FluentCommunity review

FluentCommunity is a WordPress plugin that provides a platform to create social networks and even remote learning environments —all within WordPress itself. Until now, BuddyBoss was the most recognized plugin for building such spaces, but it’s time for it to face a new, heavyweight lightweight competitor. In this article, we’ll explore why FluentCommunity stands out as an excellent choice.

What is FluentCommunity?

FluentCommunity is another WordPress plugin developed by the creators of renowned tools like FluentBoards, FluentForms, FluentCRM, and FluentBooking. As a result, it integrates seamlessly with these tools if you’re already using them. For example, with FluentCRM—the email marketing manager—you can create a mailing list of FluentCommunity members with just one click.

This plugin allows you to build online communities and manage courses efficiently without compromising your site’s performance. FluentCommunity incorporates typical social networking tools (with a rather Facebook-ish touch) and a Learning Management System (LMS). This dual functionality facilitates member interaction, idea exchange, and course administration—all within one platform.

Features

• User Profiles: Like with any social network, members can customize their profiles, displaying personal information, interests, and activities.
• Unlimited Groups: There are no limits to the number of “spaces” you can create.
• Discussion Threads: Users can start and join discussions on various topics.
• Support for Mentions, Hashtags, and Polls.
• Private Messaging: Members can communicate through private messages.
• Real-Time Chat: A built-in chatroom for live interactions.
• Content Sharing: Share posts, photos, videos, and documents.
• Notifications: Alerts keep users informed about new activities or messages.
• Directories: Easy navigation through member, community, and course directories.
• Engagement Tools: Features like leaderboards, reactions, GIFs, and emojis enhance user interaction.
• Light/Dark Mode: Users can toggle between display modes to suit their preferences.

Installation & Setup

After downloading the .zip file, navigate to the Plugins section of your WordPress dashboard to install it. Once activated, you’ll be prompted to install the “Core Plugin,” followed by creating your first community.

Once this step is done, the next thing we will see is the community creation screen. There we will decide a name for our project/community, and we will also choose the path where the space will be created.

Yes!, we can choose a template to speed up our project, which could prove a very convenient alternative. Now we will talk about the benefits and characteristics of each one of them.

1. Basic: A minimalist template ideal for getting started quickly with standard features like forums and blogs.
2. Course: Tailored for online learning, with tools to create lessons, modules, and private areas for students.
3. Product: Perfect for promoting and supporting physical products, featuring spaces for reviews, discussions, and feedback.
4. Blank: A fully customizable option for experienced developers looking to build a community from scratch.

For our example, we’ll use the Course template to demonstrate how FluentCommunity can facilitate narrative literature courses.

Basic

This is a minimalist template designed to get started right away with the basics and essentials. Basic offers typical sections like forums, blog posts, and also a homepage with simple architecture.

This FluentCommunity template is recommended for those who want to start a project without being overwhelmed by customization options. In other words, it’s easy to set up and is an excellent choice for generic communities or projects in their early stages of development.

The Basic template is ideal for modest communities and projects whose scope may not yet be fully defined.

Course

As its name suggests, the Course template was designed to create online learning courses. For this reason, Course includes tools for creating and managing educational content. It’s undoubtedly the ideal option for lessons, creating content modules, and conducting remote classes.

Course integrates systems for student assessments and progress tracking. It also comes with features such as forums for course Q&A, private areas for students, and exclusive modules for specific learners.

This template is perfect for virtual academies, empowering instructors and teachers by combining education with robust community tools.

Product

The Product template for FluentCommunity focuses on the seamless promotion and support of physical products. It includes spaces for reviews, technical discussions, and user feedback.

The design here was conceived to strengthen and foster interaction between users and manufacturers, artisans, and all kinds of physical product creators. Therefore, it includes tools for creating surveys, polls, and feedback management.

Product is the template to choose for businesses and companies interested in building communities around their products. It’s the ideal option for SaaS companies (cloud technology solutions), tech or software user communities, and brands seeking to build loyalty by fostering interaction around their products.

Blank

This is a blank slate —a canvas for those who want full control over every choice in building and designing their community.

It’s a 100% customizable template that doesn’t impose any restrictions on its preset design. With it, you can build from the ground up and pursue a specific content design direction. Naturally, you can integrate any functionality from the templates mentioned above, but this template demands a bit more effort.

For this reason, it’s recommended for developers with experience in website creation and/or projects seeking their own unique shine, a more exclusive identity, or special requirements.

For our example, we’ll use the Course template to demonstrate how FluentCommunity can facilitate narrative literature courses.

As we can see, we can change the default settings that allow anyone to access the portal, configure our contact email for alerts, and also use email sending via SMTP with FluentSMTP (recommended).

Once the settings are saved, the Configuration Panel will appear, offering six options in the form of large buttons: portal settings, customization (aesthetics), advanced settings, course management, access to FluentCommunity documentation (recommended), and finally, the ability to change the URL of the portal we’ve created.

Within the Portal Settings we will find all the relevant options to give shape, personality and functionalities to our community.

The sections are divided according to a right options menu that groups configurations according to their area of incidence.

In the first option, General, we find the most basic options (e.g. adding a logo, changing the community name and customizing the login page).

Under Customizations we are (again) offered to make aesthetic changes (e.g. activate the Dark Mode).

In Managers we can create additional managers and manage the already appointed ones (when we enter the first time, the list will be empty but we will see the +Add Manager button to create members).

Email Settings allows us to configure the sender name, email and footer of emails (these settings will be used to send emails from FluentCommunity).

Features & Addons allows us to add functionalities in the form of modules; for example, Leaderboards, Badges, Courses with structured lessons, animated Gifs via Giphy, Emojis and Media location settings.

In Manage Topics we will configure the various content categories, which will allow members to filter messages with the topic navigation bar in the Spaces.

Space Groups is the place to organize the Spaces in groups to facilitate the management and structuring of our communities.

In Menu Settings we will be able to customize our navigation menus, both the sidebar and the top menus. Here we can activate, deactivate or reorganize all the menu items according to the needs of our community.

Privacy Settings is the area where we can activate or deactivate different access permissions for Spaces and specific pages depending on the users.

Finally, Manage Courses is where we will create courses and modules for our community members.

Why FluentCommunity could be the best alternative for building communities?

To start, FluentCommunity’s code is highly optimized. This doesn’t just preserves our original site performance: it powers a portal that operates at lightning speed. In comparison, BuddyBoss feels bloated and sluggish..

With FluentCommunity, everything flows with exceptional smoothness, and the numbers back it up. The file sizes tell a compelling story: at the time of writing, the ZIP file for FluentCommunity’s main plugin is just a couple of megabytes, while the Pro add-on weighs in at a slim 2.96 MB. Contrast this with BuddyBoss, which clocks in at 15.5 MB for its main plugin, an additional 7.1 MB for the Pro add-on, and yet another 13.5 MB for its mandatory theme.

But performance it’s not just about size: FluentCommunity stands out for its flexibility. Unlike BuddyBoss, it doesn’t rely on a dedicated theme to function. While BuddyBoss technically supports other themes, without its official one, the platform feels incomplete and lacks polish. FluentCommunity, in contrast, is free from these constraints, empowering you to focus on what truly matters: creating a vibrant, powerful community without unnecessary hurdles.

FluentCommunity also avoids trying to “do it all.” For the vast majority of site administrators, its features are more than sufficient. Built from the ground up to be lightweight, it operates efficiently without requiring a dedicated server or exceeding standard hosting resources.

In essence, FluentCommunity is a lean, reliable solution tailored for those who value performance, simplicity, and flexibility in community-building tools.

In Conclusion

FluentCommunity represents a challenge to BuddyBoss, the current market leader, urging it to rethink several aspects of its approach.

With its ultra-lightweight coding, FluentCommunity ensures that installation won’t slow down your site. It also provides all the necessary tools to address the typical needs of building communities on WordPress.

It’s clear that the developers are committed to further improving this plugin, which is still relatively new to the market. If we look at the consistent updates and enhancements seen in other plugins from the “Fluent” suite, it’s easy to foresee FluentCommunity quickly positioning itself as the #1 choice in its category.

Thank you for reading! We invite you to share your thoughts in the comments section below. Wishing you all success in your projects!