How to Build an Online Community: The Complete Walkthrough

How to build an online community, start to finish, on your own WordPress website. This video maps the whole journey in seven stages, shows the choices you have at each one, and proves each stage on a real screen: who it is for, the setup wizard, who can join, spaces, the activity feed, moderation and engagement.

Transcript

To build an online community, decide who it is for, set it up on your own WordPress website, and give people a reason to come back. Here is the whole journey, in seven stages. Decide who it is for, then run the setup wizard. Choose your Registration mode, and open your first Spaces. Start the Activity feed, set up Moderation, then work on Engagement. Stage one, who it is for. Name one group of people, and the one thing they come for. Stage two, the setup wizard. You need a WordPress website and one free plugin. On the BuddyNext Home screen, Run guided setup opens the wizard. It is a few short screens. The first asks for your Community name and one Brand colour. A later screen creates your Community Feed, Members and Spaces pages. Stage three, who can join. Registration mode has four choices. Open registration lets anyone sign up. Invite only needs an invitation. With Admin approval, you review each request. Closed means only you add members. This is that screen in the wizard, Who can join your community. Below, Private community makes people log in to see anything. This is the sign-up page a visitor gets: an email, a name and a password. A new member then gets a short welcome. First, Set up your profile. Then Join some spaces, so nobody starts with an empty feed. Stage four, spaces. Each space has a type. Open, where anyone can join. Private, where people request to join. Or Secret, invite only and hidden from the directory. With BuddyNext Pro, a space can also be locked to a paid plan. Spaces are made on your site, with the Create a space button. The form asks for a name, a type, a category and a short description. Stage five, the activity feed, where the community lives day to day. Members write in the post box, and it takes more than text, such as a poll. Posting to sets who sees each post, from Public down to Only me. Inside a space, Yuki votes on a poll with one click, and the numbers change at once. For news everyone must see, an announcement is pinned above every other post. Stage six, moderation. Any open community gets spam and arguments. Members report a post, a comment or a member, and every report lands here, under Moderation. Reports on the same post are merged. Five members reported this one, so it is marked in red. Dismiss closes a report. Remove takes the post down. The three-dot menu acts on the person, such as Warn author, Strike author or Suspend author. Under Automation, Auto-hide after N reports puts a post under review by itself. It starts at five. Stage seven, engagement. Notifications and email digests are built in. Private messages come from MediaVerse, and points from WB Gamification, both separate plugins. Events and courses, from Eventonomy and Learnomy, connect through BuddyNext Pro. Every member has a Notifications page, with tabs such as Mentions, Comments and Spaces. In their settings, each kind of email can be Immediate, or held for a Daily or Weekly digest. These are private messages, kept on your own site. And with Eventonomy connected, Upcoming events sit beside the feed. A paid membership community, with plans and checkout from BuddyNext Pro. A customer community, set to Invite only. A club or association, with a member directory and Admin approval. Or a course community, with a private space for each Learnomy course, through BuddyNext Pro. Your next step. Today, write down who it is for. This week, run the setup wizard and open three spaces. Then pin a welcome announcement, post one poll, and invite people you already know. BuddyNext is the free community plugin for WordPress. Write down who your community is for today, and run the setup wizard this week. Get BuddyNext. The link is below.