboard.
- Click Remove sample posts.
- Confirm. Only posts the template created are removed; anything you or your members wrote stays.
Sample posts that already have member replies are kept, so those replies aren't lost. You can delete them yourself later.
Things to know about templates
- Applying a template doesn't tick Choose a starting template on the launch checklist. Tick it yourself. See Complete your launch checklist.
- Templates don't change your members, access groups, subscription plans, or platform plan.
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