Admin Overview

The BuddyNext admin hub is the single place you manage your whole community from. Instead of scattering settings across dozens of unrelated screens, BuddyNext groups every control into labeled sections that follow how you actually run a community: set it up, manage your platform, look after members and spaces, drive engagement, handle notifications, and moderate. This page is your map - find any setting by the job it does.

What it is

Every BuddyNext screen lives under one top-level BuddyNext menu in wp-admin, organized into sections. The sections are ordered from setup through day-to-day operation, and each holds a small, focused set of tabs. The goal is that a new owner can guess where a setting is from its job, and find it on the first try.

Why it is organized this way

A community platform has a lot of settings. Listing them flat would be unusable. Grouping them by purpose means you spend less time hunting: branding and pages sit under Settings, anything about people sits under Members, anything about communities sits under Spaces, and so on. Pro features slot into the same sections rather than into a separate menu, so the structure stays the same as your community grows.

Navigation map

Tabs marked (Pro) require BuddyNext Pro. Everything else is in the free plugin.

Section	Tabs	What you configure
Settings	General; Appearance; Navigation; Pages & URLs; White-label (Pro)	Core community name and identity, theme appearance and brand color, the front-end navigation menu, and the URL for each community hub.
Get Started	Home; License (Pro)	Find your way around a new install, work through setup, and enter your Pro license key so the plugin receives automatic updates.
Platform	Features; Add-ons; Tools; Webhooks; Plugin isolation	Turn whole features on or off, install and connect companion plugins, run maintenance tools, send outbound webhooks to other systems, and choose which other plugins load on community pages.
Integration Settings	One screen	Control how each companion plugin surfaces inside BuddyNext. This is its own section in the menu, next to Platform.
Members	Directory; Labels (Pro); Registration & Login; Roles & Capabilities; Privacy & Data	Manage the member directory (with its Profile Fields, Avatar & cover, Member Types and Invites sub-tabs), apply member labels, set how people register, sign in and verify, define roles and capabilities, and set privacy defaults and data tools.
Spaces	Directory; Settings	Manage the spaces directory (with its Categories sub-tab) and set who can create spaces and how new ones start.
Engagement	Insights; Announcements; Activity; Social; Reactions (Pro)	View engagement insights, post site-wide announcements, manage posts, set activity feed defaults and connection behavior, and (Pro) choose a custom set of reactions.
Notifications	Notifications; Email; Email Templates; Email Log	Set notification defaults and channels, configure sending email identity, edit the email templates members receive, and review a log of every message sent.
Realtime & Push (Pro)	Realtime; Push; Push prefs	Configure real-time updates, web and mobile push delivery, and the default push preferences for members.
Campaigns (Pro)	Broadcasts; Drip Sequences; Scheduled Posts; AI Feed	Send broadcast emails, build automated drip sequences, schedule posts, and configure AI feed ranking.
Moderation	Controls; Pending; Reports; Suspensions; Appeals; Rules (Pro); AI Moderation (Pro); Bulk Moderation (Pro); Moderation Log	Set moderation policy, review pending content, work the report queue, manage suspensions, handle member appeals, and read the log of who moderated what. Pro adds automatic rules, AI-assisted moderation and bulk actions to the same section.
Monetization (Pro)	Plans; Subscriptions; Payment Gateways; Coupons; Paywall	Define paid membership plans, manage subscriptions, issue discount coupons, configure the paywall prompt, and connect payment gateways (Stripe, PayPal, points).

Note: Sections marked (Pro) and individual (Pro) tabs appear only when BuddyNext Pro is active. With the free plugin alone you see Get Started, Members, Spaces, Engagement, Notifications, Moderation, Platform, Integration Settings and Settings, with the Pro-only tabs inside them hidden. Free also shows an Upgrade section with a Free vs Pro comparison, which is an upsell rather than a place to configure anything.

Turning features on and off: Platform > Features

Every capability has exactly one on/off switch, and it lives in BuddyNext > Platform > Features. There is no second switch hidden in a settings tab.

Kind	What it means	Examples
Core	Always on, shown locked.	Activity feed, Member profiles, Spaces, Follows, connections, blocks, Notifications, Login + registration, Search index, Moderation
On by default	You can switch it off.	Hashtags, Reactions, Comments, Sidebar widgets, Member onboarding flow, Email verification, Site announcements, Bookmarks, Polls, Re-shares, Installable app (PWA), Scheduled posts
Off by default	You switch it on when you need it.	Outbound webhooks (Free); Realtime, Push notifications, AI suite and AI moderation (Pro)

Two entries behave differently. Direct messages shows the state of the switch in WPMediaVerse (Settings, Messages) and links you there, because WPMediaVerse runs messaging. Scheduled posts is a Free entry: switching it off hides the schedule button in the composer, while posts already scheduled still publish. With BuddyNext Pro active, the Pro capabilities (such as White-label branding, Member labels, Email broadcasts, Drip sequences, Moderation rules, Bulk moderation, Custom reactions and Analytics) appear in the same list.

Refined in 1.0.4

The admin had a full quality pass in 1.0.4, so screenshots from earlier versions may look slightly different:

• Every settings screen uses the same full-width card style, with inputs capped at a comfortable reading width.
• The left navigation shows real hierarchy - section labels with their screens nested beneath - and keeps its sidebar layout on iPad.
• Logo and image fields open the WordPress media library with a preview and a Remove button.
• License moved out of Monetization and onto its own tab, so activating updates no longer means hunting through the billing screens. As of 1.1.5 it sits under Get Started.

Dark mode follows your theme (1.0.7)

The Appearance tab controls your community’s brand color, and dark mode rides along with it automatically. BuddyNext does not have its own light/dark switch - it follows the toggle your theme already provides. If your site runs BuddyX or Reign, switching that theme’s light/dark toggle switches BuddyNext with it, with no extra setup.

1.0.7 extends dark mode to reach the corners it used to miss: native form controls (inputs, dropdowns, checkboxes), skill chips on profiles, and leaderboard badges all now follow the theme instead of staying light in a dark layout.

Shaping the menus: Settings > Navigation

Settings > Navigation is where you shape every menu BuddyNext puts on the front end. It covers five surfaces, and each one works the same way:

Surface	What it is
Main Navigation	The community nav bar.
Profile Tabs	The tabs on a member’s profile.
Space Tabs	The tabs on a space page.
Mobile Bottom Nav	The bar pinned to the bottom of the screen on phones.
Account Dropdown	The menu behind the avatar in the header.

For each item on a surface you can:

• Hide or show it with the toggle on its row.
• Rename it - type the label your community actually uses.
• Reorder it by dragging its handle.
• Choose who sees it - all members, logged-in only, admins only, or anyone holding a capability you name.

Custom links can be added to the Main Navigation. The other four surfaces list the items that exist; they are extended in code rather than from this screen.

The Account Dropdown (1.0.8)

The header avatar menu is new to this screen in 1.0.8. Previously it was the one navigation surface with no admin control at all - hiding Bookmarks, renaming a link, or reordering the menu meant writing code. It is now a scope like any other, so it hides, renames, reorders, and gates by capability from the same panel as everything else.

Links that companion plugins add to the menu (for example Courses, when Learnomy is connected) appear in the manager on their own, so you can hide or rename those too.

Note: Log Out is marked Fixed and is always shown. An owner who could hide it would strand every member on the site with no way to sign out, so it does not carry a hide toggle.

Reordering the mobile bottom bar (1.0.8)

The Mobile Bottom Nav is the five-slot bar members see on a phone. Its tabs can now be dragged into the order you want, the same as every other scope - previously it was the only scope whose rows looked reorderable but were not.

Two slots stay pinned and show a fixed handle instead of a draggable one:

• The centre Create button, which is only dead-centre while it has the same number of tabs on each side of it.
• Profile, the fixed last slot.

Everything else in the bar (Activity, Spaces, Notifications, and any tab a plugin adds) reorders freely around them, and the front-end bar honours the order you save.

Jump to any setting with the command palette

You do not have to remember which section a setting lives in. BuddyNext registers every one of its settings with WordPress core’s built-in Command Palette.

Press Cmd + K (Mac) or Ctrl + K (Windows / Linux) anywhere in wp-admin, start typing the name of the setting - for example “brand color”, “registration”, or “reactions” - and jump straight to it. This is the fastest way to reach a setting when you know what it is called but not where it lives.

Note: The Command Palette is part of WordPress itself, so the keyboard shortcut works on every admin screen, not only inside BuddyNext.

Where to go next

Each section has its own deep-dive in this documentation:

• New install? Start with the Admin Setup Wizard - it walks you through the most important Settings, Members, Spaces, and Notifications choices in one flow.
• For who can join and how members are managed, see the Members documentation.
• For communities, categories, and membership rules, see the Spaces documentation.
• For reactions, notifications, email, and moderation, see the Activity Feed, Notifications, and Moderation Queue pages.
• For Pro sections (Realtime & Push, Campaigns, Monetization) and the Pro moderation tabs, see the BuddyNext Pro documentation. (Insights is a free feature - see Community Insights.)