First-Time Setup
A visual walkthrough of everything you'll do after installing SocietyPress — with screenshots of every step.
The SocietyPress Dashboard
After activating the plugin, you'll see a new SocietyPress menu in your WordPress sidebar. This is your home base — everything you need to manage your society lives here.
The dashboard gives you an at-a-glance summary: how many members you have, upcoming events, recent activity, and quick links to the areas you'll use most. Don't worry about all the options right now — we'll walk through each one.
The SocietyPress dashboard — your home base for managing everything.
Name Your Society
Open Settings → Website. The first thing to fill in is your society's name — this appears in the header, footer, emails, and anywhere your society is referenced.
While you're here, set your:
- Society location — city, state, or region
- Contact email — where member inquiries go
- Timezone — so events display the right times
- Founded year — displayed on your public site
Hit Save Settings when you're done. You can change any of this later.
Settings → Website — tell SocietyPress who you are.
Set Your Brand Colors
Navigate to Appearance → Design. This is where you make the site look like your society, not a generic template.
Pick your primary color (used for headers, buttons, and navigation) and your accent color (used for highlights, links, and call-to-action elements). The live preview on the right side of the screen updates in real time as you adjust.
- Primary & accent colors — color pickers, no hex codes needed
- Fonts — choose a heading font and a body font
- Logo — upload your society's logo
- Layout — content width, spacing, border radius
Nothing goes live until you click Save. Experiment freely.
The Design panel — pick colors and watch the preview update live.
Create Membership Plans
Go to Members → Membership Plans. Before you add members, you need at least one plan for them to belong to.
Most societies have a few standard plans. Set up the ones that match your organization:
- Plan name — Individual, Family, Student, Lifetime, etc.
- Dues amount — annual cost (or $0 for honorary/lifetime)
- Renewal period — annual, biennial, lifetime, or custom
- Description — what's included (shown to members)
You can add, edit, or remove plans at any time. Members won't lose their records if you reorganize later.
Membership Plans — define what your society offers.
Add Your Members
Open the Members menu. You have two ways to get your members into the system:
Option A: Import from a spreadsheet
If you have an existing member list in Excel or Google Sheets, export it as a CSV file and use Members → Import Members. Map your spreadsheet columns to SocietyPress fields (name, email, tier, join date, etc.) and the importer handles the rest. It catches duplicates and flags any rows that need attention.
Option B: Add members manually
Click Add New Member to enter members one at a time. Fill in their name, contact info, select a membership tier, and save. Good for small societies or adding new members as they join.
CSV import — map your spreadsheet columns and let SocietyPress do the work.
After importing or adding members, you'll see them all in the member list. From here you can search, filter by tier or status, edit individual records, or export everything back to a spreadsheet.
Your member list — searchable, filterable, and exportable.
Enable Your Modules
Go to Settings → Modules. SocietyPress has a lot of features, but not every society needs all of them. This page lets you toggle each module on or off.
Modules include:
- Events — calendar, event management, RSVPs
- Store — sell books, publications, and merchandise
- Volunteers — track volunteer roles and hours
- Genealogy Records — searchable record database
- Newsletters — manage and archive past newsletters
- Donations — accept and track donations
- Resources — curated link library for members
Disabled modules disappear from the sidebar entirely — less clutter for you, and less confusion for anyone else who helps manage the site.
Modules — only enable what your society actually uses.
Build Your Pages
Go to Appearance → Pages. The page builder is how you create everything your visitors see — your homepage, about page, contact page, and any others you need.
Each page is built from widgets — self-contained content blocks that you stack in whatever order you want:
- Text — rich text with headings, lists, and links
- Image — photos and graphics with captions
- Events — automatically shows upcoming events
- Members — member spotlight or directory embed
- Call to Action — buttons and highlighted sections
- Columns — side-by-side layout for any content
Drag widgets to reorder them. Click any widget to edit its content. The page shows exactly what your visitors will see.
The page builder — drag, drop, and edit. No code required.
Go Live
Your society's name is set, your colors look right, your tiers are defined, your members are imported, and your pages are built. Time to open the doors.
SocietyPress doesn't publish anything until you say so. When you're ready:
- Review your homepage — click "View Site" in the admin bar to see what visitors will see
- Check your navigation — make sure the pages you want in your menu are there
- Test on your phone — pull up the site on a mobile device to make sure it looks good
- Share the link — send your URL to a few board members for a final gut check
When everything looks right, you're done. Your society's website is live.
A finished SocietyPress site — ready for members and visitors.
You're up and running.
Your site is configured and ready to serve your society. Explore the full documentation to learn about events, the store, genealogy records, and everything else SocietyPress can do.