The situation
One organisation, four audiences. A career network connects young professionals across Africa with opportunities. An alumni community keeps graduates in touch with each other and with mentors. A learning site teaches. A programme for young entrepreneurs gives its participants a place to study and meet. Each has its own members, its own look and its own rules, and none of them should be open to the public.
The same few things are needed in all four: a member approves or invites you in, you see your own feed and groups, you learn, you book time with a person, and you can ask for help.
Where we started
We began with the career network’s members app and its public website, then applied what worked to the others as they were added. By building each one on the same stack, a fix or a new feature in one place became a known quantity in the next, and the team that runs the four sites does not have to learn four systems.
The four communities
- The career network app. Members join, take a career assessment, build a profile, follow groups by sector and apply for opportunities. Affiliate organisations and ambassadors have their own onboarding and dashboard. The public site in front of it is in English, French, Portuguese and Arabic, and organised by sector.
- The alumni portal. A members-only community with a feed, groups, a member directory with mentor links, events with RSVPs, and a welcome page that answers the first questions. New cohorts are onboarded in batches.
- The learning site. Courses with assignments and quizzes, a welcome page and a feed, with coaching sessions booked from inside the site.
- The entrepreneur programme platform. A learning space with the programme’s playbook, quizzes and reports for the people running it.
What every site has
- Approval and roles. Members are approved or invited, and each role (member, editor, group organiser, affiliate) sees only its own menu and tools.
- Feed, groups and profiles. Community features on BuddyBoss, with a mobile app on the same platform.
- Learning. LearnDash courses, with assignments and quizzes added through PressPrimer.
- Booking. Coaching and mentor sessions booked through AmeliaWP, with calendars kept in sync.
- A help desk. Members raise questions through a help desk inside the community, with forms and outbound email handled by the Fluent suite.
- Analytics for the team. Independent Analytics and our own BuddyPress Stats plugin give the team a clear picture of who is active.
- Safe sign-up. reCAPTCHA on login and registration, and a clean-up of unused plugins.
- Content in the block editor. Pages built with the WordPress block editor, so the team can edit them without a page builder.
Plugins behind it
BuddyBoss Platform, Theme and App; LearnDash with PressPrimer Assignment and Quiz; MemberPress and AffiliateWP for membership and ambassadors; AmeliaWP for booking; Fluent Support, Fluent Forms, Fluent SMTP and Fluent CRM; WPML for the multilingual public site; Independent Analytics and our BuddyPress Stats.
What it makes possible
A network that can open a new member community without starting from zero. The people running each one see their own members, and the organisation has one stack to keep updated, tested and secure.