Buddypress - A Nice Membership Tool Build a community on WordPress

[imjjss 0]

Initially, I wanted to install a fourm on my site. After tried some nice forum software, I felt I need something more than just a fourm, -- something that can be extended to a community based CMS.

 

To be a CMS, the software needs to be able to manage membership, to represent products and service, to deal with payment flow.

To be a community, the software needs to be able to manage membership, to provide communicating tools.

 

Finally, Google brought me to BuddyPress, and I've build up my CMS site based on it. It's still in infancy stage, but BuddyPress is so extendable, for all my ideas, it provides the posibility. I love it.

 

At very basic level, it's a community tool, comes with a default theme, click install and it start working without additional effort.

The basic commponents are Member Profiles, Groups, Forums, Blogs.

 

All components are connected with each other. Global, personal and group activity streams with threaded commenting, direct posting. All with full RSS feed and email notification support.

 

Member profile fields are fully editable. You can define it to suit your needs.

 

Groups can be public, private or hidden.

 

Messages can be public(facebook's wall) or private, not limted to one on one, it can be one to many.

 

A full featured Fourm is build into each group.

 

So, with the above features, you can start your online network within no time, and that's not all. BuddyPress has a big base of plugin developers. For most of your special needs, there's a plugin for it. If you browse through all the plugins, you will be suprised on how people is using BuddyPress for everything.

 

At extended level, BuddyPress can be a nice business tool.

For example--

 

On member's profile, you can set some fields to allow members represent their business.

 

Observe the functions of a Groups, -- why it can't be a product, a service, a training course? By the way, there's a plugin for training, you can open a school base on that.

 

There are several nice membership management plugins available. For paid membership, they also deal with the billing process.

 

On the entertaining side, Alburms, Movies, Musics... you can have them on your site by choosing a plugin.

At advanced level, if you know how to code, the posibilities is virtually unlimited.

 

Think about Facebook, BuddyPress is something like that at basic level. Then, you can plant your business on top of it with vast plugin support.

 

Maybe there's something else similar available on the net. But BuddyPress is completely open source. Everything from the core code, to the documentation, themes and plugin extensions, are available for free.

 

I'm very happy for what I find in

[mahesh2k 0]

I do have one site with buddypress installaed. The issue with buddypress is that core slightly differs from wordpress. This makes it hard for most of us to use wordpress plugins. I do want to use some wordpress plugins on my that site. But unfortunately i can't because there is no one to port the wordpress plugins. There are some guys who do that like WPMU Dev, but they're annoying and charge 75$/month fees. I don't think that fee is reasonable and hence i prefer not to use that plugin. That plugin is 'user sync' plugin which is only available at buddypress as of now. They also add some ads on the installation. I wish to get rid of those ads but their TOS restricts me from doing this. I don't know why anyone should invest on WPMU dev guys and i think you should not buy their stuff. They're very deceptive in their plugin and theme distribution and charge un fairly. I know we should not ask for free stuff but what WPMU Dev is doing is unfair. Coming back to the buddypress topic, if it becomes more popular then i'm sure it'll be possible to bring some themes and plugins from wordpress core. It's one good software which competes with ning, so i want to see it grow more. But if anyone wants to run forum then instead of buddypress they should run forum because buddypress has lot of glitches and will hardly do good with busy forum of 100 +actively posting members.

[Ahsaniqbalkmc 0]

A few days back, I was searching for facebook alternatives that are open sources. I website mentioned a few good one including elgg and buddypress. I chose buddypress because of its association with Wordpress. I understand Wordpress core enough to perform the necessary changes so I thought it is better to go for something which I already know about. I installed buddypress core and I was quite happy about it however I had to abandon the installation because I couldn't find a way to add facebook style video sharing feature to buddypress.After that I installed elgg but I had the same problem with it. The video sharing feature was so important for my project that I abandoned the complete project.

[imjjss 0]

I agree, many of the WPMU Dev things charge more than they offer.Last year when I was a WP newbie I was thinking to buy a WPMU Dev theme. While study their fancy theme, I found other stuffs better than theirs and free of charge. Luckily I didn't buy.Now, as more I understand the theme/plugin world, I think most of those paid products are not worth purchasing. Instead, some products comes free with paid subscription service, that worth the money. Because no product can full fill our expectation totally. We normally want to make some customization. With the paid subscription service, the developer can help in many ways, in most cases, it can go beyond the product itself.Back to the BuddyPress topic, I was quite frustrated at the beginning because the reason starscream meantioned above-- it has its own way to do things. Many WP resources can't work with it. But since my primary goal of blogging is to build a community, and there are not much competitive choices available, so, I decided to give up some WP advantage and focus on BuddyPress. After a certain time and efforts input in it, I become firmly a BuddyPress lover, for 3 reasons--Firstly, I already learned a lot about it, now I'm able to handle many customization without plugins. In fact, I only keep 5 plugins -- BuddyPress, Akismet, BuddyPress Custom Post, EventPress, and MyPlugin. For any other customization I need, I study relative plugins and pick useful functions and organize it in MyPlugin. This way, I can keep my site relatively light weighted, and easier for troubleshooting.Secondly, BP community is big and helpful. I learned a lot from them. No mater what strange idea I want to implement, there's always somebody come to hlep or discuss posibilities. It's really a great resource.Finally, BP is trending up. There are lots of goodies coming on the road. There are also big investors, their business relay on BP, this keeps BP actively developed and maintained.After all the consideration, I am settled down on BP, and do my homeworks around it. Now, I'm quite happy with what I have worked out from it.