BuddyPress For Dummies
BuddyPress For Dummies
BuddyPress allows users to create their own social community on their Web site. BuddyPress entered the scene and began to gain attention in the blogging community during the summer of 2008, and brought a suite of plugins and add-ons to the very popular blogging platform, WordPress.
Today, anyone can host a social community on their own Web site through the combined use of WordPress and BuddyPress. The really good news is that you can accomplish this on your own Web site for the cost of exactly nothing. BuddyPress is free, open-source software that you can download,install, and begin building your own social community on the Web today.Whoever said, 锟絥othing in life is free锟?hasn锟絫 met the folks behind the BuddyPress and WordPress software development!Social communities on the Web are all the rave today.
They started with sites like MySpace (
MySpace) and Facebook (
www.facebook.com),where people can go to the Web site, join, and immediately start connecting with other people who share similar interests, hobbies, ideas, and talents.These communities allow you to share photos, music, videos, news, information, and even personal anecdotes about you and your life. You锟絩e able to net-work with other people from around the world who share the same interests as you through searching for them, joining groups and discussion forums,and then creating friendships so that you can keep track of and stay in touch with the people you锟絭e met.
Social communities are an event on the Internet in a room that锟絪 never empty and in which the party never ends.BuddyPress isn锟絫 a stand-alone program; it requires the use of the WordPress software. This means that you have to be running WordPress on your Website before you can add the BuddyPress component. WordPress is an insanely popular (and free) blogging platform that锟絪 open source, easy to install, and used to power the content management of your Web site. After you install WordPress, you can add BuddyPress and start building a community.
Asyou锟絣l find in the pages of this book, BuddyPress is easy to install and gets your site up and running in a very short amount of time.Niche communities are popping up all over the Web. These communities encourage social groups that focus on specific topics, ideas, and talents to share information and enable community members to network with one another, regardless of geographical location.
By using BuddyPress on a WordPress-powered site, the possibilities of social networking on the Internet are endless! Political groups, environmental groups, businesses large and small, knitting groups, bowling groups, sports groups . . . any special interest group of any kind can build a community space on the Web where people with the same interests can connect, discuss, and share.