A coding bootcamp is a calendar with a community attached. A group of people starts on the same Monday, works through the same weeks, asks the same questions in the same order, and finishes with something they can show an employer. The website has to follow that rhythm. A generic forum plus a pile of course pages does not.
This guide is for a bootcamp or cohort-based coding school that wants to run its own site on WordPress. The stack is Learnomy for the curriculum, cohorts and assignments, Jetonomy for code help, and BuddyNext for profiles and project showcases. Reign is built to work with BuddyNext and every Wbcom plugin, so the whole site shares one design. Each plugin has a free version from the Wbcom store, and anything that needs Pro is labelled below.
This is not a study-group setup. If you run an informal learning group around notebooks and peer review, the data science study group guide covers that. Here the focus is the paid cohort: intake, weekly pacing, mentors, and a demo day.
Start from the calendar, not the plugin list
Before you install anything, write down what happens in a cohort and who needs what at each point. The plugins then slot into a plan instead of dictating one.
| Stage | What students need | What you need | Where it lives |
|---|---|---|---|
| Before day one | Pay, get access, meet the cohort | Seat limit, coupon codes, a roster | Learnomy checkout and cohort, a BuddyNext space |
| Weeks 1 to 8 | Lessons that unlock on schedule, a place to ask for help | Assignment grading, sight of who is falling behind | Learnomy lessons and assignments, Jetonomy Q&A |
| Demo day | A page that shows their project, a way to be seen | A showcase you can point visitors to | BuddyNext profiles, a pinned announcement |
| After graduation | A certificate, a reason to stay | An alumni room that keeps the cohort alive | Learnomy certificate, BuddyNext spaces |
Keep this table somewhere visible while you build. Each section below fills in one row.
Selling a seat and enrolling a cohort
Learnomy free takes payment on its own. It includes Stripe and PayPal checkout with no WooCommerce needed, membership plans and coupons, so an early-bird discount code or a monthly instalment plan does not need Pro. Membership plans can bill monthly or yearly and can carry a free trial, but the Membership module ships switched off, so turn it on under LMS Settings, then Modules, before the Memberships menu appears.
If a company pays for a group of its staff, you do not need checkout at all. A course set to invite-only has no price, no buy button and no self-enrolment. You add the students yourself, one at a time or from a CSV list, and Learnomy creates accounts for any email address it has not seen before.
What cohorts add (Pro)
A cohort is a scheduled batch of a single course. In Learnomy Pro each cohort has:
- a name, such as the intake month
- one course it belongs to
- a start date and an end date
- a seat cap, which defaults to 30
- a status: Draft, Open, In progress, Completed or Archived
Pro extensions ship switched off, so enable Cohorts under LMS Settings, then Modules, first. Students added to a cohort are enrolled in the course automatically. Statuses are changed by hand rather than by the calendar, so you decide when an intake closes.
Two behaviours matter for a paid bootcamp. First, when a student buys the course, Learnomy places them in the course’s open cohort automatically. If you have more than one open cohort they choose one from their account. Second, automatic placement never goes past the seat cap: a buyer who arrives when the cohort is full keeps their access and can join a later cohort. That means a late payment never turns into an awkward refund conversation about a full room.
An instructor can be named on a cohort. That person runs it, sees every member’s progress and can add and remove members, even if someone else owns the course. They cannot delete the cohort or move it to another course, which stays with the course owner and administrators.
If you are on the free plan, the workable pattern is one course per intake, with the intake name in the title. You lose the shared roster and the progress view, but the content and checkout work the same way.
A week of lessons that unlock on schedule
Bootcamps lose people when week three opens before week two is finished. Pacing is the fix.
Every Learnomy lesson has an Available date in the free plugin, so a fixed unlock date works without Pro. Pro adds two more release rules: a countdown that starts when each student enrols, and unlocking after a prerequisite lesson. For a cohort that starts together, use the fixed-date rule, because everyone moves at the same speed regardless of when they paid. The same Pro screen shows the whole schedule in one table, so you can read your eight weeks at a glance.
Pick the lesson type that matches the activity:
| Activity | Lesson type | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Recorded walkthrough | Video or Embed | Paste a YouTube or Vimeo address; it plays in a responsive frame |
| Live lecture | Live | Holds a Zoom, Meet or Teams link, a start time and a duration; the join button stays available for that long |
| Reading and exercises | Text | The default |
| Cheat sheet | PDF or Download | Uploaded files are served only to people entitled to the lesson |
One trap on live lessons: do not put the session time in the Available date field. That field controls when the lesson unlocks, so setting it hides the lesson and its countdown from students. Leave it blank and use the Starts at field.
Assignments and grading (Pro)
Free Learnomy grades most quiz questions automatically and sends essay questions to a human reviewer, which is enough for knowledge checks. Project work needs assignments, which are Pro.
An assignment attaches to one lesson and has a maximum score and an optional due date, read in your site’s time zone. Students submit text, files, or a link. The link field is meant for work that lives elsewhere, and the docs give a hosted screen recording or a Google Doc as examples, so a repository or deployed-page address fits the same slot. You grade each submission with a numeric score and feedback. You can also add a rubric of weighted criteria such as “readable code” or “tests included”, and Learnomy works out the score from them. If a submission is not good enough, ask for a resubmission, which reopens the form even if the deadline has passed.
The weighted gradebook, also Pro, combines quiz and assignment results and can export to CSV.
Spotting the student who has gone quiet
On the instructor dashboard, a cohort has a progress view with an At risk badge and an At-risk only filter. A member is flagged when they have done nothing in the course for more than ten days, or when their progress is more than 25 points behind the cohort’s schedule. Use that list for the weekly check-in message rather than waiting for a student to say they are lost.
Code help that does not drown the instructors
Bootcamp instructors answer the same question many times a week. Jetonomy turns the answer into something the next cohort can find.
Create a Q&A space. Every post is a question, replies are answers, and the person who asked marks one reply as accepted. The accepted answer shows an Accepted tag, the topic gets an Answered badge, and the answer’s author earns reputation. A space moderator or admin can also accept an answer. The Unanswered filter on the space listing gives your mentors a queue of what still needs a reply.
The composer has a code block button and an inline code button. Students should use the code block for anything longer than a line, because it keeps indentation and scrolls instead of wrapping. The editor does not convert typed backticks, so tell students to click the button. Pasting a stack trace into a plain paragraph is the quickest way to make an answer unreadable.
Separate the rooms by who needs to see what
A bootcamp has at least three audiences, and they should not all see the same thing.
| Audience | Needs | Setup |
|---|---|---|
| Applicants | A look at the culture before paying | A public space with Open join, read-only for visitors |
| Current cohort | Private help, no judgement from strangers | A private space, or a BuddyNext private space linked to the cohort |
| Alumni | Mentoring, job leads, staying in touch | A space with approval-based joining |
Both plugins have free privacy controls. Jetonomy spaces can be public, private or hidden, with open, approval or invite-only joining, and a private space is always approval-based or invite-only. BuddyNext spaces can be Open, Private or Secret.
Learnomy can also drive membership automatically. In BuddyNext Pro, switching on the Community control on a course or a cohort creates a private BuddyNext space for it, and members are added and removed as their enrolment starts and ends. A cohort reaching its end date does not remove anyone, which suits the alumni habit of staying in the room. In Jetonomy Pro, an adapter grants access to a space based on a Learnomy course or membership plan.
Let students ask without an audience
Jetonomy has private topics in every space, with no setting to turn on. A student ticks a checkbox and only they and the moderators can read the post. Use this for questions that reveal an API key, a repository still being worked on, or a worry about a grade. Private topics are not a replacement for private messaging; one-to-one chat is a Jetonomy Pro feature, and BuddyNext direct messages run through WPMediaVerse.
Prefixes also help. A space owner can set coloured labels such as Bug, Question or Solved so mentors can filter at a glance.
Project showcases that a hiring manager can open
A showcase is a profile, not a gallery page that gets forgotten after demo day. BuddyNext profiles can carry the work.
Build a field group called Projects and make it a repeating section, so one student can add several entries. Each entry can use these free field types:
- a short text field for the project name
- a URL field for the repository
- a second URL field for the live demo
- a multi-select for the stack
- a long text field for the description
Set the group and fields to Public if you want outsiders to see them. Tick Include in search on the text and choice fields, so typing a framework name into member search finds the students who used it. Searchable fields only match for the audience that can see them, so a Members only field will not appear for a logged-out visitor. Repeating sections display on the About tab as entry cards.
Learnomy adds a credential layer in BuddyNext Pro. Completed courses appear as Certifications on the profile and a completion posts a milestone to the feed, with the certificate linking to a public verification page. Screenshots in a profile Media tab need WPMediaVerse active.
Running demo day
BuddyNext has the tools for the event itself. An admin announcement pins to the top of every member’s feed until dismissed, which is the right place for the schedule. Members can start polls for a people’s choice vote. Hashtags give each demo day its own feed, so a post tagged with the day collects every project in one place. Free BuddyNext lets a profile pin one post, so students can pin their demo day post, and Pro allows several.
If you want the event itself on the calendar with RSVPs, Eventonomy handles that and is covered in the other guides in this series.
Certificates: what they prove
Learnomy issues certificates automatically when a student completes a course. Each carries a unique ID, a digital signature and a public verification address, and students can share them to LinkedIn. You choose the completion rule per course: every lesson, every lesson plus a passing final quiz, a percentage of the content, or manual completion where only an instructor marks the student done. For a bootcamp, manual completion tied to a passed demo day is a reasonable choice.
Be precise about what the certificate says. It confirms that someone completed your course. It does not certify job readiness, and it is not an accreditation. Word the certificate and your marketing to match.
What needs Pro and what stays free
| Need | Free | Pro |
|---|---|---|
| Course checkout, coupons, membership plans | Learnomy | |
| Invite-only courses and list enrolment | Learnomy | |
| Cohorts, drip rules, assignments, gradebook | Learnomy Pro | |
| Live lesson links, quizzes, certificates | Learnomy | |
| Q&A with accepted answers, code blocks, private topics | Jetonomy | |
| One-to-one messaging inside the forum, file attachments | Jetonomy Pro | |
| Profiles, repeating project fields, spaces, polls | BuddyNext | |
| Course and certificate cards in BuddyNext, plan-gated spaces | BuddyNext Pro |
The free versus Pro page lists every product the same way, and the plugins overview shows the whole range.
Before the first cohort starts
- Write your community guidelines, using the guidelines template as a starting point.
- Create the course and the lessons, with fixed release dates for week one only.
- Create the cohort and set it to Open, then test a purchase with a coupon.
- Create the Q&A space and a private cohort space, and post three example questions so the first real student sees what good looks like.
- Build the Projects field group and fill one in yourself.
- Invite your mentors as space moderators.
- Read the cohort programme guide for the pacing and drop-off questions that sit outside software.
If your project is a developer community rather than a school, the developer community guide covers announcements, snippets and contributor recognition, which a bootcamp needs less of.
Frequently asked questions
Do I need the Pro versions to run a bootcamp?
You can start without them. Free Learnomy sells the course, issues certificates and runs quizzes, and free Jetonomy and BuddyNext cover help and profiles. You need Learnomy Pro for cohorts, drip rules and assignments, which are the features that make a bootcamp feel like one.
Can students submit code for grading?
With Learnomy Pro assignments, students submit text, uploaded files or a link, and you grade with a score and feedback or a weighted rubric. Learnomy does not run or test the code. Grading is done by a person reading the submission.
Will the forum highlight code properly?
The Jetonomy composer has inline code and code block buttons that keep spacing and line breaks. The docs do not describe syntax colouring, so do not promise it to students.
Can I keep each cohort in a separate room?
Yes. Use a private space for each intake. With BuddyNext Pro, Learnomy can create and fill a private space for a cohort automatically. Without Pro, a space owner approves join requests by hand.
What happens to a cohort when it ends?
Status changes are manual, so you set it to Completed or Archived yourself. Ending a cohort does not remove its members from a linked BuddyNext space, so alumni can stay.
Do students need to be logged in to see the showcase?
Only if you choose that. Profile fields and groups have their own visibility, from Public to Only me. Set the project fields to Public to let employers see them without an account.