I would like to see something like the “tag surfing” feature on http://en.wordpress.com/tags/
If u run a large community it is essential to “categorize” ur posts in some way to make them accessable. I think the tag surfing idea is a pretty simple and good solution!
A tag cloud on the frontpage and a feature like “Browse by recent Tags” would be great!
@Jtbailey, WOW beauty of a classified plugin ! One suggestion, why not make it post to twitter and where can I get the plugin?
@Gpo1
Sorry, it’s just a mock-up so far, I’m trying to entice one of these geniuses into actually coding it, or something like it
Having it post to Twitter is a good idea though
I can’t partecipate to the GSoC.. 
too young
@21green: That idea sound nice, I\’ll consider it too.
@Jtbailey: The project sounds like a nice coding challenge, but I don\’t think it\’s relevant to the actual development of the BuddyPress \”core\”.
@Nicola: Don\’t worry, GSoC is every year and I think a developer like you won\’t have problems entering in the future!
What do you think about Photo Galleries?
There is a wp classifieds – https://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wp-classified/
I think he\’s adapted it for wpmu. He\’s very responsive. Your mock ups are sweet, though. Maybe you could twist his arm to devote some time specifically to bp to get that tight integration look.
Also, I second Photo Galleries. Why are there no photo galleries???? Wish I could code.
Oh no, @Enrico, classifieds are THE core function of every local newspaper, which is essentially what Buddypress is, when you think about it.
But if you want to do a photo gallery, take a look at this guy’s Drupal module: http://drupal.org/project/picasa
I was impressed at how seamless it was. Personally I’m nervous about being responsible for people’s personal photos, especially when Flickr and Picasa do such a nice job of it for free. That module made me realize It’s better to have a good “glue” module than an excellent standalone “gallery”.
@Zenseeker, I tried wp-classifieds and Classipress and both left much to be desired. No worries, I have a nice jQuery/ajaxy theme I may be able to ransom off to get what I need.
BuddyPress is to build a social network! For a newspaper you can use a simple CMS.
That drupal module looks strong, it has a lot of interaction with Picasa! However, I think photo galleries in a social network are more like a way to share moments rather than a tool to showcase personal work or store/backup images.
Personally, when I use the photo galleries at Facebook with my friends is to share photos related to something specific (a party, meeting, birthday, old photos from school, etc). They have enough quality to be downloaded (but they won’t be useful if you want to work with them later).
Using a third party service like Picasa or Flickr makes your site depend on other site to work, and forces your users to open an account on any of those services (users don’t like registrations, and even sometimes they don’t know how to link one account with other). I know this won’t be an issue for the average person in this forum, but future potential users will have problems, and we have to think every single thing to be as fool-proof as possible.
If you are concerned about storage, maybe you can use a professional service then (like Amazon S3). But if it’s about privacy then it would be better if you don’t host photo galleries at all. Privacy is another thing that needs to be reviewed at BuddyPress!
Robust classifieds (paid and free)
Group calendar/events with registration
Photo galleries (for groups, members, and group events)
Cheers!
@Jtbailey,There is a wp classifieds – https://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wp-classified/
Liaise with this developer and get him to integrate it with your mock-up. & twitter posting.
Maybe entice him with donation ?
@jtbailey, I agree wp-classifieds might not have all the bells & whistles, but when I talked to the developer he was extremely responsive. I was thinking to get him more involved with bp if possible.
A photo gallery that pulled featured pics to the frontpage like some of the magazine themes do would be nice. Would that be possible?
@Enrico Lamperti
you may want to take a look at:
http://www.foaf-project.org/
The Friend of a Friend (FOAF) project
The Friend of a Friend (FOAF) project is creating a Web of machine-readable pages describing people, the links between them and the things they create and do; it is a contribution to the linked information system known as the Web. FOAF defines an open, decentralized technology for connecting social Web sites, and the people they describe. [more…]
FOAF is part of a shift towards a Web where we can choose the sites and tools we like, without being cut off from friends who made different choices. FOAF lets you share and inter-connect information from diverse sources, move it around, and use it in unexpected new ways. [more…]
@Jeffca: Thanks for your collaboration!
@Zenseeker: I think it’s possible to make a gallery with that feature as long as it doesn’t make trouble with future privacy settings! That’s a nice suggestion, thank you!
@Fishbowl81: Wow, that’s very interesting! Thanks for the information!
How about something for the site admin. A few ideas. A blog clone plugin. Setup one or more clone blogs including plugin settings, then depending on the role, group or whatever of the new user it would clone the blog with all the setting, menu, etc. already setup. This would of course go great with a true role-manager for wpmu that could create site-wide roles, or edit the site-wide rights of any of the roles. Which used with a wpmu specific adminimize plugin that would recognize not just the old roles, but newly created ones too and then set the menus site-wide for each of the roles (or if we can clone blogs, at least would recognize newly created roles). This would be great for educational or setups that want to charge for extras (although I guess these are kind of wpmu ideas, but still very relevant to buddypress too.
Another tack would be to create some educational plugins for quizzes somewhat like Moodle without Moodles rigid structure. (But those are more WordPress specific rather than buddypress) although buddypress with individual eduacational spaces for each student, but sitewide feeds of grades to teachers would be great. And schools need the free stuff with money hard to come by from administration types who think computers are just big calculators for adding up costs.
And yes, I definitely agree about the privacy issue.
Lots of great ideas above all the best in making your choice and best of luck at GSoC.
I’ve been through the problem of having to configure each new blog in wpmu, and I found this plugin to be a bit helpful.
Interesting ideas. I haven’t thought about the possible educational uses BuddyPress may have and now you mention it, sounds good!
Thanks for sharing your thoughts 
Yes, I use new-blog-defaults too and it is great, but it doesn’t allow regular plugins to be setup. For young learners it is often very important to limit what they can see and to have some of the more obscure functions setup ahead of time in order to help them learn the basics faster.
Anyway, I look forward to hearing what you decide to do. Best of luck.
After thinking about this, I decided I’ll go for the photo gallery plugin.
I think galleries can be used in a lot of scenarios, and users will like to add and share their photos.
The features I have in mind now are:
- Photos organized in albums: This is important so your “birthday party” photos are separated from your “travel to Paris” photos.
I thought a nice way to group photos (internally) is using “tags”, so if you want to put your photo in other album too you don’t have to upload it twice. At the same time, using this you could add photos to a “pool” (like in Flickr) easier.
- Photo captions + comments: Each photo may have a caption and friends can leave comments.
- AJAX navigation: to make it easier for users who want to see photo by photo.
- I’ll be happy to integrate galleries into groups. (so if your football team wants to share the shots of the last game, you can see them in the group’s album instead of in your “personal” albums)
You mentioned other ideas that I really liked, but I think this project is the better one. I’ll be glad to hear more feature suggestions and/or critics about features listed above.
I’ll send my application tomorrow (04/2) with -at least- this ideas, but if someone suggests something else for the plugin I’ll try to add it.
I submited my proposal. You can see it here:
http://gomobile.com.ar/gsoc-2009-application-photo-gallery-for-buddypress/
Once again, thanks to all who shared they thoughts. I’ll be happy to read your opinion about this!
@Enrico Lamperti, Thanks for you effort in the album plugin..A suggestion I don’t know the tech name of it,but in Facebook photo you can tag a name of the person in the photo.
I feel all warm and fuzzy inside knowing this is going to be coded. Sounds great Enrico! Best of luck!
@Gpo1: I’ll try to pull that in if possible
@Jeffca: Thank you!
I’ll comment if I have news about this.
I love the the photo gallery component idea! However doesn’t Andy have the Album feature on the agenda after 1.0 production release?
Here is the description of the album component thats said to be out in 09 sometime.
“Photo Albums
Members of a BuddyPress installation will be able to create their own photo albums. These albums can be shared with friends and groups.
Each member will be given a certain amount of space, which can be set by the site administrator. Albums and photos can be tagged. It will also be possible to browse public photos via photo tag pages that other members can browse (just as you browse blogs via tags on wordpress.com).
Photos can also be tagged to a group as mentioned previously in the group component overview.
Photos can be uploaded from a members computer, and will be re-sized accordingly using the built in WordPress image manipulation functions.”
Uhm… I think that if this project is accepted then you’ll see photo galleries in a couple of months for sure! 
As long as it’s not already in development or if exists a working bp plugin, the project has a chance to be accepted… It’s a feature many of you are waiting. Having someone (me, in this case) doing this stuff allows people like Andy to focus on other important pieces of BuddyPress.
