An image illustrating an article about Setting up BuddyPress for the First Time on thealicesyndrome.com

Setting up BuddyPress for the First Time

This article is going to take you through setting up BuddyPress for the first time. It is geared towards people trying to set up Social Networking sites with features similar to those available with Ning or other hosted Social Network providers, as such it assumes that you will want all of the features of BuddyPress, plus a few more (well, a whole bunch more!).

An image illustrating an article about Adding Forums to your BuddyPress Site with bbPress on thealicesyndrome.com

Adding Forums to your BuddyPress Site with bbPress

The main BuddyPress Forum component is bbPress. This is a core piece of software created by the creators of WordPress and it is pretty much fully integrated into WordPress and BuddyPress. With bbPress you can create two types of forum in a BuddyPress context – Site-wide forums and Group Forums. Site-wide forums have to be setup by the site admin whilst group forums are optional aspects of groups that are enabled by the group creator.

An image illustrating an article about Testing, Configuring and Getting to know your BuddyPress Site on thealicesyndrome.com

Testing, Configuring and Getting to know your BuddyPress Site

The combination of WordPress and BuddyPress is a powerful and complex mix, it will take you some time playing with all of the features in order for you to come up with your ideal site. In this article I would like to take you through the basics of getting to know your site and customising it for your purposes, in future articles I will cover adding additional features to your site in order to further customise your installation.

An image illustrating an article about Using MediaPress to add Media Galleries to your site on thealicesyndrome.com

Using MediaPress to add Media Galleries to your site

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.

An image illustrating an article about Creating Great Group Home Pages with BuddyPress Group Extras on thealicesyndrome.com

Creating Great Group Home Pages with BuddyPress Group Extras

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.

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