BuddyPress

I have a feeling this was doomed to failure, but I had a play with:

http://wpmudev.org/project/Multi-Site-Manager

which allows you to run one Mu installation for serving multiple domains.

It all seems to work, but you cannot – it seems – have BuddyPress working on any site other than the main one, at least at a first, quick look.

Is it possible to run a multi-site BuddyPress from one installation of Mu, does anyone know, please?

Many thanks and thank you to everyone who helps to make all of this stuff work.

No this is impossible or either not recommended. If you go look inside a database with wpmu/buddypress you’ll see that without even a second wpmu/buddypress install, it’s a total mess since you get a few new tables for every blog/user, now imagine that you have 200 wpmu/buddypress installs in one database and then have 10.000 users per install. It’ll be a huge mess and probably make your server/sites really slow.

Only possible solution would be to make multiple databases, with one database per install. If your on a cheap host, this’ll be impossible, but if your on a dedicated or self hosted, you could get this to work. Still won’t recommend this though, since it’ll take a lot of resources.

So far, buddypress is not multi-site aware.

There are situations where you may want it to be like that though, but as above, no way I’d do it on a shared host.

This isn’t what you want, but thought I’d share as it’s sort of related and in case anyone comes across this post via Google at a later date – BP_ENABLE_MULTIBLOG:

http://codex.buddypress.org/how-to-guides/changing-internal-configuration-settings/

Thanks for the replies everyone.

Xevo – The vague idea was for very many fewer sites and blogs than that, but your point is taken.

Andrea – No, it is on a VPS. It was actually following some of your posts on other sites which made me have a look at Multi-Site Manager.

DJPaul – Thanks for the link. Had not seen that and it has sparked off another idea. So, you can have BuddyPress sites within BuddyPress sites, eh?

Is that OK to do?

If I spent as much time actually writing blogs as playing with ideas, the database might actually be in danger of filling up.

Thanks again everyone.

@nocomment yeah, we’ve fiddled and tested BP & multisite together.
@DJPaul – will investigate right-quick!

There are cases where clients have a use for multiple sites, each with its own distinct buddypress. So that would be cool. (I think we’re working on a trac ticket – don’t hold me to it yet tho)

Edit: quick confer with Ron, and the multi-blog part is a seperate isue than on multiple sites. Still thinking.

I have two installations of wpmu/buddypress, one for Japanese users and one for English users. For English users, I use the user tables of Japanese users. This requires both install to use the same database, but similar to what you want, perhaps.

BP_ENABLE_MULTIBLOG basically allows BuddyPress to not look for the root domain, but instead just work on which-ever domain or blog that you’re on at the time. It isn’t really the answer to this question/issue, but rather a way to side-step the issue.

At the moment, there is no kind of “BuddyPressMU” type setup, allowing multiple BP communities on one installation. But, this isn’t an impossible task to pull off, with some effort.

The underlying problem is that BP uses 1 set of site-wide tables for all MU blogs regardless of site or association. It is coded to think that it has control over the entire MU setup. What would need to happen is for BP to look for which site it is occupying and enumerate its DB tables according to the site_id…

However… If we’re using one MU installation, we’re still talking about sharing a userbase regardless, so even the above scenario might not be optimal. Ultimately the problem comes from the shared userbase, which means even a new “site” has no real way to say these 10 users only belong to this site, and these 12 users to this one, and these 20 users to this one…

Something like this, in my opinion, is something that the core should be aware of, but not manage; similar to sunrise support in MU. As setups like this become more popular and the community need for it arises, I’m sure there will be a great solution to this.

I made a little plugin that allows you to have different BP on each domain, but there are limitations.
As jjj said, there is always one user base and plugin just adds different BP components on each site (like activities that user take, groups, messages..).
I’m not using forum so I’m not sure if this plugin would made different forum instances.

My plugin is basically making copies of tables for each site, e.g.
for friends table which is “wp_bp_friends”, plugin makes copies like:
wp_bp_1_friends (for site with id 1)
wp_bp_2_friends (for site with id 2)

That would be the way to do it. Polish up that plugin and put it in the plugin repo.

Oh yes please! If you’ve already whipped up the plugin, that’d be great.

Yes, please release this if you are willing.

@JJJ [blockquote]Ultimately the problem comes from the shared userbase, which means even a new “site” has no real way to say these 10 users only belong to this site, and these 12 users to this one, and these 20 users to this one…[/blockquote]

On my wpmu setup I am using a number of plugins from the premium site which was setup by Andrew. I am not sure which of his plugins does this, but on my setup, each blog does have it’s ‘own’ members.

I had asked awhile back about how to properly go about allowing a user to register on a subdomain blog without ever leaving that blog. This way each blog can have it’s ‘own’ members.

So when I look in my admin, I actually have a list of blogs, and the members belonging to each blog.

Would this be what is needed in order to get bp to filter the activity for each blog, to only display members/blogs/forums/activity streams etc… from the given blog being displayed?

For the life of me I cannot figure out exactly which plugin from Andrew is allowing this. Maybe Andrea would know…

I have many blogs that have been bugging me non-stop to try and figure out how to bring social networking to their site, but have no solution for them. I know that I could simply install multiple copies of wpmu and give each blog their own complete setup with bp, but that destroys the concept of one codebase to have to update and maintain. It would quickly become a nightmare trying to manage multiple wpmu installs just to get bp working for each blog independent of each other.

Blogs can have their own users in MU; they always can. The line gets blurry when you start talking about “sites” though, because a “site” is just another blog where users have roles and caps… The WordPress dashboard doesn’t really make this a clear thing visually, but at the end of the day you still only have 1 users table, regardless of how many sites or blogs you setup and how many users have what roles/caps on which blogs/sites.

Dizzy yet?

I actually like the fact that all the users are in the same table. Down the road it would allow me to do like ning does, where they have individual sites, only displaying information pertinent to the members of that site. However every member also belongs to the ‘hub’ site should they choose to visit it.

I guess the real ‘root’ of the problem for me is how to filter the activity on a per site basis, to give the appearance of a dedicated social group belonging to the site displayed.

Is any of this even vaguely possible as bp stands now?

I actually like the fact that all the users are in the same table. Down the road it would allow me to do like ning does, where they have individual sites, only displaying information pertinent to the members of that site. However every member also belongs to the ‘hub’ site should they choose to visit it.

I guess the real ‘root’ of the problem for me is how to filter the activity on a per site basis, to give the appearance of a dedicated social group belonging to the site displayed.

Is any of this even vaguely possible as bp stands now?