BuddyPress.org

I’m not sure that this is the right forum to post this in, so let me know if it isn’t and I’ll go move over there (this seemed like the best place).

I have a general question about when to use BuddyPress, as in, I don’t want to install BuddyPress and find out it was complete overkill… so here’s my scenario.

The site I may be building is a membership site, which I was going to build leveraging some wpmudev plugins (Membership and Events +). Anyway, there is a need to have a Members Directory on the site as well, where users can have their information, like a basic profile, shown to other members. They may or may not be able to communicate to other members, but if not and it’s just a member directory, is it a good idea to utilize BuddyPress for this or can I achieve the same functionality with a simple WordPress install?

If they can communicate with each other, I’m assuming BuddyPress is the way to go. I’m having trouble knowing where to draw the line for utilizing BuddyPress.

I’m going to do an install of it now as a test to see what I get out of the box and how it works. I installed this a loooong time ago but I’m sure a lot has changed. Thanks for any suggestions or probing questions!