This is the public record of what's coming next. It's organized by theme rather than by date because delivery estimates for a solo project are notoriously unreliable. Each item describes the motivation (the problem), scope (what the deliverable is), and blockers (what has to happen first, if anything).
Items are listed in rough priority order within each section. Things near the top will likely ship sooner; things near the bottom may move up, move down, or be dropped entirely as the project evolves.
For what's already shipped, see CHANGELOG.md.
Recently shipped
Items that have landed recently. Kept here for a release cycle or two so visitors can see momentum before being pruned into the changelog.
SocietyPress 1.5.0 — the first finished release
Released 2026-08-28 as v1.5.0. Eighteen optional modules, five child themes, the ENS migration path, and the Theme Exchange with all three tiers open. The number is 1.5.0 rather than 1.0 because 1.0.0 and 1.0.1 were already published tags from May and June — and because a release numbered below the 1.1.x builds already in the field would read as a downgrade and never be offered to them.
The changelog starts again at 1.5.0; the development line is archived in CHANGELOG-1.x.md.
Theme Exchange — Tier 3 (full child themes)
Shipped 2026-08-28. The Exchange's top tier is open. A published review policy states what is accepted, what is refused, and what the "Reviewed by SocietyPress" badge is a statement about — safety, and nothing else. Submissions are GitHub issues on the org against a checklist drawn from the policy, so the queue is public and its wait times are visible without anything being built to display them. Anybody may submit; the gate is a named, answerable author rather than a credential, with one open submission per author at a time and the right to decline a review without it counting as a rejection. Societies install a reviewed theme by downloading its .zip and uploading it through WordPress; one-click install from inside the plugin waits until the process has seen real submissions.
ENS migration handbook — the reference half
Shipped 2026-08-27. The migration guide now carries a field-by-field table of every column an EasyNetSites export contains and what each becomes, a note on the three columns that do more than they look like — the tie that makes a couple a couple, the record id that makes a second import safe, and the date that governs overwriting — and a three-level plan for backing out: undo the import, restore the site, or start over.
Roadmap audit — twelve items were already done
Audited 2026-08-27 against the live sites and the source. Twelve entries were describing work that had already shipped, in some cases months earlier: site-wide search and the XML sitemap on getsocietypress.org, the GitHub releases feed on the homepage, the mailing-list signup, Theme Exchange Tier 2, the Kindred dataset on the demo site, the Hart Island collection, the 29-guide documentation hub, the FAQ content, the automated release pipeline, and the two platform features that shipped the same evening. They have been removed rather than left to be picked up again.
Seven things genuinely remain, and three of those are not code.
For everything that shipped before 1.5.0, see CHANGELOG-1.x.md and CHANGELOG-pre1.md.
Dormant
Work that is real, wanted, and not moving right now. Nothing here is abandoned and nothing here is scheduled — it is parked in one place so that what is missing from SocietyPress is written down honestly rather than remembered by one person.
Everything else that was on this roadmap has shipped.
Softaculous one-click install
Motivation: Most of the target audience hosts on cPanel providers where Softaculous is the default installer. A one-click install cuts the path from "heard about SocietyPress" to "running on my site" from an afternoon to three minutes. Scope: Build the Softaculous package per their submission spec (info.xml, screenshots, bundle ZIP layout), validate it with scripts/build-softaculous.sh end-to-end, and submit through the partner program. Blockers: None.
5-minute Getting Started screencast
Motivation: Most society administrators learn faster from watching than from reading. A short video covering install → setup wizard → first member import → first event closes the "can I actually do this?" gap. Scope: A 5-minute screencast with voiceover, published to YouTube and embedded on the homepage and docs landing. Blockers: A clean demo environment and time to record.
ENS Migration demo walkthrough
Motivation: The single most effective sales tool for an ENS society is a "watch us migrate one" demonstration. Having a live example with realistic ENS-format data proves the migration works. Scope: Use the ENS-format CSVs in Sample Data/ENS Migration Demo/ to perform and document a fresh migration on demo.getsocietypress.org. Publish the walkthrough as a docs page. Blockers: A decision about the demo site. It already carries the Kindred dataset — 571 members, 8,149 records — and a walkthrough that shows a migration arriving on an empty site means replacing that. Either the demo is rebuilt from the ENS CSVs so the Kindred data is the migrated data, or the walkthrough is recorded somewhere other than the public demo.
Incorporate the SocietyPress Foundation as a 501(c)(3)
Motivation: SocietyPress as "a project Charles runs" is vulnerable in ways a 501(c)(3) isn't. A foundation creates a legal home for the project independent of any one person, enables donations to be tax-deductible, qualifies for GitHub's nonprofit program, and gives societies confidence in long-term sustainability. Scope: Incorporation as a Texas nonprofit, IRS Form 1023 or 1023-EZ filing, bylaws, board composition, fiscal sponsor arrangement if appropriate. Blockers: Legal and tax advice; time.
GitHub Sponsors / Open Collective
Motivation: Recurring sponsorship smooths income volatility and gives sponsors a visible recognition channel. Scope: Enable GitHub Sponsors on the SocietyPressFoundation org, then add a github: line to .github/FUNDING.yml so the Sponsor button appears on the repository. Alternative: Open Collective. Blockers: None. Checked against GitHub's documentation on 2026-08-27: an organization qualifies by contributing to open source and operating in a supported region — 501(c)(3) status is not required, and the payout account may be a personal one. What the 501(c)(3) does gate is the claim that a sponsorship is tax-deductible, which the profile must not make until the Foundation exists.
Rejected / Deferred
Things that got considered seriously and deliberately left out. Listed here so they don't get rediscovered and re-proposed.
- Accepting external PRs. Explicitly not a project goal — see
- Gutenberg / block editor support. SocietyPress is an intentional
- Tailwind or any CSS framework on the marketing theme. The theme
- React-based admin. Vanilla JS only, for the same reason.
classic-editor + page-builder product. The block editor adds complexity senior volunteers don't benefit from.
is deliberately hand-written with CSS custom properties so it can be customized without a toolchain.
Changing this document
This roadmap is a living document. Items move up, down, or off the list as the project's priorities evolve. Material changes are noted in CHANGELOG.md under the Unreleased section.