Private spaces are exclusive, invite-only areas within your communities. This article explains what they are, how to create them, and how to give members access, either manually or automatically through courses, memberships, and groups.
For more, see: Organize and Navigate Your Thinkific Community
Private spaces are exclusive, invite-only areas within your communities. While spaces can remain open to all, private spaces allow select sets of members, like course cohorts or project teams, to engage more meaningfully. Members can securely share resources, tips, and milestones while keeping discussions organized and streamlined, enhancing engagement without cluttering the broader feed.
Some of the ways you can use private spaces to create a better learning experience for your students include:
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Breakout collaboration sessions: Foster small-group discussions in an exclusive and focused space.
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Cohort-based learning: Maintain one community while creating private spaces for different student cohorts.
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Workshops and seminars: Provide dedicated discussion areas for students attending invite-only workshops or seminars.
To create a private space, follow these steps in Customize and Manage Your Community Spaces and toggle the Private space setting on.
For more, see: Customize and Manage Your Community Spaces
By default, only Site Admins are automatically added to a private space. Other users, including community moderators, must be manually added to a private space. To do that:
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From the Admin Dashboard, go to Products
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Select Communities
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Locate the community you want to work with in the list and click on the community card
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From the community page, locate the space you want to edit in the left navigation and click to open its name
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Select the cog icon at the top of the space
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Under Access, select Add a member
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Use a checkbox to select the members you want to add to the space.
Note
You can only add members to a private space if they are enrolled in the community that the space is in.
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Click Add
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Click Save
For more, see: Community Moderator Role
You can automatically give members access to a private space by adding the courses, memberships, or groups they belong to. Students who enroll in an added course or membership, or join an added group, get access to the space. They lose access when they are unenrolled or removed from the group, unless another course, membership, or group you added still gives them access.
To set this up:
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From the Admin Dashboard, go to Products
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Select Communities
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Locate the community you want to work with in the list and click on the community card
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From the community page, locate the space you want to edit in the left navigation and click to open its name
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Select the cog icon at the top of the space
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Select Access
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In the dropdown menu under Automatic access, select Add a course, Add a membership, or Add a group
Note
The available automatic enrollment options are based on the community access type. Learn more in Automatic Enrollment Options Based on the Community Access Type, below.
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Select the course(s), membership(s), or group(s) you would like to add
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Click Add
Students who are currently enrolled in the selected products or groups will gain access to the private space. To stop granting access through an item, remove it from the list.
Your community's access rules decide what products or groups you can select as a basis for an automatic enrollment. Options your community doesn't grant are greyed out with the label Restricted by your Community access rules.
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Students that purchase this community via the checkout: automatic access isn't available, and the Add button is disabled.
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All students that are logged into your site: you can select any courses, memberships, and groups.
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Students in selected courses, bundles, or memberships: you can only automate enrollment based on courses and/or memberships that have been selected in the access settings. You can't automate enrollment based on groups.
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Students in selected groups: you can only automate enrollment based on groups that have been selected in the access settings. You can't automate enrollment based on courses or memberships.
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Access is added when a student enrolls in a connected course or membership, or joins a connected group.
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Access is removed when a student is unenrolled from the course or membership, removed from the group, or when you remove the corresponding product or group from the automatic enrollment settings for the space.
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If a student has access through more than one product or a group, for example, a course and a membership, they keep the longest access. Access that never expires always takes priority over access with an end date, and the latest end date wins between different products that both have an associated expiry date.
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Group membership doesn't expire, so a student in a connected group always has unlimited access to the space.
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Community access restrictions always apply on top of the space-level restrictions. It is not possible to give access to a private space but not the community the space is in.
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If you switch a public space to private, you must add members to it manually, as it will no longer be accessible to all community members.
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If a private space is made public, all community members will automatically gain access. If you switch it back to private again, the original members will still be there.
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Automatic access only works for members the community lets in. If you change your community's access rules, products or groups that grant automatic access to a private space that the new community enrollment rule doesn't cover, they stop granting access, and students who only had access through them lose access to the community space.
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If a student has access to a space through more than one item, removing one item doesn't remove their access. They lose access only when none of the remaining items cover them.
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Members added manually who also belong to a removed course, membership, or group may lose access when that product or group is removed from the space access rules.