Presales questions
We are developing a platform for language learning coaching. We are looking at options and see that you have a very interesting stack of products. We will be building a community and courses. I have been looking through documentation but I cannot find answers to the following questions:
Is it possible to run live video through fluent community to members?
Secondly, it is imperative that users get feedback on their work and I cannot see anything about audio facilities.
Thank you. Samantha.
Welcome to the community @samanthafarrance. Now regarding your questions:
- You can run Live Video hosting via the Video Embeding -> Custom HTML. So you have to run the Live Video somewhere like Youtube or other live platforms. WordPress / PHP is not designed to run live video in the core.
- Audio: Audio support features will be available via our FluentPlayer integration. More here: https://fluentplayer.com/
- There isn’t a built-in live streaming feature in Fluent Community. However, you can easily embed virtually any live streaming or broadcasting service (for example, inside a pinned post).
- Regarding feedback on students’ work, it really depends on how you’re planning to assess them and the type of assignments you provide. In many cases, Fluent Forms is a great fit for collecting questionnaires, homework submissions, file uploads, and other types of student work, all while keeping everything within your own ecosystem.
The reporting section in Fluent Community is already quite promising, although it could still use some refinement. That said, the new Fluent Player looks like a great addition to the stack, especially because it can provide video engagement and watch-time reports, giving you much better insight into how your students consume your content.
Also as a cool idea, you may want to check AI realtime API services, to create an AI tutor or voice assistant (just like in Duolingo who uses this same approach), and put that on a landing with theme compatibility just for premium members. So as they can actually talk with a trained agent of your own. This has nothing to do with Fluent community. But I think it’s a cool and inexpensive idea for a multilingual online school.
It depends on your approach for sure (formal, gamification, personalized, etc)
Thank you both for your responses on this. I'm just in a chat with WPmanageninja pre-sales and they are telling me that we would have to use an external audio link or something. This to me seems like a crazy oversight. Even our very old WP community (I think used BB press or even just standard comments) allowed audio playback from uploaded user content. They just simply rendered an easy player. Circle.so does this and so does mighty networks that we are currently looking at. Even discord does it. Is it that it will never be a function or is it imminent? If so when? We want to go ahead with committing to the whole stack, but we certainly won't do if this functionality will never exist. Sorry to be blunt (it's the German in me!) but if we can't get a solid answer on this then the developer would be walking away from money on the table and our long-term commitment.
Samantha Farrance no they aren't exploring this audio feature idea. They do the bare minimum for fluent community and develop other products (like fluentCRM, player, cart) because they want to make more money through pro licences. You'll feel very frustrated with fluent community because it seriously lacks all the features that are elsewhere on the market and the devs don't take any suggestion and don't show their roadmap. I hang in here because I've invested the money (sunken cost fallacy!) but I am not happy with this product and I don't know of any community made with this product that is remotely successful
Anne-Sophie W can you respond on this Shahjahan Jewel ?
Sales are telling me that it's not in the pipeline. We would need community,crm, forms, support, fluentcart and probably Fluentbooking - so that is 6 products. Is there a bulk deal? I really need a DEFINITIVE answer please
Samantha Farrance no bulk deal. Their point is to make as much money as they can
Anne-Sophie W I really hope this is not true Shahjahan Jewel
Samantha Farrance I didn’t mean it in such a bad way. They are a legit dev team comprised of sub teams; one per product. Their lifetime prices aren’t so steep, but they won’t offer bundles because they are still in early development (sorta). Maybe some day but I doubt it.
My only complaint is that they don’t show a roadmap of what’s coming next and don’t seem to take our suggestions into consideration a lot. Now with that being said, Support is excellent and answer within several hours (sometimes less). Still. Absolutely legit and solid products. But they are quite limited in terms of personalization (looking at fluent community in particular) and that’s why several people in this community develop (paid or free) addons. You may not need all the pro versions of all their products like fluent form, CRM, cart etc. Although most of the new and exciting features concern the pro versions. Hope I could help
btw thanks Jorge de los Reyes but my question is about audio posted in the feed and not in lessons/courses
Samantha Farrance As the team mentioned, I think the only current option is using a custom URL together with the Preview feature.
You can upload audio files, and they'll be organized in the Documents section of a Space. However, clicking them will trigger an immediate download rather than playing them in a built-in preview.
So, unfortunately, that's not possible at the moment.
I'd recommend submitting a feature request (not for entirely new functionality, but as an enhancement to the existing file upload system). Since audio uploads are already supported, it would be great if audio files in the Documents section and the activity feed could have an inline player or preview, similar to the new Image Gallery preview feature that was released a couple of days ago.
If you suggest it that way, I think that it could be considered not as a new feature (I guess, more complex), but as an improvement. I am sure many users will also like to preview not only audio, but also any file.
Many plugins allow you to do this actually. So it's completely doable.
Also, you may want to consider creating your own file repository, with plugins like https://www.wpcloudplugins.com/modules/file-browser/.
You can use a shortcode on a landing page, show all the files of a Google Drive folder for example (your audios) and actually create a better experience than audios on a feed. This plugins allows you to make searches, and also allows something quite important: tracking of downloads, previews and so. Something that wil lbe too complex I guess for the FC core.
Jorge de los Reyes thank you. Shahjahan Jewel has just stated categorically that this feature will be available within one month: https://community.wpmanageninja.com/portal/space/fluent-player/post/adding-videos-from-the-fluent-player-s-m
Samantha Farrance Cool!
In any case, you may like to check the plugin I shared. I am aware many users use it for similar purposes. And honestly, I bought a license a couple of years ago and it is really cool in tandem with community for file sharing in an organized and tracked way.
Hope it helps.
That being said, if there is a native option, I'm always on that side :)
I asked about this back in Feb so this is excellent news!