keegan announces a redesigned invite flow, available as the upcoming change “Enable invite modal with roles”, which simplifies inviting admins and members. The new modal features a toggle for Members (supporting shareable links or specific emails) and Admins (single-use email invites). Admin invitees initially become moderators to start helping immediately; they gain full admin rights only after the inviter confirms via email. This two-step process is designed to mitigate security risks associated with bypassing confirmation.
ondrej questioned why the flow doesn’t allow direct moderator invites, noting the current terminology might be confusing. rishabh explained that the design prioritizes early site onboarding where adding another admin is common, making the automatic moderator status a convenient side-effect of that decision. While acknowledging the suggestion to add a direct moderator option, rishabh indicated this might be considered in future updates.
Community feedback highlighted the benefits of the new interface. awesomerobot suggested adding an educational link explaining privilege differences, encouraging users to choose moderators when full admin access isn’t necessary for better security. mcwumbly agreed this would be a useful addition. Later, rishabh shared additional improvements via pull requests. In a separate thread within the discussion, joya asked about assigning groups during invitation; RGJ clarified this feature remains under the advanced options, and joya later confirmed it was working correctly.
We’ve redesigned the invite flow so you can invite someone as an admin in a single step, alongside a clearer experience for inviting members. It’s available today as the “Enable invite modal with roles” upcoming change.
What changes when the flag is on
The invite modal is redesigned with a Members / Admins toggle:
Invite members:
Choose how to invite: a shareable link (optionally restricted to an email domain) or an email invitation sent to a specific address. Secondary options (max uses, description, expiry, arrive at topic, add to groups) are tucked behind a gear button to keep the default form short.
Invite admins:
Enter an email address and click Create & send. Admin invites are always single-use and restricted to that address. When the invitee accepts:
they become a moderator right away, so they can start helping immediately
you receive the usual admin confirmation email; once you confirm, they become a full admin
After creating an invite you’ll see a summary of what was configured, with the link ready to copy or share. The invite type can’t be changed after creation.
The admin onboarding panel’s “Invite collaborators” step now opens this flow with the Admins tab preselected.
Navigate to the Upcoming changes page in your admin area (/admin/config/upcoming-changes). Locate the “Enable invite modal with roles” item and update the “Enabled for…” field to opt your community into the new experience. You can opt back out from the same page at any time.
Why would you only want to invite an admin and not a moderator? To me the description is confusing “The invitee becomes a moderator on signup and an admin once the inviter confirms the email” so does that mean if you don’t approve their email they will just be a moderator, maybe I’m reading this wrong but you need an activated email to do stuff?
Just to clarify that to me its not clear that they become moderators as its called ‘invite admins’ and the tab says ‘Admin’. All I’m suggesting is to make it easier to invite and admin or a moderator.
Yeah I understand that but I was mainly wondering why you would only want to easily invite another admin instead of offering an option to invite a new moderator too.
That’s a good question. We initially designed this flow so that it can be plugged into early site onboarding stages when it’s appropriate to invite another admin to help with site setup and configuration. To make this admin invitation experience more convenient and predictable for both parties, we decided to extend this to grant moderator status automatically. So the email flow is a side-effect of that decision.
Thank you for the mockup! The suggestion to make it easier to invite a moderator using the same UI is good, and we might look into that once we shift more focus from the initial admin experience.
I like this version a lot because it covers both cases, and a lot of the time a moderator might be the better option because they can still be helpful without gaining full access to destructive actions (and thus it doesn’t require an additional confirmation, so it’s a simpler process).
There might also be an opportunity for education here, with a simple link that explains the difference in privileges between the two. Every time an admin can reach the conclusion of “oh actually a moderator is enough” we end up with slightly more secure sites.
What changes when the flag is on
Turning on the new invite flow in your community
What do you think?
link that explains the difference in privileges between the two. Every time an admin can reach the conclusion of “oh actually a moderator is enough” we end up with slightly more secure sites.
