# Yards: a home for your people

> Make a yard for your school, church, mosque, family or friends. Choose who gets in, post a notice, set up events with reminders, chat, and keep it kind. Free.

Updated: 2026-10-09
URL: https://commonyard.app/features/yards/

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](/for/schools/).
- **Faith** — adds the devotional, the prayer wall and the week’s service and meeting times. See [CommonYard for faith groups](/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](/guides/your-yards-games/).
- **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](/guides/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](/guides/stay-safe/).

## 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](/guides/make-a-yard/) and [Run your yard](/guides/run-your-yard/).