BuddyPress.org

The way I see it is that the blogs are the icing on the cake you get with a social network built on wp and bp. I don’t see the sense in a quick blog post form in the frontend. If you only want to write a quick note then use the activity stream. The wp backend is one of the best I have seen and I’ve worked with a lot of different systems. Why take all those goodies away from your users by restricting them to only use a few of the available features through a form on the frontend?

I mean, I would never use the QuickPress widget on the dashboard for the same reason. If you think your users will have problems with the backend interface (not likely, let em play around for an hour and they’ll be pros), then half a dozen short introductory screencasts about the various features are the way to go. Easy to make and once your users get the hang of it, they won’t want to go back. The wp backend is the most intuitive out there and it’s not gonna change anytime soon. Why should it?

With all that said I do agree that a unified look can only be beneficial to your community, so if you want to go that extra mile, then get someone to build an admin theme that mirrors the look of your site (or do it yourself).

I’ll be modifying the backend just a bit, I think. Change some colors around, add my own logo and then there’ll be a help page full with screencasts highlighting the features of both the front and the backend.