BuddyPress.org

Hi Everyone

I am familiar with WordPress Mu however new to Buddypress and one of my clients wanted a ning.com type site however using ning, you do not own the system and there are many limitations.

So I dived into buddypress in the last week and on my 4th install sorted out all the requirements to get a nice smooth WP Mu + Buddpress + bbpress system integrated.

The system is still in development as the social networking aspect is only one part of this sport coaches membership site. I am still trying to get YM Membership plugin to work on it as it needs to be a paid membership site.

Here is the site: http://networkofcoaches.com/noc

I learned several important lessons:

1. If an existing wordpress install is present 1 level down such as in the root folder then WP Mu will not install until you temp disable wp-config.php and wp-blog-headers.php in that existing installation

2. When installed WP Mu in a sub folder as I have it ./noc you cannot use the sub-domain installation and must install WP Mu using the sub folder option. If your WP Mu is in the root of your domain then you can use sub domains.

3. WP Mu and Buddypress are relatively simple however integrating bbpress is a mission. I used these resources and it works now perfectly: http://umwblogs.org/wiki/index.php/Integrating_WPMu%2C_BuddyPress%2C_and_bbPress

and

https://bbpress.org/forums/topic/basic-integration-screencast

4. Now going to use bp-test to add extra top level menu options

My wishlist:

1. A themes upgrader system to modify WP themes for buddypress

2. Top level menu built in editor

3. Paid membership script integration and/or JV Manager2 (Fantasos) integration

4. Video integration especially All-In-One-Video

5. RSS and Twitter feeds

6. Easier homepage and widget editing (so far I can only add widget to the left column, even if I add one to one of the other columns, the system then adds it to the left column?

7. When a user request is received, unless you are already logged in you get a forbidden page, this should rather go to a login page and then process the friend request. My very 1st test user was very concerned over this forbidden page

Overall, I am very impressed. It is a little technical but once you have one successful install it is much easier.

I have a large free WP Mu system that I will be adding WP Premium plugins to and will market with Buddypress and bbpress installed. Keep an eye on http://besteportal.com

In fact I will have Buddypress integrated in a week and feel free to grab an account, in fact you will be helping me test the load on the system if you signup and play around as there are only 4000 blogs currently. I will be adding many additional functions to this site and it will effectively be a wordpress.com type offering however with Buddypress social networking and a few of my tricks.

A question I have is if I use the WP Premium multi db plugin which can split the WP Mu database into as many databases as you want to vastly improve efficiency and performance, then how will Buddpress+bbpress respond as it shares the same database. Perhaps I should have used a seperate database for bbpress?

Keep up the great work BuddPress!

Best Regards

Mark