How to Check Your Community Health in BuddyNext

How to check your community health in BuddyNext, step by step. The Tools screen under BuddyNext, then Platform, then Tools shows background tasks, the object cache, the search index and the database, with buttons to rebuild the search index, repair the database, restore default emails, recount, flush the cache, and export or import settings (keys, secrets and the licence are not exported).

Transcript

In this tutorial you will check the health of your BuddyNext community on the Tools screen, and learn what each repair button does. You need BuddyNext, the free plugin. It takes about three minutes. There are five steps. Open Tools. Check background tasks. Check the search index. Check the database and emails. Then repair counts and move settings. Step one. Open Tools. In your WordPress admin, open BuddyNext, then Platform, then Tools. You do not need this screen in normal running. Open it when something feels off. Step two. Check background tasks. Digests, cleanups, scheduled posts and emails run in the background, with no setup. The Queue line shows how many tasks are waiting and how many failed. On this site some have failed, so the panel says so, and links to the Action Scheduler log, where you retry or clear them. Run now processes a batch of the queue straight away, to clear a backlog without waiting. Below it, Object cache tells you whether a persistent cache is installed. BuddyNext works without one. Past roughly two thousand members, a persistent cache becomes the recommended setup. Step three. Check the search index. Search reads one index of members, posts and spaces. This panel shows how many rows are indexed, whether the full text index is present, and when it was last rebuilt. If search returns nothing, or misses recent content, click Rebuild search index. Step four. Check the database and emails. The Status line says whether every BuddyNext table and column is present. BuddyNext repairs a missing one by itself. Check and repair database retries straight away. It only creates what is missing. Nothing is deleted or overwritten. Restore default emails brings the emails you have not edited up to the latest wording. Emails you have customised are never changed. Step five. Repair counts and move settings. Repair counters recomputes counts that can drift after an import, such as space members or follow counts. It is safe to run at any time. Flush BuddyNext cache clears a stale value after you change a setting. Export settings downloads your BuddyNext settings as one file. API keys, payment secrets and the licence key are left out. Import settings applies that file on another site, and only to settings that already exist there. Enter your keys and licence again on that site. Last, Data on uninstall. It is off by default, so deleting the plugin keeps your community data. Turn it on only if a delete should erase everything. That is all five. Tools opened, background tasks checked, the search index checked, the database and emails checked, and the repair buttons covered. You now know where to look when something in your community feels off. Next in this series: Choose a space's privacy type.