How to Create and Manage a Community on Nexus

What you need before you start

On Nexus, a community is called a server. A server holds your channels (the individual conversation rooms), your member list, and your settings. Anyone with a free account can create one, and you can be a member of as many servers as you like.

A quick note on what Nexus supports today: servers are built around text channels and file sharing. You can send messages, attach files, pin important messages, reply to specific messages, and react with emojis. Voice and video calls are not currently available.

Step 1: Create your account

1. 1Go to the Nexus homepage and click Get Started, which takes you to the registration page.
2. 2Sign up with an email address and password, or use the Google sign-in button.
3. 3If you registered with email, enter the one-time verification code we send to your inbox.
4. 4After signing in, you land directly in the app. Your account keeps you signed in, so returning takes you straight back to your communities.

Step 2: Create your community

1. 1In the app, look at the narrow sidebar on the far left — this is your server list.
2. 2Click the + button at the bottom of that sidebar.
3. 3Enter a name for your community, add a short description, and pick a category such as Gaming, Education, or Technology. The category mainly matters if you make the server public, because it helps people find your community in Discover.
4. 4Choose your visibility: a public server can be found and joined by anyone from the Discover page; a private one stays out of Discover.
5. 5Click Create. Nexus sets up your server with two starter channels: general and announcements.

Tip: a two-sentence description that says who the community is for and what people talk about makes a much bigger difference than a long list of keywords.

Step 3: Organize conversations with channels

Channels keep conversations tidy. A study community might have channels like homework-help, exam-prep, and off-topic; a gaming community might have lfg (looking for group), patch-notes, and clips.

To add a channel, hover over a category heading in the channel sidebar and click the + button. You can give channels a name, a description, and mark them as private. Channel creation is limited to the server owner, admins, and moderators — regular members can read and write, but not restructure the server.

• •Start with three to five channels. More channels can be added whenever a topic clearly outgrows an existing one.
• •Use the announcements channel for updates everyone should see, and pin those messages so they stay easy to find.
• •Channel names work best as short, lowercase topics that members instantly understand.

Step 4: Invite members

Click the invite icon next to your server's name in the channel sidebar. Nexus copies a link to the app to your clipboard, which you can paste into a group chat, an email, or a post. Anyone who signs up through it joins Nexus and can then find your community.

Public communities are the easiest to join: after registering, new members open the Discover page, search for your server's name or browse by category, and click Join. Private communities are not listed in Discover, and Nexus does not currently support one-click invite links that add a person directly to a private server — this is a known limitation we are working to improve.

Current limitation: the invite button links to the app rather than to your specific server. For private communities, tell invited members to get in touch with you in-app, or make the server public while it grows.

Step 5: Run the community day to day

• •The member list on the right shows who is online. Hover over a member to add them as a friend or start a direct message.
• •Hover over any message to reply, react, or pin it. Pinning is the simplest way to build a short list of important announcements.
• •You can edit or delete your own messages at any time from the message menu.
• •Keep the number of roles simple: owners and admins manage channels; moderators help moderate content; members participate.

Where to go next

If you plan to open your community to strangers, read Practical Community Moderation on Nexus next — it covers writing rules, handling conflict, and using Nexus's reporting tools.

If you have questions while setting things up, the Support page has a contact form and email address, and the troubleshooting guide covers the most common problems new owners run into.