The sitewide activity, members, and groups are all widgets which would simply needed to be added to your sidebar. Other than that its as simple as installing BuddyPress and your main site will be maintained while the profiles will assume the new theme.
If you’d like to see a more custom example, check out MMAFrenzy.com where I integrated the profiles into my own design but for basic functionality and maintaining your own theme its just a basic install.
Hope that helps, feel free to ask any questions so I can hopefully clear them up for you.
Using a clean version of the latest trunk from trac.buddypress.org?
I have it setup at MMAFrenzy.com. Only soft-launched at this point while I tie up a few loose ends but it’s going great so far and has customized rather easily.
I’m with Media Temple on the base DV with BuddyPress and its great, plus it easily scales up when your site grows (I currently fluctuate between two plans depending on traffic). MT has all the requirements for BuddyPress and a lot more. I’ve been with them for almost two years, so if you have any questions don’t hesitate to ask.
https://buddypress.org/forums/search.php is the correct link for the forum search function. Why it isn’t linked on the forum or in the sidebar I don’t know but that’s where you can access it at.
Did you manually approve the comment? I’ve encountered a bug where BuddyPress says I’ve published a post and/or when really I’ve only approved one from another author.
I’d file a ticket on trac.buddypress.org as this is something I’ve also run into.
Thanks ron_r but I don’t think that link works:
404: Not Found
Seems as though we couldn't find what you're looking for. You may have come from an old outdated link.
Use the menu above to find your way.
I’m sure google is on this, so we can just google site:buddypress.org
OK. I withdraw my recommendation for Site5. They are no different than other shared hosting and won’t respond well to BuddyPress, based on the warnings I get for my non-BP sites.
Thanks.!
Don’t ask why I didn’t tried this before I asked. Here in Norway, we are pretty lazy so I think it explains the most. 
– And I don’t have any trouble understanding your english 
Another option is iMountain (imountain.com). They offer clustered hosting to VPS to dedicated, without cpu processing limits.
@hudatoriq – and it shoudl worry you. On a shared host, you will *always* hit inodes or sql limits before you use up a tenth of bandwidth or space.
yes, I *did* get kicked off shared hosting. This was before buddypress, and I only had a couple hundred users.
If you plan on being any size, get a VPS. We not not recommend shared hosting for WPMU. Add Buddypress to it and you’re adding a lot more processing. Shared hosting will not be able to handle it.
What? I live in Saratoga Springs, but I grew up right at the bottom of Millcreek canyon. Heart of the Olympus Cove…
SLC, olympus cove to be exact. You?
Creede, your site looks great. I am in Utah too, where are you guys at?
http://utahmodern.org
Still not officially launched, but running the latest from buddypress.
Here’s my alpha site that could be much beta…
http://whiteblackthepenguin.net/
Maybe you should uploaded a language file for WPMU too. And this will let MU can active the languages ‘select list’ in backend.
WPMU (Core) and BP always change them language at the same time. So when you change the language of MU. The BP’s will change too.
Hope you understand my poor English. Ha……
Thanks for the tip!
Yesterday I reinstalled for what I had hoped was to be the last time (at least for a little while) worpressmu and buddypress using the subdirectory rather than subdomain option for new blogs. My plan was to simply create a news blog, since that works (as noted by chriscarter) — it isn’t as elegant because you can’t use the buddypress home theme (unless you want whole new buddypress blog with its own useres, etc.). Nevertheless, it works.
I just checked with bluehost, and they told me that I cannot use the subdomain option on bluehost. Maybe that simply means I need to modify the database DNS wildcard, but for the moment I am sticking with subdirectories for blogs and a new news blog — and hoping I can find a way to fiddle with the appropriate php code in buddypress wpmu.
Please feel free to check out the site, just realize its very alpha and could be much beta ; ) — http://whiteblackthepenguin.net/
Ok, thanks !
So all I really have to do, is create the buddypress-xx.po and .mo, and upload them to the same folder as the template file?
I am guessing now, but how do I actually “activate” my language? Is this still in the WPMU wp-config.php file?
Thanks for helping me out on this one.!
Languages files must named as buddypress-xx_XX.po and .mo.
DO NOT replace the buddypress.po file. It is just a template file.
Yes, I tried to view it on IE6: buttons disappeared, message encroached.
I am having a similar problem.
When I go to my ‘news section,’ I get an ‘Error 404 – Not Found’ message in the blog area.
I reinstalled wpmu, but chose the subdomain option instead of the sub-directory option for new blogs. I then was able to get to the news blog (root blog), but could not create new blogs that work — the URL bumps me to OpenDNS and the mesage ‘We did not find any results for: [ blog.mydomain] Please try a new query above’ Note: my server is bluehost.
I have reinstalled everything a couple of times using both approaches and get the same results
So… unless I can figure this out, I have to choose between not having a functioning news section under buddypress, or no being able to create new blogs.
