Description
Turn your BuddyPress site into an exclusive private community in minutes!
Private Community 2.0 helps you create members-only areas on your WordPress site. Whether you’re building a company intranet, paid membership site, or exclusive community, this plugin gives you complete control over who can access your content.
🎯 Perfect For:
• Company intranets and team portals
• Paid membership communities
• Private family or group websites
• Educational course platforms
• Exclusive member networks
✨ What’s New in Version 2.0:
We’ve completely rebuilt the plugin from the ground up with a focus on simplicity and performance. The new tabbed interface makes setup a breeze, while powerful features work behind the scenes to keep your site secure.
🔒 Two Simple Protection Modes:
1. Partial Protection – Keep some areas public
• Lock specific member directories or group pages
• Protect certain URLs while keeping others open
• Use wildcards to protect entire sections (like /premium/*)
2. Full Protection – Lock everything except what you choose
• Make your entire site members-only
• Whitelist specific pages for public access
• Perfect for private company sites
⚙️ How Your Visitors See It:
• Built-in Login – Beautiful login form that matches your theme
• Custom Forms – Use your favorite form plugin
• Smart Redirect – Send visitors to a specific welcome page
💪 Why Choose Private Community?
• Set up in 2 minutes – No complicated configurations
• Works with any theme – Tested with popular BuddyPress themes
• Lightning fast – Optimized for sites with thousands of pages
• Secure by default – Blocks brute force attacks automatically
• Always compatible – Regular updates for latest WordPress versions
Documentation
📚 Comprehensive Documentation Available:
• User Guide – Complete setup and configuration guide
• Developer Guide – Hooks, filters, and API reference
• Testing Guide – Quality assurance and testing procedures
THEME – WORDPRESS THEME WITH OUTSTANDING BUDDYPRESS SUPPORT
- FREE BuddyPress Theme: BuddyX – Offers unique layouts with clean code and easy-to-customize options, giving you a whole new way to visualize BuddyPress.
OUR ADON PLUGINS TO FURTHER IMPROVE YOUR BUDDYPRESS OR BUDDYBOSS PLATFORM COMMUNITY
Check out free community add-ons by Wbcom Designs:
- Wbcom Designs – BuddyPress Member Reviews Allow members to add ratings or feedback to other community members.
- Wbcom Designs – BuddyPress Group Reviews Allow members to add ratings or feedback to BuddyPress groups.
- Wbcom Designs – BuddyPress Activity Social Share Allow members to share activities on their social profiles like Facebook, Twitter, What’s App, LinkedIn with OG metadata.
- Wbcom Designs – Private Community with BP Lock A plugin to make your community private and only accessible to logged-in users. It also allows you to keep select pages or the component public.
- Wbcom Designs – BuddyPress Job Manager Allows your to integrate WP Job Manager plugin to BuddyPress.
- Wbcom Designs – Check-ins for BuddyPress Activity Allow members to add their location or post their Check-ins updates to activity.
- Wbcom Designs – BuddyPress Favorite Notification Allow members to be notified after any like or favorite on their BuddyPress activity.
- Wbcom Designs – Shortcodes & Elementor Widgets For BuddyPress It offers shortcodes and elementor widgets for the activity listing, member’s directory display, and the group’s directory on any post/page.
Check out paid community add-ons by Wbcom Designs:
- Wbcom Designs – BuddyPress Hashtags Allows members to use hashtags in BuddyPress or BuddyBoss Platform activities and bbPress topics..
- Wbcom Designs – BuddyPress Polls It allows you to extend BuddyPress or BuddyBoss Platform Activity for members to publish Polls with various options and works perfectly for individual activities and group activities.
- Wbcom Designs – BuddyPress Quotes It allows the feature to let members post their activity updates with interactive background selection such as colors and images set by the site administrator to tell a more expressive story.
- Wbcom Designs – BuddyPress Status & Reaction Allow your members to set a status icon and tagline on their profile and offer a big set of icons to react to published activities.
- Wbcom Designs – BuddyPress Profanity Allow you to censor content in your community! Easily Censor all the unwanted words in activities, private messages contents by specifying a list of keywords to be filtered.
- Wbcom Designs – BuddyPress Sticky Post Allows site administrators to prioritize certain activities over others. It lets admin pin-up site-wide and group activities to the top of the activity list.
- Wbcom Designs – BuddyPress Auto Friends Allow the site admin to select global friends for all his members and add bulk global friends.
- Wbcom Designs – Shortcodes & Elementor Widgets For BuddyPress Pro It offers shortcodes and elementor widgets with various argument parameters for the activity listing, member’s directory display, and the group’s directory on any post/page.
EXPERT SUPPORT
We are ready to provide incredible support. Ask your questions at contact us directly.
Screenshots
Welcome tab – Quick setup and overview of the plugin features 
Partial Protection tab – Select specific BuddyPress components and URLs to protect 
Full Protection tab – Enable site-wide protection with whitelist configuration 
Protection Rules tab – Configure how protected content is displayed (forms vs redirect) 
Frontend view – Login form displayed on protected pages
Installation
Quick Setup (2 minutes):
- Upload the plugin to your
/wp-content/plugins/directory - Activate ‘Private Community for BuddyPress’ in your Plugins menu
- Go to Settings Private Community
- Choose your protection mode and save
That’s it! Your private community is ready.
FAQ
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Do I need BuddyPress to use this plugin?
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Yes, this plugin is designed specifically for BuddyPress communities. It won’t work without BuddyPress installed and active.
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How quickly can I set this up?
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Most users have their private community running in under 2 minutes. Just choose your protection mode and you’re done!
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Can I keep some pages public while protecting others?
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Absolutely! Use Partial Protection mode to choose exactly which pages to protect, or use Full Protection with a whitelist for public pages.
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Will this slow down my site?
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No. Version 2.0 is optimized for performance and can handle sites with thousands of pages without any speed issues.
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Can members still register if my site is locked?
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Yes! The registration page can be whitelisted so new members can still sign up while the rest of your site remains private.
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Does it work with my theme?
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Private Community works with any properly coded WordPress theme. It’s been tested with all major BuddyPress themes.
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What happens when non-members try to access protected content?
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You choose! Show them a login form, redirect to a specific page, or display a custom message using any shortcode.
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Is there a limit to how many pages I can protect?
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No limits! Protect one page or your entire site – the plugin handles both equally well.
Reviews
Contributors & Developers
“Wbcom Designs – Private Community for BuddyPress” is open source software. The following people have contributed to this plugin.
Contributors
Translate “Wbcom Designs – Private Community for BuddyPress” into your language.
Interested in development?
Browse the code, check out the SVN repository, or subscribe to the development log by RSS.
Changelog
2.1.0
- Enhancement: Improved login and registration popup display and functionality
- Enhancement: Enhanced UI for login and register forms with better styling
- Enhancement: Improved save settings button design and user experience
- Enhancement: Enhanced locked message content display and formatting
- Enhancement: Better form handling with custom content messages positioned above forms
- Enhancement: Modernized CSS styling throughout the plugin
- Enhancement: Advanced whitelist support with wildcard patterns for flexible URL protection
- Fix: Fixed protection rules form submission and validation issues
- Fix: Fixed line break rendering in restriction messages to display properly
- Fix: Fixed custom content message positioning in login/registration forms
- Fix: Fixed settings persistence to prevent data loss
- Fix: Fixed duplicate entry prevention in protection rules
- Fix: Fixed null post object handling to prevent PHP warnings
- Fix: Fixed AJAX handler to properly preserve newlines and HTML formatting in rich text fields
- Security: Implemented double sanitization for enhanced security across all inputs
- Security: Improved data validation and escaping
- Dev: Enhanced translation system for better internationalization support
- Dev: WordPress Coding Standards (WPCS) compliance improvements
- Dev: Updated default content and messaging
- Dev: Improved code quality and maintainability
2.0.0 – Major Update
- Completely rebuilt from the ground up for better performance
- New modern admin interface that’s easier to use
- Added Partial Protection mode for selective content locking
- Added Full Protection mode for complete site privacy
- URL patterns with wildcards now supported (/docs/*)
- Choose how to display login: built-in form, custom shortcode, or redirect
- Automatic brute force protection (5 login attempts per 15 minutes)
- Works smoothly with sites having 1000+ pages
- Fixed compatibility with PHP 8.2
- Your existing settings are automatically migrated
1.9.3
- Enhancement: Managed register button style for better user experience.
- Fix: Resolved BP lock login page issue and removed tab for register option.
- Enhancement: Improved admin UI for a smoother workflow.
- Update: Ensured consistent and meaningful labels throughout the interface.
- Update: Changed label text to be more descriptive and consistent.
- Enhancement: Used constants, consistent output functions, and correctly escaped attributes.
- Fix: Addressed deprecation notices, including PHP deprecated implicit conversion from float to int.
- Fix: Resolved PHP deprecated issue.
1.9.1
- Fix – (#55)Fixed notice on the logged-out template
- Fix – (#56)Fixed deprecated notices with PHP 8.0
- Fix – Compatibility fixes with BuddyPress 12.0
- Fix – Compatibility fixes with WordPress 6.5
1.9.1
- Fix – add bp lock icon
- Fix – (#52)fixed lock pages do not work
1.9.0
- Fix – Updated admin ui
- Fix – Change enable/disable button style
- Fix – Remove button in wrapper
1.8.0
- Fix – Added Buddypress Recaptcha support for login/register forms
- Fix – updated welcome title
- Fix – #49 Login UI Issue managed
- Fix – Added hook for login and register form
1.7.1
- Fix – Backend Options Improve UI
- Fix – removed BP Components tab
1.7.0
- Fix – Fixed phpcs issues
- Fix – Removed install plugin button from wrapper and phpcs fixes
- Fix – (#39) Update login/register form UI for logged-out mode
1.6.0
- Enhancement – Added redirect option for log out user
- Enhancement – Update backend switch UI
1.5.0
- Fix – PHPCS Fixes
1.3.0
- Fix – Support to override template
- Fix – Remove cpt functionality
- Fix – Updated admin notice
1.2.0
- Fix – Add condition for display registration form according to the ‘Anyone can register’ option. (#23)
- Fix – Registration form input email style. (#26)
- Enhancement – Added select/unselect all options in page list admin settings. (#8)
1.1.1
- Fix – Admin settings saving glitch.
1.1.0
- Enhancement – Added setting to use custom login registration form using shortcode.
- Enhancement – Changed admin UI.
- Enhancement – Compatibility with BuddyPress 4.3.0
- Fix – Page lock issue.
1.0.4
- Fix – Lock custom post type.
- Enhancement – The locked page is not displayed in the archive.
- Enhancement – Locked component and page will not be displayed in searched content.
- Enhancement – Lock component single page if the component is blocked.
1.0.3
- Plugin code structure changed
- Added Multisite support
- Lock Template file update
1.0.2
- Changed admin settings UI and a login/register form on the locked content template.
1.0.1
- Updated Labels.
1.0.0
- first version.