Getting started in the admin - Membership.io Docs

The admin is the web app at app.member.dev where creators set up and run their hubs. This guide takes you from a new account to your first hub and its address. Each step shows what to do in the admin first, then the API request that does the same thing, so you can script it later. A few terms first:

A creator (also called a platform user) is someone who runs hubs: an owner, admin, or staff member.
A team is the workspace that owns your hubs, media, and API keys. Signing up creates one for you. See Tenancy.
A hub is the branded destination your members visit. See Mental model.

The admin needs nothing but a browser. To follow the API steps, set the base URL:

export MIO_BASE_URL="https://api.member.dev"

1. Create an account

In the admin: open app.member.dev/register. The Create an account page asks for:

Field	Required	Notes
First name	No	Used in the welcome heading and in your team’s name.
Last name	No
Email	Yes	Must be a valid email address.
Password	Yes	At least 8 characters.

Select Create account. The admin signs you in and opens the Getting started page. Signing up also creates your first team and makes you its owner. The team is named after your first name (for example, “Sam’s Team”), or “My Team” when you leave the first name blank. Already have an account? Open app.member.dev/login, enter your email and password, and select Sign in. The admin opens the Dashboard, or the page you were trying to reach before it asked you to sign in. With the API: register with a flat JSON body. Like the other platform sign-in endpoints, it returns a flat token body, not a JSON:API document.

export MIO_ACCESS_TOKEN=$(
  curl -s -X POST "$MIO_BASE_URL/api/v1/auth/register" \
    -H "Content-Type: application/vnd.api+json" \
    -d '{
      "email": "you@example.com",
      "password": "a-long-password",
      "first_name": "Sam",
      "last_name": "Rivera"
    }' | jq -r '.access_token'
)

Success is 201. An email address that already has an account returns 409, and a password shorter than 8 characters returns 422. To use an existing account instead, sign in with POST /api/v1/auth/login, as shown in Sign in as a creator. Then look up your team id. Most admin requests include it in the path:

export TEAM_ID=$(
  curl -s "$MIO_BASE_URL/api/v1/teams" \
    -H "Authorization: Bearer $MIO_ACCESS_TOKEN" \
    -H "Accept: application/vnd.api+json" | jq -r '.data[0].id'
)

A new account belongs to one team, so the first result is yours. If you belong to several teams, pick the right one by its name. Reference: Register · Login · List teams

2. The Getting started page

After you sign up, the admin opens Getting started. Its heading is Getting started, above “Build your hub and add content. Developer tools are optional.” It shows up to four cards, in this order:

Card	Button	What it does
Create a hub	Create hub	Opens the Create hub dialog on the same page. See step 3.
Add your content	Go to library	Opens the Library, where you upload videos, audio, and other files.
Connect with the API	Create API key	Opens the API keys page with its create dialog open. See Manage API keys in the admin and the API keys reference.
Read the docs	Read the docs	Opens these docs in a new tab when the admin has a docs URL configured.

The page does not track which steps you have finished, so use the cards in any order. To come back to it later, open the account menu and select Getting started (see step 5).

3. Create a hub

In the admin: select Create hub on Getting started. The Create hub dialog has four fields:

Field	Required	Notes
Hub name	Yes	The hub’s display name. The API calls this `title`.
Slug	Yes	The last part of the hub’s address, `hub.member.dev/{slug}`. The admin fills it in from the name as you type, until you edit it yourself.
Description (optional)	No	A short description of the hub.
Private hub	No	A switch, on by default. See Private and public hubs.

Select Create hub. The dialog closes, the admin confirms with Created '<name>'., and the hub appears on the Hubs page. You can also create a hub from the Hubs page. Select New hub at the top of the page (or Create hub when you have no hubs yet). That dialog, “What should this hub be called?”, asks only for a Hub name and says your hub starts from the Starter template. Select Create hub. The admin derives the slug from the name and keeps the field hidden; it shows a Slug field only if the slug is taken or invalid, so you can pick another. The hub is always created private, with no description, and appears in the Your hubs list. You can change the slug, description and privacy afterwards in the hub’s settings.

Slug rules

A slug must:

be 1 to 100 characters long;
use only lowercase letters (a–z), digits (0–9), and hyphens;
start and end with a letter or a digit.

As a pattern, that is ^[a-z0-9](?:[a-z0-9-]*[a-z0-9])?$. For example, member-academy and a are valid, but Member-Academy, -academy, and academy- are not. When the admin fills in the slug from the name, it follows these rules for you: the name “Member Academy!” becomes member-academy. Slugs are unique across every hub on the platform, not just your team’s. If the slug you ask for is already taken, the hub is still created, with a hyphen and six random letters and digits added to the end. The admin tells you when this happens, for example Created 'Member Academy' with slug 'member-academy-3f9c1a'; your requested slug was unavailable. Use the slug the hub actually got.

Private and public hubs

A new hub is private unless you switch Private hub off. A private hub is invite-only: people who are not signed in cannot see it, and members cannot sign themselves up. Keep the hub private while you build it. When you are ready for members, open the hub from the Hubs page, then select Settings in the hub sidebar. Switch off Private hub under General settings and select Save settings.

Making a private hub public later does not change its registration setting. Where the MIO-4519 Admin release and starter scaffold are enabled, the starter template enables registration at creation, even while the hub is private; members can sign themselves up after you make it public. If Admin falls back to bare hub creation, only a hub created public gets registration enabled automatically. For a bare hub created private, turn registration on with the CLI or API before inviting members, as described in What publishing does not turn on.

With the API: send a JSON:API envelope. is_private defaults to true when you leave it out. Note the trailing slash on the collection path, /hubs/.

curl -s -X POST "$MIO_BASE_URL/api/v1/teams/$TEAM_ID/hubs/" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $MIO_ACCESS_TOKEN" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/vnd.api+json" \
  -H "Accept: application/vnd.api+json" \
  -d '{
    "data": {
      "type": "hubs",
      "attributes": {
        "title": "Member Academy",
        "slug": "member-academy",
        "description": "Courses and community for our members.",
        "is_private": true
      }
    }
  }' | jq '.data | {id, slug: .attributes.slug, is_private: .attributes.is_private}'

Success is 201. Read the slug back from the response, because it has a suffix when the one you asked for was taken:

{
  "id": "0197...",
  "slug": "member-academy",
  "is_private": true
}

A slug that breaks the rules above returns 422. Reference: Admin create hub

4. Open or manage a hub

In the admin: select Hubs in the sidebar. The page, titled All hubs, lists your hubs under Your hubs. Each row shows the hub’s name and slug. Under it are Private or Public with “Updated ”, and the row actions:

Select the row itself, or Manage, to open the hub workspace. It opens on the hub’s Home page. The hub sidebar has the other areas, including Pages, Members, Payments and Settings. Pages remain listed in the admin, where you can create or delete them. To open a page on the member-facing hub, select its title or choose View page from its More options menu; supported destinations open in a new tab. Some page rows have no View page action. Hub owners can edit supported home, custom, and sales pages in the hub’s inline editor: open the page while signed in to the hub as its owner and select the floating Edit button. Editing is not available in the platform admin. The editor is part of the mio-hub release, so its availability depends on the hub environment. The CLI and API remain options for authoring page trees.
A new, unpublished page is not visible to public visitors or members. Its signed-in hub owner can open the draft in the hub editor; other visitors may see not found until the page is published.
Open hub opens the member-facing hub in a new tab.
In the hub sidebar, choose Settings to open General settings, where you can change its Hub name, Slug, Description (optional), and Private hub setting, then select Save settings.

In the workspace sidebar, View hub opens the member-facing hub in a new tab. The hub row’s Open hub, workspace View hub, and page View page links use the hub origin configured for the current admin environment. These external links are not shown when no origin is configured. Opening a hub page does not sign you in as a hub contact. Public pages can be viewed without a hub session; a private hub or member-only page may require you to sign in through the hub’s existing sign-in flow. The row’s More options menu has Copy slug and Delete hub. To delete, type the hub’s exact name in the confirmation dialog; Delete hub stays disabled until it matches. You can also delete from Settings → Danger zone. See Delete a hub. If you have no hubs yet, the page shows No hubs yet with a Create hub button. If you have many hubs, select Load more at the bottom of the list to see the rest. With the API: list your hubs. The API does not return a hub’s public address, so build it from the slug:

curl -s "$MIO_BASE_URL/api/v1/teams/$TEAM_ID/hubs/" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $MIO_ACCESS_TOKEN" \
  -H "Accept: application/vnd.api+json" \
  | jq -r '.data[] | "\(.attributes.title)  https://hub.member.dev/\(.attributes.slug)"'

The list is paginated. See Pagination and filtering. Reference: Admin list hubs · Admin update hub

5. Find your way around

On a desktop, the sidebar on the left of every admin page has:

Item	What it opens
Dashboard	An overview of the alerts that need you and your hubs. See The admin Dashboard.
Hubs	Your team’s hubs, as in step 4.
Library	Your team’s media library: upload files, organize them in folders, and build playlists.
Contacts	Your team’s contacts.
Notifications	The alerts open for your team.
Docs	These docs, in a new tab.
Account	Opens the account menu. Select Account settings for your profile and team settings, in five sections: team, profile & security, payment accounts, developer tools, and billing. Select API keys for your team’s keys. See The Account area.

The Account row at the bottom of the sidebar opens the account menu. It shows Team: . If you belong to several teams, open that row to switch teams; with one team, the row simply shows its name. You can also pick a Light, Dark, or System theme, go back to Getting started, open API keys, open Account settings, or Log out. See Your account and team. On a phone, the sidebar is hidden. Tap Menu in the bar at the bottom of the screen to open the same items, with the account menu at the bottom.

The admin is in alpha. Some hub sections are still unavailable and are hidden from the hub sidebar. The API keys page is available now, but only the team owner can manage keys. An API key cannot create another key.

Next steps

Create a hub: build out the hub’s pages, branding, and content with the mio CLI, then publish it.
Hub settings in the admin: change a hub’s basics, sign-up rules, domain, email, policies, redirect origins, and footer.
Media workflow: the Library’s folder tree, playlists, and settings.
Manage API keys in the admin: create a team API key for your integration or the CLI. See the API keys reference for the endpoint details.
Manage hub members in the admin: see who belongs to a hub, change roles, and open a member’s billing and history.
Manage contacts in the admin: manage your team’s contacts, tags, attributes, and segments.
Hub Home in the admin: the stats, alerts, and setup steps on a hub’s first page.
Notifications in the admin: the open alerts for your team and where to fix them.
Sign in as a creator: the platform sign-in flow for your own tools.
Authentication: when to use a platform JWT, a contact JWT, or a team API key.
Tenancy: how teams and hubs scope your data.

​1. Create an account

​2. The Getting started page

​3. Create a hub

​Slug rules

​Private and public hubs

​4. Open or manage a hub

​5. Find your way around

​Next steps

1. Create an account

2. The Getting started page

3. Create a hub

Slug rules

Private and public hubs

4. Open or manage a hub

5. Find your way around

Next steps