@iseestarz
Activity wall – Yes – in core.
all members chat – private user to user email like messages in core. Chat rooms with plugins like “quick chat” – so yes
sleek custom profiles for members, -hard to tell what is “sleek” – custom? for each member? There are a couple of plugins that played with this – not sure how they work, if they’ve been updated lately.. modding how all profiles look to make them “sleeker” than default 2015 – theme – possible..
a paid membership option – that would be a plugin.. there are several that get into that.. s2member, paid memberships pro, ultimate member maybe? Some options from wpmudev as well I think.
A way to let paid members make their own post/articles on the homepage – hmmm.. maybe prevent non paid members from even creating a blog.. or you mean any activity posts on home page – I think these things are possible.. BP recently added “user levels” but I have not see much actually use that.. but extending this should be easy to some degree..
However if your focus is on paid members things, and you will need support to put all this together and keep it running (you are not a php coder with lots of time to read codex and test things) – then developing around BP is likely to get expensive, and you might be better off forgetting bp exists and looking at some of the more premium systems others have put together around wordpress (a few wpmudev plugins combined achieve what you describe without needing BP) – and there are others..
Of course you don’t have to look for such a system revolving around wordpress either – there are more mature social network options that may save you time and sanity – things like phpfox, boonex dolphin, oxwall..
random thoughts from a bp user.. I’m not a dev and have not tested all the things out there that get into paid members things and restrictions.. if you search the forums here there have been a few comments from others pointing to some other similar plugin options – and some people have pointed out troubles with some of those on the market.
Ty for the input this sums up everything, reading further into particular plugins I’m either going to give users ultra or symposium a try.
