The situation
Light sources such as synchrotrons are large shared research facilities, and the people who use them are spread across many countries: researchers, students, instructors, institutes and partner programmes. They run schools and conferences, share lectures and courses, hire, and work on joint projects. What they lacked was one place to do all of that together.
The brief was a community of practice rather than a forum. It needed to know about organisations as well as people, and to give a research community the tools it uses day to day.
Where we started
We began in late 2024 with a BuddyBoss community: members, groups, activity, blogs and forums. From there the site grew module by module, each one added when the community needed it, and the whole thing is tied together by shared profiles, groups and partner pages. In 2026 membership sign-up moved from MemberPress to our own Learnomy.
What the site has
- Members and partners. People and partner organisations each have profiles, with their own tabs for wikis, jobs and teams.
- Groups, forums and blogs. The community core, with group tools laid out the way each group works.
- A community calendar. Events and conferences, with calendars for users, groups and partners.
- Bookings. Appointments and meetings between participants, with confirmation, reports and video conference links.
- A jobs board. Posting and finding jobs, filters including salary, job seeker pages and an Alert Me button, all linked to partner and group pages.
- A wiki. Categories, a watch list, a pending-review queue and articles tied to a partner.
- A project manager. Project dashboards with Gantt charts, milestones and calendars, for working on joint projects together.
- Teams. Lists that work as teams inside groups and partners, connected to Slack.
- Courses and a central library. Lectures, courses and a library for the community to share.
- A sign-up journey. Membership types, a clear sign-up path and bulk account creation for onboarding a cohort.
Plugins behind it
BuddyBoss Platform, Platform Pro and the BuddyBoss theme for the community; Learnomy and Learnomy Pro for courses and membership; WP Career Board for the jobs board; ProjectFlow for projects and Gantt charts; WP ConnectPress and The Events Calendar for bookings and events; BuddyPress Private Community Pro, a member types plugin and a user to-do list; and a custom core plugin that holds the community’s own features.
What it makes possible
A research community that can run its schools, hiring, wikis and projects in one place, and that adds a module when it needs one, without starting over.