The community website looks lovely. There is a photograph, a menu and perhaps an About page where everyone is deeply engaged. Excellent. Now for the slightly impolite question: if a member wants to discuss a concern or find a decision, where do they go?
If the answer involves three messages, a link buried in an old conversation and a little patience, there is room for improvement. We do not need to rebuild the internet. Sometimes making the entrance visible is enough.
A small plugin with a clear job
Deferendum Community Links 0.2.1 is now available in the WordPress.org directory. I built this plugin for my Deferendum project with a deliberate boundary: the WordPress page shows the way, while participation stays in the community. A button should not pretend to be a parliament.
The plugin adds a card leading to a group, an existing concern or a decision in Deferendum. Use a Gutenberg block or a Classic editor shortcode. You do not configure API keys or enter a Deferendum password into WordPress. Mercifully for the administrator, setup does not require a small diplomatic expedition between two accounts.
The page informs. The card shows where to continue
Imagine an association page with meeting dates, contact information and an explanation of its activities. Beside them, an Our community card can open the group. For a specific discussion, another card can lead directly to an existing concern or decision.
This is not an invitation to copy every argument onto the public page. The separation is the useful part: a visitor finds the destination without turning the website into a display cabinet for private data. A clear public heading can do more than a long paragraph promising participation while forgetting to provide an address.
In Classic, the example structure looks like this:
`[deferendum url="https://app.deferendum.com/app/groups/your-group" language="en"]`
`your-group` is a placeholder, not a real test group. Replace it with the identifier in your authorised link. In Gutenberg, enter the destination in Group or topic URL, choose a language and preview the page. Simple does not mean we stop checking where a link leads.
A clearer entrance is not an open door
A group or topic link does not automatically grant access to non-members. The plugin does not copy private content, synchronise accounts or store votes, sessions or passwords. It does not retrieve group data, contact Deferendum by itself or set tracking cookies; operation and ordinary logging on the WordPress site remain the administrator’s responsibility.
A shareable invitation is different: it may let new members join and should be published only with explicit permission. A personal invitation received by email should never become a public notice. The card heading is public, and the plugin does not rewrite the page’s SEO rules. Private names, internal questions and results belong in their proper place.
Five languages, not five miracles
Visitor-facing cards and destinations support RO, EN, FR, ES and PT. Editor controls are in English. The card language does not automatically translate the discussion or the entire website. The plugin requires WordPress 6.3 or later and PHP 8.0 or later. Its GPLv2-or-later licence applies to the WordPress plugin, not automatically to the hosted application, backend or community data.
Unsupported URLs render no card instead of producing a persuasive button to the wrong destination. I would check the mobile page, language, heading and link before publication. Those are small checks, but they matter more than declaring the website connected and hoping for the best.
Participation continues in Deferendum, under the group’s rules. The plugin does not guarantee consensus. It has no such ambition. It does something more modest and genuinely useful: when a community wants to continue the conversation, it does not make people hunt for the entrance first.
Details and setup on the WordPress plugin page.
