What's the reference to "communities" in the documentation?

The documentation for Members refers to the following: “Communities - Create comments sections and communities for logged in or paid-only members to foster engagement with your work.”

I assume “comments” is just a comment section on the posts. But for “communities,” is there a place to see what this looks like and how it works? Is it similar to this forum? Something else? I didn’t see it described anywhere and the sample website didn’t have it (or if it did, it’s behind a paywall).

Unrelated, but it sounds like this members feature would work for small businesses with recurring revenue that exist mostly in-person. For example, a gym that wants to offer premium content online and accepts online and in-person payments. Is this a use-case you are designing for? We have different tiers of membership for our community and I’m looking into this online content as part of a premium membership.

Hi @EliCash :wave: . That’s an interesting use case for Ghost :weight_lifting_woman: . You could certainly use it with such a model, but the in-person gym part would be something you’d connect directly to Stripe with. Ghost make the most of it’s Stripe integration and gives you full control of your revenue in Stripe. You could manage your gym members in there and then provide them with premium content within a Ghost site.

Regarding communities: The best example is using Discourse, a community forum tool, with Ghost to allow your community to discuss the topics in your Ghost articles. Check out our documentation page on Discourse integration: