How Do I Create a New Circle?

In late 2020/early 2021 we introduced the ability for Circle owners to control many aspects of how their Circle members can interact with each other.  The intent of this article is to go through each area and explain what it does and the different options available to Circle Owners when creating a new Circle, or for existing Circle owners to make changes to how their Circle works.

Creating a Circle - First Steps

Let's start with the first screen you see after tapping on "Create Circle", below.  Let's break down the different sections:

1. Circle image, name, description - just like it sounds, this is where you give your Circle a custom image, name, and describe the Circle for the members or people searching for it (if it's public).  These can be edited at any time.
2. Public or Private - Public Circles are able to be searched and found by anyone in the app. Private Circles are by invite-only.  PLEASE NOTE - for privacy reasons, once the Circle has been created you cannot change this setting.
3. Circle Focus - Choose up to three different areas where you intend to have the main topic(s) of your Circle be.  This step is optional, but will help people searching for Circles know what you are about.  We also plan to use these settings down the road to enhance search and recommendations.  These can be changed at any time.
4. Requirements - Are there certain health traits you want to use to gate entry into your Circle?  This is where you set them up.  We'll dig into this in more detail below.  PLEASE NOTE - for privacy reasons, once the Circle has been created you cannot change these requirements.
5. Settings - This is the area where you can control how the members can interact in the Circle and some of the basic functions.  We'll dig into this more below.  You can change these at any time.

Circle Restrictions

You have the ability to limit entry into the Circle based on specific health factors.  Anyone wanting to join the Circle will need to have indicated in the "My Info & Privacy" section of the profile that they have the specific health item to join the Circle.  This allows you to target Circles at a specific population you are interested in interacting with.  For example, you can create a Circle that "looks" like you to find others in the app that are into similar things that you are.  An example could be "Women over 40 that eat Paleo and are nurses".  PLEASE NOTE - for privacy reasons, once you have created your Circle the restrictions cannot be changed.  If you ever want to change them, you'll have to create a new Circle.

Circle Settings

You can control a lot of different settings that will determine how members of your Circle interact with each other.  We'll go through each of these below, in reference to the image.  What is important to note is that none of these settings will bar entry to anyone joining, but it will guide how interactions take place.  PLEASE NOTE - you CAN change these settings after the Circle has been created.

1. Preferred language - What is the primary language spoken in the Circle?  This is a single-choice select field.
2. Location - Are you focused on any particular location?  This is a free text field.
3. Members can create posts - Can anyone other than the Circle owner create brand new posts?  If you turn this off only the Circle owner can create new posts.
4. Members can comment - Will you allow Circle members to comment on posts?  If this is off, members may not comment or reply to any posts.
5. Members can upload photos - Are members allowed to share pictures in their posts?
6. Members can add links - Are members allowed to include links to external websites as part of their posts?
7. Fast complete posts - turning this on will automatically create a post when each member completes a fast within a specified duration.  The default is that this is turned on and includes fasts between 16-72 hours in duration.  Tapping on this field enables you to turn it off or change the set duration.  If a member's fast falls outside of the range specified, it will not automatically be posted to the Circle.  For users of the original LIFE app, this was a feature that existed and was always turned on.
8. Show member mood updates - When this is on, any time a member updates their mood it will automatically share that in a Circle post.
9. Post when a new member has joined - When this is on, each time a new member joins the Circle it will automatically create a post welcoming them.  If you have a large Circle, you might want to turn this off.

Wrapping Things Up

Once you have your Circle set up how you think you want it, you have the option to preview how it will appear to other people by hitting the "Preview" button.  Make sure everything looks like you want it, then hit create!