How to Set Up the Activity Feed in BuddyNext

How to set up the activity feed in BuddyNext, step by step. Under BuddyNext, then Engagement, then Social, Default post visibility sets the audience of a new post when the member does not pick one, and Show new-posts indicator controls the notice that counts new posts. Under BuddyNext, then Settings, then General, Public explore feed decides whether visitors who are not signed in can read Explore. Members read the feed in four tabs: For you, Following, Spaces and Network.

Transcript

In this tutorial you will set up the activity feed in BuddyNext. The feed is the stream of posts a member sees when they open your community. You need BuddyNext, the free plugin. The feed works from the start. It takes about three minutes. There are five steps. Set the default post visibility. Keep the new posts notice. Open the feed to visitors. Read the feed as a member. Then see it as a visitor. Step one. Set the default post visibility. In your WordPress admin, open BuddyNext, then Engagement, then Social. Under Activity Feed, find Default post visibility. It starts on Public. The other choices are Followers only, Connections only and Only me. This is the audience a new post gets when the member does not pick one. A member can still choose another audience on each post. A post written inside a space starts on that space's members. Step two. Keep the new posts notice. On the same screen, Show new-posts indicator is switched on. About once a minute, an open feed checks for new posts. A notice at the top counts them, and a click brings them in. Switch it off, and members see new posts when they reload. Step three. Open the feed to visitors. Open BuddyNext, then Settings, then General, and scroll to Discovery. Public explore feed is switched on. With it on, someone who is not signed in can read the Explore feed. If they open Activity, they are shown Explore instead of a sign-in page. Switch it off, and a visitor who opens Explore or Activity is sent to sign in. Public posts, profiles and hashtag pages can still be read by their own address. To close the whole community, use a different switch. Under Members, then Privacy and Data, it is named Require login to view the community. Step four. Read the feed as a member. Sign in as a member, and open Activity. The feed has four tabs. For you is a blend. Your own posts, people you follow, your spaces, hashtags you follow, and public posts from everyone else. Posts from your connections come first. Following holds posts from the people you follow, newest first. Spaces holds posts from the spaces you have joined. Network holds posts from your connections. Step five. See it as a visitor. Sign out, and open Explore. This is what someone sees before they join, because Public explore feed is on. A box named Join the community invites them to sign up or log in. They can read, but not post or follow. Only public posts, and posts in open spaces, are shown here. A post for followers, for connections or for the author alone never reaches Explore. That is all five. The default post visibility set, the new posts notice kept, the feed opened to visitors, the four tabs read as a member, and Explore seen as a visitor. Your feed now starts every post with the audience you chose, and visitors see only what you allow. Next in this series: Choose who sees a post.