How to Use the Explore Page in BuddyNext

How to use the Explore page in BuddyNext, step by step. Explore is a wall of cards showing what is new across the whole community: public posts, posts from open spaces, forum discussions, new members and spaces. Filter it by All, Members, Spaces, Posts, Discussions or Media, and click a card to open it. Visitors can read Explore too, unless the site owner switches off Public explore feed.

Transcript

In this tutorial you will use the Explore page in BuddyNext. Explore shows what is new across the whole community, not only the people you follow. You need BuddyNext, the free plugin. Explore is there from the start. It takes about three minutes. There are five steps. Open Explore. Read the cards. Filter by type. See it as a visitor. Then open or close it to visitors. Step one. Open Explore. Sign in as a member, and click Explore in the menu on the left. It sits under Activity. Activity is built around you, from the people you follow and the spaces you joined. Explore is the same for everyone, so it is never empty for a new member. The line above the title counts the members, spaces and posts in your community. Step two. Read the cards. Explore is a wall of small cards, with the latest posts first. A label at the top of each card says what it is. The first page also mixes in a few of the newest members, and two spaces. For a member who picked interests, those spaces match their interests. A card is a preview. Click it to open the post, the space or the profile. A member card also has a Follow button. Scroll down, and more cards load by themselves. When a long page ends, the Older posts button carries on from there. Step three. Filter by type. Under the search box is a row of filters. All, Members, Spaces, Posts, Discussions and Media. Members lists people by the day they joined, the newest first. Spaces lists open and private spaces, the newest first. A secret space is never shown here. Posts, Discussions and Media each keep one kind of post. Media is every post with a photo, a video or an audio clip. Step four. See it as a visitor. Sign out, and open Explore. A visitor gets the same wall of cards, under a box that invites them to sign up or log in. They see public posts, and posts from open spaces. A post kept to followers or connections, or written in a private space, never reaches Explore. A visitor can read and open cards. To follow someone, they have to join first. Step five. Open or close it to visitors. In your WordPress admin, open BuddyNext, then Settings, then General, and scroll to Discovery. Public explore feed is on by default. Switch it off and save, and Explore is for members only. A visitor who opens it is sent to sign in, and lands back on Explore afterwards. Signed in members always see Explore, whichever way this switch is set. That is all five. Explore opened, the cards read, the filters used, the page seen as a visitor, and the visitor switch found. Your members, and your visitors, can now see what is going on across the whole community. Next in this series: Use the sidebar cards.