Two admin pages control who can find and join your community: Admin โ Settings โ General (visibility and identity) and Admin โ Settings โ Registration (how people become members). Together they decide whether your space is open to the world or locked down to an invited few. This guide walks through both.
Visibility: public or private
On the General page, the Visibility & access section sets your community's privacy:
- Public โ anyone can view the community without an account. (On some plans this option is upgrade-gated.)
- Private โ content is hidden until someone joins and signs in.
When a site is public you can also toggle search engine indexing so it appears in Google; private sites can't be indexed, so that switch turns off automatically. The same section has a maintenance mode toggle with a custom message for when you want to temporarily take the community offline. The General page is also where you set your site name, tagline, description, default language and timezone, custom domain, and contact email.
Registration modes
The Registration page decides how new members get in. Pick one mode:
| Mode | What it does |
|---|---|
| Open | Anyone can sign up and join instantly |
| Invite only | Only people you invite can join |
| Approval | People request to join and an admin approves each one |
| Closed | No new registrations at all |
| Paid | Members must buy a plan to join |
Visibility and registration reconcile automatically โ for example, choosing an invite-only or closed mode keeps your community private.
Approval process
If you choose Approval, you can pick how requests are reviewed:
- Standard โ you approve or decline each request as-is.
- Questionnaire โ applicants answer screening questions you build, so you have context before deciding.
Pending requests appear in a banner linking straight to your join requests queue. Invite-only and closed modes link to your invitations page instead.
Paid membership
Switching to Paid requires two things first: at least one active site access plan and a connected Stripe account. If either is missing, MateFlow prompts you to create the plan or finish Stripe setup before the mode can be saved. Once live, a summary card shows the plan name, price, and any trial.
Changing modes safely
Because these changes affect who can reach your community, MateFlow confirms sensitive switches โ moving to closed, to invite only, or away from approval while requests are still pending โ so you don't accidentally lock people out or drop applicants.
Next steps
- Ready to open the doors? See Invite members and grow your community.
- Just starting out? Follow Launch your community from scratch.
- Explore the full admin toolkit, or set up a custom domain.