Yards: a home for your people

A yard is a community inside CommonYard — for a school, a church or mosque, a family, a team, a neighbourhood or a group of friends. It has its own posts, its own chat room, its own events and the people who run it. Anyone can make one.

Three kinds of yard

• School — adds Practice, a bank of questions to revise with, and a shelf of study materials from the yard’s admins. See CommonYard for schools.
• Faith — adds the devotional, the prayer wall and the week’s service and meeting times. See CommonYard for faith groups.
• General — just the yard and its chat.

What a yard gives you

• Posts that stay in the yard. A post made in a yard stays there: polls, opinions, petitions, swipeys, pictures and videos. Anyone can look inside a public yard before joining; a private yard’s posts are for its members.
• A chat room. Words, photos, videos and voice notes, under CHAT on the bar inside the yard.
• Events with reminders. Add what, where and when; members say they’re coming and get a reminder an hour before.
• A voice for the people who run it. A notice at the top of the yard, and Announce to the yard to send one post to every member, once a day.
• Games of its own. Inside a yard, GAMES is the yard’s own page: its games on now and coming up, and members' games that its admins allow. See Your yard’s games and ladder.
• A weekly ladder. This week’s points climb the yard’s ladder, which starts over every Monday.
• Sub yards. A big yard can hold smaller ones — a hall, a class, the choir — each with its own chat and admins. See Sub yards.
• A link that invites. Share your yard’s link and whoever takes it lands in your yard, ready to join. It shows a proper preview on WhatsApp and elsewhere.

You choose who gets in

A yard is public — on the open list, where anyone can find it and read its posts and chat — or private, off the list with its posts and chat for members only. It can take anyone with the link, need admin approval — people ask, and an owner or admin lets them in — or take nobody new for now, and its link can be reset at any time. You can make people admins or mods, and take someone out of the yard.

Keeping it kind

Owners, admins and mods can take down a post from the yard, and put it back if it was taken down by mistake. Members can report, block, hide a post or mute the yard. See Stay safe on CommonYard.

Make a yard

1. On HOME, tap Find a yard beside your yards, then Can’t find yours? at the bottom of that page.
2. Under STARTING SHAPE, pick SCHOOL, FAITH or GENERAL.
3. Give it a name, say what brings everyone together, and choose Public or Private.
4. Tap Create a yard, then share its link with your people.

For its first week, your yard shows a card with three things to get it going: ask the first question, share the link, and bring three people. The full how-tos are Make a yard and Run your yard.