Super Simple Social/Community Functionality for Website

July 22, 2019 6:30 PM

I'm looking for suggestions / how to build for a website with only one social feature.

I'm looking to start an 'events' website for a community. I want the site to be super simple (metafilter simple!) where mostly it's just once a week posts of community events. I do think one social feature would be useful to this community - the ability for users to post if they will be attending a specific event, and maybe a profile pic, so other community members can recognize them at the event. Beyond that, I want the social functions to occur in the real world, not on the site. What's the easiest, best way to incorporate this in a website? I know I can use Buddypress (WordPress) but from the things I'm seeing that seems like overkill for what I want to accomplish. But still, is that going to be the easiest way to do this thing? Also, I'm not on Facebook, and don't want to do this with Facebook, although I would consider almost any other social platform that might have this functionality. Finally, to be clear, I'm not sponsoring the events myself, just aggregating them for likeminded people who want a list of events for their community.

posted by extrabox to Computers & Internet (5 answers total)

Unfortunately, registered user profiles with photos, a calendar, and the ability for users to post whether they're attending an event is pretty sophisticated stuff, and BuddyPress is probably the best tool. You could put together your own system with a bunch of different plugins, but the big advantage of using BuddyPress is that there's a big community of users who can provide support.

Double unfortunately, this is the kind of thing that FaceBook does really well.
posted by jonathanhughes at 7:13 PM on July 22, 2019 [2 favorites]

Do you know about Meetup.com? It's used for exactly what your describe: coordinating real world events. In fact the home page right now has a header saying that "The real world is calling."
posted by Nonsteroidal Anti-Inflammatory Drug at 7:55 PM on July 22, 2019

Response by poster: Thanks for answers so far. I do know Meetup, but just want to emphasize I'm just aggregating diverse public events, run by people I'm not associated with, that would all appeal to the community my site/email list is for. So I don't run the events, and don't want to run events at this time (maybe in the future), I just want people who already go to this kind of event (talks/shows) to know about some they might have missed, and if different people who subscribe to my newsletter see they're going to the same event, encourage them to say hi in real life at the event. I suppose there's even offline ways of encouraging my two primary goals 1. making people aware of events 2. encouraging interaction if two members of the community attend the same event. (i.e. a logo button or logo nametag you get if you join the mailing list) and I'm open to those suggestions too.
posted by extrabox at 8:18 PM on July 22, 2019

I’m part of a local parents Meetup group, and it is more than 50% people posting public events.. They do have to enter the info, but that’s going to be true of any platform (except perhaps FB since many events have official FB announcements).

Good thing about Meetup is that it’s pretty well-known and some people will already have accounts.

Just a calendar I think won’t meet your criteria 2 unless everyone already knows each other.
posted by Kriesa at 3:46 AM on July 23, 2019

Response by poster: Thank you @Kriesa, I didn't know that, what I knew of Meetup was organizers posting their own events.
posted by extrabox at 1:05 PM on July 23, 2019