A dance studio has a natural end point that most online businesses would envy: the recital. Everything students do all term points at one evening on a stage. That gives you a shape for the website. It does not need to try to be everything. It needs to help students rehearse between classes, keep them practising in the weeks when nothing seems to be happening, and fill the seats on the night.
This guide is for a studio that teaches in person and wants an online home for it. The stack is Learnomy for class videos, WB Gamification for practice streaks, and Eventonomy for the recital and other events. Reign is built to work with BuddyNext and every Wbcom plugin, so the whole site shares one design. Learnomy and Eventonomy each have a free version from the Wbcom store, and anything that needs Pro is labelled. WB Gamification has no paid plan.
Work backwards from the recital
Before you build, put the year on one page. Online features should earn their place by supporting a stage in the term.
Think of it as a countdown:
- Start of term. Courses are ready, one per class, with the first lesson open so nobody arrives to an empty page.
- Learning the piece. Lessons release week by week, each a short video segment.
- Mid-term slump. A streak and a weekly challenge give students a reason to open the site on an ordinary Tuesday.
- Two weeks out. The recital event goes live with dates, times and a running order.
- Show week. One email to everyone who has reserved tells them what changed.
- After the show. A replay lesson and a thank-you post keep the memory alive.
Class videos that students can find again
The commonest request from students is simple: “Can I see that combination again?” A Learnomy course answers it.
Choose a structure
Make one course for each class, or one for each piece being taught. Use sections for weeks or for parts of a routine, and a lesson for each short segment. Short segments beat one long recording, because a student can loop the eight counts they are stuck on without scrubbing through a full hour.
Each lesson can hold a different kind of material. Paste a YouTube or Vimeo address into an Embed lesson, or upload a file to your own site. Files on your site are served only to students who are entitled to the lesson, and the direct address stops working for anyone else. If your videos are already managed in MediaShield, Learnomy’s docs describe a protected player that you can use for them. Check that plugin’s own documentation for what each plan includes before you promise anything to families.
Add a text lesson beside the video for the counts, the music title and a note on what to focus on. An audio lesson works for a track a student wants to practise to without a screen.
Music is a legal matter as well as a practical one. Using a track in a video, or sharing it in a lesson, may need permission. Ask a qualified adviser before you publish anything built on someone else’s recording.
Control who gets in
You have several routes, and the right one depends on how the studio already sells classes.
| Route | Best for | Learnomy plan |
|---|---|---|
| Invite-only course | Students already enrolled in person; you add them by email or from a CSV list | Free |
| Membership plan | An “online pass” billed monthly or yearly that includes several classes | Free |
| One-time price | A single workshop or masterclass | Free |
| Preview lesson | Letting a visitor sample before they join | Free |
An invite-only course has no price, no buy button and no self-enrolment, which makes it a clean fit for students whose fees are already paid at the studio. Coupons give a returning-student discount on a membership, and the membership module needs to be switched on under LMS Settings before the menu appears.
Release the choreography in order
Free Learnomy lets you set an Available date on each lesson, so the first lessons open at the start of term and the next ones a week later. Learnomy Pro adds a countdown that starts at each student’s own enrolment, for a self-paced class. These Pro modules ship switched off, so enable them under LMS Settings first. A lesson marked as a preview stays open to visitors who are not enrolled.
Practice streaks that mean something
A video library does not make students dance. Habit does, and habit is what WB Gamification is for. It watches what members do on the site and awards points, streaks and badges for it. For the Learnomy actions, no wiring is needed: the plugin detects them on its own.
What counts as practice
Be honest with yourself about what a website can know. It can tell that a student finished a lesson. It cannot tell that they danced. So decide which on-site action stands in for practice.
| Practice signal | What the site records | What it cannot know |
|---|---|---|
| Completing a lesson | The student marked the lesson done | Whether they moved at all |
| Passing a short quiz on the combination | A graded result | How well they performed it |
| A submitted practice claim | A short note, optionally with a photo, which you approve | Whether the claim is true |
A lesson completion earns 10 points by default, with a short cooldown so a student cannot click through every lesson in seconds. Quizzes earn more when passed. The third route is the Submit Achievement block. A student writes what they practised, can attach a photo, and the submission waits in a queue until you approve it. Approved claims earn points like any other action, and a student can submit up to five a day by default. It costs you review time but suits a small studio that knows its students.
How streaks behave
A streak counts consecutive days on which a student earned at least one point. Several rules matter for a studio.
- A one-day grace period is on by default, so one missed day does not break the streak. You can set it between zero and three days.
- Milestones at 7, 14, 30, 60, 100, 180 and 365 days award bonus points that you can adjust.
- Streaks use each member’s own time zone, falling back to the site’s.
- A Streak block can show the current count, the longest streak and an optional 90-day heatmap, which looks like a practice calendar.
The streak counts any point-earning action, so it will count a forum reply as well as a lesson. To make it mean practice, switch off the actions you do not want on the Points screen, since a disabled action earns nothing. The docs also suggest disabling the daily login bonus if you want one unified streak. Test it on a spare account before opening to students.
Levels, badges and challenges
WB Gamification starts with five levels and lets you rename them and move the thresholds. Points levels measure activity, so name them accordingly: Warm-up, Rehearsal, Show night and Encore work better than anything that sounds like skill. Your teacher still decides who moves up a class.
Badges can be awarded at a points milestone, or after an action has been done a set number of times, such as ten lessons. Challenges set a target within a period, for example five lesson completions this week, with a bonus when finished. A challenge with a start and end date suits “recital countdown”, and it closes by itself.
Be careful with rankings
Leaderboards are optional, and each member can opt out. If you teach children, think hard before ranking them against each other. Streaks and personal bests compare a student with their own past, which is gentler. WB Gamification also offers weekly cohort leagues, which group members of similar activity so nobody competes with a much more active dancer.
Peer kudos let students thank one another. Both giver and receiver earn a few points, with more for the receiver. That is a kind way to build a culture, and it needs no ranking.
The recital as an Eventonomy event
Eventonomy treats a recital as an event with a venue, a date, a capacity and a way to register. Most of what a recital needs is in the free plugin.
Build the event page
Create the event with its venue from the shared venue catalog, so you can reuse the theatre next year. Add a description, a cover image and the date. Then use the Agenda panel to build the running order. Each session has a title, start and end time, an optional speaker name as plain text, a day number for a multi-day event and a short description. Enter each class’s number as a session, and the event page shows a timeline. For a two-night recital, sessions group under a heading for each day. The speaker field is a name, so use it for the class or the teacher.
Reservations, families and the waitlist
Families reserve seats with a registration. Attendees can add additional guests when they register, each of whom counts toward capacity, and you set the maximum number per registration under Settings, then Registration. Set the event capacity to the number of seats you have. Turn on Waitlist when full so that cancellations are filled in order, and Show remaining spots so families see the seats going.
Add custom questions to the registration. A question such as “How many wheelchair spaces do you need?” lets you plan seating before the day.
For free recitals this is everything you need. Free Eventonomy also includes reminders one day and one hour before, and an Add to calendar link for Google, Outlook or Apple calendars.
Show week messages
You can email everyone who is Going from the attendee screen, free of charge, with a subject up to 200 characters and a message up to 5,000. Use it for parking, doors opening times and changes to the running order. Guests who registered without an account are included. A limit of five blasts an hour per event stops accidental repeats.
Selling tickets (Pro)
If the recital is a ticketed fundraiser, Eventonomy Pro adds paid tickets, Stripe, PayPal and WooCommerce checkout, early-bird pricing, coupons, refunds and QR code check-in at the door. An event can carry several ticket types, such as an adult ticket and a child ticket, each with its own price and quantity. Free tickets and pledge-only donation tickets work without Pro, but paid checkout does not. The event ticketing guide goes through the setup in detail.
Relatives far away
Give grandparents abroad a way to watch. An event can have a venue and an online meeting address together, and each registrant gets a personal join link instead of the address being shown on the page. Test the stream with a friend before show night, and decide in advance who is responsible for the camera.
Photos, video and young performers
A recital produces pictures and recordings, and many dancers are children. This is where a careful studio slows down.
This is not legal advice, because the rules differ by country and region. As general practice:
- Get written permission before posting an identifiable photo or video of any performer, and for under-age dancers get it from a parent or guardian.
- Default to members-only visibility, and show first names or none.
- Decide who holds the accounts for young dancers before launch, and take advice on the rules for children’s data where you operate.
- Give anyone a simple way to ask for a picture to come down, and act on it quickly.
No plugin makes a site compliant. The documentation for each describes its own privacy tools, but your policies and your adviser are responsible for the rest. For ideas on structuring the rules for a community, the community guidelines template is a starting point.
Where families and students talk
Learnomy and Eventonomy handle teaching and events. For conversation, add BuddyNext, the recommended engine for a new community. Make one space for each class, private so a teacher approves joiners, and use announcements for changes that every member must see. Showing Eventonomy events and Learnomy course completions inside BuddyNext needs BuddyNext Pro. If you would like another example of a creative community with performance at its heart, the music community guide takes a different angle.
Free or Pro, task by task
| What you want | Plugin | Plan |
|---|---|---|
| Class video lessons, invite-only courses, memberships | Learnomy | Free |
| Lessons that release by countdown from enrolment | Learnomy Pro | Pro |
| Points, streaks, badges, levels, challenges, leagues | WB Gamification | Free, no Pro plan |
| Recital page, venue, running order, RSVPs, waitlist | Eventonomy | Free |
| Paid tickets, QR check-in, specific weekday repeats | Eventonomy Pro | Pro |
| Class spaces and feed | BuddyNext | Free |
| Events and courses shown inside BuddyNext | BuddyNext Pro | Pro |
The free versus Pro page shows every product in the same way.
A term checklist
- Decide what counts as practice and which actions to switch off in WB Gamification.
- Film the first piece in short segments and publish them as lessons.
- Add your current students to the invite-only course.
- Create the recital event with its running order, even as a draft.
- Write your photo and video policy and share it with families.
- Open registration, then check the waitlist and reminders on a test account.
Frequently asked questions
Can I keep class videos private?
Yes. Files you upload to your own site are served only to entitled students. Videos you embed from another service are protected only by that service’s own settings, so choose accordingly.
Do I need Pro to run a recital?
Not for a free one. Venue, running order, capacity, guests, waitlist, reminders and attendee emails are free. Paid tickets and QR check-in at the door are Eventonomy Pro.
Can a streak track real practice?
It tracks actions on the site, such as completing a lesson or an approved practice claim. It cannot confirm that someone actually danced.
Is WB Gamification paid?
No. It has no paid plan, and every mechanic ships free.
Can adults and children share the site?
It is possible, but decide how accounts, visibility and consent work for children first, and take advice on the rules where you operate.
Can I run an end-of-term showcase online?
Yes. Use an event with a meeting address, and give registrants their personal join link. A replay can go into the class course as an Embed lesson afterwards.