It's not until recently that I'd heard of BuddyPress - probably because I don't use WordPress (I use entity2); though it does seem like quite a good extension for the ever popular CMS. The purpose of BuddyPress is to turn WordPress into a social network a lot like Facebook (in some ways).
BuddyPress is essentially a set of WordPress MU specific plugins. Each plugin component adds a distinct feature to BuddyPress and only handles functionality for that specific component (for example, private messaging). BuddyPress also has a core plugin that all other plugins require, it contains shared functions and performs the basic modifications to the WordPress MU interface
By installing BuddyPress you can use the following components:
- Extended profiles,
- Private messaging,
- Friends lists,
- Groups,
- "The wire" (a bit like The Wall on Facebook),
- Activity stream,
- Blogs,
- Status updates,
- Photo albums.
So as you can see it does turn your WordPress into Facebook, but without all the dodgy applications that you get on there - and without the large number of people. Since a colleague mentioned it to me when I said I was going to be building a social site I thought it was worth taking a look at - unfortunately after weighing up the options I decided to go with phpBB and some custom files.
Has anyone used this plugin? I'd be interested to see how people get on with it, and how easy people find it.
