An online yoga studio is a timetable with a library behind it. Students look at the week, pick a class, show up live when they can, and watch the replay when they cannot. Beginners need somewhere to start that is not a random class from the middle of the week. Everything else, including the community, supports those three things.
This guide builds that studio on WordPress with Eventonomy for the weekly schedule, Learnomy for replays and beginner programs, and BuddyNext for a student community. Free and Pro scope is labelled throughout.
One boundary applies to the whole site. This is a setup guide, not instruction or health advice. Your teachers are responsible for what they teach, and students should consult a qualified professional about injuries, health conditions or anything that worries them before taking part in a class. Put that statement where students will see it, and have it reviewed by someone qualified where you operate.
Make the timetable the front page
Students come back to a studio site mostly to see what is on. Eventonomy’s events archive can be that page. It has four views in the free plugin: Grid, List, Month and Upcoming. Upcoming groups classes under headings such as Today, Tomorrow and This week, which suits a studio well. You choose which views are enabled and which one opens by default, under Settings, Appearance, Event views.
| View | What it does | Plan |
|---|---|---|
| Upcoming | Date-grouped agenda: Today, Tomorrow, This week | Free |
| List | Compact rows, quick to scan | Free |
| Month | Calendar grid | Free |
| Grid | Cards with cover images | Free |
| Week and Day | Hour-grid calendars, with a tab in the view switcher | Pro |
If you run many classes a day, Week is the natural view and it needs Pro. On the free plugin, Upcoming does most of the job.
Teachers, rooms and styles
Eventonomy keeps a shared catalog of venues and organizers. Create each teacher as an organizer, and each online room or physical space as a venue, and reuse them across events. Use event categories for style or level, such as a gentle class or an all-levels class, so students can filter. Visitors can browse all events from one organizer.
For an online class, tick Virtual on the event and add the meeting address. Each registered student gets a personal join link on the event page and in their reminder email. The link stops working if they cancel, and people who have not registered never see the meeting address. The Join button appears from one hour before the start until the event ends. Your video tool (Zoom, Meet or similar) still hosts the class; Eventonomy just controls who gets the link.
Set the weekly pattern
For a class that happens at the same time every week, create the event and set Repeats to Weekly with an interval of 1. Free recurrence covers Daily, Weekly and Monthly with an interval, so every week, or every two weeks. A weekly repeat follows the weekday of the start date. Choosing other weekdays is a Pro rule.
Two real-world needs go beyond that, and both are Pro:
- A single event that repeats on several weekdays, such as Monday and Thursday, with an end date or a set number of sessions.
- Skipping specific dates in the rule, such as a holiday week.
On the free plugin there is a workable way round each. Create one weekly event per class slot, so a Monday class and a Thursday class are two events. For a missed week, open the event editor, find Upcoming dates under Date and time, and use Cancel this date. A cancelled date leaves the calendar and the public page, and you can restore it later.
Editing a repeating event edits the whole series. If one session needs a different time or teacher, create a separate one-off event for it.
The recurring events guide covers time zones and daylight-saving changes in more depth. Eventonomy keeps the local time steady across daylight-saving changes, and each event has its own timezone field, which matters for students in other regions.
Write the event description for a student who has never been to the studio. Cover the logistics: how long the class runs, what style it is, who teaches it, how to get help if the link does not work, and whether cameras are expected on or off. Keep it practical. It should not carry claims about what a class will do for anyone’s body or health.
Sign-ups, capacity and reminders
Registration on an event has three modes: people register on your site, registration happens on another site, or no registration is needed. For a class with limited places, choose registration on your site, set a capacity, and turn on the waitlist. When someone cancels, the oldest person on the waitlist is promoted automatically. You can also cap the number of extra guests per registration and close registration a number of hours before the start.
Reminders go out one day and one hour before each date, and they carry the join link for online classes. An Add to calendar row offers Google, Outlook and .ics, and there is a subscribable calendar feed that you switch on in settings.
One honest limit. An RSVP covers the event, which for a repeating class means the series, not a single date. That fits a standing weekly place. If you want students to book individual classes one at a time, or to pay per class, read how class booking sites are set up, and check how it behaves against your own timetable before you promise anything. Paid tickets in Eventonomy are Pro.
Put replays in a members-only library
A class replay is a lesson. Learnomy gives you a place to keep them so they are findable and can be limited to people who have paid.
One shelf per way people look
Students rarely scroll chronologically. They look for a style, a length, or a level. Create a course for each shelf, for example a replay course per style, and add each recording as a lesson. Courses have categories and tags, plus difficulty and target-audience fields, and the catalog can be searched and sorted.
| Shelf | What goes on it |
|---|---|
| By style | One course per teaching style, new replays added as lessons |
| By length | Short classes for a busy day, longer ones for the weekend |
| By teacher | One course per teacher, for students who follow a person |
| Back catalog | Older classes, kept but out of the main view |
Adding a recording
Use the Video or Embed lesson type and paste the page address of the recording. Learnomy builds a responsive player from addresses WordPress already understands, such as YouTube and Vimeo. A video uploaded to your own site is a different case: files in your media library are gated automatically by the same rules as the lesson text. A link to a file or video on another host is left as it is and is not gated by Learnomy. If a replay must stay behind the paywall, upload it to your own site or use a protected player. If you run MediaShield, a video that is in your MediaShield library plays in its protected player, with its watermark and watch tracking, when you use the same address in a lesson.
Decide before you record whether student cameras and voices are part of the recording. Tell attendees at the start of each recorded class, and offer a way to attend without being recorded. Recording rules differ by place, so have your policy reviewed.
Who sees the library
Learnomy’s free plugin includes membership plans with monthly or yearly billing and an optional free trial, and checkout through Stripe and PayPal without WooCommerce. Create a plan that includes your replay courses, or a plan with a single course for the back catalog. Coupons are free too. Gift codes and team seats are Pro, as is subscription management such as pause and proration.
Give beginners a path of their own
A new student who joins in the middle of a schedule and lands in an advanced class will often not return. A beginner program fixes that, because it tells them where to start and what comes next.
Build it as a course in Learnomy:
- Create the course with the difficulty set to beginner and a short target-audience line.
- Add sections, each holding a few lessons, in the order you teach them.
- Add a first lesson that tells the student, in your words, to check with a qualified professional if they have any health concern before they begin, and that you cannot assess anyone’s individual situation.
- Choose a completion rule: all lessons completed, or a percentage of content.
- Add prerequisites so a follow-on program opens only after the starter course is complete.
The free plugin includes prerequisites, sections, a fixed release date on any lesson, and certificates. If you want each student’s program to start on their own enrolment day, and release a lesson a set number of days after they join, that is the drip feature in Learnomy Pro. Learning paths and cohorts, where a group moves through together, are also Pro, and a cohort suits a fixed-start program such as a set number of weeks. The guide to running a cohort programme covers that format.
Offer a live Q&A as part of the beginner program. Create it as a Live lesson in the course: it holds a join link, a start time and a run time, shows a countdown beforehand, and enables a Join now button only during the session. This keeps the session limited to enrolled students, which a public event does not.
A student community around the classes
A thin community works better than a sprawling one. With BuddyNext, create a few spaces that map to how students think about the studio:
| Space | Purpose |
|---|---|
| Start here | Questions from beginners; a teacher or moderator answers |
| This week | Announcements about the timetable, changes and cancellations |
| Replays | Students say what they watched and ask for more of something |
| Studio notices | Posts from the team only |
BuddyNext spaces can be Open, Private or Secret. A moderator or owner can post an announcement that pins to the top of a space feed, and setting Who can post to moderators and owner turns a space into a read-only channel for the team. Reports, content safeguards and a warning and suspension ladder are in the free plugin.
Two links need BuddyNext Pro: showing Eventonomy classes in the BuddyNext feed, search and notification bell, and linking a Learnomy course to a private space so enrolment adds students automatically. Without Pro, you can still post the link to a class in a space by hand.
Direct messages between students run through WPMediaVerse and are free once that plugin is installed with Messages on. The community has an installable web app option that puts the site on a phone’s home screen. It is a web app and not a native app.
Keep the tone of the space about the studio. Posts that give instruction, or advice on injuries or conditions, belong with a teacher in a class, not in a thread between students. Write that into your house rules, and use the community guidelines template as a starting point.
A week at the studio
This is an example to adapt. It is not a recommendation about how often or how long anyone should practise.
| Day | Live | Library |
|---|---|---|
| Monday | Morning class | Replay of last week’s Friday class goes up |
| Tuesday | Beginner session | Beginner program lesson released |
| Thursday | Evening class | None |
| Friday | Live Q&A for beginners | Beginner program lesson released |
| Weekend | Optional longer class | New replay added to the style shelf |
Publish the same pattern week after week. A predictable timetable is what turns occasional visitors into regulars.
Free and Pro for a studio
| You want | Plan |
|---|---|
| Events archive, weekly repeats, RSVPs, waitlist, reminders, calendar feed, virtual classes | Eventonomy free |
| Week and Day views, specific-weekday repeats, skip dates, paid tickets, calendar sync | Eventonomy Pro |
| Video and audio lessons, memberships, coupons, prerequisites, certificates | Learnomy free |
| Per-student drip, learning paths, cohorts, gift codes | Learnomy Pro |
| Spaces, announcements, reports, safeguards | BuddyNext free |
| Events in the community feed; course-linked spaces | BuddyNext Pro |
See the free versus Pro comparison for the whole stack, and what Reign is for the theme. Reign is built to work with BuddyNext and every Wbcom plugin, so the whole site shares one design: timetable, library and community all look like the same studio. If your offer is closer to a guided audio practice than a class schedule, the guide to guided meditation memberships takes that shape.
Frequently asked questions
Do I need Eventonomy Pro to run a weekly class timetable?
No. The free plugin has daily, weekly and monthly repeats with an interval, RSVPs with capacity and a waitlist, reminders, virtual events and four browse views. Pro adds Week and Day views, repeating on specific weekdays, skipped dates and paid tickets.
How do I cancel one class in a repeating series?
Open the event editor, find Upcoming dates, and use Cancel this date. The date leaves the calendar and the event page, and you can restore it later. The rest of the series is untouched.
Can I keep replays for members only?
Yes. Put them in Learnomy courses limited to a membership plan, and upload the video to your own site so Learnomy can gate the file. A link to a video on another host is not gated by Learnomy.
Does an RSVP book a single class?
On a repeating event, one RSVP covers the event and its series. For individual class bookings, plan how you will handle that before you launch.
Can I give students health or injury advice in the community?
No. Students should consult a qualified professional about injuries or health conditions, and your house rules should keep instruction inside classes taught by your teachers.
Do I need BuddyNext?
No. The timetable and the replay library work without it. BuddyNext adds a place for students to talk, and with Pro it surfaces classes in the feed.