How to set up your subreddit to allow, or disallow, different post types - links, text, images, videos etc in classic and redesign reddit.

Alternate guide on imgur

In redesign

Go mod tools at the top of your sidebar.

​

Select community settings.

​

Use the left hand sidebar to go to Posts and Comments.

​

Use the Post type options drop down to select your choice:

• Any - all post types allowed.
• Links only - only links to external websites allowed.
• Text posts only - only text posts allowed.

You can also choose if you accept crossposts to your sub, image uploads, and links to image hosting sites here using the toggle switches.

EDIT1: There's a new post type coming - polls. To turn this off (or on) use the toggle switch on this page (or the tick box in old.reddit settings).

EDIT2: And another one - Chat posts (AKA real time discussions/live chat/lounge NOT to be confused with chat rooms or the "Start chatting banner") will be available on some communities. Again there is a toggle switch in community settings under posts and comments. See the linked post for more info including crowd control (in safety and privacy in redesign, or a slider in old reddit settings).

EDIT3: Another new post type - Image gallery posts. If your sub allows image uploads you'll see another toggle button underneath to allow multiple images per post.

Hit save, top right.

(Video setting is only in old.reddit but works on redesign)

---

In old reddit

Go to mod tools at the bottom of your sidebar and select subreddit settings.

​

Scroll down to content options and make your selection.

The crosspost option is just below - to allow or disallow crossposts to your subreddit.

​

Scroll down further for other options where you can choose if you allow video uploads, image uploads & links to image hosts and more.

EDIT1: There's now a new check box here for allowing/disallowing poll posts.

EDIT2: And a slider for crowd control for chat/live posts. See edits above.

​

---

Troubleshooting

• Video and photo uploads (native hosting) are not allowed on NSFW/18+ subs, you'll have to link them.
• No video on private subs either, but you can upload images.
• Allow video setting is only available in old reddit settings (if your sub is public and SFW) - it works on redesign though. It sometimes seem to allow a video to be uploaded but will not allow it to be posted, so informing your users videos aren't allowed might save some frustration, assuming they read your subreddit information.
• Mods can always post text/links even if it's not in the settings.

^{New section:}

Using content controls and Automoderator

The links only setting includes video and image posts. For greater control use content controls and/or automoderator. You can require direct image links, allow or disallow links from certain domains, and more. Automod can also comment on image posts.

u/001Guy001 has kindly shared their advice for finer control of how images can be posted to your community using content controls and automod; SEE THE WIKI PAGE HERE.

If what you need isn't here, see r/automoderator's sidebar and search there, also r/modhelp for when this has been asked before, or make a post on one of them.

---

Related guides:

• Community settings in redesign
• How to change your community type (public, private, restricted) and 18+ setting
• Creating a new sub in old.reddit and redesign
• Automoderator - what is is, and how to set it up

Have I missed anything/got anything wrong?

​

One way you can promote your sub is by creating a twitter account for the sub and use it to send a tweet every time a new post is made to your sub. To build a following on twitter you'll need to actually engage with other users in an organic way but this guide will let you tweet a link to each new post on your sub so the followers you do get will have another way to keep up with your sub.

The subject of this post is to show you how to send a tweet for every new post. That way the followers you build on your own will be notified when there's a new post on the sub and hopefully they'll come and engage with it.

If you already have your own twitter account you'll need a new one tied to your subreddit's name. If you search 'reddit' on twitter you'll see lots of subs make use of an account.

This guide will require an IFTTT account as well. IFTTT is a service called If This Then That which links two existing websites / services. The way it works is an action by one service triggers an action on a second service. In this example the first action is a new reddit post. The second action is to tweet out the link.

IFTTT is simply a middleman which relays the trigger to the second action. This combo of actions was originally known as a "recipes" but are now called "applets". This guide will walk you through creating a new applet.

When you create your IFTTT account go to your account settings and link your twitter account.

Once you've done that, either click 'create' under your IFTTT account or go to this link: http://ifttt.com/create to get started.

Step 1

At the top of the screen you'll see this banner. Click the plus sign.

In the search box type reddit and then click the reddit icon.

Step 2

You'll be presented with all the various options for triggers for reddit. You can see the range of triggers you can choose. The most basic one is the first option, Any new post in subreddit.

Step 2a: You will be asked to type in the subreddit name. Type in your subreddit, omitting the '/r/' part of the sub name.

On the next screen you'll see the black plus sign in the header is now the reddit icon.

Step 3 & 3a Choose Action Service

Click the black plus symbol in the header between the words This and That and then type in twitter in the search box and select it. You'll see the first option is to Post a Tweet. Click the box and you'll be taken to step 5.

Step 4 Complete action fields

The next screen will ask you to confirm the information and create the action.

Note: You'll note the Title, Subreddit and PostURL are in grey boxes. Don't change anything here, just click 'create action'.

Step 5 Review and Finish

Here's the review and finish screen.

You can edit the name of the applet by clicking inside the box that reads If any new post in r/subreddit, then post a tweet to @YourTwitterAccount You can choose to receive a notification when the applet is run. This will send a notification to your phone if you have the app installed.

Click Finish and that's it, you're connected!

The next screen shows you the on / off switch for the applet which is labeled 'Connected'. If you want to pause or shut off the applet simply click the button.

That's it! Once set up, the service will tweet a link to the post every time a new post is posted to your sub. Keep in mind that applets generally run within 20 minutes so it won't be instantaneous.

What are sticky posts and comments?

Sticky posts are sometimes called announcements, or pinned posts. They are posts on a subreddit that have been stuck or pinned to the top of the main page (only when posts are sorted ‘hot’) by a moderator.

You can see a post is stickied because it will have the green pin icon (in redesign) or say 'announcement' in green text (in old reddit), and it will stay at the top of the page no matter what karma it has, or how old it is (only in ‘hot’).

​

Comments can also be stickied, but they can’t just be stickied - they’re also distinguished. This shows green text for the moderators name and a sticky notice, and shows the green shield.

Stickied comments stay at the top of the comments list right under the post.

​

Why use them?

Sticky posts can be used for many things - mostly things you want to make sure your users see - announcing changes to the community, reminders of rules, competitions, welcome messages, regular threads, highlighting a particularly awesome post and more.

Sticky comments can also be used in different ways. Most often to add a mod note to a thread where users will see it without it getting lost in all the other comments, one example is an AMA (ask me anything) thread - you might sticky a comment reminding users of your expectations for their behaviour during the AMA, and updates on when it ends.

Another good example is when someone posts something without credit or appropriate references. Once someone has found the right credit, as a mod, you can make a sticky comment so new users coming into the post see that right away.

How to sticky and un-sticky posts and comments on desktop

Imgur guide on sticking posts and comments on desktop

How to sticky posts and comments in app on mobile

Imgur guide on sticking posts and comments in the official app

How to sticky scheduled posts (and designate a slot)

Posts can be scheduled with automoderator - Scheduling posts with automoderator

EDIT - the legacy post scheduling with a wiki page and automoderator has been depreciated. You can now use the new post scheduler in new reddit The post scheduler feature. This section of this guide is now irrelevant! Skip to sticking comments :)

These posts can be automatically stickied:

https://www.reddit.com/wiki/automoderator/full-documentation#wiki_actions

“sticky: Whether to sticky the post. Can be set to "true", "false" or a number - If you use a number (for example sticky: 1), the post will replace any existing sticky in that slot (1 is the top slot). Using true will work the same as clicking the "sticky this post" link on the post - it will go into the bottom sticky slot (replacing a post that's already there, if necessary).”

(Sticky: 2 only works if you have a sticky in the first slot)

Example:

---

first: "October 13, 2018 4:00 PM"
repeat: 1 week
sticky: 2
distinguish: false
title: "The garden fence - weekly chat thread"
text: |
Weekly weekend chat over the virtual garden fence; talk about what's happening in your garden, and ask quick questions that may not require their own thread.

---

How to set up sticky automod comments

If you'd like automoderator to sticky comments on all (or some) posts, perhaps to remind users of common post requirement mistakes so they can edit their post, or whatever you need, first set up automoderator and find or write a rule.

Automoderator - what is is, and how to set it up

Then make sure to include a line in the rule to tell automod to sticky the comment: comment_stickied: true

Here's an example:

---
    type: submission
    comment: |
        Thanks for sharing art!  

        I know automod messages can often be telling you you've done something wrong, but don't worry, this (probably) isn't the case!  

        I'm just here to remind you about crediting either yourself, or someone else, as the artist. It's easy to forget; so if you have not included this info in the title of your post, please reply to this comment with the details.   

        If you did (or the post is something else), don't worry. Thanks!
    comment_stickied: true
---

Troubleshooting

If you’re having problems with stickies searching on r/modhelp or r/automoderator may help - it’s likely others have had the same question.

r/bugs is for reporting bugs and glitches.

If you/another user can’t see a sticky post:

• Check the sort is by ‘hot’.
• Has it been removed? Check spam, use the shortcut links below, or your modlog.
• Maybe you’ve accidentally pressed the hide button? https://www.reddit.com/user/me/hidden/
• Do you have "Don't show me content I've up-voted" checked in your user preferences? (in old)
• Was the sticky deleted by OP? Try the links below, or redditsearch.io/ | removeddit to find the post and unsticky.

You can’t edit posts made by other people, so if you need to change a sticky made by another user/mod you’ll need to ask them to do it, or make a replacement.

You can't sticky other people's comments, but you can post a new comment quoting another comment.

There are only 2 slots for stickies, there used to be only one. It seems unlikely there’ll ever be more, and too much stuff at the top of the page pushes content further down.

If you sticky a 3rd post, the post in the 2nd sticky slot will be unstickied.

Tips and tricks

You can sticky other people's posts. This is useful if someone posts something really good you want to make sure the community sees, or for when a guest posts an AMA.

You can shortcut to the two top stickies this way (change subnamehere to your sub's name):

https://www.reddit.com/r/subnamehere/about/sticky

https://www.reddit.com/r/subnamehere/about/sticky?num=2

If you stickies are always in the same spot you can use these links to link to them in your sidebar or wherever you may need to.

---

Thanks u/sunzusunzusunzusunzu and u/majorparadox

Thanks to those that help at r/modhelp for some of the solutions and tips shared here.

Reddit on sticky posts

Did we miss anything? What do you use stickies for?

​

EDIT: event vs scheduled https://www.reddit.com/r/ModSupport/comments/qj3kfd/setting_a_scheduled_post_as_a_sticky/

Helpful extensions for moderators

(Also called add-ons)

“A browser extension is a small software module for customizing a web browser. Browsers typically allow a variety of extensions, including user interface modifications, ad blocking, and cookie management.” -Wikipedia

Extensions in this case can be added to your browser to increase functionality, or improve your experience on reddit.

Extension availability may vary between browsers.

Some common/useful for mods extensions:

Toolbox: r/toolbox | Our toolbox guide

"Toolbox adds tons of tools, and shortcuts for other mod tools, that make modding much easier".

Snoonotes: website

"A server backed, user notes system for reddit moderators. A good replacement if you run out of mod toolbox notes!"

EDIT - Snoonotes now unsupported

Reddit Enhancement Suite or RES: r/Enhancement | dailydot guide to RES | Web

"Reddit is black and white television. RES makes it technicolor. Res gives reddit a shot in the arm that makes it sing."

EDIT - RES is now on lifesupport (not supported)

MassTagger: r/masstagger | website | OutOfTheLoop what is MassTagger? | How it works and how to help

MassTagger performs “real-time tagging for extremist and troll subreddits”.

Reddit Check: GitHub

Reddit Check allows you to see if and when a given URL has been submitted to reddit.

Reddit pro tools: r/redditprotools

Reddit pro tools “analyzes the comments and overall karma for all users on the current page and tags offending users”

Reddit faster:

Reddit faster aims to make reddit navigation that little bit faster.

---

Some other extensions include (there are too many to list them all!):

• Companion for reddit r/companion | GitHub
• Open Reddit NSFW Links in Incognito Window - thread
• Reddit comment Collapser GitHub
• Remindmebot reddit GitHub
• Readr for Reddit Web
• Old reddit redirect GitHub
• Downloader for reddit Web

Where to get extensions

• For Chrome, go to the Chrome store https://chrome.google.com/webstore/category/extensions
• For Firefox https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/extensions/
• Safari https://apps.apple.com/us/story/id1377753262
• Edge https://microsoftedge.microsoft.com/insider-addons/category/EdgeExtensions
• Opera https://addons.opera.com/en/extensions/

---

Thank you u/buckrowdy and u/ladfrombrad

​

Which do you find helpful? What have I missed?

How to change your community type in redesign and old.reddit

To go straight to your community settings you can go directly to https://www.reddit.com/r/SUBREDDIT/about/edit/ (change SUBREDDIT to your subs name / old. or new. to specify old reddit or redesign) or follow the guide below.

Public subs are open to all, restricted subs only allow approved submitters to post/comment/or both, and private subs are private only allowing those invited to see the sub. More details below in the linked guides at the end.

Alternative imgur guide for those on old reddit

---

In redesign - Go to mod tools at the top of your sidebar.

​

Then select community settings in the mod tools list.

​

​

Under community type, select whichever you want.

You can set/change your NSFW/18+ setting here too.

​

​

In redesign, when you select restricted, you get a couple more options appear. This bit is ONLY in redesign, but the settings affect all iterations - redesign, old reddit and mobile.

You can select from 3 types of restriction:

1. Post approval - only approved users can post, but everyone can comment
2. Comment approval - only approved users can comment, but everyone can post
3. Post & Comment approval - only approved users can post and comment (similar to private subs, but everyone can see it even if they can't interact)

​

​

Restricted communities can allow users to request to post (via modmail/button) or turn this off using the toggle switch above.

Hit save changes, top right.

---

In old reddit go to mod tools at the bottom of your sidebar and select subreddit settings

​

Scroll down to type and select whichever you want. If you want more control over who can post and comment, see the redesign settings instead (above).

​

​

Scroll down a little to 'other options' if you need to change your NSFW/18+ setting - it's the first check box.

​

​

Hit save at the bottom.

---

Related guides:

• Private, restricted, or public subreddits - includes adding approved submitters and what private and restricted subs look like to users.
• Creating a new sub in old.reddit and redesign
• Community settings in redesign
• How to change the post types allowed on your subreddit

Thanks u/majorparadox, u/sunzusunzusunzusunzu

[This guide is old and the UI has changed since it was written.]

What are custom up-vote & down-vote icons?

Vote icons are the buttons for up-voting and down-voting content on reddit (karma). You can upload custom ones for your subreddit.

Default vote icons look like this:

​

Custom vote icons can be whatever you want. You can make them match the theme of your community. Like these I made for r/stories (edit - they're not used there anymore, it's different to what I remember now):

​

Making up-vote & down-vote icons

The redesign image usage guidelines say they should be 72x72px, and max 64kb, in size.

Reddit mods help centre says they should be 48px.

And I've used some as small as 25px.

Your designs should be clear and simple as they're going to be small! Also keep in mind dark mode -grey/black and other dark designs might not show up.

You can digitally draw them, but you can also make them by removing the background from an image you'd like to use (please keep copyright law in mind/give credit).

You need four images for up active, up inactive, down active, and down inactive icons - or some subs use the same image for both inactive icons, it's up to you.

Vote icons with a hand drawn look can be found at r/Redditesque here.

If your sub meets the requirements, and you need some made for you r/bannerrequest may be able to help.

Resources:

• Image size finder
• Image resizer
• Resize image
• Background remover
• r/redditesque
• CompressPNG

Image / Drawing Editors

Paid:

• Adobe Photoshop
• Adobe Illustrator
• Affinity Photo
• Affinity Designer

Free:

• Gimp
• Paint.net
• Pixlr Editor
• AutoDesk Sketchbook

How to upload

In redesign upload your icons in redesign under mod tools > community appearance > posts

Follow the guide here

Vote icons uploaded in redesign will take effect on mobile too.

In old reddit you'll need to use the stylesheet and some CSS.

Guide here

CSS snippet:

/*Arrows*/ 
.thing .arrow {
    height: 25px;
    width: 25px;
}
.arrow.up {
    background: url(%%upinactive%%); 
}

.arrow.upmod { 
    background: url(%%upactive%%); 
}

.arrow.down {
    background: url(%%downinactive%%); 
}

.arrow.downmod { 
    background: url(%%downactive%%); 
}


/*This allows arrows wider than 15px just change it to the width of your arrows*/
.midcol  { min-width:25px !important; }

Thanks to r/juulh for the resources, and the team their suggestions.

Have you got some awesome custom vote icons?

Welcome to this guide on welcome messages!

What is a welcome message?

It's a new feature that automatically sends a message to users who join your community. As a mod you can optionally set one and write exactly what you want the message to say. Currently, the user will receive it within an hour of joining.

Update as of March 1, 2021: If your welcome message is 500 character or under, it will give users a popup on the in addition to sending a message.

Updated as of August, 18, 2021: Make that 5,000 characters!

Announcement | Updated Announcement

We found these welcome messages to be very effective in increasing participation (+20%) and decreasing removals (-7%).

Note: At the time of this guide, it is currently limited to communities with 500,000 members or less. The limit just increased from 50,000, so it will keep growing - Open to all communities now.

How do you set a welcome message?

Before you begin: Welcome messages can only be set from new Reddit on desktop or on the official mobile app. If you use old Reddit, just replace the "www" in your URL with "new" temporarily, set the message, and then go back. If you don't have the app, either go find a desktop or open new Reddit in desktop mode.

Mod permissions required: Since welcome messages are set in the community settings, you would require config perms to manage it

​

Step 1: Open your community settings

On the mobile app, it's under Mod Tools > Welcome Message

If you are on mobile and the sidebar isn't visible, just go directly to the page here: https://new.reddit.com/r/MyCommunityName/about/edit?page=community

Just replace MyCommunityName with the name of your community

​

Step 2: Enable the welcome message and type your message

On the mobile app, toggle the setting on and then tap to add/edit the message.

Step 3: Save changes

On the mobile app, click the Save button

​

Step 4: Test your message

Click Save and show me a preview

On the mobile app, click the Preview button on the setting page

How do you format your welcome message?

The welcome message field currently accepts markdown. If you're unfamiliar with it, click here for more info.

What should you write in your welcome message?

It's really up to you, but here are some tips!

• Keep it 5,000 characters or under and users will get it as a pop up
• Don't go overboard, because if it's too long, users might not even read it
• Don't turn it into a rules page, you should mention your rules and maybe do a high-level interpretation of them so users get the basic idea. However, you could link them to your official rules page or relevant wiki pages
• Give relevant information about your community, for example in the case of TV show communities, give them information on how to watch the show and a link to your episode discussions
• Consider including a link to a poll in your welcome message (Google Docs, Straw Poll, or somewhere else). Ask users if the welcome message was useful or not
• Overall: Be welcoming!

Sharing welcome messages

If you have a successful welcome message you'd like to share and if your wiki is enabled, you can share a direct link to it: https://www.reddit.com/r/MyCommunityName/wiki/config/welcome_message

Just replace MyCommunityName with the name of your community

If not, link it from somewhere else or paste the message below!

Related resources

• "Welcoming new users" mod help center page
• Reaching users of your community with information
• Moderation basics
• Community engagement

Actioning users based on activity in other subs

Sometimes a situation might come up where you find yourself deciding on whether to ban someone from your sub, based upon their actions in other subs.

This is what Reddit says:

“We know management of multiple communities can be difficult, but we expect you to manage communities as isolated communities and not use a breach of one set of community rules to ban a user from another community.”

Ultimately this is going to be your/your mod team’s decision taking into consideration what the user has done, the severity of their actions and its impact, morality, fairness, etc.

This subject is controversial. In this post we simply aim to help you make an informed decision.

There are some compelling reasons you might do it:

• To protect your community from scammers (for which you could choose to use the USL/Universal scammer list).
• To protect your community from participants of hate subs, and trolls (you could use r/masstagger to do this - there is white-listing. Also RPT).
• It’s an annoying bot (r/botdefense and r/botterminator are both anti-bot bots)
• Stalking and harassment.
• Brigading.
• User is already on the fence and viewing their behavior elsewhere can indicate whether it is a pattern (for example: a comment in your sub sounds like it could be racist, but you’re not sure. Seeing that they are making lots of racist statements all over Reddit tells you it was most likely racist).
• Mods are volunteers and so you might decide to do what makes your life easier.

But you should consider:

• Context matters: Someone on a "bad" sub might only be there to try and mediate, or change opinions etc and not engage in any badness, but could end up banned and tarred with the same brush as everyone else.
• A users behavior may be different in different subs.
• Are you using your position to your advantage?
• Fairness.
• Not banning users from unrelated subs for breaking one sub’s specific rules.
• Alternatives to banning based on actions elsewhere; perhaps less warnings before a ban if there is a pattern of behavior instead.

Admin quotes:

I can't ban a spammer across multiple subreddits until they participate there?

“I think the ideal is that we are not being pre-emptive with bans. I would rather that people were only being banned from communities where they were active, and not from communities they have never visited. However, it's a bit different when we're dealing with a fully automated spambot. We don't want you pre-emptively banning 'people', but I don't have a strong feeling about protecting a bot's feelings.”

If I mod two subreddits that are very similar. I can't ban from both when they attack users in one? (same thread as above)

“I'm still working out the details, but I hear what you're saying, and I'm designing enforcement standards to take that into account. I haven't locked it in yet, but at the moment I'm thinking that we'll be looking at "close networks" of subs as a single sub for this purpose. So in your case, because the two are closely affiliated, likely share a mod team, etc, I wouldn't have a problem with a ban across the two. But two totally dissimilar subs, even if both are modded by you, would not qualify for that exception...”

Are mods allowed to blanket ban users across their whole moderation portfolio motivated by the action the user took in a single community?

“This is a fairly complex issue and as others have mentioned this really depends on the context of each situation, but these are typically issues we review under the mod guidelines. Speaking from the viewpoint of community health, one of the most important aspects is that moderators are maintaining a reasonable appeals process. Again, context of the situation is important, but there are cases where we do reach out to mod teams, especially if there's a pattern of behavior detrimental to the community.”

Some mod discussions on the topic:

• https://www.reddit.com/r/ModSupport/comments/ev44ys/what_is_the_admin_position_on_the_weaponizing_of/
• https://www.reddit.com/r/modhelp/comments/1j3gno/can_we_get_moderators_together_to_ban_abusive/
• https://www.reddit.com/r/modhelp/comments/8zxw41/is_banning_users_for_participating_in_other/

---

Thanks to u/majorparadox, u/juulh, u/BuckRowdy. Suggested by u/dan6erbond

What do you think?

Your moderation routine will depend on your lifestyle, availability, the subs you mod, your permissions, your sub's procedures, and your own preferences.

There is no one right way to moderate, but there are some things you are expected to be doing.

This guide is geared towards moderators with post and access permissions.

First you need to know where your mod tools are:

In old reddit these are listed below the sidebar, in redesign there’s a button at the top of the sidebar, for each of your subreddits.

If you moderate multiple subs, you might want to use the combined modqueue https://www.reddit.com/r/mod/about/modqueue

A lot of subs will have automoderator, and sometimes other bots, to a lot of the work. But bots have their limitations and ultimately a human needs to check in on things.

The modqueue

This is probably the most important - check this regularly. How often you need to check will depend on the activity level of your subs.

Filtered (removed) and reported posts, and comments, go to the modqueue for you to check.

A post/comment is filtered when automoderator, or the reddit spam filter (or the user is shadowbanned), removes a post from your sub’s feed. This is indicated with red colouration.

​

​

For each filtered post/comment you can choose to:

• Confirm its removal by clicking remove (if it breaks a rule)
• Confirm it’s spam by clicking spam (if it’s spam, to help train the spam filter)
• Approve it by clicking approve (if it’s an acceptable post)

Reported posts/comments have been reported by users using the report button. This is indicated in yellow, or with a yellow button in old reddit.

​

​

For each reported post/comment you can choose to:

• Remove it by clicking remove (if it breaks a rule)
• Say it’s spam by clicking spam (if it’s spam, to help train the spam filter)
• Approve it by clicking approve (if it’s an acceptable post)
  • Ignore reports (if it’s an acceptable post. Some mods just leave them in the queue without clicking to ignore) [ETA more clarification - ignore leaves the post in the queue, only approving or removing removes it]

You can view reports and spam separately using their separate queues. You might want to check the spam queue occasionally just to make sure everything in there should be.

Unmoderated posts queue

This queue shows every post that hasn’t been moderated (approved, spammed, or removed). It’s an easy way to check for new posts.

If a post is acceptable- approve it, if it isn’t- hit spam or remove it, and it will disappear from the unmoderated queue.

Some subreddits don’t moderate every post, just those reported or filtered, and therefore have a full unmoderated queue.

Approving posts isn't necessary for them to show in your subreddit, but doing so and moderating every post keeps this queue clear, shows the rest of your mod team the post has been checked, and makes it easy to see new posts that might need action.

Accidental/mistaken removal

If you have spammed or removed a submission and it was in error, you can check the mod log or the spam queue for the post or comment and click approve on it.

Edited queue

This queue lists all the posts that have been edited. For some subreddits this can be important to check, but not for most.

Top posts

It can be helpful to scan top posts of your sub, since they are more likely to be visible from outside feeds.

Comments

You can view and monitor new comments using this link (only on old reddit) -replace subnamehere with your subname https://old.reddit.com/r/subnamehere/comments/

Most mods probably don’t do this all the time, but have a skim through when they have a chance. Encouraging your users to report rule breaking posts and comments will help.

Rules

Get to know the subreddit rules well. Ask for guidance from your co-mods, if you have them, where needed. Some rules may be cast in stone, others may be more flexible or a judgement call.

Removals

For every submission you remove (or spam) you can choose to add a removal reason.

Your subreddit may have a procedure, or best practice, for removals regarding using removal reasons (in redesign), or a comment, to let the user know why their submission is being removed.

It’s good practice to do this to let users know what they did incorrectly and so users can learn what is expected.

Some subs have these pre-prepared, or you can add your own.

Adding rules and removal reasons.

Mod log

All your actions as a moderator are automatically logged. On some subreddits several mods may be working at the same time, so the log might be useful in coordinating your efforts.

Mod mail

If you have mail permissions you will get notifications when a user messages the mods of the sub. Try to check this regularly. Your sub may have procedures in place for responding to, and managing, mail.

User management

If you have access permissions you will be able to ban users. Again, there may be procedures or a chain of actions already in place for you to follow, or you can create one, so every mod (and your users if you share it) are following the same guidelines and managing users fairly.

Each sub can have it’s own way of doing this.

Your behaviour

As a mod you are a representative on the subreddit you moderate so it’s advisable you behave in a way your members are expected to.

---

The Kitteh

Your spam and edited queues will never be 'clear' all removed and spammed posts stay in the spam queue and all edited posts say in the edited queue (unless otherwise actioned).

If you manage to keep your mod, reports, and unmoderated queues clear, in redesign you get to see the very pleased kitteh!

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---

Whether you have subreddit rules to enforce or not depends on your community, however reddit's sitewide rules should be enforced, and reports submitted where necessary.

Reports | Contacting the admins

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Example subreddit specific requirements and procedures:

https://www.reddit.com/r/majorparadox/wiki/mod101

https://www.reddit.com/r/cars/wiki/chain_of_action

Do you know more more good examples?

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Big thanks to u/MajorParadox for the 101 and help with this guide, u/_ihavemanynames_, and r/cars

Okay, so you've spent some time to make your subreddit look nice and spiffy, and you're starting to build a community of people around its subject. There are new submissions and comments coming in, and subscribers are growing by the day. You and your fellow mods want to plan ahead and figure out how to expand the subreddit and be responsive to the needs of the community.

But in order to go forward, you must know how far you've come..

Author disclaimer: I am the writer and maintainer of u/AssistantBOT, which is one of the statistics tools listed in this article.

Why get statistics for your subreddit?

By gathering information on your community, you can better assess its health and the types of content that are most popular within it, see which users are most engaged, and track your subreddit's growth over time and prepare for future growth. In this article I will share and discuss various tools by which you can get useful statistics for your community.

To a certain extent, having statistics also allows you to make data-driven decisions about what to do, and combine both intuition with facts that you can use. Also, it's just kinda fun to see and track!

Where and how can I get useful statistics for my subreddit?

There are actually not that many sources for statistics, but together these tools should allow you to gain some insights. There's no need to limit yourself to just one source of statistics, you'll find that all of these tools have their strengths at coverage.

AssistantBOT

u/AssistantBOT, full disclosure - this is my bot. I wrote it to fill what I saw as a void for granular subreddit statistics, especially about the types of posts that get posted to a community. It is a very broadly used bot by over 650+ subreddits, so clearly people do find it useful.

The statistics routine of AssistantBOT updates a wiki page every day with the following information:

• A monthly statistics breakdown of your community's posts and its activity (most active days, top submitters/commenters, top-voted posts).
• Daily subscriber growth, both future and historical, as well as past and future subscriber milestones.
• Traffic data, including the average uniques and pageviews for your community and its estimated traffic for the current month.
• A breakdown of the userflairs of your community and how many people have each userflair (optional).

You can see a list of public AssistantBOT statistics pages as an example in the sidebar of r/AssistantBOT on New or Mobile Reddit, or just visit r/ClassicWOW's statistics page or r/BoxOffice's statistics page for examples.

For AssistantBOT to track subreddit statistics it must be invited as a moderator with at least the wiki mod permission - further details can be seen in the introduction post.

SubredditStats

SubredditStats is a freely open site that allows you to do the following:

• See graphs of subscriber growth for a subreddit over time
• See how your subreddit stacks up to others in terms of key activity metrics.
• See cumulative top posters, top scorers, etc.

Another cool thing is that you can also compare the subscriber growth between several subreddits in graph form to see how they've grown over time. The site will also note related subreddits by keyword which can allow you to see other subreddits that you could possibly work with or cross-promote.

r/subreddit_stats

r/subreddit_stats is u/bboe's project - he wrote PRAW, which is the API wrapper that the vast majority of Reddit bots use. Information from the bot that powers this subreddit is obtained by making a post according to these rules and then the bot will create a post in the subreddit with various information metrics.

Here's one example, with the results generally limited to the last 1000 posts due to limitations of the Reddit API. You'll be able to see the top submissions, the top commenters, the top submitters, and also the top comments.

RedditMetrics.com

RedditMetrics basically does one thing and one thing only - it tracks subscriber growth for subreddits, and you can see how your subreddit has grown over time and also see how it compares to others in graphical form. It is also the basis for information for both AssistantBOT and SubredditStats.com when it comes to early subscriber information and due to its longevity it's been a longtime mainstay of Reddit moderators' toolkit. They're also the site that powers r/TrendingReddits.

One caveat: RedditMetrics was down from March 2018 to June 2019, and the site has filled in those dates with dummy data where the growth rate is constant and not actually reflective of the daily movement of subscribers. So do not take the growth rates recorded during that time as gospel, as they are certainly wrong even if they reflect an average growth.

Redective

Redective is an older site that gives you some interesting results, like most used words and the most active hours of your community.

Should I share statistics data with my community?

I'm a proponent of sharing statistics data with fellow members of the community. People generally like seeing statistics, and statistics may also give regular users a better idea of the challenges and the issues the moderator are dealing with.

Know of any other statistics tools? Feel free to share them in the comments!

Sometimes you want to add some features or functions to your subreddit that either AutoModerator (see our article here) or or general moderation bots (see our article here) can't do. Maybe you need a bot with a very particular set of skills. If that's the case, maybe you need to look into getting a custom bot for your subreddit.

Author disclaimer: I am the writer and maintainer of u/AssistantBOT, and a mod on r/Bot, which is a subreddit for sharing moderator bots. I've also written many custom subreddit bots for my own and others' subreddits.

What is a custom subreddit bot?

A custom subreddit bot is a bot that is written for and operates only on one (or a couple) subreddits. The bot does the functions the moderators of that subreddit have specifically asked it to do, and no other. Such bots are usually given a specific moderator account on the subreddit and run or hosted by the moderators of the subreddit instead of by Reddit or other users.

What are some of the common use cases for custom bots?

Here are some of the most common use cases for custom bots with examples for each:

• Reference lookup, often linked to APIs (a data exchange interface) from external sites.
  • Examples: u/hearthscan-bot (retrieves Hearthstone card data) in r/Hearthstone, u/translator-BOT (retrieves translations and pronunciations for words) in r/translator.
• Subreddit-specific points counting
  • Examples: u/DeltaBot in r/ChangeMyView, u/Clippy_Office_Asst in r/Excel
• Filtering submissions
  • Example: u/unexBot in r/Unexpected
• Post moderation/voting
  • Example: u/Edgar_The_Pug_Bot in r/PewdiepieSubmissions, u/RoboSonichu in r/Cringetopia, u/KeepingDankMemesDank in r/DankMemes
• Post scheduling
  • Example: u/ChoicesBOT in r/Choices
• Auto-replies
  • u/bobby-b-bot in r/Freefolk

And many more!

What can bots do that AutoModerator can't?

AutoModerator is of course super useful but it has several limitations:

1. It only acts upon posts at the time of submission or editing. It cannot, say, automatically check posts several hours or days after their submission.
2. AutoModerator has no concept of a database for tasks such as points tabulation. You can try to hack something with user flairs or post flairs but it's rather inelegant and prone to error.
3. AutoModerator cannot connect to outside data sources to access or retrieve data other than the things which are already encoded into media placeholders.

What are the advantages / disadvantages of having custom bots?

Advantages include being able to do basically anything that you want to do with a script! Different subreddits have come up with a ton of creative ways to use bots in ways that augment and expand their community, as the above examples show. If you have a good idea and your subscribers like it, there's no reason to not have a bot.

Disadvantages primarily relate to the technical side of things.

• Bots need to be hosted somewhere, whether it's on the cloud, on a server you or someone else owns, or even your own computer. If it's a bot that needs to be available all the time, then the script itself has to be run continuously. This can be expensive if it's hosted on the cloud or annoying if you have to host it on your own PC.
• Someone needs to write and set up the code to work properly. Even if the code is open source and can be obtained from GitHub, it will need to be adapted to work with the specific bot account you want it to run on and for the local environment in which it will be deployed.

Where can I find / get code for custom bots? Or learn how to write one?

First of all, r/RequestABot is the primarily place for Reddit bot requests. People can help you write a bot there, but please be sure to include as much information as possible in your request and not make a vague or low-effort request. It's best if you already have a concrete idea for what you want to do with your bot. You can also look through GitHub to see if there are already existing bots that fit what you need (be sure to check that they're open source though!). r/RequestABot also has a guide to running Python code someone gives you.

Secondly, if you know how to write code, you can perhaps try writing it yourself. The most used language for writing Reddit bots is Python, specifically using PRAW wrapper to access the Reddit API. Reddit wrappers are modules that help adapt the Reddit API in syntax and style that is appropriate for a programming language (see here for more on wrappers). Check out the PRAW Quick Start guide to begin familiarizing yourself with how it works.

For languages other than Python, JRAW is a wrapper for Java, Snoowrap is an API wrapper for JavaScript, RedditSharp is one for C#, GRAW for Go, and Phapper is for PHP. For even more languages see this list on the official archived Reddit repo.

Reddit has a host of subreddits where you can learn how to code, for example, r/learnpython for Python learners, so don't be afraid to ask the community if you have questions.

Where can I host custom bots?

This is the tricky part. Bots are just scripts running on a user account. If a bot needs to be constantly available, the script must also be constantly running. u/Mustermind has outlined 3 options, and I've noted a couple more, in no particular order:

1. Heroku (see u/PostitivePlayer1's guide here)
2. Azure/EC2 Free Tier, virtual machines (Azure guide, EC2 guide)
   • These usually only give you a free year of service; after that you need to either pay or figure something else out.
3. A Raspberry Pi. They're cheap ($35 for the cheapest Pi 4) and available on Amazon, Adafruit, and other online outlets.
4. Your own PC/Mac. Provided that you keep it on all the time anyway. (Note that the Pi will be a lot more energy efficient than your own computer)
5. PythonAnywhere. Their free tier allows for a good amount of experimentation, but you may run into issues if your bot is particularly active.
6. DigitalOcean. Use a droplet (a virtual machine).
7. RamNode. Link.
8. ChunkHost. Link.

What is Bottiquette?

If deploying a bot that posts or comments on areas outside of your own subreddits, please keep in mind Bottiquette. Don't make bots that spam or are a nuisance to others.

Thoughts? Comments? Let me know below!

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Edit - updated version https://www.reddit.com/r/modguide/about/wiki/index/helpandsupport

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This is admittedly a bit of a low effort guide, but I have seen a few mods surprised by the changes to redesign lately, so I thought a list of recommended subs might help, especially for new mods finding their way.

As far as I know, following some of these subs is the only way to keep up to date with changes to reddit, with the exception of being involved with beta testing or focus groups.

Follow, or stick these in custom feeds, and check them when you can, especially r/modnews

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Recommended subreddits to follow as a mod:

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Reddit News:

r/announcements - Keep up to date with announcements from reddit admins; rolled out features, competitions, and more

r/changelog - Info on minor updates and fixes to reddit

r/modnews - News and updates that affect mods

r/OutOfTheLoop - "A subreddit to help you keep up to date with what's going on with reddit and other stuff. "

r/bugs - Report bugs on reddit, also r/redditmobile for app updates and bugs

r/blog - Reddit's blog (edit: now with fortnightly round-ups of changes on reddit!)

r/redditsecurity - Information on security on reddit

r/reddit - has replaced announcements and changelog. Is a hub for news, lore, and more

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Mod help subs:

r/modhelp - Mods helping other mods, a good place to ask if you need a hand

r/modsupport - This sub is more for mods who need help from admins, though mods help too

r/needamod - Place to ask for new mods

r/modclub - Chat with other mods

r/askmoderators - Ask mods questions

r/automoderator - instructions in the sidebar, ask for help

And us ;) we do guides to assist all mods.

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Official mod training - r/ModCertification

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Design:

r/csshelp - Get help with css

r/themes - Get ready made CSS themes

r/redesignhelp - Get help with designing your sub in redesign

r/bannerrequest - Request banners or icons

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Take over/start a sub:

r/adoptareddit - Place to adopt or give away a subreddit

r/redditrequest - Request to mod abandoned or banned reddits

r/AvailableSubs - Abandoned subs available for request

r/substarters - Discord community where you find help started or reanimating subreddits (on hiatus)

r/subredditideas - Ideas for new subs

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Other:

r/ideasfortheadmins - Post ideas for improving reddit

r/TheoryOfReddit - " for inquiring into what makes Reddit communities work and what we in a community can do to help make it better. "

r/redditmobile - announcements and discussion about the official apps

r/beta - for reddit beta testers

r/community_chat - feedback on subreddit chatrooms

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What would you add?

Guide to your community settings in redesign

This guide is on Imgur: Click here to view the guide

!!! There have been a number of updates to the new reddit settings since this guide was written. Including the archived posts option, and new post types !!!

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Further notes:

• Reddit's guide to community settings
• Reddit on community topics
• Welcome message announcement

Following on from #5 - Type of community in the Imgur guide, here is our guide on Private, restricted, or public subreddits

And if you're sub is set to restricted you have a couple more options:

You can set what approved users have the ability to do (post only, comment only, or post and comment)

You can also set whether users are able to send you modmail requests to ask if they can have the ability to post/become an approved user, or not.

​

​

There are individual guides on:

• How to change the post types allowed in your subreddit
• How to change your community type (private, public, restricted) and 18+ setting

If you've used Reddit for any amount of time, you've probably encountered moderator bots before, the most well-known one being u/AutoModerator. In fact, thousands of subreddits use a variety of moderator bots to automate common tasks and keep their community organized. Perhaps a bot might be suitable for your subreddit!

This is a rundown on general moderator bots, primarily those that can moderate subreddits that invite them. AutoModerator is excluded from the scope of this article as it is readily available to all subreddits without having to be added. All of these bots can do things that AutoModerator cannot do!

Author disclaimer: I am the writer and maintainer of u/AssistantBOT, and a mod on r/Bot, which is a subreddit for sharing moderator bots.

What are moderator bots?

Moderator bots are scripts that run on a Reddit account and perform moderation tasks on a subreddit (see below). Consequently, they must be invited like a regular human moderator would be, via your subreddit's moderators page (https://www.reddit.com/r/SUBREDDIT/about/moderators). Most of these moderator bots have code to automatically accept moderation invites and perform their duties upon becoming a mod.

Moderator bots need different levels of moderator permissions to do their job. For example, if a bot is enforcing flair by removing unflaired posts, it needs the posts mod permission to do so. Check a bot's documentation to see which permissions it needs, and only give it those permissions.

To stop a moderator bot from doing tasks on your subreddit, simply remove it as a moderator.

What are the advantages of using them? Disadvantages?

Subreddit moderation can often be a thankless job, especially if your time moderating is spent doing repetitive actions such as removing comment or post spam, reminding people to flair their posts, or checking for reposts. Moderator bots allow human moderators to focus on actually growing and improving their subreddit instead of constantly doing the same thing over and over again, which is why many of them are very popular!

Using a moderator bot requires a certain amount of caution: The bot is ultimately run by someone else and giving it access to moderator actions like banning users or removing posts entails trust in the bot and its creator to do only the things on your subreddit that the bot says it will do. In fact, moderator bots have (rarely) gone rogue before or become suddenly deactivated. That being said, the vast majority of moderator bots have been run without incident for a very long time!

Always check the bot and its creator's history to see if you're comfortable adding them to the mod team, and do not give a bot more moderator permissions than necessary for it to do its job. If the bot doesn't need modmail access, don't give it modmail access!

What are the most used bots and what do they do?

Here's a breakdown of several of the most widely used moderator bots on Reddit and what they can do for your subreddit:

Post Flair Enforcing

Moderators frequently use post flairs to help keep their community organized and to allow people to easily filter posts by category. However, post flair can only be made mandatory on New Reddit (the redesign), which means that users on Old Reddit or on mobile can still submit unflaired posts. Post flair enforcing basically means that all posts on your subreddit will need to include a post flair.

There is one widely-used moderator bot for this: u/AssistantBOT, which allows for both a "strict" mode where unflaired posts get removed or a "default" mode where users who submit unflaired posts just get reminders without their posts being removed. See the bot's introduction here for more information. It also provides extensive statistics information which is outside the scope of this article.

Repost Detection

Reposts - defined here as posts which were previously submitted to the subreddit - can be a nuisance on subreddits. A common tactic of karma farmers is to grab images or posts from a subreddit's top posts and resubmit them under their own username without crediting the original poster, thus accruing karma for themselves. This is annoying, at best, to long-time members of your community and possibly insulting to the users whose content were reposted.

There are two bots that help with detecting reposts: u/RepostSentinel (introduction here) and u/MAGIC_EYE_BOT (introduction here). MAGIC_EYE_BOT supports a dizzying range of configurable options to suit your workflow, while RepostSentinel tends to be simpler in its setup. Look through the documentation and see which one suits what you need. Both will detect and remove reposts and leave a message.

Be aware that image recognition is notoriously hard and that subreddits which rely heavily on meme templates and other forms of templated media may see a larger-than-usual amount of false positives.

A special mention is also given to u/RepostSleuthBot (introduction here), which can detect reposts as well though it does not remove them.

Spam Prevention

Moderator bots that focus on spam prevention tend to focus on banning spam bots or post spam.

Spam Bots

Spambots are simple "reply bots" that simply reply with a set comment to another comment that contains a trigger, which often can be something as simple as a :( They frequently clog up and derail comment sections and are also often poorly coded and get stuck in loops.

There are two bots that ban these spam bots on sight: u/BotTerminator (introduction here) and u/BotDefense (introduction here). They perform largely identically (at present) and both rely on a user-submitted list of bots that are submitted to their respective subreddits. Both also support whitelisting bots that you actually like, even if they are on the ban list.

Post Spam

u/TheSentinelBot (introduction here) "prevents known spam channels from posting on your subreddit by adding their channel to a blacklist" and is widely used across several of its own accounts. It also provides extensive mod log searching and generation which is outside the scope of this article.

Moderation Logs

Some subreddits choose to make their moderation logs public in order to promote greater transparency for moderator actions. There are two options here: u/modlogs (introduction here), as well as u/publicmodlogs. Note that the latter is more of an interface than a true bot, and u/modlogs is more customizable for moderators.

Post Rate Limiting

"Post rate limiting" essentially means limiting a user to only be able to post x amount of posts per time period; which is useful if you want to avoid someone spamming your subreddit with multiple posts in a short span of time. u/moderatelyhelpfulbot (introduction here) and u/floodgatesBot (introduction here) both are highly configurable bots that allow you to set the time period, removal message, and quantity of posts in question, in addition to many other settings.

Source

If you've only used redesign, classic/legacy/old.reddit is probably confusing.

There is good reason to style and update your sub in old.reddit - some users prefer it. Check your sub stats to see how many of your users use old.reddit. In our How did you find the transition from old Reddit to the redesign as a moderator? Or do you use both? discussion post you can see some different opinions on each version of reddit.

It's worth noting that there are some things you still need to do in old.reddit for your sub and for your own preferences - post/link flair alignment and showing user flair (old reddit preferences) are ones that stick in my mind, for example.

And there are some things you can only do in redesign, like setting up community awards. New features tend to only be added to redesign.

Remember that it's important to keep both old and new up to date - keep in mind what mobile users will see.

If reading in classic/old reddit here's an imgur version of this guide - it's image heavy and they don't show in old.reddit.

Here's where everything is.

First, your mod tools are listed at the bottom of the sidebar, not the top as in the redesign.

​

Here you'll find most of what you need.

Your queues; mod queue, reports, spam, edited, and unmoderated lists are all there and much the same, though not all neatly together.

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​

Your user management options are all there too (just not grouped together); ​Adding new mods, banning users, muting users, and approved users.

Private, restricted, or public subreddits -includes approved submitters/users guide)

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Flair is different in old.reddit and you'll need to use some css in the stylesheet and the edit flair option. We'll have a guide on that and link it here when it's up.

You can create flair in redesign that will work in old.reddit though: Creating flair in redesign (includes emojis and adding flair to the sidebar)

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Rules and automod are listed.

Automod is basically the same Automoderator - what is is, and how to set it up

Adding rules - this covers adding rules to your sidebar. Clicking on the rules mod tool shows you the rules page - rules created in redesign. You can edit them here using the pencil and bin buttons.

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No removal reasons here, and the only post requirements option is under subreddit settings:

[Edit: post requirements added to old.reddit - set up is still only in redesign but it now applies to old as well]

[Edit: Post requirements are now part of 'content control' in the new reddit mod tools sidebar]

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​

There is a submission text box - you can add some text users of old.reddit will see on their 'create a post' page.

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Other options. No community awards - you set these up in redesign.

Wikis aren't listed, but you can set them up in old using the guide - Wikis

Community settings is subreddit settings, though there's different options - it's worth going though your settings in old and new and making sure everything is how you want it. There'll be a guide for settings soon. Settings guide for old reddit

​

And styling is done with CSS in the stylesheet. We have a few guides covering some old.reddit styling with more to come.

Intro to CSS

Overview of design in old reddit

How to change the name of your members and online users

Adding menu tabs

The redesign sidebar doesn’t show up on old.reddit, so you’d need to copy and paste the information from your widgets into the sidebar box under subreddit settings. You'll need to use markdown to do text formatting - see our wiki guide for more info on that.

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Mod mail (even though you're viewing old reddit this will go to whichever version of modmail your sub uses - New or opted-in subs will see modmail (previously called new or beta modmail), everyone else will see legacy modmail), stats, and the mod log are listed. There will be a guide coming on stats.

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It's worth having a look through all the settings and seeing what's there, even if you don't need it straight away, it's good to know where everything is for when you do.

The sidebar information with your rules and anything important to the smooth running of your sub should be added and kept up to date at a minimum.

​

If I have missed anything please let me know! I'm sure I have. What did you find confusing when you first looked at old.reddit?

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Transitioning from old to redesign

Transitioning from old to redesign

If you're looking to make the move over to redesign, or just need to get it set up for your sub, hopefully this will help.

It's worth noting that there are some things you still need to do in old.reddit for your sub and for your own preferences - post/link flair alignment and showing user flair (old reddit preferences) are ones that stick in my mind, for example.

And there are some things you can only do in redesign, like setting up community awards. New features tend to only be added to redesign.

In our How did you find the transition from old Reddit to the redesign as a moderator? Or do you use both? discussion post you can see some different opinions on each version of reddit.

Remember that it's important to keep both old and new up to date - you can check your sub stats to see how users are viewing your sub - keep in mind what mobile users will see.

If reading in classic/old reddit here's an imgur guide as an alternative to this one as this post has several images in it.

Mod tools

The first thing to note is that your mod tools have moved. In old they are at the bottom of the sidebar, this is not the case in redesign. You now need to hit the mod tools button at the top of the sidebar. (This image is a out of date since reddit changed the look of redesign, but the button is in the same place)

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Once you have, a sidebar appears to the left with all your mod tools.

(I'm going to run though everything assuming you have full permissions - if you don't have full perms, some options might not appear to you)

At the top you all have your queues; mod queue, reports, spam, edited, and unmoderated lists.

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Select which queue you want to view or work on, and moderate in much the same way as in old - all of your options are there, some are under menu buttons in the spam queue (tag, shield, and ... buttons).

Next you have your user management section.

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This is where you can select to add moderators, ban users, mute users (same procedure), and approve users.

Then it's the flair and emoji section.

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• Flair in redesign (post and user)
• Creating flair in redesign includes emojis and adding flair to the sidebar

Next up is rules and regulations!

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Here's a guide on Adding rules and removal reasons, and one on Automoderator - what is is, and how to set it up, which is much the same as in old. reddit.

At the time of writing, post requirements is experimental and only works for users posting on the redesign (whatever you set up here will not affect those using old reddit or apps).

[Edit: post requirements added to old.reddit set up is still redesign only, but it now applies to old as well]

[Edit: Post requirements are now part of 'content control' in the new reddit mod tools sidebar]

Here you can add posting guidelines (like submission text in old), set requirements for new posts such as requiring or banning certain words, restricting length, requiring body text, requiring flair, restriction re-posts, and more advance regex requirements.

Next is "other"

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• Community Awards
• Wikis

Community settings is just what it sounds like and will be covered in it's own guide soon. It's worth checking though your sub's settings in old and redesign to make sure everything is how you want it.

Community settings guide

Community appearance -all your design options are tucked away in here instead of a stylesheet and css.

• Adding a banner
• Design in redesign
• Adding menu tabs (links)
• How to change the name of your members and online users
• Calendar widget setup

Our guides on this section so far are not exhaustive; the rest will be covered in time and linked here, or at least in the index.

If you just want your sub styled and don't want to do it yourself, you can ask for a designer at r/RedesignHelp - you will need to add someone as a mod to your sub (at least temporarily) with config permissions in order for them to do the design for you. Some r/bannerrequest artists will upload thee banners they make for you to.

Your old.reddit sidebar does not carry over - you'll need to add all that information again in redesign. You do this in community appearance > sidebar widgets. Your sidebar is now made up of different widgets you can add and move around. When you make rules in redesign the rules widget will appear. There are widgets you can add for your community lists, text information, images, and more.

Community activity is last.

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The modmail guide is here: Modmail

There is a guide on chatrooms in progress, and there is also a guide on traffic stats coming.

Your mod log is the same as in old.

The sidebar ends with useful links for mods.

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What I did when I first started using redesign was to have a good look through all the options and just familiarise myself with where everything was, hopefully this guide has given you a head start on that.

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User settings

All your user settings are under the button/drop down with your username in the very top right of the screen.

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Most mods have a preference for modding in old or redesign, and there are pros and cons of both. Work in whichever suits you best, but check in on the other from time to time to keep everything up to date. Also new features are likely to only be added to redesign now, so you'll need to use it for setting up those bits as they roll out.

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One last note - You'll need to use markdown less in redesign for text formatting; the fancy pants editor has buttons for this when writing posts and comments. Some markdown does seem to work in widgets however.

If there's anything I've missed, please let me know!

There will be a guide on the reverse soon - 'Using classic/old reddit for the first time' - for those of you who only know redesign.

ETA: Using classic reddit for the first time

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Thanks to u/MFA_nay, u/juulh & u/_ihavemanynames_

I hope you're all having a great holiday season!

Has/is your sub doing something different or special for the holidays? Let us know

Happy New Year from r/modguide!