I have an advanced configuration of BuddyBoss on a multisite network. In order for this to be viable for my community it must include the following features (just to get a sense of what this project is going to entail to compete with existing options). Most of this is going to be broadly applicable as well:
- Extendable Social Profile Fields akin to xprofile fields. (a UI to design the layout of the profile field sets in the social profiles "About" tab would be an improvement over BuddyBoss, which requires custom CSS to do so.)
- Advanced and customizable search functionality of the members and group directory. (Restricted access to social profiles and/or limited public profiles would be an improvement over BuddyBoss.)
- Membership plugin integration (preferably including Paid Memberships Pro for its addons and customizability).
- Front end user blogging capabilities integrated in the social profiles, with options to restrict ability to publish blog posts to certain membership plans (well... I can do that last bit easy enough with PMPro.)
- Limit the amount of allowable storage for users profile albums and media uploaded to their blog posts based on their membership plan.
- Private, Public, and Hidden Groups, along with an integration with the membership functionality to restrict the ability to create private or hidden groups (among other group features).
- The ability to categorize Group/Space by "types".
- Business pages directory with membership plans that allow site owners to configure what features are enabled in a listing based on the plan that the listing owner purchased. Available features must include activity feed, separate inbox, reviews UI, featured/promoted/claim options, listing admin/moderators, and google and/or openstreetmap integration. (Directorist's existing integration with BP/BB is actually pretty shallow compared to something like SpacesEngine made for BB.)
- Discussion Boards integrated with the groups/spaces (the forums in BuddyBoss are over-designed, second-group-activity-feeds with tagging capabilities, so this is an opportunity to do better. Compare that to something like wpForo).
- Integration with zoom or other conference calling technology in the social groups/spaces.
- A OneSignal integration would extend the capabilities of the existing notification and messaging system, however an option to replace the messaging system with Better Messages would allow site owners to utilize their many existing integrations, including OneSignal (and BetterMessages works as a single messaging system on a multisite network, so I'm committed to it).
- Media offloading capabilities of community uploads, including videos (BuddyBoss implemented a custom media folder structure to develop a permission management system using symlinks, which is very good to have for communities, but it also had the negative effect of limiting offloading options. A bunny.net integration would be an affordable alternative to S3).
- Ads. (Advanced Ads has a great integration with BP/BB, but it uses WooCommerce, which I try to avoid).
- Community Moderation Features.
- Developer-friendly (I have a custom annotations dashboard in the BuddyBoss user profiles based on the hypothes.is API that I would need to convert to FluentCommunity)
- Gutenberg blocks (but address the limitations of WP's default content storage format in post_content and store attributes and content as JSON.)
- Do not make FluentCommunity an All-In-One Solution!!! Instead, work on integrations with top plugins like LearnDash, TutorLMS, Paid Memberships Pro, etc... Some of the suggestions here could be light add-ons as well, but if the goal is to keep FluentCommunity fast and competitive, focus on the CORE functionality of the social network! An all-in-one solution is not in line with WordPress and the open source community ethos.
Anything else that I'm missing?
This goes without saying, but also... the ability to follow and connect with other users...
Shahjahan Jewel For some reason Fluent Community did not want to work in a local dev environment using DevKinsta. I got it to work in a test site on RunCloud. I firmly disagree with the effort to integrate course functionality in the core plugin, as well as the containerized implementation that requires a custom menu system, is completely separate from the activated theme, is unlikely to work with WP's broader plugin ecosystem, etc., etc.
FluentCommunity seems to be more for internal communications that don't need any bells or whistles, or for beginner WP users who value simplicity over everything else. However, this means that it isn't really competing 1-to-1 with BuddyPress or BuddyBoss in my opinion. WpForo, Discourse, MatterMost, rocket.chat, zulip, and Flarum are closer competitors (on the basis that they are open source and can be self-hosted, and have the similar target user cases).
I'll keep FluentCommunity in mind for projects that only need a simple internal communications interface, but I think we can both agree that there's nothing here for me as an advanced BuddyBoss site owner...
Brandon Meyer, If it's not that your buddyboss site requires significant resources that made us go to buddyx to gain so much fluidity in the platforms. So if one day, you discover that Buddyboss is poorly coded and requires too many resources, you will have a possibility with fluentcommunity which will certainly evolve quickly.
DAVID MOUSSEBOIS, BuddyX is just a theme, the vast majority of the resource-draw is coming from the BP or BB platform plugin itself... I know how to appropriately spec and spin a server (I wrote a document on it), I also implemented my community platform as a multisite network to separate the several services that I offer as opposed to activating them all on the same site, I offload media, etc. etc... A social networking platform is not for the faint of heart to run regardless, but I'm all for giving new, alternative solutions a fair shake!
However, as I said, I have concluded that it is not an option for a configuration such as my own without the many features, extensibility, and customizability of other existing options. I am not writing it off by any means - I outlined the projects that it would be appropriate for and said I would keep my eye on it.
It's got a waaays to go though, and its containerized implementation means it is going to make it that much harder to use third-party plugins with it (I also reject the BuddyBoss app for the same reason), and it isn't merely theme-agnostic - it's theme-independent. Each service-specific site on my multisite is designed and branded to look like you're always on the same platform. Maybe Fluent Community will include theme-like settings in the future to design separately from the activated theme on the site(?), but currently there is very little in the way of design options.
Implementing course functionality also means it will not just need to compete with BP/BB in features and functionality, but with LearnDash and TutorLMS as well - unless you are looking for something very simple that may even work on your shared hosting at GoDaddy - and that's fair! But it's not currently qualifying to class with BB or even BP. It's a functional prototype of most of the basic social features by comparison, and even less-so when discussing the course functionality.
I wish them luck if that's the goal - but given the decisions they've made with its implementation I suspect that it is not so much about competng with BB/BP/bbP, but offering a light, simple alternative for the GoDaddy crowd.
Just to be clear, this was meant to be constructive feedback from a huge Fluent fan based on an honest comparative review. Not much of a response though... Am I to take the silence as a concession or perhaps resignation? I hope it's not a matter of only acknowledging doting praise!
I read your contribution here with great interest. I am disappointed to see no one from Fluent took the time to respond. It does leave a lot of room to wonder why not. Strange. 3 months and no respond?
Of the points you made ... 6, 10, 11, 12, 14, 17 were those of most interest / relevance to me.