BuddyPress.org

Hi everyone.

Im new to BuddyPress and would like some clarification in exactly what it provides.

I have installed BP 123 (default,default theme) and WP MU and its up and running fine.

I have a mountain climbing club website to deliver and after my current solution is no longer supported (PostNuke) I have chosen BP as it seems fantastic.

Having setup a ‘test’ site on Ning, each user can have a blog, each blog stays within the parent sites ‘UX/UI/Look & Feel’.

Now I would rather use BuddyPost however, I don’t seem to understand how to make this happen (blogs like on Ning). I have created a blank page called ‘News’ and pointed my parent site ‘posts’ to happen on that page. Now that ‘News’ page is a tab on the top of the site which if fine and dandy ‘and works. Its my parent sites blog which I want committee members to be able to post about our club.

Next to the ‘News’ tab I have the ‘Blogs’ tab which gives me a list of my User blogs (out of box). Problem is each blog acts ‘as it should’ a separate blog/site and can be branded up differently by the user. I know I can set it to have a single theme but it still has a dashboard and another navigation menu etc.

I don’t want that to happen. Visually I want the user blogs-Blog posts to appear under my club site, with all my club site navigation links (About,News,Blog etc) staying at the top, like Ning does. E.g embed the user blog under my club site. I want to give my users a very ‘basic’ blog experience under my club site, not each users blog being fully customizable as it would be overwhelming for users who are not net savvy. If you have a look at Ning you will see what I mean, users for a social network can create blogs but they are basic and visible ‘under’ the social network site.

How can I make this happen?

Maybe I should not be using WP NU, just WP Vanilla?

Sorry if this is long winded but I just cant find the answer to my query. I have spent hours last couple of weeks playing with my install trying to find these answers.

Many Thanks.