There are a lot of things that happen by default in BuddyPress that you may have a need to change. For example the types of activities displayed in the activity pages, how many activity items are displayed per page etc. These things can be changed, but you will need to have some knowledge of coding, or be applying a code snippet that you’ve been given.
The information that is displayed in Sidebars is an important aspect of your website, one that can be tailored for each individual page if you wish, though this aspect is one that will tend to make your site setup more complex. In my search for better ways of displaying more relevant information with each page viewed what I have settled upon is a solution using two sidebar management plugins, these are Content Aware Sidebars and Display Widgets.
Possibly the most important task in setting up your BuddyPress Social Network is with regards to how you configure members and their profiles. This article attempts to describe the basic steps required in configuring BuddyPress ready for your new membership. Of course the exact details will vary from site to site however there are common factors that affect all sites.
BuddyPress Style Modules are an attampt to harmonise the way styling code snippets (CSS) are used in a BuddyPress environment.
Mycred is a full featured system for awarding points based on member participation at your site, the types of activities that result is points being awarded are entirely configurable and you can install add-ons such as Badges that allow you to create badges to be awarded when certain points levels have been attained. For all it’s power MyCred is pretty simple to install and configure.
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.
So far we have installed our basic BuddyPress install for our Ning style social network, we have done a lot. But still the site we have created lacks features, for example there is no Chat or sharing of photo’s and video’s, it would be nice to have events, the groups are pretty basic as are the member profiles. This article attempts to show you how you can move further towards your dream social site by introducing quite a large number of plugins and giving you basic information about how to install and use them.
