New Club Setup

Welcome. Once your club's site exists, this page is a friendly checklist to walk you through getting it ready. None of these steps are hard, and you can revisit any of them later, so there's no need to get everything perfect on the first pass.

A quick note on where things live before you start. This guide covers your club site, meaning the pages, members, and content you manage in the Club Management Portal. A few things happen in your separate Clubistry account instead, including creating the club, managing your subscription, and some account-level setup. Because those account screens can change over time, your first-login and account-management steps may look a little different from what you see here. When that happens, follow the current instructions from your Clubistry account or support.

A practical starting order

You don't have to follow this order exactly, but for most clubs it flows well:

Review Site Settings and branding.
Build your website content, including Pages and other content areas such as documents, news, and events.
Connect Stripe at any point before you turn on anything that takes online payments.
Create or confirm Membership Types, including renewal timing and renewal messaging.
Build Applications and set up any payment steps used in the application process.
If your member list is larger than your plan allows, upgrade your Clubistry subscription before importing members.
Import Members once the rest of the setup is close to ready.
Set up Board Positions and assign members after the member import is complete.
Test the public site, the member experience, and any payment or application flows.
Move to your own domain or go live once the site is ready.

1. Configure your site basics

Start with the settings that shape how your club looks and reads to visitors. Getting these in place early means everything you build afterward already feels like yours. A few good first steps:

fill in core club information in Site Settings
review your theme and fonts
upload logos, header images, or other branding as needed

2. Build your pages and other content

With your basic settings in place, this is where you build out the website your members and visitors will actually see. Take your time here. This is the part that makes the site feel finished. Common setup work includes:

reviewing Pages and your navigation
updating your home page and other key public pages
adding documents, news, events, and any other content you want ready at launch
reviewing the member pages and signing in yourself to see what members will see

Because building content takes a while, many clubs wait to import members until the rest of the site is close to launch-ready. That way the member information stays fresh.

3. Connect Stripe before anything takes payments

Clubistry uses Stripe to handle online payments. You can connect it whenever it fits your schedule, as long as it's done before you turn on anything that collects money. Until Stripe is connected, a few things simply wait:

your online store can't accept payments yet
forms that collect a payment can't be completed
application steps that include a payment can't be used

There's nothing to worry about here. Each of these will start working the moment Stripe is connected.

4. Set up membership structure

Before you import or create many member accounts, take a look at Membership Types. These settings shape how your memberships work, including:

how each membership is labeled
renewal timing
dues amounts
grace periods
membership-specific roles
renewal reminder timing and the messages that go with renewals

It's worth doing this early because it shapes both how you manage members and how renewals run. Getting it set up now saves rework later.

5. Build applications and related payment steps

If your club takes applications from people who want to join, set up Applications before importing members. Typical setup work includes:

creating or reviewing the application form and the steps it follows
deciding who reviews the submissions that come in
confirming what happens once someone is approved
setting up any payment step the application requires

If your application includes a payment, connect Stripe first so you can test the whole flow before launch.

6. Check your plan's member limit before importing

Each Clubistry plan includes a limit on how many members you can have. If your member list is larger than your current plan allows, upgrade your subscription before you run the import.

This matters because of how the import handles the limit. If the import would put you over your plan's limit, Clubistry stops the whole import before it runs and asks you to upgrade first. Nothing is partially imported, so you won't end up with half a list and cleanup to do. Upgrading first lets the full import go through in one pass.

7. Import member accounts near the end of setup

Once most of your site is in place, you can begin working in Members.

For many clubs, importing members is one of the last big steps, because gathering content and setting up applications takes time. Waiting until the end means the member information you import is still current when the site launches. Typical setup work includes:

importing or creating member accounts
checking that members have the right membership types
reviewing communication and privacy settings as you test
confirming the right people can manage members

Most clubs handle member accounts through their admins and the people they give the Member Manager role to, who can add and manage members in the portal.

8. Set up board positions and assignments

You can define your Board Positions earlier in setup, but you can only assign people to them once the matching member accounts exist. So it works well to build the list now and assign people after your member import. Typical setup work includes:

creating or reviewing the list of board positions your club uses
adding details for each position, such as its label and optional contact information
putting positions in the order you want by dragging the rows up or down, which saves automatically
assigning members to positions after the member import is complete

9. Test before sharing widely

Before you announce the site widely, walk through the main paths your members and visitors will take. A little testing now means a smoother launch and fewer surprises. Good things to check:

your public navigation and the content on each page
signing in as a member
the member experience once signed in, including the member dashboard, the page where members update their own information, and your member roster (you choose the names of these pages, so they may be titled to match your club)
any application forms your club uses
any online payment your club has turned on
any board or member directory pages you expect people to use

A simple way to do this is to sign in as a member yourself and click through the way a member would.

10. Move to your own domain or take the site live

While you build, your club uses a Clubistry web address. Many clubs later switch to their own domain, like their club's name, once everything is ready.

Save this step for near the end, after your content, setup, member import, and testing are done. That way your members land on a site that's ready for them.

Setting up your own domain happens in your Clubistry account rather than in the club site. Because those account screens can change, follow the current instructions from your Clubistry account or support rather than older screenshots.