Now that you have installed BuddyPress and have configured a number of eats features and those of add-ons it’s important that you get to know BuddyPress from a users perspective. This article will take you through some of the basic features of your BuddyPress Installation from a users perspective. The exact range of features available on any site will depend upon which features have been enabled by the site Admin.
Social Graph Protocol BuddyPress YR is a plugin that aims to improve the information presented to Facebook when BuddyPress pages are shared onto this social media platform, it allows you to edit Meta tags that will be passed to Facebook when your WordPress and BuddyPress Activity pages are shared. This means that you have greater control over how your site is presented.
BP Portfolio is a plugin designed to allow artists to showcase their images on a BuddyPress Site, the free version supports photo’s whilst the Pro version adds support for video and Audio files. BP Portfolio adds a new page to BuddyPress called projects through which artists are able to showcase their works.
Buddy Member Stats is a plugin that displays a range of statistics about BuddyPress site members in a tab on their profile.
BP Restricted Signup by Email Domain is a plugin that allows a site administrator to set domain whitelists for user signups. This means that if you only want to allow members with a gmail.com address you can, or more likely, people with a .edu mail account
BuddyPress Follow allows members of a BuddyPress social network to follow each other, it places follow buttons on each members profile and in the members page and adds extra tab’s in each members profile page, one showing who is following you and the other showing who you are following.
Buddy Registration Widget is an unusual plugin in that it is very mission specific, it will add a widget that displays the BuddyPress registration page, it disables the BuddyPress member profile cover image site wide and it won’t allow new members to access the site until they have set uploaded a profile avatar image. There are no settings to change, once uploaded these options are set and that’s it. So if your site has these specific requirements then this plugin is for you, but if you want registration in a sidebar widget but also want profile cover images then this plugin is not an option!
One feature missing from the default BuddyPress installation is media galleries and the ability to allow BuddyPress users to upload their own images to be shared with others. Typical hosted social platforms allow the addition of media in three ways – media can be uploaded to a members personal profile page, for sharing with others and display on their profile page, Media can be uploaded to groups and held in a group gallery and media can be uploaded “to the site” – typically placed in a single collective gallery for all to see and often these images are displayed in a front page slider showcasing the uploads of those members. Sometimes media uploads can be marked as “Featured” and will be displayed in a featured content area in the main gallery.
Compared to a platform such as Ning, the BuddyPress Group home page I feel is one area that lets BuddyPress down. By default it actually just displays the activity feed for the group. A Ning group home has extended information about the group, it has a summary of the forum posts and it has a comments section. In this article I intend to show you how by using BuddyPress Group Extras you can have a home page for your groups with all of these features.
Associating WordPress Blogs to BuddyPress Groups
There is a way of getting a basic level of association between specific blog categories and Groups by using the Blog Categories for Groups plugin, and you can make it that comments to those blogs appear as topic replies in that particular groups forum.
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