Community website builder
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
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.
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.
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.
Profile fields, with per-field privacy each member controls. Keep the list short; people finish short forms.
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.
Members sign in with standard WordPress accounts. If you already have users, they are already members.
Community website examples
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.
All of them live in the use cases hub.
Where you are now
The right next step is different depending on what you are running today, so here are four, rather than one button for everybody.
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.
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.
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
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
Every screen below is BuddyNext running inside a real WordPress theme. Click any screen to open it full size.
Questions
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
Install the free core on a WordPress site and open your first space today.
What a community platform has to do, and what changes once you host it yourself.
What a social network plugin has to include before it can replace a stack of add-ons.
The build itself: the steps involved and what it actually costs to run.
The two kinds of membership site, and which software each one actually needs.
Charging for access to the community itself, and where that differs from gating content.
WBComDesigns is amazing. The WP plugins and themes are of top notch quality with lots of features and updated very frequently. Supports are very responsive and helpful. I use Reign with TutorLMS, and the experience is surprisingly smooth. The recently launched BuddyNext Pro and MediaShield Pro are…
WBCOM Designs has constantly updated and supported their plugins and themes. Recently the new BuddyNext project is Amazing! - and the new line of addons like Mediaverse, Jetonomy, Mediashield, and Listora.. are likewise Amazing! - and very well built. Today their online Chat solved a download…
I have found that support for Wbcomdesigns has been very responsive and has gone above and beyond to help resolve any/all issues I run into.
Prompt and thorough feedback and responses, very easy to work with, really excellent customer service. I'm grateful to the team, particularly Kerit and Shashank, for their patience and help.
Swift and expert coding by Kerit to apply a personalised display adjustment on the Reign Theme for a media plugin that was not fully supported at the moment.
I received a very nice answer just a few hours after I created a ticket. Funnily enough, the feature I had requested in my ticket had just been implemented and released, so Kerit asked me to update the LD Dashboard plugin. It all works as I had hoped for my use case. Maybe I wasn't the first to…
Excellent service from Kerit Piplani and his team. Quick and efficient with my websites. I look forward to lots more business with them.
Support is helping me with set up. Multisite Theme and PLugin working as expected. We are continuing with WBcom Thank You to the team
I am really glad to have known BuddyX Pro Team led by Mr.Varun Dubey. I had a challenge of mobile responsiveness and after I brought the issue to their attention, they were able to address it promptly. They also made a follow-up on my experience after resolving the issue. I highly recommend WBcom…
Its response rate and working very well I appreciate and am very happy to work with this webmaster.