WP 3.0.1 would be the best install with BuddyPress 1.2.6 (released this coming weekend).
But before walking through too much detail, is there a reason you want BuddyPress on a subdomain? Is WordPress installed on the main domain?
Now, it is possible to install BP and have members create blogs using subdomains .. but maybe you have a different purpose for putting the whole community on the subdomain .. which is also possible.
There are a growing number of great themes for BuddyPress:
http://premium.wpmudev.org/project/buddypress-magazine-theme
http://bp-tricks.com/
Also, you can take any WP theme and modify it to match the community by using the template pack.
Yes, you can install WP 3.0.1 in physical subdomain and go multisite in subdirectory mode. See BuddyPress configurations available here:
https://codex.buddypress.org/getting-started/before-installing/#bp-config
Thanks for the info so far. I currently have a site about my home town. Its a news and topical debate site real-whitby.co.uk I would like to try create a community section of that site and felt the subdomain would be the best place ? But obviosuly im willing to listen to you guys if you think thats a bad move.
@whitbyglennk installing BP at the root is the ideal scenario. However, it can be installed in a secondary blog of installation as well. Rephrasing @LPH2005‘s question earlier, what do you have at the root of your public folder that you cannot install WP 3.0.1/BP at root?
Hi There, please see the above post. The root is real-whitby.co.uk. Instead of the forum thats already in place I want to have a community attached to that main site, with blogs, groups, and a forum. Any thoughts or pointers of the best way forward are greatly appreciated.
@whitbyglennk Hi Glen,
As soon as I saw the name Whitby I thought “That rings a bell” and had to search back through the archives at CSSCreator, nice to see the domain flourishing although it was the ‘Sea Anglers’ site you were working on back then.
To clarify for the thread real-whitby is presently a WP site and quite an evolved and customised one.
As has been said you have all options available to you really as to which is the best one to take I’m not to sure, I think it’s fair to say the most work would be to activate BP on the primary root blog, creating a secondary blog would be an easier option but I’m tending to think that a physical subdomain i.e community.real-whitby the easier route along with user blogs as folders, community.real-whitby/glensblog.
I’m not entirely sure of the best approach, you’ll probably need to experiment on a localhost test install to get a feel for the amount of work required and how the various options work in practice.
Thanks for your help. Pleased to know you remembered me, its a small world even on line. After a lot of hard work I eventually switched the sea angling site to wordpress along with a magazine theme from gabfire. whitbyseaanglers.co.uk/
Ive never looked back since. The ease of adding posts and displaying them on a homepage is amazing and saves one hell of a lot of time. Looking back to those days of trying to write html and css I wonder how I kept my sanity.
Anyway, thanks for your advice. I would tend to agree that a subdomain named community would be the way forward. Im quite looking forward to getting it running. I love tinkering with these things and it will make a good project for the coming winter months.
Just clarify, wordpress mu is now non existent ?
All the best – Glenn
@whitbyglennk
Yes, the mu features are now ‘built in’ to WordPress – have a look on the WordPress Codex for WordPress Multisite (and ‘setting up a network’).
We have no problems running BuddyPress installed on a secondary blog on one of our current development projects
Edit// too slow 
Yes WPMU is now defunct; you have WP 3.0 so already have the capability of running it as a MS install, you just have to do a little manual configuration to enable it which is explained over on the WP Codex.
I think a sub domain is the easiest approach, hardest aspect is working existing theme into BP.
Don’t dismiss writing HTML / CSS completely especially from a hand coding point of view, I would say there are a few of us around that would probably express the sentiment that they hoped WP and other cms’s didn’t become the defacto standard for web sites, as much as I like WP
Thanks for your advice guys. Im sure Ill be back for more help soon. Ive seen a few themes I like but not sure how to get hold of them :
http://www.h-mag.com/
would love to get my hands on this theme
wITH regards to people setting up their own blogs in subfolders. Will they have the choice of different themes etc or does every sub blog follow the sites main theme.
Each blog can have it’s own theme. Site admin can determine which themes are installed and available to the bloggers.
Sites like h-mag, hello eco living and alike are bespoke developments.. They are not ‘off the shelf’ themes
Thanks Roger, is there no-where you can buy similar premium themes ? The ones at link above are good but not brilliant.
@whitbyglennk
There are very few premium themes built specifically for BuddyPress – although you can enhance existing WordPress themes. I’ve seen some great looking bespoke BuddyPress sites, but I haven’t seen a generic BuddyPress theme with a design and layout that blows you away.
The difference between BuddyPress and WordPress is the number of options available to you. BuddyPress allows you to build much more complex sites.
Out of the box, BuddyPress attempts to be a generic social network that is all things to all men. Of course, this is not what real world sites tend to need – you’ll find that most of the best commercial developments only use the portions of BuddyPress they need, and bend the core product considerably to meet real world needs.
Whilst it’s useful to have an all encompassing platform, it doesn’t make it particularly suited to premium theme designers – sure, you can make it look nice, but with so many options, and so much tailoring to deliver real world needs, themers face an uphill challenge to produce something that breaks away from the out of box generic set of functions.
A further problem is the make up of the code – BP embeds an awful lot of presentation decisions in the core of the product (activity stream contents, default menu structures) instead of in the templates (where you’d expect them to be). So, again, producing any significantly different can be a real chore.
