Building Your Community Structure

Set up the shape of your Chatto server before you invite a large group of members. The important choices are room layout, default access, announcement channels, roles, and the public identity of the server.

First-Day Checklist

1. Set the server name, description, logo, banner, welcome message, and message of the day.
2. Decide which rooms everyone should see immediately.
3. Create room groups that match how your community thinks about topics or teams.
4. Use universal rooms for channels that every eligible member should belong to.
5. Create custom roles only when you need a reusable permission bundle.
6. Use room or group permissions for local behavior, not server-wide denies.
7. Keep at least one verified owner recovery email in owners.emails.

Room Groups

Every channel room belongs to one room group. Groups do two jobs:

Job	Why it matters
Sidebar organization	Members see rooms and operator-managed links in grouped sidebar sections.
Permission scope	Group-level permissions become the default behavior for rooms in that group.

Use groups for durable categories such as Announcements, General, Project Teams, Support, or Off Topic. Avoid creating a group for every tiny topic. Room-level overrides are easier to understand when the group default already matches most rooms inside it.

Fresh servers start with a Lobby group containing #announcements and #general. You can rename the group, move rooms, add sidebar links, or replace the layout entirely.

Universal Rooms

Use a universal room when membership should be automatic for everyone who is allowed to join the room.

Good universal-room candidates:

Room	Typical policy
#announcements	Everyone sees it; only owners or trusted staff can post.
#general	Everyone can participate unless your community is invite-only or segmented.
#rules	Everyone sees it; posts are restricted.

Universal rooms do not write one membership record per user. Chatto derives effective membership from the room’s room.join permission and active room bans. If you later disable Universal, previous explicit memberships remain intact.

Tip

Members cannot leave a universal room. Tell members to mute noisy universal rooms instead of trying to leave them.

Permissions Strategy

Start broad and add local exceptions:

Goal	Best place to configure it
Ordinary member defaults	Server-scope grants on everyone
Behavior shared by a category of rooms	Group permissions
One exceptional room	Room permissions
One exceptional user	User permission override
Reusable staff capability	Custom role

Avoid server-scope denies unless you really want to block a capability everywhere. Chatto uses deny-wins resolution, so a broad deny can be hard to reason about later.

Common Structures

Small community

• One Lobby group.
• #announcements as universal and read-only for normal members.
• #general as a normal or universal room.
• One moderator or custom helper role if you need content cleanup.

Team or organization

• One group for company-wide or community-wide rooms.
• Separate groups for teams, projects, or committees.
• Universal #announcements and possibly #general.
• Custom roles for repeated access patterns such as staff, contractors, or project leads.

Event or course

• Universal read-only #announcements.
• One group per track, cohort, or topic area.
• Sidebar links for schedules, recordings, forms, or external resources.
• Room-level posting restrictions for high-signal rooms.

Branding And Public Presentation

Operators can edit the server name, description, welcome message, message of the day, logo, banner, and blocked username list from the admin UI.

Use these fields deliberately:

Field	Operator use
Server name	The human name members recognize.
Description	Link previews and server metadata.
Welcome message	Login-page context, onboarding notes, terms, or support links.
Message of the day	Short operational or community-wide notice for signed-in members.
Logo and banner	Visual identity for the server and login page.
Blocked usernames	Prevent impersonation, reserved names, or offensive handles before signup.

Related Guides

Permissions & Roles The full permission resolution model, built-in roles, scopes, and common patterns.

Identity & Login Local accounts, external providers, SMTP email flows, and owner recovery.

Server Operations Admin dashboard, event log, metrics, backups, and recovery operations.

Room Directory API Typed API reference for room groups, sidebar layout, and visible rooms.