Community App Under Your Brand: Install It From the Browser

Looking for a white label mobile app or a community app under your own name? This video shows how a WordPress community site becomes an app your members install to the home screen from the browser, with your site name, your logo and your brand colour.

Transcript

What is a white label community app? It is your community, opened from an icon on the member's phone, with your name on it and nobody else's. Your name under the icon. Your logo and colour inside. And your members, on your own site. You can rent the app of a hosted platform. It is quick, but your members sit on their side. You can have a native app built. It is yours, but someone has to build it, send it to the stores and keep it updated. Or you can make the community site you already own installable. That is the one this video shows. An installable website is added to the home screen from the browser. There is nothing to download from a store. It opens in its own window, without the address bar, so it feels like an app and not a web page. And it keeps a home screen ready, so it still opens when there is no signal. A member visits the community on their phone. The browser offers to add it to the home screen. An icon appears next to their other apps, and from then on, your community is one tap away. This is what opens. It is recorded here on a wide screen, and the same pages fit a phone. Groups, posts and polls. Notifications, so a member sees who replied to them. Private messages, for the conversations that do not belong in a group. And a member directory, where people find each other and connect. Now the white label part. The app takes its name from your WordPress site, so that is the name under the icon. Inside, members see your logo, and your brand colour on every button and link. It runs on your own domain. And a developer can swap the home screen icon for your own mark. A bookmark is easy to forget. An icon on the home screen is not. Inside the community, a bell shows each member what is new. With the Pro version, a member can also allow push alerts, which arrive even when the site is closed. One thing to be clear about. This app is installed from the browser. It is not a listing in the app stores today. A native app for the stores is in the works, and it will run on the same community, so your members will not have to move. Every member who installs it is on your own list, in your own WordPress dashboard. You can export that list whenever you like. Side by side. Members on their platform, or on your site. A fee every month, or a free plugin on your hosting. Their look, or your logo and colour. And if you leave a rented app, you start again. Your own site stays with you. Every week your community is only a bookmark, it is one more thing your members forget to open. BuddyNext is the free community plugin for WordPress. Put your community on your members' home screens, starting this week. Get BuddyNext. The link is below.