---
title: Create an Institution
description: Set up your organization's space in Preservated, choose a URL slug, and invite your team.
section: getting-started
order: 2
updated: 2026-06-12
verified: 2026-06-12
related: [getting-started/first-import, reference/roles-and-permissions, guides/collections-and-permissions]
features: [collections]
---

# Create an Institution

By the end of this page you'll have an institution with its own public URL and your first teammates invited.

An institution is the top-level container for everything you do in Preservated. All artifacts, assets, collections, and member permissions are scoped to it, and it gets its own public web address.

## Choose a name and slug

When you create an institution you pick:

- **Name** — the display name visitors see, e.g. "Whatcom Museum".
- **Slug** — the URL identifier, e.g. `whatcom-museum`. Your public site lives at `preservated.com/your-slug`.

Slugs are lowercase, use hyphens instead of spaces, and can't use reserved words like `admin`, `api`, or `docs`.

:::note
The slug appears in every public link to your collection, so choose one you're happy to keep. Changing it later breaks existing links.
:::

## Set the default visibility

Each institution has a default visibility for artifacts that aren't in any collection:

- **Public** — visible to everyone, including search engines.
- **Members** — visible to logged-in members of your institution.
- **Admin** — visible only to institution admins.

Individual collections and artifacts can narrow this later, so a safe starting point is **members** while you organize, switching to **public** when you're ready to publish.

## Invite your team

From **Admin → Members** you can invite people by email with one of four roles — **admin**, **editor**, **contributor**, or **viewer**. In short: admins run the institution, editors manage content, contributors submit material for review, and viewers browse members-only material. The full capability matrix is in [Roles and Permissions](/docs/en-US/reference/roles-and-permissions).

Invitations are sent by email and expire if unused. People who don't have a Preservated account yet can accept an invite and create one in the same step.

## Next steps

With your institution in place, [run your first import](/docs/en-US/getting-started/first-import) to bring in some photos.