Suggested Plugins for a Community-Based Website

[adonismale]

Dear fellow WordPress users,

Hello, I am relatively new to WordPress since I’ve been using a forum-based community for many years. I am thinking of migrating over to WordPress and its amazing community 🙂

I am looking for suggestions of best-in-class plugins, free or paid, made by well-respected developers that accomplish the following:
1) Permission and User Registration system – Maybe WP core includes this? But I need to be able to distinguish between guests who receive public content and registered members who can interact via the forums, downloads, store, etc.
2) Gallery system – I’m pretty sure NextGEN is the dominant gallery system, and I believe that it meets my criteria of batch uploading, batch editing and moderating, albums and categories, extensive control panel options, and permissions.
3) Forums – I’m looking for a full-featured forum solution, so I think bbPress and its community is the way to go?
4) Downloads – This is something where I definitely need your suggestions. I have an extensive archive of downloads that I’d like to make available. The features should include basic categories / subcategories, permissions, batch uploading, file description and screenshots.
5) Database – I’m looking for a fairly easy system to create custom databases of information, such as a biographical index of famous celebrities in my niche or an index of stores in my niche.
6) VIP Permissions & Store – I’m not sure how this would work if it’s a plugin, but I’d like to be able to offer VIP Memberships and sell physical products via an ecommerce store.
7) Social / Gamification / Token & Economy System – This is the one where I need the most help on, as I’m looking for plugins to make the site socially-oriented such as ‘leveling up’ your profile, earning or spending points, quizzes, etc … stuff to make the website interactive and socially fun. This is NOT to integrate with Facebook, Twitter, or Tumblr with social sharing, but instead to make my website a socila destination in its own right.

Thanks in advance for your suggestions,
Joel

[WPyogi]

Sounds like you may need to hire someone to help with this much complexity – especially since you already asked this a couple of days ago (I’ve deleted your duplicate thread, BTW, per the forum guidelines) but a few possible answers:

1. https://wordpress.org/plugins/press-permit-core/ or look for membership plugins (search the plugins repository – i.e. https://wordpress.org/plugins/search.php?type=term&q=members)

2. NGG is used widely, but there are other options – ask them if you have specific questions

3. bbPress is certainly widely used and yes, a good way to go.

4. many options for managing downloads as well: https://wordpress.org/plugins/search.php?type=term&q=downloads

5. Possibly https://wordpress.org/plugins/pods/ or https://wordpress.org/plugins/participants-database/

6. If you use a membership plugin, that may take care of part of it, or look at WooCommerce, including their paid extensions.

7. Maybe look at plugins related to bbPress – assume that’s where this kind of thing would be tied in? Here’s one:

https://wordpress.org/plugins/rating-widget/

A few other possibilities:

https://wordpress.org/plugins/search.php?type=term&q=earn+points

I’m sure you can find others by searching the plugins or try google.

[adonismale]

I appreciate the response. I was overwhelmed with the number of search results that came back, so I figured the community would be able to suggest the “best-in-class” plugins made by well-respected developers.

[WPyogi]

Yep, totally agree that it’s often hard to narrow down all the plugin options.

“best-in-class” plugins made by well-respected developers.

But that’s kind of a moving target too because there are many variables – your needs, your site, other plugins you are using, possible conflicts, plugins being maintained or not, etc. So it’s usually unavoidably going to be a bit of trial and error for you unless you want to hire someone…