BuddyPress

I was thinking of launching a video portal (like youtube) along with social-networking features of facebook/flicker etc. I had short listed 3 sites that do exactly that which are: http://www.phpfox.com, http://www.dolphin.us from http://www.boonex.com, and http://www.socialengine.net

Then somone told me about buddypress and I am now researching about its functionality/plugins etc. I am really beginning to like the open source BuddyPress social networking system.

While reasearching BuddyPress, I read “BuddyPress Media” description and what is coming in next releases and it sounds pretty awesome. BuddyPress Media description says this:
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Whether you’re building a video portal, a photo sharing community, or a niche social network, Buddypress Media lets you emulate and exceed the functionality of popular sites like Facebook, Flickr, Youtube, and deviantART.
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Now I am wondering if BuddyPress along with BPMedia meet my needs for a video portal social networking site.

I have some questions as follows:

1. Can BuddyPress (along with BPMedia plugin) be used for a video portal social network? What I mean is this: users register and then after registration, the users land on a page that looks similar to youtube homepage with full video functionality like youtube video player, featured videos, spotlight videos, recently added videos, most viewed videos, top rated videos, related videos, videos from the same user, etc. You know what I mean. This page can be called something like (My Videos) and people should be able to search and embed videos from others video sites as well as able to upload their own videos…..it will be great if users can embed/upload multiple videos at a time. People should also be able to search for any videos on this site.

2. Can users also do everything in the point #1 but with audio/music files (e.g. My Audio or My Music)?

3. Can you also have a page called something like (My Photos) where users can then upload their photos/images in to the photo gallery?

4. Then the rest of the functionality can be from the buddypress itself where users socialize with each-other just like facebook/twitter etc.

5. Does BuddyPress (or BuddyPress Media) also has a “Friends” feature like facebook? Can it be implemented in to the buddypress?

So just need help understanding if the above functionality is available in the current BuddyPress Media or future BPMedia release?

Thank you for your answers and help, it is highly appreciated.

It will help me make a better decision.

Regards,

Rick

@rickkumar

In general, when picking a CMS for a web application you’ll always want to go with an “open source” application. In terms of availability of information, add-ons, and raw progress, nobody out there can compete with WordPress / BuddyPress.

1. Can BuddyPress (along with BPMedia plugin) be used for a video portal social network?

Yes. That’s precisely what it’s designed to do. But keep in mind, a lot of these features are very, very complicated to implement properly and it will be several months before we have *everything* finished.

Also, if you’re planning on being the next Vimeo, Revver, or YouTube, realize what you’re getting yourself into. You’ll need ninja-grade server admin skills to compile and set-up all the video transcoding software, racks of servers, and terabytes of data transfer. It’s not going to be cheap.

2. Can users also do everything in the point #1 but with audio/music files (e.g. My Audio or My Music)?

Yes, but we’re not finished writing it yet.

3. Can you also have a page called something like (My Photos) where users can then upload their photos/images in to the photo gallery?

Finished and already working. Download the 0.1.9 nightly build from Google Code and try it out. http://code.google.com/p/buddypress-media/downloads/list

4. Then the rest of the functionality can be from the buddypress itself where users socialize with each-other just like facebook/twitter etc.

BuddyPress has forums and profiles and a kick-ass framework to build on. Our plugin implements comments, user tagging, activity, like feature, keyword tagging, and many other things for uploaded media items.

5. Does BuddyPress (or BuddyPress Media) also has a “Friends” feature like facebook? Can it be implemented in to the buddypress?

Yes. Please take a look at the plugin features list, here:

http://code.google.com/p/buddypress-media/wiki/BuddyPressMediaFeaturesList

6) Seriously, just download it, install it, and play with it. Describing a plugin with 30 admin screens and 207 configuration options in a forum post really doesn’t do it justice.

Thanks!

^F^

@foxly

First of all thank you very much for answering my questions. I have spent many hours on BuddyPress and also read all the planned features of BuddyPress Media plugin and I think going with this open-source CMS is the way to go.

I have few more questions based on your responses as follows:

FOXLY: Also, if you’re planning on being the next Vimeo, Revver, or YouTube, realize what you’re getting yourself into. You’ll need ninja-grade server admin skills to compile and set-up all the video transcoding software, racks of servers, and terabytes of data transfer. It’s not going to be cheap.

Q1: Per my understanding, videos/audios won’t take any storage/bandwidth on our site if all these are embedded by our members or us. For example, if videos are embedded from youtube, then it will take youtube bandwidth. Right?

Q2: Any videos upload by our members to our site will take our storage and bandwidth. Also all the pictures that will be uploaded by members will take our storage and bandwidth. Am I Right?

Q2A. Btw, does BuddyPressMedia plugin provide both embeding from other sites and also direct loading for the media?

Q3: Is it possible to land a user after registration/login on a Video/youtube style page using the options in BuddyPress or BuddyPress-Media pluggin?

Q4: I understand BuddyPress Media plugin is a monster undertaking just by looking at the features. If possible, can you please give a rough estimate on when will the initial video/audio functionality be implemented? It will help me plan the project accordingly.

Q5: I don’t know if this question belongs here but I will ask it anyway: Does BuddyPress let companies/bands/celebrities etc create a page like facebook? Or do I need some special plugin to implement this functionality during registration?

Thank you again for your help.

Regards,

Rick

If your just wanting to build a website for people to post their youtube videos on, you will need to find a niche audience of some kind and create a community around it to give people a reason to post their videos there. You can’t expect people to arbitrarily post videos on your website.

The reason why sites like youtube and vimeo are so large is because they actually host and encode the videos for people. If someone already uploaded a video of their little boys first baseball game to youtube so they can share it with their friends on facebook or whatever, why would they come to your website and post it there?

A number of people on here have said they are using Buddypress for City websites, maybe you could create a video sharing hub for people in your city and have contests for best video of the week or something. Then if you are trying to make money off this, you could get local businesses to sponsor their home town online community.

@alanchrishughes

Thanks for your input.

Yes, I agree with your reasoning for a niche video sharing community network site.
My plan is quite similar to this: I plan to develop this network for a particular community speaking a particular language with about 30 million population in many countries/cities around the world. The plan is to let “Punjabi” speaking population come to this hub. Majority of the population is in India but many other countries/cities around the world has big Punjabi population especially in USA/Canada/UK/Australia etc. When the site gets famous and have a large membership, then I can think of getting local businesses from various cities to sponsor or get ads. Ads can be targeted to location/gender etc but that is a long-term thing. Currently my undeveloped domain gets over 100 unique visitors daily from people checking to see if there is a site on the domain. Basically, I want to make this video social network a hub for Punjabi community around the word to stay connected and have fun doing so.

@rickkumar Sounds interesting man, good luck! You might want to go ahead and get a standard Buddypress community going though just to keep the 100 visits a day from loosing interest. You can get a head start on building the community this way, then in a month or two when this media plugin is stable and ready to go, people will have even more of a reason to continue visiting.

@alanchrishughes

The domain name is http://www.PunjabiTube.com and I am little hesitant to put BuddyPress site on it without video functionality because video is kind of expected and should be the landing page that users will see first after login. And then they can visit other pages on the site for social networking needs. Thanks.

@rickkumar you know if all you want to do is allow people to embed their videos on your social network, you don’t even need to wait for this plugin, just use

http://buddypress.org/community/groups/oembed-for-buddypress

@alanchrishughes

I will soon check it out. It appears the plugin does both photos and videos which is good. Do you know any sample sites using it or may be some screen shots. Just wondering if the plugin provides any youtube type page layout or the videos/photos just get posted in the comments/feeds/posts wherever the URL link is pasted by members.

Thank you.

@rickkumar No I’m pretty sure all it does is converts the youtube url to an emdbeded video.

If you are wanting individual pages for each video, I’ve read a bit about a “group blog” plugin or feature, each group would have its own blog and I would think then members of a group could post articles to the group blog and embed their videos the same way you would with a regular wordpress site. But then it might get a bit to complex this way, I don’t know I’ve never used the plugin, just suggesting you maybe look into it.

@alanchrishughes

I want youtube like page layout and functionality for videos. It is ok to also have media inserted in the comments/activity etc but that is not my primary need. I can use “oEmbed for buddypress” for inserting media in to comments/activity but I am afraid if it will cause issues later when I replace with “BuddyPress Media” plugin. The other concern I have is that my visitors may not like the site layout/functionality if I use it and may lose interest in our site PunjabiTube.com thinking it is not really a video site.

I will just learn and try rest of the BP functionality and all the other plugins etc I need while I wait for the version 0.2.0 initial beta download. This is what I found on BuddyPressMedia plugin page:
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Content Types
Build 0.1.9 supports JPG, GIF, and PNG image files
Build 0.2.0 will support JPG, GIF, and PNG image files, embedded streaming audio and video from Youtube, Revver, and dozens of other sites via oEmbed
Build 0.2.1 will support HTTP streaming of Audio and Video files
Build 0.2.2 will support HTML5 streaming of Audio and Video files
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Hopefully beta version of 0.2.0 will come in couple of months and that should be good enough to start with.

Thanks for all your help buddy.

Regards,

Rick

@rickkumar if you aren’t looking to host the videos yourself I don’t see why you would need this plugin. If all the videos are going to be from youtube or vimeo or other sites, you just need to work on your page layouts and design.

@alanchrishughes I am looking for both embedding from other sites and also members loading directly to our sites.

In the beginning, most of the videos will be embedded from other sites to kickstart the site and at the same time members can also load videos/photos directly to our sites. I am researching video/youtube type of themes for buddypress also.

Thank you.

@foxly

Please respond to my follow up questions above?
Thank you very much.

Rick

Like foxly said above:

“Also, if you’re planning on being the next Vimeo, Revver, or YouTube, realize what you’re getting yourself into. You’ll need ninja-grade server admin skills to compile and set-up all the video transcoding software, racks of servers, and terabytes of data transfer. It’s not going to be cheap.”