Community website builder
Build a community website on WordPress.
Members, spaces, messaging and moderation from one free plugin, on hosting you choose. Not a hosted builder with a monthly bill, and this page is upfront about what that trade costs you and what it buys.
How you build it
Five steps, in order.
This is the whole job. It is admin work on a WordPress site, not a development project, and most of it is decisions rather than clicks.
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Install
BuddyNext is a WordPress plugin, so it goes on a site you already have or a fresh WordPress install. There is no separate account, no subdomain and no export problem later.
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Choose your spaces
Three or four to start, not fifteen. Empty rooms read as abandoned, so open the ones your members will actually use and add more when they ask.
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Set what members fill in
Profile fields, with per-field privacy each member controls. Keep the list short; people finish short forms.
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Style it with your theme
It restyles from CSS tokens rather than forcing a bundled theme, so the community looks like the rest of your site. BuddyX and Reign are built for it if you want a head start.
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Invite people
Members sign in with standard WordPress accounts. If you already have users, they are already members.
Community website examples
What people build with it.
23 worked examples, each written up as its own guide: what the pattern needs, what it costs to run, and where it usually goes wrong.
- Alumni community: keep grads connected to campus
- Brand community: customers who sell for you
- Coaching community: built so members actually show up
- Community for online courses: more than a video player
- Community marketplace: where members buy and sell
- Creator community: membership your fans open daily
- Fan community: a home your fandom actually owns
- Fitness community: keeps members on their streak
- Freelance marketplace: connect talent with clients
- Gaming community: as fast as the game itself
- Internal community: one your team opens daily
- Investor community: a private network you own
- Local community platform: businesses meet the neighbors
- Mastermind community: worth opening every day
- Membership community: your audience, fully owned
- Mentorship community: built to actually pair people
- Neighborhood community: a platform your block owns
- Niche job board: connect employers with the right people
- Nonprofit community: connect your cause to volunteers
- Online academy: keeps learners to the finish line
- Product feedback community: power users drive the roadmap
- Professional networking community: owned by your industry
- SaaS community: replace the support ticket queue
All of them live in the use cases hub.
Where you are now
Pick the sentence that sounds like you.
The right next step is different depending on what you are running today, so here are four, rather than one button for everybody.
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I have not started yet
Then the fastest way to judge this is to use it. The sandbox spins up a real community you can post in, and you can throw it away afterwards.
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I pay for Circle, Mighty Networks or Skool
The bill grows with your membership and the members sit on their servers. Moving is the part people assume is impossible, so it is worth reading what it actually involves before you renew.
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I already run BuddyPress or BuddyBoss
Your members keep their WordPress logins, so nobody re-registers. The free BuddyNext Importer brings the rest across: members, profile fields, groups, activity, forums, media and private messages.
Migrating from BuddyPress Migrating from BuddyBoss What the importer moves
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I am building this for someone else
A full REST API ships in the free core, so a custom front end or an integration is a first-class path rather than a retrofit. The plugin source is public, so you can read it before you commit a client to it.
See it for real
What you are building.
Every screen below is BuddyNext running inside a real WordPress theme. Click any screen to open it full size.
Questions
Before you start building.
Is this a drag-and-drop community website builder?
Not in the Wix or Squarespace sense, and it is worth being clear about that. BuddyNext is a WordPress plugin: you install it on a WordPress site and configure spaces, profile fields and permissions from the admin. What you get for that is a community you host yourself, with no per-member pricing and no platform that can change its terms. If you want a hosted builder with nothing to install, Circle and Mighty Networks do that well and we compare against both.
What can I actually build with it?
Member communities of most shapes: alumni networks, coaching and membership communities, brand and customer communities, marketplaces, internal team spaces, neighbourhood groups, fan communities and product feedback boards. Each of those is written up as a worked example on this page, with what the pattern needs and where it usually goes wrong.
Do I need a developer?
To launch, no. Installing a plugin and choosing your spaces is admin work, not development. A developer becomes useful if you want a custom front end or an integration, and for that a full REST API ships in the free core.
What does it cost to build a community website this way?
The community software is free and GPL, including the companions for forums, media and gamification. You pay for WordPress hosting, which for a small community is a few dollars a month. Pro is optional and adds group and real-time messaging, gated and tiered spaces, and paywalls.
Can I move an existing community into it?
If you are on BuddyPress or BuddyBoss, yes, and with the free BuddyNext Importer: members, profile fields, groups, activity history, forums, media and private messages. If you are on a hosted platform, our team has run those migrations through the source platform API, so ask us rather than starting over.
See it in action
Watch what you can build
Video tours of a WordPress community website in action - a course community, a creator membership, forums and Q&A, a job board, gamification, and a store, all on one site.
Start building, free.
Install the free core on a WordPress site and open your first space today.
Keep reading
- Online community platform
What a community platform has to do, and what changes once you host it yourself.
- WordPress social network plugin
What a social network plugin has to include before it can replace a stack of add-ons.
- How to create a social network
The build itself: the steps involved and what it actually costs to run.
- Membership site on WordPress
The two kinds of membership site, and which software each one actually needs.
- WordPress membership plugin
Charging for access to the community itself, and where that differs from gating content.