Run a Community From One Dashboard: Members, Courses, Events, Payments

Most community owners pay for a chat app, a course platform, an events tool, a job board and a payment page, and keep five member lists in step by hand. This film follows Marcus through one month of running a ninety-two member community from a single dashboard on his own website.

Transcript

This is Marcus. He runs a community of ninety-two people. Last year, running it took five different tools. This year it takes one. A chat app for the conversation. A course platform for the teaching. An events tool for the meetups. A job board and a directory, bolted on. And a payment page to hold it together. Five bills, five logins, and five member lists that never quite agree. When someone asks how the community is doing, the answer is in five places. Here is one month of running it from a single dashboard. It starts with people. Everyone who joins lands on one list, and it is his list. He can see who is new, who is active, and who has gone quiet. Each member has a profile that carries everything they do here. A welcome series greets each new member, without him sending a thing. He sets up where people gather: open spaces, private ones, and one that is by invitation only. The numbers that tell him how the community is doing come from his own data, not from a report someone else decides to show him. In week two he gives people something to do. A new course goes live, He builds the lessons himself, in the order he wants, and everyone who finishes gets a certificate with the community name on it. He can see who has enrolled and how far each of them has got. The monthly meetup goes on the calendar, with registration built in. On the day, he checks people in from the same screen. Members post jobs to each other, and every application shows up here too. Week three is housekeeping. A healthy community needs rules, so he sets them once. How many reports hide a post. When a member gets a warning. What happens after that. Most days, the queue is empty. The forum has its own spaces for questions, ideas and announcements. When there is news, one message reaches every member. The business directory, with every listing and every review, sits on the same dashboard. Week four is the part most platforms take a cut of. Marcus sets his own plans and his own prices. A free plan to bring people in, and a paid plan for the ones who want more. He sells courses, he sells tickets, and the payments go to his own account. The members who make the place worth joining get recognised without him lifting a finger. He decides what earns points and what each level is called. At the end of the month there is one login, one dashboard and one member list. One place to look. One thing to learn. One thing to pay for. For members it is simply one place: one profile, one feed, one set of notifications. The list is his. He can export it whenever he likes. And because it all runs on his own website, nobody can raise the price on him or switch it off. The feed, the forums, the courses, the events, the jobs and the directory, built by one team to run as one community. On WordPress. On your site. See it live. The demo is one click away. BuddyNext. Your community, finally your own.