[Ken K.]

Are there any start-up guides on-line? It’s great there’s so much activity here, but I have no idea how to do much of anything. Never used WordPress before. Buddypress seems to be up and running.

I expect that I can accept all the defaults, but I don’t even know what roles to assign to users. The description of them on the WordPress site doesn’t seem to fit, as far as I understand, which isn’t far.

[r-a-y]

It all depends on what you want to do with your community.

Since you have no experience with WordPress, the BuddyPress for Dummies book might be a good way to start:
https://buddypress.org/2010/03/book-buddypress-for-dummies/

If you have some coding experience, it shouldn’t take you long to get up to speed. Although it would have helped to have some idea of how WordPress works, especially with themes and hooks.

[Ken K.]

I’m OK at coding.

Holding off on buying the book until I see if buddypress can be what I want– which is basically a no-frills replacement for facebook status updates and comments.

This moment I’m looking for:
1. How to decide what the right role is for users
2. How to keep a users activities hidden from anyone except their friends.

Any advice very welcome.

[r-a-y]

Try installing it locally on your computer, or give testbp.org a spin.

1) That’s up to you. If you don’t need members to write blog posts, then the default WP role of “Subscriber” should be fine.
2) A full-featured privacy component is on its way (by Jeff Sayre). Until then, there isn’t really another plugin that does this right now.

[Ken K.]

Thanks. I doubt I need a blog at all. I’ll look up Jeff Sayre and see what’s happening.