SocietyPress
A complete WordPress platform for genealogical and historical societies.
Free and open source under the GPL. No premium version, no locked features, no lock-in —
just the whole thing, given away. Host it yourself, or have it hosted for you at
societypress.net; the software is the same, and free, either way.
societypress.net ·
Live demo ·
Documentation ·
Report a bug
What it is
SocietyPress is a single-file WordPress plugin paired with a purpose-built
parent theme and five ready-to-use child themes. Together they give a
genealogical or historical society everything it needs to run itself online:
members, dues, events, a library catalog, newsletters, a records repository,
volunteer coordination, donations, a blast-email system, committees, voting,
a page builder, and a frontend that's legible for non-technical volunteers
by default.
It was written for the people who actually keep these organizations
running — committee chairs, long-serving volunteers, librarians — not
for agencies or developers. Everything is biased toward "a senior volunteer
can do this" over "a developer will figure it out."
What's in the bundle
| Module | Status | Purpose |
|---|
| Members | Always on | Profiles, tiers, dues, groups, surname research, member portal |
| Events | Toggleable | Scheduling, registration, waitlists, recurring, calendars, iCal |
| Library | Toggleable | Full OPAC-style catalog (tested at 19,000+ items) |
| Newsletters | Toggleable | PDF archive with auto-generated cover thumbnails |
| Resources | Toggleable | Curated external links, searchable |
| Committees | Toggleable | Committees, chairs, delegated permissions |
| Volunteers | Toggleable | Opportunities, signups, waitlists, hours tracking |
| Donations | Toggleable | Campaign-based tracking, progress bars, acknowledgments |
| Blast Email | Toggleable | Mass email with merge tags, batching, delivery tracking |
| Records | Toggleable | Genealogical records repository (cemetery, census, marriage, etc.) |
| Store | Toggleable | Public storefront for products and library items |
| Documents | Toggleable | Board documents, policies, forms with per-doc access |
| Photos & Videos | Toggleable | Nested galleries plus YouTube embeds, frontend lightbox |
| Voting | Toggleable | Elections, ballots, results |
Plus: page builder (40 widgets), design system (live-preview color and
typography controls), email system (logged, merge-tagged, dev-mode), unified
admin sidebar, a setup wizard, a custom login page, full site lockdown,
field-level encryption for sensitive data (XChaCha20-Poly1305), GDPR
exporters and erasers, and search across every module.
A complete breakdown lives in docs/FEATURES.md.
Requirements
- WordPress 6.0 or later
- PHP 8.0 or later
- MySQL 5.7+ or MariaDB 10.3+
- PHP
libsodium extension (present in PHP 7.2+) — for field encryption
- PHP
imagick extension — for newsletter cover thumbnails (optional)
Installing
One-click (recommended)
On any cPanel host with Softaculous, pick SocietyPress from the catalog
and install. This provisions a fresh WordPress, installs the plugin, activates
the theme, and runs the setup wizard automatically.
Submission to Softaculous is in progress — see the
roadmap.
Manual install
Download the latest societypress.zip from the
Releases
page, extract it, and upload the contents to your existing WordPress site.
From source
git clone https://github.com/SocietyPressFoundation/SocietyPress.git
# Plugin: Code/plugin/societypress.php → wp-content/plugins/societypress/
# Parent theme: Code/theme/ → wp-content/themes/societypress/
# Child themes: Code/theme-<name>/ → wp-content/themes/<name>/
Activate the plugin, then activate either the parent theme or a child theme.
The setup wizard will open on first activation.
Documentation
End-user guides (setup walkthroughs, module-by-module how-tos) live at
societypress.net/docs.
Getting help
See also SUPPORT.md.
Contributing
SocietyPress is open source but not open to external contributions at this
time — it's designed, written, and maintained by one person, and the
pace/direction is set accordingly. You are welcome to fork, modify, and
deploy it under the terms of the GPL. Bug reports and well-described feature
requests via GitHub Issues
are very welcome.
Full policy in CONTRIBUTING.md.
License
Released under the GNU General Public License v2.0 or later.
Free as in freedom. Free as in beer.
