[robcwright]

A thought occurred to me the other day as I was interacting with a client over their secure message gateway. Couldn’t Buddypress do something very similar?

-Buddypress behind an SSL
-Create an invite to the site and send email to soon to be new user
-New user registers with the site and is able to view forum post or PM securely behind the SSL and WordPress auth.

I guess you’d have to send a PM to a non-registered user, inviting them join the site and tell them they have a message waiting for them. Click the secure link, create account, login, and view PM, at which point the conversation happens on the site. Once the new user replies, a notification is sent to the author stating the new user has responded and to click the link to view the message.

Anyone every thought about or seen something similar?

[r-a-y]

All you need is a SSL cert and then you can secure your entire WordPress install. BuddyPress should inherit the SSL settings from WordPress.

[robcwright]

understandable. What about the messaging component? Some kind of cross between secure invites/invite anyone and some custom email templates?

[r-a-y]

You could try the Welcome Pack plugin, which sends a customizable PM when you activate your account, in combination with Secure Invites.

[techguy]

I can confirm that you just have to install the SSL certificate (doesn’t work on a shared host as well) and then BP works fine. Just realize that there’s a cost (on the server) to running everything over SSL. It uses more of everything I believe (CPU, memory, bandwidth).

[Snaky Love]

Yuo have to define “secure” on a technical level. SSL only secures the transport of bytes, that should work right out of the box with buddypress, you just need to upgrade you existing webserver configuration and get a SSL certificate. YOu can get free certs at cert.org.
However, this does not mean that the messages are encrypted – so content in your database will still be readable to anybody who has access to the database.