It can be confusing at first to get to grips with how channels differ from rooms, and vice-versa. Let’s break it down!
Channels
Channels are 'buckets' of content into which you and your contributors can add posts, videos and documents. They give your site structure and guide your community members to the right content.
The Zapnito community has four channels, which you can access on the left-hand menu. They are News, Community Insights, Community Success and The Vision.

In each, a brief description is given on the type of content you can expect to see. For example, the news channel contains information on “Zapnito’s news. New networks, our latest award wins and more”. Channels allow customers to more easily understand what your goals and vision are.
When you create your Zapnito site, think of the main categories into which you can organise content that is relevant to your business. Don’t worry if these don’t come to mind straight away! It can take a week or two to understand how best to structure your site.
Rooms
Rooms are sub-communities of your wider community. They allow you to create spaces that bring together people with shared interests.
Rooms are also flexible. This means that you don’t necessarily have to create rooms for people. For example, you could create a room to organise an event or a conference. There is no limit to the number of members you can have in a room.

At the moment, our Zapnito site has six rooms, examples of which are the Customer Update Room and the Training Room. You’ll notice that the Training Room is private, unlike the Customer Update Room. As the name suggests, private rooms are reserved for specific members. For example, only Zapnito customers are given access to the Training Room. Rooms are based on affiliations, so members need to be invited to join a private room.
For more information on how to add users to rooms on your community, check out this guide.
Once you are a member of a private room, you will be able to post content to the room that will be available to other members who are also in the room. You are also able to have conversations in rooms, as well as view who their members and contributors are.
How can I delete a private room?
Due to security reasons, there's not an option to delete private rooms because it would make all the content visible on user profiles. However, you can archive the private room or make the room 'open' with the acknowledgement that all content will be visible and then you can delete the private room.

For more information on channels and rooms, please access the Zapnito Launch Training course. This will help you prepare your Zapnito site for launch.
If you have any queries, please contact us at support@zapnito.com or add a comment below this article.
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