Apr 29, 2010

WordPress + BuddyPress = Excellent Social Network Platform

The web is getting social.  Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, orkut and there is long list of social networking tools.  I am big fan of WordPress and I am sure most of us are. I have reviewed and experienced the WordPress from both edge – Development and Customization from developer point of view and Content Publishing and Blog Management from Blog Owner’s end. I have always found it a super easy for developer and blog owner.

I just have an another great reason to love WordPress because now you can build a social network with BuddyPress within WordPress.   BuddyPress – a great plugin developed by Lead Developer Andy Peatling has brought  immense options to add social networking features to a WordPress blog.

BuddyPress - Social networking in a box

BuddyPress is social networking CMS which can be added on top WordPress and built to bring people together. It works well to enable people with similar interests to connect and communicate. Some of the fantastic uses might be:

  1. A campus wide social network for a university, school or college.
  2. An internal communication tool for your company.
  3. A niche social network for your interest topic.
  4. A focused social network for your new product.

This means that bloggers and podcasters using WordPress can now have a self-hosted solution for creating social networks, instead of relying on third-party sites like Ning.

Features of BuddyPress include:

  1. Global, personal and group activity streams
  2. Fully editable profile fields allow you to define the fields users can fill in to describe themselves
  3. Powerful public, private or hidden groups
  4. “Friending”
  5. Private messaging will allow your users to talk to each other directly, and in private.
  6. Full powered discussion forums
  7. Each of your users can start their own full powered WordPress blog.
  8. Easily extendable with plugins

BuddyPress promises to let you get up and running with your own social network in 6 minutes. I have experienced to setup BuddyPress in few of our projects. I found it quite easy and simple. I had also spent a good time to see the plug-in development for BuddyPress. It’s pretty straight forward and similar like WordPress plugin development. Theme development is also something that require a little understanding of BuddyPress standard rest is what in WordPress.

You can visit and check live sites we have build and powered by WordPress + BuddPress.

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