Communities

Create internal communities with their own discussion boards, wikis, news dashboards, user lists and messaging facilities

BECOME A MEMBER Download Communities

See Communities screenshots

Creating a new topic on a message board
Creating a new community
Adding a new topic to a community message board
Replying to a topic on a community message board
Adding a new page to a community wiki
Working with community wikis
Checking out members of a community
Sending a message to another community member
Managing a community via the Manage Community tab
Finding a community to join
Adding a News topic to a community
Detail

We know you love BuddyPress, it’s a great tool, but for some of us it’s just a bit overwhelming!

We don’t want our WordPress Multisite networks turned into massive social networks, we want them to networks and platforms WITH social features — not dominated by them.

With our Communities plugin, you can quickly bring social features to your WordPress network within mere minutes without using BuddyPress.

Packed full of features such as:

  • Allows your users to create their own communities
  • Users interact with each other from within their site admin dashboard
  • Users can create and reply to topics using Message boards
  • Simple, easy to use internal wiki
  • Community owners and moderators can send news to community members
  • Easily send messages to other community members
  • Simple tools for community management
  • Ability to make communities public or private

Check it out!

Once installed a new Communities menu is added inside the site admin dashboard.

The new communities menu item

Anyone can create a community via the ‘Communities’ menu, then they can contribute to that communities message board, wiki or news areas or visit that communities dashboard.

Creating a new community

Or join an existing community!

Joining a community

Each community has its own powerful message board which can contain multiple topics and threads, posts can be made stickies or edited or removed by moderators.

Users can be messaged or their blog viewed and naturally all the latest information appears on the groups dashboard.

 

Working with the message board

And as if that wasn’t enough, every community also gets its own wiki!

That is, a collaborative area where all members of the community can add new pages, edit existing ones and even revert changes if required… just like your own private Wikipedia!

Once a wiki page has been created it can easily be managed:

wiki management

Oh!  Did we mention community owners and moderators can send news to all community members?

Sending news

Neato! Heh?

Want more?

This plugin is designed to be used with other social WPMU DEV plugins such as:

  1. Messaging plugin – this provides the ability to easily send, receive and read your friend’s emails from inside your blog dashboard.
  2. Friends plugin – Lets your users ‘friend’ each other, display funky widgets with avatar mosaics of all their friends on the site
  3. Avatars plugin – provides your friend’s avatars

We hope you enjoy the Communities plugin!

 

Usage

Start by reading Installing mu-plugins section in our comprehensive WordPress Multisite Manual if you are new to WordPress Multisite.

To install:

1. Install Messaging plugin
2. Install Avatars plugin
3. Download the plugin file
4. Unzip the file into a folder on your hard drive
5. Upload communities-framework.php to wp-content/mu-plugins/
6.  Upload communities.php to /wp-admin/
7.  This should automatically create a new Communities menu inside the site admin dashboard

Your new Communities menu item

Please Note:

  • If the auto-install does not add the db tables for you then run the sql code in “friends_sql.txt” on your install.

To Use:

Go to Communities > Communities in your site admin dashboard

Create a new community by:

  1. Adding a name
  2. Adding a description
  3. Choosing if you want users to have to enter a code to join a private community
  4. Clicking Create

Creating a new community

Join a community by:

  1. Go to Communities > Find Communities
  2. Add your search term and click Search
  3. Once located click Join or you can Send Message to Owner

Finding a community

Working with Message boards

Message boards work like a forum but are located inside the site admin dashboard.

Create a new topic on a Message board by:

  1. Go Communities > Communities
  2. Click on the Message Board action link next to the community you want to add it to
  3. Add the title, the content, and if you want select Yes to make it stick to the top of the message board and then click Post.

Creating a message board

4.  Users can click on the topic link on the Message board to reply or write their own new topic.

Replying to a topic

5.  Here’s how simple it is to reply to a topic on a message board

Replying to a topic

Working with Wikis

The community wiki is designed to support a simple wiki within the site admin dasbhoard.

To create a wiki:

  1. Go to Communities > Communities
  2. Click on Wiki next to the community you want to create the wiki in
  3. Click on New Page
  4. Add your title, content and click Publish

Creating a wiki

 

Managing Communities

Community owners and moderators have a Manage Communities menu item under Communities where they can edit, delete items and send news.

Only community owners and moderators can add News.

Sending news

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