Module Guides
One guide per SocietyPress module. Plain English, written for the volunteer who runs the website.
Blast Email
Send mass emails to all members or specific groups. Track delivery, suppress bouncers, honor opt-outs.
Read the guide →Child Themes
SocietyPress ships with five GPL-licensed child themes. Each carries its own palette, font choices, and a few small layout tweaks. They're starting points — pick the one closest…
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. Per-document access control (public / members-only /…
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 →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, plus member-submitted "Picture Wall" galleries (ancestor portraits, member-submitted heritage photos).
Read the guide →Governance
Committees, officers, meetings, volunteer hours. The administrative backbone — who's on which committee, who chairs what, when did the board last meet, how many hours did Mary contribute…
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 →Installer
The fastest path from "I heard about SocietyPress" to "my society's site is running on it." A single PHP file (`sp-installer.php`) you upload to your web host's `public_html`…
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. OPAC-style — open-access, no…
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. Upload your back issues; SocietyPress generates cover thumbnails and shows them in a grid. Members browse, click, read.
Read the guide →Page Builder
Drag-and-drop page assembly. Every shortcode SocietyPress ships has a matching widget in the page builder, so you don't have to type shortcodes by hand if you don't want…
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. Three short pages 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 →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 →Voting & Elections
Online ballots for board elections, bylaw amendments, and member surveys. Tier-based eligibility (e.g., "only full members vote on bylaw changes; subscriber-tier members don't") is built in.
Read the guide →