You can also access it via the "hamburger" menu in the upper right. Admin functions are generally marked with the wrench :wrench: icon, so look for that.
Go to the [Required tab](/admin/site_settings/category/required) of the site settings and enter all the required fields. **Until you set these required fields, _your Discourse is broken!_** Go ahead and do that now.
By default you get the same standard generic "penciled in" Discourse logo everyone gets. Look for the [**assets for the forum design**](/t/assets-for-the-forum-design/5) topic; follow the instructions there to upload your logos to that topic, and then paste the uploaded image paths into the required logo settings.
To quickly give your Discourse a distinctive look, without having to edit or understand CSS, create a new color scheme via [Customize, Colors](/admin/customize/colors).
You can also specify custom CSS and custom HTML headers/footers to further customize the look. One common request is a navigation header that takes you back to the parent site. Here is some example HTML to put in [Customize, CSS and HTML Customizations](/admin/customize/css_html) under "Header":
You may want to grant other users staff abilities – to do so click the admin button :wrench: on their user page, then look for the grant buttons.
If you want to get extra-fancy you can also [set up single-sign on](https://meta.discourse.org/t/official-single-sign-on-for-discourse/13045), or even [build your own oAuth 2 login](https://meta.discourse.org/t/login-to-discourse-with-custom-oauth2-provider/14717).
If email is not working, you have a broken Discourse – email is required for new account signups and notifications. **Test your email to make sure it is configured correctly!** Visit [the admin email settings](/admin/email), then enter an email address in the "email address to test" field and click <kbd>send test email</kbd>.
Email deliverability can be hard. We strongly recommend using dedicated email services like [Mandrill](http://mandrill.com), [MailGun](http://www.mailgun.com/), or [MailJet](http://www.mailjet.com/), which offer generous free plans that work fine for most communities.
One of the default topics is [Welcome to Discourse](/t/welcome/6). This topic is pinned globally, so it will appear on the homepage for all new users. Your welcome topic is important because it is the first thing you visitors will see:
- Where am I?
- Who is this discussion area for?
- What can I [find here](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d0VNHe5fq30)?
- Why should I visit here?
[Edit this welcome topic](/t/welcome/6) and write a **brief introduction to your community**. Think of it as your "elevator pitch" – how would you describe this site to a stranger on an elevator when you had about 1 minute to talk?
Right now [your FAQ](/faq) is the same Creative Commons [universal rules of civilized discourse](http://blog.discourse.org/2013/03/the-universal-rules-of-civilized-discourse/) we provide to all Discourse installs. These built-in community guidelines are referenced a bunch of places; please *do* use them and refer to them often -- they really work!
4. Paste that URL into the `faq url` setting in the admin site settings. This links your topic from the hamburger FAQ menu entry at the top right of every page.
**Don't create too many initial categories**, as you can overwhelm your audience. You can always add more categories later, and easily bulk recategorize topics any time. It's better to figure out organization as you go rather than assuming you'll get it all right from the beginning (hint: you won't).
To add a category, visit the [categories page](/categories), then click Create Category at the upper right. You can set security per-category so only certain groups of users can see topics in that category.
Every category has an initial "About the {foo} category" topic created alongside it. This topic will be pinned to the top of the category, and the description you enter here will be used in a bunch of places. Be sure to give your new category a good, clear description!
If your discussion area is be open to the public, new visitors will arrive that are initially strangers to the community.
Discourse is designed to offer safe defaults for public communities, even with no active moderation. There is a [trust system in Discourse](https://meta.discourse.org/t/what-do-user-trust-levels-do/4924/2) where regular users automatically earn abilities to assist in governing the community.
All new users start out at trust level zero, in a sandbox with restrictions for everyone's safety. **Trust level zero users _cannot_**…
- post more than 2 hyperlinks
- post any images or file attachments
- send private messages
- flag posts or topics
- have actual links in the "about me" field of their profile
-@name mention more than 2 users in a post
There are also a lot of rate limits around how many actions new users can take. Of course, new users don't stay new users forever; reading a variety of topics is enough to [transition to trust level 1](https://meta.discourse.org/t/what-do-user-trust-levels-do/4924/2) in about 15 minutes.
These defaults are safe, but they may be too conservative for your site:
- If you are pre-vetting users, or your site is private and you approve all new users manually, you can set everyone's `default trust level` to 1.
- You can individually adjust these default new user restrictions. Search the settings for `newuser`. Two settings we see commonly adjusted are `newuser max images` and `newuser max replies per topic`.
Out of the box, Discourse defaults to [Creative Commons licensing](https://creativecommons.org/).
> Your users will always retain copyright on their posts, and will always grant the forum owner enough rights to include their content on the forum.
>
> Who is allowed to republish the content posted on this forum?
>
> 1. Only the author
> 2. Author and the owner of this forum
> 3. Anybody\*
Number 3 is the Discourse default – that's [Creative Commons BY-NC-SA 3.0](http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/deed.en_US).
If that's not what you want, please see our [admin User Content Licensing](/admin/site_contents/tos_user_content_license) page for a brief form that will let you cut and paste your decision into section #3 of the [Terms of Service](/tos#3).
- One CPU and 1GB of memory, with swap, is the minimum for a small Discourse community. As your community grows you may need more memory or CPU resources.
- Hopefully you are running [in our Docker container install](https://github.com/discourse/discourse/blob/master/docs/INSTALL.md); it's the only one we officially support. That will guarantee easy updates, and all recommended optimizations from the Discourse team.
For more assistance on configuring and running your Discourse forum, see [the support category](http://meta.discourse.org/category/support) or [the hosting category](http://meta.discourse.org/category/hosting) on [meta.discourse.org](http://meta.discourse.org).
This guide is a [work in progress](https://github.com/discourse/discourse/blob/master/docs/ADMIN-QUICK-START-GUIDE.md) and we hope to continually improve it with your feedback.
