BuddyPress.org

Install wordpress and deep intergrate bbPress into it, then install buddypress on your wordpress and presto.
Make sure that your deep intergration with bbPress works before you install buddypress though.

THIS WILL NOT intergrate your bbpress into buddypress. So topics/posts in bbpress won’t show up in your activity stream for example.

hi Mike
The problem with the author url is, it is generated by wordpress. Let me take a look at it, there must be someway to get over that too.
The problem with the unified url is a trouble as wordpress uses 3/4 options settings for that (home,wpurl,siteurl,url), an interesting thing will be if we just cap all of them.

Let me take a look at the author url, will be posting again soon

Hi Shanni,
I’m also a fan of Simple Facebook Connect, and the author of this plugin seems pretty active to implement the new features by Facebook. So I would not worry that much about the future of this plugin: it seems to me the best plugin to connect a WordPress blog with Facebook.
But I wonder: does he work smoothly with BuddyPress? I mean: can users register on BuddyPress using Facebook Connect?
Thanks,
Nicolas

“Would it be easier to bite the bullet now and set up WPMU now so that later I can offer blog functionality? “

WPMU is being merged in with the next version of WordPress. You’ll be able to enable it fairly easily. So, start with WordPress.

“I’ve had a BIG respon$e to my first tweets about the idea and people want in on my project, but alas, I’m no tech geek!!! So I have customers but no website, lol!”

Then my best advice would be to hire someone to build it for you.

The only difference between WP and WPMU is on WPMU each user on the site will have their own blog with an admin. It’s like having your own wordpress.com. If you want just a social network type site then I’d go with WP + BP. Functionality wise there really is no difference between BP on WP or WPMU.

As for hosting. Thats a personal choice. I use shared hosting with some cacheing and I off set with hosting static files on Amazon S3. If you make your themes slim and compress files you should be ok unless you get linked to by a major site and a million people are hitting your site.

WPMU is only needed if you want individual user blogs à la wordpress.com.

If you don’t need this functionality, get standard WP.

Buddypress is only a WP plugin. So if you know how to install wordpress and manage plugins you know how to install Buddypress. In your WP admin search buddypress in the new plugins dialog, install it. Then go into your themes and choose the buddpress theme. Thats it. Buddypress must have a buddypress theme. Click extend above and then themes for some theme options.

hnla said: “quick question, regarding the aspect of group blogs and group forums is there really a difference?”

No, there isn’t. That’s why I would consolidate everything on blog posts (no forum topics, status updates, etc.) and threaded comments (no wire etc.), the native WordPress way of structuring conversation. And then you can use Category and other built-in post options to differentiate between types of posts+threads and do different things with them.

“Defining a Social Network / Community”

At the core is a relational database with member data and content that is then presented and connected in different ways on the user interface.

Online community is an older term that usually referred to forums. Organization of the data is mainly by topic/content.

Social networking evolved from forums. Profile pages of the users came to the fore. Central point of organization became individual members.

Wordpress’ strength is still content management. Member management in WP is underdeveloped for social networking.

The plugin is BuddyPress Badge:
https://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/buddypress-badge/

Have you upgraded your wordpress Mu to wpmu 2.9.2 or you are using the old version of wpmu below 2.9.

For now, you can simply rename wp-content/buddypress and you will be able to access the wp-admin. Let us know about your current configuration in details as mentioned here
https://buddypress.org/community/groups/how-to-and-troubleshooting/forum/topic/when-asking-for-support

My 2 cents: In my custom theme I try to consolidate everything around blogs and groups. I’m still on 1.1.3.

Blogs are of course WordPress strength. I’m trying to get to a social network with a greater emphasis on content, where possible via RSS and with front-end posting on blogs and groups to lower the threshold.

For the social networking aspect I need profile pages for members and some ways for members to interact with eachother, via internal mail, friending/following, joining eachothers groups and blogs.

Groups are Buddypress’ killer app imho. Buddypress has the potential to become a real collaboration platform around content, with endless real world applications in businesses, organizations and associations.

Buddypress has all the basic elements to achieve this, but the following are still huge annoyances and don’t look like they will be fixed any time soon:

– Member management is all over the place, in different pages under wp-admin, different database tables and different places on the front-end. Adding custom member data fields and integrating them with outside applications is complicated and inflexible. By design (!) there is no built-in way to reliably store separate firstname and lastname, which makes out-of-the-box BP useless for most businesses and organizations. There is little validation on sign-up form fields.

– No built-in privacy/security.

– Built-in forums are increasingly clashing with commenting on blogs and wires and the social networking structure. There is no reason to have old-fashioned forums in a next generation social network. You might as well integrate a WELL-style bulletin board system. Having a single sign-in option for people who want to use a forum on the side is great, but please stop weaving forums into Buddypress.

What Buddypress needs imho:

1. Consolidated member management; all member data stored in one place in the database, one page in wp-admin, one member profile page with “edit account settings” on the front end.

2. Content-focused member profile pages. Members should be able to use their profiles to introduce themselves and showcase their blogs and groups.

3. Conversation around blog posts and (threaded) blog comments, ideally with front-end posting like P2. There is no reason to have blog posts AND forum topics AND wire or whatever it’s called. Group blog should be a built-in feature.

4. End-user-friendly control over their groups and blogs, including privacy/security and front-end admin.

Summary:

– Members
– Blog posts
– Threaded comments

Presented in:

– Profile pages
– Blogs
– Groups

It’s just pulling the data from https://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/

Just had this problem myself.

https://trac.buddypress.org/ticket/2361

Normally BP fails silently if this table is missing. However if a WordPress plugin calls $wpdb->show_errors() it reports the error above.

Workaround – find the plugin with $wpdb->show_errors() and comment it out.

Ian