Introduction To

Social NetworkingWith Wordpress

What Is WordPress?

Popular blog (and CMS) platform.

Built on PHP and MySQL and licensed under the GPL.

Thousands of plugins that expand it's features.

Thousands of themes.

wordpress.org

What Is WordPress MU?

Allows you to run multiple blogs on same domain.

Sub-domain setup (david.superjail.com)

Sub-directory setup (superjail.com/david)

Managed by one admin control panel.

Plugins available for WPMU.

v

What Is BuddyPress?

Set of plugins that adds social networking features to Wordpress MU.

Extends functionality of Wordpress (blogs, users)

Start a social network from scratch.

Add features to an existing blog network.

vAndy Peatling is a freelance web developer in Vancouver Canada. Chicspeak started the idea of Buddypress in beginning of 2007. Female college students to post journals online. Client requested social features, and afterwards Andy started to build these features as plugins you could drop in Wordpress MU. It was a side project, until Automatic employed Andy fulltime.

BuddyPress Components

Version 1.0 RC-1:

Extended ProfilesPrivate MessagingFriendsGroupsThe WireActivity StreamsBlogs

testbp.org

Extended Profiles

Private Messaging

Friends

Groups

The Wire

Activity Streams

Blogs

Examples of BuddyPress Sites

testbp.org

wannanetwork.com

explorewithme.com

solopracticeuniversity.com

BuddyPress Themes

Home theme most current themes can be adjusted

Profile themes

BuddyPress Plugins

Many Wordpress / WPMU plugins are easily adaptable.

If you can write plugins for Wordpress, you can learn to write them for BuddyPress.

Skeleton Component available.

Facebook Connect, OpenID, Twitter, Friendfeed, video, events, wp-cache, privacy plugins developed and being developed.

Coming In 2009

Status updates (via twitter, etc.)

Photo Albums (photo galleries, tagging, etc.)

New community developer network (launching soon)

New Community Developer Network

Why BuddyPress Could Be Big

By the end of 2009, BuddyPress could do for social networks what Wordpress has done for blogs.

Cons:

WPMU is a pain in the butt to install (compared to WP)

Limited hosting options (no shared hosting)

Lack of themes/plugins.

Pros:

After installing WPMU, plugins are relatively easy to install/configure.

Themes/plugins increase in 2009

Strong development network.

BuddyPress Resources

Urls:

buddypress.com/forums

codex.buddypress.org

buddypressdev.org

davidbisset.com

Twitter:

@josswinn

@trentadams

@andrea_r

@dimensionmedia

@mikepratt

fin