If you have read Getting Started with Pyramid you might be interested in learning more about what you can do with it. None of this is rocket-surgery, but if you’d like to better understand the options available, here is part 1 of an in-depth breakdown about the tools you have on hand to build and enhance your Nostr-based community in one easy-to-host package.

Pyramid Homepage:

The homepage provides you with a simple interface to set up and manage your community and the relay’s functions. From there, you can adjust settings, invite members, adjust allowable invitations per user, and view statistics. Community members can visit to manage their media files, see personal stats, and manage their own invites. The Pyramid’s root user (likely you), can also enable optional paywalled content posting for members, turn on OTS timestamping, and adjust allowable Nostr event kinds. All of these options help to diversify your main relay’s feed while providing valuable services to your members. The homepage also acts as a simple wayfinding method to the services that your community is hosting or that you are providing for your members. Custom NIP-05 nostr user addresses with your community domain name, which are available to your members, can be claimed here as well.

Pyramid Main Relay:

The main relay is a hub for all of Pyramid’s subrelays and services. Its relay URL will be the [wss://] version of the domain name that you chose for your Pyramid. All of the information regarding members and invitations is gathered there. The relay itself does not function under a tight set of rules, like the rest of Pyramid’s offerings. It is similar to any other allow-listed Nostr relay, like paid access relays or Web-of-Trust relays. You can establish it’s usage as a write/oubox relay for your members, as a topical feed where you ask your members to participate in curating a specific vibe, or a mix of both. Regardless of how you choose to sculpt it, the concept of the main focuses around the members of your community (who they are, what they post, who they else they invite, the things they share). This is where your community’s personality will develop into something that truly feels like a community and will become the face of it. The main feed is publicly browsable. Anyone outside of the community can interact with community members’ notes. As a write/outbox relay, notes will be sent to any member’s followers that use an outbox-enabled client. If you wish to keep your main feed topic-scoped, member publishing can be done from any client that supports single relay writing.

The Subrelays:

• /inbox - The inbox subrelay is set up to provide your members with a user-respecting place to recieve their public replies, notifications, and other interactions. A unified social graph filters out unwanted bots and other obvious spam. Mention limits reduce inbox noise created by conversations that tag multiple users (aka hellthreads). As the operator and community manager, you can set and adjust this level to your community’s needs. Optional pubkey blocking helps to prevent spam, harassment, and abuse from individuals pubkeys and malicious networks of pubkeys. In the homepage interface, you can search whether a specific pubkey is within the group’s extended social graph, to either make welcome in new users a little easier, or to preemtively block known spammers and harassers from breeching your members’ notifications. The inbox also has full NIP-17 DM support for secure encrypted messaging, with an optional Proof-of-Work requirement to further reduce the chances of DM spam. When activiating your community inbox, set your limits to what you think is reasonable and adjust as needed (or based on member feedback). Be sure to let your members know utilize these benefits by setting wss://<YourPyamid’sDomainName>/inbox as their public inbox/read relay AND their private inbox/DM relay. The inbox relay will function as both and the terminology for setting these will vary by which client they choose to use.
• ALL OTHER SUBRELAYS CAN BE BROWSED AND WRITTEN TO BY APPENDING THE MAIN RELAY’S URL WITH THE APPLICABLE ENDPATH, WITHIN A COMPATIBLE NOSTR CLIENT.
• /internal - The internal subrelay is designed as member’s only space. When this relay is enabled, any member of the main Pyramid relay can visit it, as a standalone feed from any compatible client, to read and participate in more intimate, quiet discussions. The possibilities are broad. This could function as a completely sequestered community space for groups that prefer to interact away from the public eye. It can also function as a place for group discussions around curation planning, conveying information about membership, any other possibility. Notes written here need to be sent from a client that enables “protected notes”. This just means that the metadata of a note is structured in a way that says it was intended for publication to one relay, to help reduce the note propagation that naturally happens with public notes. Nothing here is encrypted or completely leak proof, as that is not the intent. The internal subrelay is more like the quiet table in the back of the diner. Some currently compatible clients include jumble.social , fevela.me , and nosotros.app . Point your members toward wss://<YourPyamid’sDomainName>/internal through a compatible client to encourage the internal conversion.
• /personal - the personal subrelay is a simple but useful tool for you and your members. Thsi relay simplya accepts notes written by a member and only show those notes to that member, as well. It’s like a cross-client, cross-device note-taking service. Similarly to the internal relay, notes written here are not encrypted but protected. For your members to utilize the note-taking service available on personal, they will again need to use a compatible client that is capable of publishing protected notes, like the ones listed above.
• /moderated - The moderated subrelay is quite opposite of /internal. It is designed as a place for non-members to submit notes that members of the community need to approve or deny. The feed is publicly readable and can be used for any number of cases, from high-debate discussions around contentious topics to curating a feed of endorsed advertsing, like a mini billboard. All notes written here require a minimum Proof-of-Work for submission that the Pyramid root user can define on setup. Non-members will need to use a compatible client to submit their posts and comments. Some clients that currently support proof-of-work include coracle.social , jumble.social , fevela.me , jumble.imwald.eu , alphaama.com , and Gossip for desktop. When activating this relay, consider including a client suggestion in the description, so non-members can figure out where they need to go in order to sumbit their notes.
• /favorites - The favorites subrelay functions as a fully curated feed of notes republished by the Pyramids’s members. No notes can be written directly to the subrelay, as it only accepts republishings. The group can agree on any number of potential focal points for curation. The feed is publicly browsable and meant for presentation of especially interesting content. A motivated group of individuals can create an engaging feed with a look and feel that matches the group’s personality. Alternatively, the group could agree that only high-signal information be republished there for a rich, informative feed. Currently, only clients like fevela.me , jumble.social , and jumble.imwald.eu support the republishing action. Be sure to introduce members who are interested in group curation to an appropriate client.
• /popular - The popular subrelay is an automated curation feed that builds itslef based off of your members’ likes, replies, reposts, and zaps from across the wider Nostr ecosystem. Once enabled, you can set the activity threshold that a note must meet in order to be presented in the feed, or you can leave it on the preset default. This is a publicly browsable feed that requires only passive activity from your community members. They can continue browsing Nostr as they always do while creating a feed of what is trending among the community.
• /uppermost - The uppermost subrelay functions similarly to the popular subrelay but it does not consider any replies. By default, the preset threshold is higher than that of popular, to assist in elevating acceptionally good content from across the Nostr network. This can be adjusted at anytime. Again, this is a publicly browsable feed, accessible from any client that allows single relay browsing.

Stay tuned for Pyramid’s Features, pt 2 Media, Chats, and More