What Are Member Connections


Firstly, What is Connections vs Followers?

Connections are the same as saying friends, you have more control of how other users interact with you such that you must be a connection (friend) of mine before they can private message me.


Followers allow members in the community who do not want to be directly connected with another member by being a connection but you might want to keep track of what they post like other social platforms. This is more of how your users topicalise what content they wish to see.


This is a common question so I thought we should start by clarifying these two different features.


NOTE: Before we start if you are viewing as an admin you will not see any restrictions or changes as Admins have full rights and permissions. Please make sure you View As a non Admin member to view any system changes!




Configure Member Connections Feature

  1. Navigate to BuddyBoss - Components. Scroll down to find the Member Connections option. 





Click on the Activate button. Now, the members can send connection requests to each other.



  1. Let’s see the view as a community member. From any member’s profile click on the 3 dots and a tiny bar will appear. Hit the View As button. After that you will see and get access to any sector of the community like Moris. 





Connecting With other members.

So, after activating the Member Connections feature, site members can now send connection requests to the other members of the community. 


From the upper menu click on Members tab. Select any member and click on the Connect button like below.  



 

Now in the image you can see i (John) selected to connect with Arianna. To see this in action you want to go to Arianna’s profile - View As as we showed in the previous step, now you are viewing as if you are Arianna or the member in which you sent the request, now navigate to the Connections tab - Requests and Accept. The member request from John will Show up here. 





  1. If you go to the Connections tab, you will see the connected members of Moris like below. Here, Moris can remove the connected members as well. 

  2. Click on the Profile icon under any profile picture.


We provide many location on or within a users profile for you to connect or disconnect with other members on the platform, where ever you see the profile icon against the members profile card, if you hover over the icon it will instruct you what action the icon will take if selected such as;


  1. Request Connection

  2. Remove Connection

  3. Cancel Connection Request.


Configure Private Messaging Feature

  1. Go to BuddyBoss> Components. Scroll down to find the Private Messaging option. 



Click on the Activate button. Now, the members can send messages to each other. They will see a message icon in every profile. 




By clicking on the Send Message icon or button, this will navigate you to your messaging inbox with a message setup ready to message. 





As an admin you can restrict the message between the connected members. Go to BuddyBoss> Settings> Connections. Click on the tick box and lastly don’t forget to hit Save Changes. 


Note: Here, you can also select which members will have the access to send connection requests to others based on membership in your community. For more details click on the View Tutorial button on the right side and watch the Member Access Settings. 




With the messaging only available to members who are connected to each other we can see from the image below that only John has accepted the connection request and so the user can now message John privately. 


Configure the List of a Member’s Connection

The members connection widget looks really good with added function to be able to see who from your connections are the most ‘Active’ or the most ‘Popular’ and even the ‘Newest’ this widget is a must to complete the look of any members profile page or any page!


  1. Go to Dashboard> Appearance> Widgets





In the Widgets section scroll down and find out Members → Single Profile. Now click on the Plus (+) icon. Type BB Connections in the tiny search bar. Hit on the (BB) My Connections once it’s visible. 




It will show you a preview of your connections. After everything is done, don’t forget to click the update button. 


This is how you can set up the connections between your community members. For in depth knowledge please see the tutorial video-



Related Material

Member Connections | BuddyBoss Platform Tutorials