Ah right. I’d copy/pasted that from a standard WordPress theme. Thanks for the correction.
Thanks for the great advice. I will def incorporate an IDE in the future; that sounds like a great idea. I guess you understand where im at with wordpress mu and buddypress. Im just trying to grasp how this thing works
http://codex.wordpress.org is probably the best place to start when trying to figure out what functions perform what tasks for what purposes. Also, think about using an IDE like NetBeans so you can reference functions and trace their usage to get an idea of why you would or wouldn’t want to use a specific function, action, or filter.
WordPress has a steep learning curve, and it uses an action oriented code structure rather than an object oriented one. There are objects out there, but you rarely interact with them directly, and in the WordPress world interacting with those objects is typically left to plugin developers to tinker with, and best left out of the template files.
Since you’re just learning, the best advice I can give you is not to edit any “core” file, or rather any file that comes included in WordPress or any plugin that you might use. If something isn’t doing exactly what you want it to, chances are you can adjust it somehow. If you can’t adjust it, make your own plugin and copy/paste the code that isn’t good enough and make your own functions out of them. If someone would have told me that 3 years ago I would have been a much happier person then. 
To be honest, there really isn’t one, at least not on paper. I can’t say that WordPress has one either.
It isn’t really about how the pieces fit, as much as it’s about how you adapt them to fit your needs. This is similar to WordPress, where it started as blogging software but people bend it around backwards to work in other ways.
Without sounding too much like a broken record, the about page sums up almost all of the functionalities of BP; none of them are more important than the others. It’s up to a good theme designer and code slinger to bring those components out and emphasize their importance to a community website.
Out of the box, BuddyPress is designed for all elements to be created equal. Groups are no more important than friends are no more important than activity are no more important than forums are no more important than directories are no more important than… You get the idea… It’s up to a good theme designer and a great developer to make the functions of BuddyPress pop-out and turn a WordPress site into a meetup.com or linkedin.com.
All of the elements exist in the core and in external plugins to do it, it just has yet to be done.
Every wordpress theme needs at least a style.css file, bloginfo(‘stylesheet_url’); tells the theme to get it’s style.css file. If you want another one, change the style.css or just add another stylesheet underneath your style.css sheet.
If your totally new to WordPress, try downloading a theme from the wordpress theme directory on wordpress.org and see how it’s made. Maybe then you’ll have a better understanding on how to do things in wordpress, like calling multiple stylesheets.
Here’s an example.
<link href="<?php bloginfo('template_directory'); ?>/css/style2.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" />
I am thinking about wordpress.com and how many users they might be running. If it's in the thousands than good.
It is in the multi-millions.
The bp-default theme is a “child theme” of bp-sn-parent theme, and you copy the bp-default theme and rename the theme folder to e.g. mythemename to make a child theme of your own. It’s not easy. If you have strong CSS foundation and Firebug, this process will take a few hours to tweak if you already have a design in mind.
https://codex.buddypress.org/how-to-guides/building-a-buddypress-child-theme/ Plus google “create wordpress child themes” or check out ” free BuddyPress child themes”
Btw, you can download latest BP 1.1.3 already
Yes thanks again Brajesh Singh. I’m using mediatemple.com and went to admin and selected to use php5. Not working yet. However I’d suppose it might take some time.
Only “error” I’ve discovered thus far, Im very pleased. Cheers to the wordpress Org. people.
Ok, I would like to say that I appreciate everyone’s post to this topic. The site is open and anyone can join as of now. It’s live and I never really said I was going to sit around for five years. A lot of people are getting that idea. I think one person actually got the idea that I am trying to do.
@Mariusooms
Drupal is a good software but, slow for development just like you had said. That’s a good reason why we didn’t use that software.
@David Lewis
I don’t think we’re going to fork it.
@Andrea_r
Yes, we would have our own custom code and maybe a whole new platform. That wouldn’t be a bad thing. At least I wouldn’t think so. I would love to talk to another developer and see what they thought. I have a few in my contacts maybe I’ll give them e-mail and see what they think.
Everyone here as actually looked at the idea not the possibility. I just wanted to know if wp and bp could handle a service like this? I am thinking about wordpress.com and how many users they might be running. If it’s in the thousands than good. We can at least learn where the faults might be(if any) that might be preventing them from growing. The whole idea in a nutshell is to have a social networking site that anyone can join and use. Of course we wouldn’t want to be bloated and non-usable.
P.S.- No I am not trying to sound harsh, mean, or any other unkind word that someone may think of. Just tired and cranky from a long day:)
The problems are all related to this bug:
https://trac.mu.wordpress.org/ticket/1147
@Mike Pratt
I think a lot of people are misunderstanding what I was asking. I am impressed with the two software but, we’re looking into the coding part not just the functionality of the software. I have used the wordpress software out of the box before. I have never tried to mess with the guts until now. That’s why I posted a few examples of what we were trying to do with the software. I am trying to get an idea of how much the coding could be changed without breaking and then becoming unusable to members. Bp out of the box is really generic and why create just another generic site? Just trying to change the code so it works for us. When I have changed some coding the site breaks and I get some errors. And no I am not asking how to do it.
If you want something less you could give Mingle a try, it works on WPSA (Stand alone).
BP is not yet support standalone wordpress, when you implement your site with MU, you can simply disable blog registering for individuals and remove the “Create blog” option in usermenu with some tick.
A few quick thoughts and comments…
1. People use Facebook, YouTube etc. for one reason… volume… millions of “eyeballs” and astronomical amounts of content. It helps that they are a joy to use. Usability is paramount for user adoption.
2. Don’t lock yourself in a closet for 5 years trying to build the perfect solution and unleash it all at once. Who knows where the web will be in 5 years. That’s a lifetime in “web years”. Start small and constantly tweak and evolve.
3. You COULD use WordPress, BuddyPress… but at a certain point I would think you’d get into a square peg / round hole scenario. If you’re really trying to do something new and cool, and you have the funding, build it from the ground up… probably in either PHP of Ruby.
“We have spent around three months with the wordpress and bp software. “
I’ve spent three years working with WordPressMU (before it was in beta even) and the job you’re talking about is *huge*. Like others have said.
Tip: start in phases. Pick something basic you can start with then build off that. Even the example given about with the tuts plus network, they started with one blog.
you also have to offer value, and in being different, phrases like “like youtube” don’t help. 
Actually that makes more sense than your first post, making multiple services and linking those together is a brilliant idea, I thought you were gonna cramp all of it in one install.
This reminds me of the tuts plus network, what they did is take multiple wordpress intalls and gave every tutorial category their own subdomain ( eg net.tutsplus.com, psd.tutsplus.com etc.). And that network is even part of a bigger network (envato).
Wether it’s possible, I’d say yes, it’s possible. Since your planning on using different servers for all of it.
@superbloggernl
No, I am not trying to do either of your options. I have a realistic ideal and just need some input on what wp and bp can actually do. That’s all. I love the wordpress platform for blogging. That is one reason why we choose wordpress. I just want to make sure we’re going the right route. No complaining here!
Ok, we’re not going to put every service on the internet in one site. We’re going to do certain services that involve social networking. Also the services that we will be offering is going to be on different sub-domains as well on different services.
Let me give you an example:
We’re working on a service for artist and people who love music (similar to purevolume).
On our site they would be on artist.domain.com and this service would be on one server.
Another network would consist of people who are looking for sitters.
They also would be on another sub domain with it’s own server.
So, there would be no bloating. Yes and of course we would integrate other services into our site like google and yahoo. We don’t wont to be a hub for other services. I mentioned facebook and myspace just because of the apps they provide. Facebook has also a business industry that will be part of our services as well. I should have explained myself a little better. Social Networking could be more advanced then what it is today. Why join multiple sites when you could get more than one service on one site? Maybe at the most we would have 10 whole services that would hopefully attract a large group. These services would be popular among internet users. I hope this makes better sense. We just need to know what wordpress can and can’t do. If we’re wasting our time then we might as well throw out wordpress and start our own platform. That would mean deleting everything including members. Maybe I will do a survey of the 10 or so services that we want to offer and see what the public would think. Sorry for the long post.
Ummm. I haven’t gotten the whole idea of wordpress coding yet. So, what someone else has used I can’t ever get it to work on our pages. I tried to use your function above but, no luck. I am thinking that I need to somehow call the main files in wp but, really have no idea of how to do it successfully yet.
I read that back in March there had been some talk of BuddyPress for standard WP. But, I guess that didn't pan out. Otherwise, I suppose that may have been a better choice.
It hasn’t happened yet. Once WordPress and WordPress MU merge, then BuddyPress won’t be far behind.
Well I have figured out a way for members to navigate through our site without the buddy bar but, I am not sure if it’s correct or not. I used the following link on pages that are not apart of wordpress. http://www.chatterbing.com/wp-login.php
Since that page and the home page already redirects users to their account. I was actually looking for a more technical method. Please give feedback on this method or maybe a new method that I haven’t tried yet.
This error has been fixed in 1.2.4. The problem was with the introduction of setting a default groupblog theme in the backend. Now we set the default as wordpress would upon installation, so it doesn’t choke when you do not select an initial theme.
We never came across this error, since we already selected a groupblog theme, once you do that you’ll never be able to reproduce that error. If you do, please tell us step by step how to reproduce and what your ‘saved’ settings are in the groupblog wp-admin section.
I believe Andy is waiting for WordPress 2.9 to come out, since that version will have a lot of media related updates. Not sure when it’ll release, but will most likely be very soon.
In the meanwhile you could use kaltura or the buddypress picture album plugin.
Your request will not be responded too btw, the buddypress development theme wont start basing their core on other people’s plugins. If you want something like that, ask the wpmu dev team to create this once it’s build into buddypress.
