General Settings

Understand what General Settings controls

Open community Settings under the gear icon at top right and go to General Settings to manage your community’s basic identity and global preferences.

This is one of the first sections a superhost should review, because the settings here shape how the community is presented, how people access it, and how core information is displayed across the platform.

From General Settings, you can update the community name, control the URL used to access the community, decide how users are allowed to join, standardize date and time formatting, and manage community deletion and restoration.

Update the community name

Use Community Name when you want to update the name that represents your community.

Enter the new name and click Save.

This name is visible to everyone, so it can reflect your organization name or the purpose of the community more clearly. As a superhost, this helps you keep the community identity aligned with your brand, audience, or use case as it evolves.

Change the community URL

Use Community URL when you want to customize the keyword that appears in your community links.

Enter the new URL keyword and click Save.

This updates both access URLs:

For hosts, it updates the default host URL in the format https://communityspaces.zoho.com/portal/<communityURL>
For members, it updates the Member Portal URL in the format https://<communityURL>.zohocs.com

Once the new URL is saved, users are automatically redirected from the old URL to the new one.

This option is useful when you want the default community links to better reflect your brand or community name, but still continue using the standard Zoho CommunitySpaces URL structure.

Use Community URL when you simply want to rename the default host and member URLs. If you want members to access the community through your own branded web address instead of the Zoho URL structure, configure Custom Domain under Customization.

Choose the community access type

Use Access Type to control how people are allowed to join the community. This is one of the most important settings for a superhost, because it directly affects discoverability, openness, and member entry control.

The available access types are:

Private – Only invited members can access and join the community.
Public – Anyone can sign up and join the community.
Closed Public – Anyone can sign up, but they must request approval from the host before joining.

This setting helps define how open or controlled the community should be.

Choose Private when the community should stay limited to a known set of invited users, such as customers, internal stakeholders, or selected partners.

Choose Public when you want to reduce friction and allow anyone to sign up and participate immediately.

Choose Closed Public when you want discoverability and public access to the signup flow, but still want host approval before people are allowed in. This makes Closed Public especially useful when you want to grow the community while still reviewing who joins.

Set date and time preferences

Use Date and Time Preference to standardize how date and time information appears throughout the community.

From here, you can set:

The date format
The time format
The calendar start day

Any change you make to the calendar start day is reflected everywhere calendars appear in the community.

This is useful when you want to keep scheduling and time-based experiences consistent for all users, especially in communities where events, tasks, and deadlines are frequently used.

Delete or restore a community

Use Delete Community when you want to remove the community and all associated data.

Before deleting, use Export to securely save your community data. Once you have done so, click Delete Community to proceed.

Deleting a community immediately removes user access and erases the associated community data, so this should be treated as an administrative action of last resort.

After deletion, the community can still be restored by signing in within 90 days.

This gives a short recovery window if the deletion was done prematurely. However, as a superhost, it is still best to export the data first and treat deletion as a serious, high-impact action.

Next: After configuring your community’s identity, URLs, access behavior, and global preferences, continue with Users & Controls to manage members, hosts, disabled users, and pending invitations.