BuddyPress.org

“make sure you’re using WordPressMU.”

“I was hoping for a main page similar to wordpress.com and then have the social features presented to each person who signs up.”

The BP theme is for each person who signs up. To have all the nifty front page features means you’ll have to wait for Andy to make one, or cobble together on your own.

Hint: it will be a different theme than the BP *user* theme.

make sure you’re using WordPressMU.

I’m working on this right now. It’ll arrive as soon as it’s ready and useable.

You can actually use any of the content that you see on the home theme in any WordPress theme. Everything on the home screen is a widget, and you can drop the functionality into any existing widget-enabled theme.

You will need to add some basic styles to the CSS file, but the IDs and classes are very generic.

I am not sure I fully understand what you’re asking, but the BuddyPress theme is a great starting point. Users can still choose their own theme (provided you’ve installed and enabled them). On Testbp.org the user profiles use the BuddyPress theme while the blogs use the default WordPress theme.

The BuddyPress theme can also be deconstructed so you can integrate the features you want into a theme of your own to further customize your community’s look and functionality.

Did you install them in /mu-plugins/ or just /plugins/?

Plugins installed in /mu-plugins/, such as BuddyPress, will not show up on the plugins page as plugins in this folder are automatically activated across the entire WPMU install.

On the other hand, if plugins are only needed on a blog-by-blog basis they are to be installed in the regular /plugins/ directory and will be shown on the plugins page just as in regular wordpress.

The BuddyPress plugins are supposed to be installed in /mu-plugins/ per step 3 of the instructions.

Right now the basics on the front screen are done and it is live at: http//testbp.org

If you get hold of the trunk, it was checked in last night.

I need to use the __() function on the “First Name” and “Last Name” fields so they can be translated – after which you should be able to translate them the same way you translate WordPress. For now, you can simply edit the names in the database – in the “wp_bp_xprofile_fields” table.

As far as I know this plugin should work with BuddyPress, I know it works with WPMU 2.6.2.

Whoa, I must have missed the forum announcement, awesome.

For orangeguru:

Nice, but did you have published this website ?

What kind of configuration do you used ? WordPress MU + Buddypress + what widget ?

Add

I like this, very impressed that it seems that their will be a sitewide activity feed (as opposed to a per user feed) Am I right Andy?

What I don’t see is categories and tags. I know WordPress MU does not support sitewide categories, and I know theres a plugin to make Tags sitewide.

Any plans for these features in Buddypress?

So here’s why blogs are separate from home bases:

BuddyPress is designed to support existing blog networks, as well as brand new installations. On an existing installation, users already have their blogs set up and established. Forcing a new blog on them just to use BuddyPress features would make no sense and most of them would be left empty and unused.

It could be possible to give users an option whether or not to set up a personal blog with their new home base. The trouble is, that would mean some home bases have blogs, others not. That could end up being even more confusing for users.

Also, another big problem is adding additional authors to the blog. This would mean other site members would be posting within a users home base which would mean an additional layer of security would be needed so they couldn’t access the main user’s messages, profile etc.

Overall, separating blogs from home bases saves a whole lot of headaches, and allows BuddyPress to easily support new and existing installs. Perhaps we can work out a way to automatically set up a redirection from “user.domain.com/blogs/blogname/” to “blogname.domain.com” for each new blog. Going any further than a simple redirect would be fundamentally change the way WordPress MU works – and that’s not something we want to do.

I’d also like to create a BuddyPress blog theme, that will tie in with the overall look and feel, and add the user navigation menu. This should reduce the contrast between home bases and blogs even further.

Hope this explains the choice a bit more.

Cheers,

Andy

Awesome, thanks Andy.

Thanks for the questions. Some things I’d like to see on the home page:

– Latest posts, comments, tags and new blogs.

– Recently active, new, and biggest groups

– Recently active and new members

– Member, group and blog directories

– Site wide activity stream

– Recent group forum posts

– Latest photo updates, most viewed photos

Just some initial ideas. Most of this should be possible already with what is already there. I’m going to tackle the home theme next week.

As for your second question. I’d like to see the signup process modified to allow the first blog to be registered straight away. This may be down the line a little bit though.

Blogs will stay on their own subdomain/subdirectory simply because this is the way WordPress MU works – and changing that would break existing installations.

Site RSS feeds will be available at some point.

Andy

Looks good!