SpaceBay - Community, Activity Feed, Group Chat & Events

Yes. SpaceBay is free and includes spaces, the activity feed, private messages, group chat, events, profiles, the member directory, points, levels, badges, the leaderboard, notifications and moderation. SpaceBay Pro is an optional add-on for extra tools.

No. SpaceBay brings its own community portal. You can show it as a full-page app or as a page inside your current theme.

Yes. Under Settings > Posts and uploads you set the longest post (500 to 50,000 characters, 20,000 by default) and the longest comment (200 to 10,000, 5,000 by default). If you lower a limit, older long posts stay as they are and can still be edited to be shorter. Developers can change the limits with the spacebay_post_max_length, spacebay_comment_max_length and spacebay_message_max_length filters.

Yes. SpaceBay limits login attempts for each visitor's network address. Behind a proxy or CDN, all visitors can look like one address. Add the spacebay_client_ip filter and return the visitor's real address. When SpaceBay thinks your site is behind a proxy and the filter is missing, Tools > Site Health tells you. The documentation has the details.

Yes. Your community runs on your own WordPress site. Members, posts, messages and events are stored in your own database.

SpaceBay organizes your community into spaces. Each space has its own feed and its own members, and you control community access from the Settings page.

Yes. Members can send one-to-one private messages and create group chats, with images, unread counts and read receipts. People added to a group chat later see the messages written after they joined.

Yes. Images in private messages and in private or secret spaces, and images in all posts when the community is for members only, are stored in a separate folder inside your uploads folder and are only shown, through your site, to people who may read the message or space. Others get "not found". On Apache and IIS the folder is closed by the files SpaceBay puts in it. nginx ignores those files, so the folder has a long random name; to close it completely, add this rule to your nginx server block and reload nginx: location ^~ /wp-content/uploads/spacebay-private/ { internal; } Change the path if your uploads folder is somewhere else. Uploaded photos have their hidden details, such as the GPS location, removed.

Reported posts and first posts from new members wait in your review queue, so members only see them after you approve them. You can also set blocked words and suspend members.

Yes. You can turn on Google and Facebook login with your own free apps. Both are optional and off until you set them up. For safety, a social login only joins an existing account whose email address the member has confirmed, by signing up with that service or by resetting their password once; otherwise the member is asked to log in with their password.

Yes. The community portal has a phone layout that feels like a native app, and it supports light and dark mode.

Yes. SpaceBay works on network sites and supports right-to-left languages.

SpaceBay connects to the WordPress privacy tools, so you can export and erase a member's personal data.

Yes. In SpaceBay > Settings > General, under "Community home location", choose "At the home address" (the other choice, "At a page address", is the default and suits a community added to an existing site). It is meant for a community on its own subdomain, such as community.example.com, or a site that is only a community. The community then opens at the home address, and the current homepage of that site is no longer shown. Your Reading setting is left alone and applies again when you turn the option off. A published top-level page, a top-level post (when your permalinks start with /%postname%), a post type archive or address, or a rewrite rule of another plugin or your theme that uses the same address as a community page, such as /members/, must be renamed first; the message lists them. If a clash appears later, for example after you install a plugin, Site Health, an admin notice, the settings screen and the command "wp spacebay portal clashes" list it; SpaceBay never turns the option off by itself. WordPress keeps wp-admin, the login, the REST API, feeds, sitemaps and your other pages. Not supported: language-prefix plugins such as Polylang or WPML in directory mode. If you use a cache plugin or a CDN, do not cache the home address or the community pages, and clear the cache after you change it. Old links under the community address move to the new address for good, with pretty permalinks.

Yes. SpaceBay has a REST API, action and filter hooks, and template overrides. A WP-CLI command fills a test site with sample content.

Your data stays. The free plugin keeps working without Pro.

Since 1.2.0. On the old site open SpaceBay > Import and export, choose Everything and start the export. Download the file, then open the same screen on the new site, upload the file and look at the preview. When you start the import in New mode on an empty community, SpaceBay keeps the IDs of spaces, posts and events where it can and adds redirects from the old addresses. Merge adds the file to a community that already has content, and Replace empties the community first after saving a safety export. Every import shows a preview before it writes anything, and a Merge or New import can be undone from the same screen.

Password hashes, two-factor secrets, login history, notifications and Pro calls are never in a file. Members get a new random password and use "Forgot your password?" to choose one, and members using two-factor login set it up again. WordPress pages, the WordPress media library and other plugins' data are not moved. Private messages are included only if you choose them in an Everything export. Accounts that already exist on the new site are matched by email address and are not changed.

No passwords. Sign-in keys and secrets (Google, Facebook, the call relay) are left out unless you tick Sign-in secrets. A file made with that option has "with-secrets" in its name; keep it as private as a password. Any export holds email addresses, and an Everything export can hold private messages, so store the file safely. Files on the site are kept for 7 days by default and are deleted after that.

The upload limit is 2 GB by default. Imports run in small steps, so they do not hit the PHP time limit, and you can also use WP-CLI (wp spacebay export and wp spacebay import). A community with 5,000 or more members should run on a VPS or on a host with an object cache. Cheap shared hosting is likely to be slow or to stop the import.

Do not cache the SpaceBay REST path (/wp-json/spacebay/ and ?rest_route=) or the Import and export admin screen in your page cache or CDN. PHP's maximum execution time and upload limit do not matter: uploads go in 5 MB pieces and the work runs in short steps. Keep WP-Cron working, or leave the screen open so it drives the steps. The export download needs your browser login. Temporary files live in the private folder under wp-content/uploads/spacebay-private/ and are removed after the run (finished exports after 7 days by default, set with the spacebay_transfer_retention_days filter).

Read the documentation or contact support.