BuddyPress.org

Hi all

I’m rapidly going nowhere with BuddyPress – don’t get that wrong – it’s working as it should out of the box, this is more about what i actually want the site to do and the experience I want users to have.

When I installed BP, I didn’t expect it to complete take over the site, I expected it to be a plugin – after all that’s what it claims to be, but it feels now more like WPMU is the plugin and BuddyPress is the core site script.

The situation I wanted was a generic “flannel panel” landing page (bit like here at BP.com, or at wp.org) then from that the visitors can dive off to static info pages, or leap through to a directory of latest blog posts and comments, or an index of blogs and topics (think WPMU site-wide categories and stuff here). Instead, it’s more like they’re landing into facebook or MySpace and that with BuddyPress the core function of the site is not blogging and all that goes with blogging, but rather it’s to make the site a gossip shop and playground. There’s already enough sites out there where people can waste time doing that, but I want to build business enablement sites.

I guess my frustration here comes from the fact that the theme system, whilst powerful, simply takes over the entire site, and there’s not enough themes in the public domain yet. In fact, it’s not really that either, it’s more that it feels like the software has been built to copycat facebook etc. without a thought to what it can usefully be used for – i.e. not enough admin site-function controls on the back end.

If that’s not making sense, then think about it this way, what exactly is the point of BuddyPress other than to show off the skills of the programmers and the fans supporting it?

My current project needs community features, but those are definitely third-tier priority to the main blog providing, and to the ecommerce functions to be built into them. The main reason I launched into BP early in the project was due to being advised to put it in as the first plugin and get WPMU and BP playing together nicely before spending time developing the WPMU side of the site.

How can I “demote” BP into being just a sideline subservient set of functions that are accessed from a link in the WPMU blogs, with their own “community” landing page a couple of levels down from the main site functionalities,rather than being the front end and dominant feature of the site?

I’m completely lost and way off-course on what I was trying to achieve with the site.

Thanks in advance for any advice or suggestions on this predicament.

Gaz