BuddyPress.org

Hi there,

So I’m a complete WP novice, I’ve only had my site up for about a month. I’m using the Headway theme, which I love for the drag and drop since I don’t know any coding. I want to take my site in another direction and offer local social networking sites and the features of Buddypress are perfect. Here’s how I envision it…

1. I have my main site as a standard WP site using the Headway theme.
2. I have subdomains as the local sites using the default Buddypress theme (not happy with what I’m reading about the Headway BP Addon).
3. I’d like to have a membership option so that when they register to join the local sites, they have to pay a yearly subscription fee. I’d like them to be able to browse the site openly, but can’t join in unless they pay. Bonus-I’d like them to be instantly added to a Mailchimp list. Ideally, each subdomain to a different list, but not sure if this is possible.

Here’s where I’m at. I’ve figured out how to enable multisite and have set up a couple of test subdomains. So far, so good. Now I need to install Buddypress I’m assuming, but I wasn’t clear on if it had to be installed on my main site (where I don’t want it) or if I do it on each subdomain. And I want each subdomain to have it’s own community. Not sure how to go about that.

Secondly, I’ve installed s2member as a membership plugin, but I’m not having an easy time figuring it out. Is there another plugin or way I can accomplish what I’m after easily?

Any advice appreciated.