Choose your plugins and start from a ready-made site

Reign is the design layer. The features your members use, such as profiles, discussions, courses or events, come from plugins. This page tells you which ones to install for the site you have in mind, in what order, and how to get a finished-looking site on screen before you write your own content.

Pick plugins by the site you are building

Start with one row. You can add more later; each plugin works on its own. Every plugin here is free: what you can build with the free plugins shows what each free edition gives you.

You are building	Install	Reign gives you
A member community (profiles, activity, groups)	BuddyNext	Header user area, login and register routing, community results in site search
Discussion forums or Q&A	Jetonomy	Discussions in site search
Online courses	Learnomy	Courses in site search
Events and RSVPs	Eventonomy	Events in site search
Member photo, video and document sharing, and member-to-member messages	MediaVerse	Media and documents in site search; powers BuddyNext’s messages
A job board	WP Career Board	Theme form styles kept out of its forms
A member directory or listings site	Listora	Works inside the Reign layout
A services marketplace	WP Sell Services	Works inside the Reign layout
Points, badges and leaderboards	WB Gamification	Works inside the Reign layout
Any site: page-building blocks and Elementor widgets	Wbcom Essential, part of Reign	Hero sections, pricing tables, sliders, FAQs, member and product grids
An online shop	WooCommerce	Shop, cart, checkout and account styling

Install every Wbcom plugin above from Reign Settings > Extend with Install free. No licence is needed for that. WooCommerce comes from Plugins > Add New.

Not sure yet? Every Wbcom plugin has a live demo you can open in your browser before installing anything. Wbcom plugins lists each one with its website, documentation, download and live demo.

Already run BuddyPress, BuddyBoss Platform or PeepSo? Reign supports them too: see the community setup pages. Use only one community plugin. BuddyNext and BuddyPress cannot run together.

Install in this order

1. The community plugin first (BuddyNext for a new site), then complete its own setup screen. It creates the pages other plugins link to, such as profiles and login.

2. The feature plugins you picked above. Run each one’s setup if it offers one, and load its demo content if you want sample data (see below).

   BuddyNext’s setup wizard can do this step for you. Its What’s powering your community? step lists the companion plugins (MediaVerse, Jetonomy, Gamification, Career Board, Learnomy, Listora, Eventonomy and WB Member Blog) with every one ticked. Untick the ones you do not need before you select Continue, or they are all installed and switched on.

3. Reign settings last. Map your login and register pages, then work through first configuration. Doing this last means the menus and pages you pick already exist.

Start from a ready-made site

Demo content comes from the plugins, not the theme. Each Wbcom plugin creates sample content shaped for what it does, and Reign styles it as soon as it exists. Reign then fills in the pages around it.

1. Load each plugin’s demo content

Plugin	Where
BuddyNext	Last step of the setup wizard: Add sample content (12 members, 14 spaces, 22 posts)
Jetonomy	Jetonomy Setup: Create sample data instead
Learnomy	Learnomy > Learnomy Setup, Demo step: Load demo academy
Eventonomy	Eventonomy > Setup & Health: Set up with sample data
WP Career Board	Setup wizard, step 6 Sample Data (ticked by default)
Listora	Setup wizard, Want some sample listings?: pick a pack
WP Sell Services	Setup wizard, last screen: Import Demo Content
MediaVerse, WB Gamification	No sample content; add a few items yourself

Load the community demo first, so the other plugins’ sample content has members to belong to.

2. Add Reign’s pages and sections

Two built-in tools give you the homepage, About and Contact pages and the sections in between.

Starter pages on a fresh site

On a brand-new WordPress site, Reign offers a set of starter pages the first time you open the Customizer:

• Welcome: a community hero, a member directory promo and an activity call to action
• About, Community (leaderboard and testimonials) and Contact
• A Privacy Policy placeholder
• A primary menu linking those pages, and the light and dark mode toggle switched on

To use them:

1. Activate Reign on a site where nothing has been published yet.
2. Go to Appearance > Customize. The starter pages appear in the preview.
3. Select Publish to keep them.
4. Go to Settings > Reading, choose A static page, and set Welcome as the homepage.

WordPress only offers starter content until the first post or page is published. If Appearance > Customize shows no starter pages, the site is no longer fresh. Use the patterns below instead.

Reign block patterns

Every page can be built from Reign’s ready-made sections. In the block editor, open the inserter, select Patterns, and pick a Reign category:

Category	What is in it
Reign Hero	Opening sections: image-led, split-screen, typography-led, community hero
Reign About	Founder and story sections
Reign Features	Feature rows, services, steps, team, member directory promo, leaderboard
Reign Social Proof	Logos, stats, testimonials
Reign Pricing & FAQ	Pricing table and an FAQ block
Reign CTA	Full-width and newsletter calls to action, activity stream CTA
Reign Footer	Five footer layouts
Reign Query	Post grids and lists for blog and news pages

Patterns take on your colour palette and switch with light and dark mode, so they match the rest of the site without extra styling.

Next

• First configuration
• Set up BuddyNext
• Sign-in and register popup