How to Host a Hive Community as Its Own Branded Site

You can now stand up a whole Hive community as its own branded site: its own address, its own look, its own domain if you want one, with every post still living on the Hive blockchain. This is a step by step walkthrough of how to do it and a clear map of who controls what once it is running.

What you are building

A hosted community site shows the community's posts, its subscribers and its about page, wrapped in a theme and branding you choose. It lives at hive-NNNNN.blogs.ecency.com, or at your own custom domain. Members can publish straight into the community from the site and the community keeps all of its normal Hive moderation. The posts themselves never leave the blockchain, so what you are building is a front door, not a copy.

Before you start

You need two things:

1. An Ecency/Hive account, logged in. The account you use becomes the owner of the site, so use the one you want in control.

2. The community id. It looks like hive-125125. You can read it off the community's page. This is the id of the community you want to host.

You do not need the community's keys. You are not taking over the community account and you are not handing over your own keys. The site is a separate thing that you own and operate.

Step by step

1. Go to ecency.com/hosting. This is the same place you would set up a personal hosted blog. Choose Community rather than a personal blog.

2. Enter the community id. Type the id, for example hive-125125. This tells the site which community's posts, subscribers and about page to show.

3. Confirm you are the owner. Make sure you are logged in as the account you want to run the site. That account becomes the owner of the instance. The community itself is not the owner, you are.

4. Pick a term and pay. Choose how many months you want and pay by HBD on-chain or by card. It is the same price as a personal blog, about $2 a month and months stack in a single payment.

5. Choose a theme and style template. Once the site is up, open its settings and pick a theme, then one of several style templates. This is where the site starts to look like the community instead of a default.

6. Set the title and branding. Give the site a title and add branding so a first-time visitor immediately reads it as the community. Small touches here do a lot of work.

7. Add a custom domain, optional. If you want the community to live at its own name rather than a subdomain, add a custom domain the same way you would for a personal blog. It is a $1 a month add-on, prorated to the months left on your term if the site is already running and you point one DNS record from your domain to the site. Keep that record set to DNS only, not proxied behind something like Cloudflare's orange cloud or verification will not pass. After that the community answers at an address that is fully its own.

8. Invite members to post. Tell the community the site is live. Any logged-in member can publish straight into the community from the site and the post lands in the community feed like any other. The moderators keep their usual tools, so the same rules and the same standards apply.

Who controls what

This is the part that trips people up, so here it is laid out plainly.

You control the site. The instance is owned by the account that created it. You pick the theme, the template, the title, the branding and the custom domain. You handle the payments. If you stop paying, the site goes dormant and nothing on Hive is lost.

You do not control the community. Hosting a community's site does not make you a moderator or give you any new power over the community itself. Moderation, membership and community rules are unchanged and stay with the community's existing moderators.

Authors control their posts. Every post shown on the site lives on the Hive blockchain under the author's own keys. The site presents those posts, it does not own them. Authors can read and edit their posts through Ecency or any other Hive app exactly as before and the rewards on those posts are theirs.

The community keeps its keys. You never need the community's keys to run the site and setting up hosting never asks for them. The site reads the community's public posts, which is all it needs.

A few things worth knowing

The posts never move. Hosting is a presentation layer over content that already lives on Hive. Turn the site off and every post is still there, readable everywhere else on Hive.

Anyone can start one. A moderator, a long-time member or a founder can all stand up a home for a community they care about. It is owned by whoever creates it.

The look is not permanent. Theme, template, title, branding and domain can all change later from the site settings. Try something, live with it, change it when you want.

Ready

Pick a community that deserves a real home, grab its id and open ecency.com/hosting. A few minutes later it has its own site and every post underneath is still on the blockchain, still owned, still earning.

Your community, its own home, on Hive.