Buddypress 1.0 – What, Why and How?

Towards the end of April, Automattic announced the release of version 1 of its long awaited ‘community management system’ – Buddypress. I have been tracking Buddypress since the time Andy Pleating joined WordPress to make Buddypress, so technically this post is a tad late. Nevertheless, here is basic foundation course on Buddypress and what you can do with it.

What is Buddypress?

I don’t know how many of you are aware about WordPress MU (Multi User), click here if you don’t. Buddypress essentially began when Andy Pleating made this site, a social network actually, using WordPress MU. The site got noticed and WordPress invited Andy to develop a networking platform on the same lines, thus Buddypress was born.

Had it been a bad elevator pitch, one would describe Buddypress as a tool to make your own social network. But why do we bother with bad elevator pitches, when we have better descriptions. This is what WordPress had to say about Buddypress -

BuddyPress is an official sister project of WordPress. The idea behind it was to see what would happen to the web if it was as easy for anyone to create a social network as it is to create a blog today. BuddyPress is essentially a set of plugins on top of WordPress that add private messaging, profiles, friends, groups, activity streams, and everything else you’ve come to expect from your favorite social network.

Why Use Buddypress?

It is easy to wonder who in the world would make another social network now, for there are already tonnes of them around and to top it none of them are making any significant money.

In my opinion, Buddypress gives options that large blogs didn’t have before, that it is to build a community around itself. The network is essentially a mini community of users, contributors in that particular niche. For instance, a few food bloggers can come together and make afood community filled with blog recipes, profiles, photos of their food, etc. using Buddypress. While they used to earlier connect using Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, etc. for these, having a community site simplifies things and is more engaging. Of course, this is just an example, and it’s scope if limited only by imagination. And that is the major USP of Buddypress.

The other being, the active community it already seems to have developed in under 1 year. Giving it an edge over competition. And among tools that let you make a social network only Movable Type’s Pro comes close on the face of it.

How?

Buddypress is essentially a plugin sort of that needs to be activated on a WordPress MU installation. So to begin using Buddypress, you need to first have WordPress MU installed (that is much like a WP installation). Then you upload Buddypress into the plugins section of MU and then activate ti with from the admin dashboard. Then move the theme or template from  /wp-content/plugins/buddypress/bp-themes/ to /wp-content/bp-themes/.  A more detailed instruction is over here.

So yes, now the wait begins whether this will be as successful as WordPress has gone on to become. The biggest problem for Buddypress would be finding good publishers.

Running a community oriented site is a lot more hardwork than running a blog. The success of Buddypress has to be tied in with the success of publishers because that is how WordPress grew, and that is how the developer community will take notice which makes WP what it is.