Module Guides
One guide per SocietyPress module. Plain English, written for the volunteer who runs the website.
Backup & Restore
Your insurance against an accidental deletion, a host going out of business, or a move gone wrong. SocietyPress has two kinds of backup, both on **Settings → Export…
Read the guide →Blast Email
Send one email to all your members, or to a group of them. SocietyPress sends it in small batches in the background, leaves out members who've opted out,…
Read the guide →Child Themes
SocietyPress ships with five GPL-licensed child themes. They differ in layout as well as color — one column or two, a sidebar on the left or the right,…
Read the guide →Developer Reference
For technically-inclined webmasters who want to extend SocietyPress beyond what the admin lets you do — add a custom page-builder widget, hook the society sidebar to add an…
Read the guide →Documents
Upload and organize your society's documents — bylaws, policies, board minutes, financial reports, anything that isn't a newsletter or library item. Each document, or a whole section, can…
Read the guide →Donations
Online giving — one-time, monthly, annually — with receipts. Plus campaign tracking and an admin ledger for hand-recorded donations (checks, cash, in-kind).
Read the guide →Email Setup
Most software you've used emailed reliably out of the box. WordPress (and SocietyPress with it) doesn't, on most shared hosting, and that's not a SocietyPress problem — it's…
Read the guide →Events
Calendar, registration, recurring events, and speaker management. The most-used module after Members.
Read the guide →Gallery
Photo albums for your society's events and collections, plus a member-submitted "Picture Wall" of ancestor portraits.
Read the guide →Glossary
Words SocietyPress uses, defined in plain English. If a term in another guide isn't obvious, it's probably in here. Organized by topic rather than alphabetically — most webmasters…
Read the guide →Governance
Officers, committees, meetings and volunteer hours — who holds which office, who chairs what, when the board last met, and how many hours your volunteers gave this year.
Read the guide →Help Requests
Public Q&A forum. The "duty librarian" model — anyone (member or visitor) posts a research question; volunteers answer when they can, out of comradery, not for a fee.…
Read the guide →Insights
One page that answers the question every board asks: "How are we doing?" It pulls a headline number from every feature you use — active members, events held,…
Read the guide →Installer
The fastest way from "I heard about SocietyPress" to "our site is running on it": one PHP file, `sp-installer.php`, that you upload to your web host and open…
Read the guide →Library
Catalog of every book, periodical, microfilm and CD in your physical library. Members search it from the website; volunteers maintain it from the admin. Most society libraries are…
Read the guide →Lineage Programs
Recognition programs for members who can document descent from historically significant ancestors. "First Families of [your county]," "Pioneer Settlers," "Civil War Veterans Descendants," "Mayflower Descendants" — anything that…
Read the guide →Members
The roster. Every other module — events, donations, voting, library checkouts — attaches to members. Get this one right and most of the rest follows. This module is…
Read the guide →Newsletters
A PDF archive of your newsletters and journals. Upload your back issues; SocietyPress makes a cover thumbnail from each one, reads the text so members can search inside…
Read the guide →Page Builder
Build a page by stacking ready-made widgets — a heading, some text, the events calendar, a donate form — instead of writing in an editor. It's part of…
Read the guide →Privacy & GDPR
What SocietyPress does to protect member data, what privacy law still asks of you, and how to use the built-in tools when a member asks for their data…
Read the guide →Genealogical Records
Searchable databases for transcribed records — cemetery rosters, census extracts, marriage indexes, naturalization papers, court minutes, anything where you have rows of structured data members can search.
Read the guide →Research Services
Optional paid research-case workflow. Comradery via [Help Requests](help-requests.md) is the default — most quick questions get free volunteer help. Research Services is the opt-in escalation for cases that…
Read the guide →Resources
A categorized directory of useful external links — partner societies, archives, online databases, vital-records sites. The "links" page every society has, made navigable.
Read the guide →Setup Wizard
The first thing SocietyPress shows you after install. Four short steps get the basics in place so the rest of the platform has somewhere to land. Takes about…
Read the guide →Store
Sell your society's publications, merchandise, and back issues online. Stripe + PayPal checkout (cart-based, not external redirect — buyers stay on your site).
Read the guide →Surveys
Ask your members questions and see everyone's answers added up. You write the questions and press Publish. SocietyPress makes the page and gives you a link to send…
Read the guide →Theme Presets
A preset is your site's design — colors, fonts, spacing, layout — packaged as a small JSON file you can share with another society. They send you their…
Read the guide →User Access & Roles
Let different volunteers do different jobs without giving everyone the keys to everything. The treasurer manages donations without seeing ballots; the librarian runs the catalog without touching the…
Read the guide →Voting & Elections
Online ballots for board elections, bylaw amendments and member surveys. You can limit a ballot to certain membership tiers — for example, only full members vote on bylaw…
Read the guide →