The Ultimate Beginners Guide To BuddyPress

by Raelene Wilson May 7^th, 2013 10 Responses

Are you thinking about setting up a social network for your university’s onesie appreciation society? Are you suffering analysis paralysis after installing BuddyPress because you don’t know which boxes you should tick? Or maybe you’ve set up version 1.7 and have a truck load of questions?

Well, you’ve come to the right place.

In this guide I’ll go through the ins and outs of BuddyPress, or as everyone and their dog likes to call it, social networking in a box.

I’ll cover:

What is BuddyPress?
Features
Why you should use it
Installation
bbPress forums
Plugins
Themes
Who uses it
Support
The future of BuddyPress

Okay, So What Is BuddyPress?

BuddyPress, BuddyPress Plugins, BuddyPress Tutorials

Add Personalized Messages To BuddyPress Friend Requests

by Sarah Gooding December 10^th, 2012 Leave a comment

Today’s tip is something that could benefit friendship interactions in any BuddyPress community. Just last week, BuddyPress developer Brajesh Singh released a new plugin. The BuddyPress Extended Friendship Request plugin takes friendship requests to the next level by supplementing the “Add Friend” button with a bit of personalization.

Once installed, this plugin causes a click on the “Add Friend” button to pop up a little message window, enabling a user to send a message along with the friendship request.

Here’s a screenshot of the plugin in action:

BuddyPress, BuddyPress Plugins, BuddyPress Tutorials

Add Attachments to BuddyPress Private Messages

by Sarah Gooding October 25^th, 2012 2 Responses

Want BuddyPress private messages to work a little more like email? BuddyPress Message Attachment is a new plugin that gives your community members the ability to attach files to private messages. The plugin’s settings page lets site administrators customize the allowed file types for the attachments as well as the maximum size.

Here’s what your messaging compose screen will look like with attachments allowed:

Attachments are then shown on the recipient’s message screen:

BuddyPress Plugins

Get BuddyPress Members Interacting With BuddyPig

by Sarah Gooding August 20^th, 2012 Leave a comment

BuddyPig sounds like a made up word, right? It’s actually a new plugin that was created during an Automattic hack day. PIG is an acronym for Personal Information Game. The BuddyPig plugin is a game designed to help BuddyPress group members get to know each other better by automatically generating questions and potential answers based on BuddyPress profiles.

BuddyPress Plugins

Tweak BuddyPress with the New Extended Settings Plugin

by Sarah Gooding July 15^th, 2012 Leave a comment

The new BuddyPress Extended Settings plugin is very useful for admins who don’t want to have to add a bunch of plugins and code snippets for certain small community-related tweaks. It adds a new tab to the BuddyPress menu that includes an easy way to put profiles on the root, show the profile tab as default, allow special characters and uppercase letter in usernames, disable customer header, control avatar sizes, etc.

BuddyPress, BuddyPress Plugins

Display BuddyPress Members Who Have Uploaded an Avatar

by Sarah Gooding July 3^rd, 2012 Leave a comment

The BuddyPress recent members widget doesn’t bother to check if a user has uploaded an avatar. Some BuddyPress site admins would prefer not to show any users who are still using the generic mystery man avatar. You can get more control over your widget display by using a plugin that checks for avatars specifically. BuddyPress Members With Uploaded Avatars Widget is a free plugin from BuddyPress developer Brajesh Singh of BuddyDev.com. This widget lets you showcase a list of members who have uploaded an avatar recently or changed their photos.

BuddyPress, BuddyPress Plugins

New Features Coming to BuddyPress Checkins Plugin

by Sarah Gooding May 22^nd, 2012 2 Responses

Last month we let you know that the new BuddyPress Location Checkins plugin is now in beta. If you’ve been following this plugin’s progress, you’ll be happy to know that imath has added BP Checkins to the WordPress repository, in anticipation of some exciting new features, including:

The ability to add photos to checkins
Community Places – an area to share the places you like and have checked in
Foursquare API – members will be able to authorize BP Checkins to get their foursquare checkins

Here’s a teaser of what you can expect in the next version:

BuddyPress, BuddyPress Plugins

Redirect BuddyPress Users After Login

by Sarah Gooding May 20^th, 2012 Leave a comment

By default members of a BuddyPress site are redirected to the home page after logging in. BuddyPress Login Redirect is a simple plugin that lets you change this. Currently you can select from three different locations to redirect:

Personal Profile / Personal Activity
Site Wide Activity
Friends’ Activity

BuddyPress, BuddyPress, BuddyPress Plugins

BuddyPress My Moods Plugin Adds Moods and Smileys to Status Updates

by Sarah Gooding April 27^th, 2012 1 Response

Want a fun way to get members interacting more on your BuddyPress site? BuddyPress MyMood is a new plugin that lets members post moods and smileys with status updates on profiles and group pages.

Posted moods then show up in the activity stream where other users can comment on them:

A user’s most recent mood post shows up in the profile header above the most recent status update.

One great feature of this plugin is that it is entirely customizable through the dashboard, should you wish to change or remove any of the moods in the dropdown list.