The Illustrated Guide to Installing and Setting Up BuddyPress 1.5+

by Sarah Gooding November 1^st, 2011 33 Responses

BuddyPress 1.5 was a huge release that introduced tons of changes and improvements that make BuddyPress more intuitive and responsive than ever before. A few things have changed since the “old days” of installing BuddyPress, most notably that you have quite a few more options at setup. We’ll walk you through the process, which is really quite easy, though those who are new to BuddyPress may have questions.

Before you install BuddyPress, make sure your WordPress setup meets the minimum requirements:

Server Requirement: PHP 5.2.4 or better
Server Requirement: MySQL 5.0 or better
Server Requirement: Apache Module mod_rewrite enabled for Pretty Permalinks

BuddyPress, BuddyPress Themes

Two New WordPress and BuddyPress Review Themes Available on Themeforest

by Sarah Gooding October 26^th, 2011 4 Responses

Last week Themeforest announced that they are now accepting BuddyPress themes. The theme market now has two BuddyPress-compatible WordPress themes available specifically for the purpose of creating a review site.

These two themes are by the same author but have a few stylistic and functional differences.

Score: WordPress & BuddyPress Review Theme

The Score theme utilizes the GD Star Rating WordPress plugin for reviews. It includes options to filter reviews and order them by score, date and title.

Notable features, besides full BuddyPress-support, include:

Follow Posts – Follow posts (games) and have them show up in your front-end profile

BuddyPress, BuddyPress, BuddyPress Themes, Themes

ThemeForest is Now Accepting BuddyPress Themes

by Sarah Gooding October 19^th, 2011 8 Responses

ThemeForest has announced that it’s doors are now open for BuddyPress themes, due to the recent success of themes already offering BuddyPress support. Salutation is one such theme, which has already had 650+ sales since we last checked after featuring it on WPMU.org:

Salutation: A New HTML5 WordPress and BuddyPress Theme

ThemeForest has already got a couple other themes offering BuddyPress support, including DynamiX (3,600+ sales) and Mingle (1,600+ sales).

BuddyPress, BuddyPress Plugins, BuddyPress Themes

BuddyPress 1.5 Released: What You Need to Know Before You Upgrade

by Sarah Gooding September 21^st, 2011 11 Responses

BuddyPress 1.5, dubbed “Lombardi”, is finally here, after hundreds of bug fixes and many exciting new features. If you’re even a casual BuddyPress user, I guarantee you that you’re going to love the latest release.

The most notable new features of BuddyPress 1.5 include:

A completely reworked Default theme – one you may actually want to use!
A brand-new installation and update wizard
Integration with the WordPress navigation menus and Admin Bar – no more BuddyBar – hooray!
A rewritten interface for managing profile fields

The New BuddyPress Default Theme is a million times better than ever before!

BuddyPress, BuddyPress, BuddyPress Plugins, BuddyPress, BuddyPress Themes, tutorials

BuddyPress 1.5 Resources: Tutorials, Videos and Info to Help You Get Ready

by Sarah Gooding August 31^st, 2011 16 Responses

BuddyPress 1.5 Beta 3 was released yesterday with many bugs squashed in Beta 2 and is now 99% complete. A full release is due out any day now and we’re here to help you get up to speed with all of the new features.

What’s New in BuddyPress 1.5
This is an excellent video from John James Jacoby’s presentation at WordCamp San Francisco. He reviews the development process for BuddyPress throughout the past year and a half and offers an introduction to what’s coming with the 1.5 release.

BuddyPress Overview from Boone Gorges

BuddyPress, BuddyPress Showcase, BuddyPress Themes, News

BuddyPress Showcase Site BP Inspire Gets an Awesome Redesign

by Sarah Gooding August 10^th, 2011 2 Responses

BP Inspire is a great website to visit for getting inspiration for your next BuddyPress project. You’ll be amazed at the wide range of possibilities with BuddyPress. Besides examples of BuddyPress sites, you can also find galleries of both paid and free BuddyPress themes.

Recently the BP Inspire site has undergone a complete redesign and they’re sporting a totally new look:

Here’s what’s new…

Showcase sites will now have the developers details displayed alongside
Simpler design allows for easier voting & sharing

Tutorials

BuddyPress For Beginners: The Ultimate Starting Resource

by Sarah Gooding May 16^th, 2011 5 Responses

If you’re just getting started with BuddyPress, you probably have a lot of questions. The good news is that there are dozens of excellent resources out there – you just have to know where to look. I’ve prepared this guide that will hopefully help to answer your questions and put you in touch with the resources you need to build your very own open source social network with BuddyPress.

Common BuddyPress Questions
We get quite a few questions on Twitter about how to get started with BuddyPress. Here are some of the most common questions and answers:

How do I install BuddyPress?

BuddyPress, Community, multisite, News, Themes

13 Fantastically Creative BuddyPress Site Designs

by Sarah Gooding December 9^th, 2010 7 Responses

Recently we’ve stumbled across some outstanding communities that are using the BuddyPress platform to power all kinds of innovative social networks with equally creative designs. A little bit of CSS and template magic is all that’s needed to turn the BuddyPress default theme into a unique custom design. The eye-catching social networks you see below are the latest and greatest social networks running on WordPress and BuddyPress.

Zombies vs. Hippies

Tufts Roundtable Commons

Bitsy

gameful

Club belote

Wijmo

KB24

peerbackers

favtrip

expressor

spytunes

Riotcart

Miscellaneous

Did you know… BuddyDress gives you both the parent and child theme?

by Tammie Lister November 11^th, 2010 Leave a comment

Today is the last day in our ‘things you don’t know about BuddyDress’ series.

Number 10: BuddyDress gives you both the parent and child theme
BuddyDress is all about giving freedom to users and part of this is providing everything in the purchase. At BuddyDress you get the parent and child theme when you get a theme – we then suggest you do your changes in the child for ease of updating the theme.

BuddyDress prices give you the options to get something to suit any budget – just check them out here.

Miscellaneous

Did you know… BuddyDress themes have built in options?

by Tammie Lister November 10^th, 2010 2 Responses

With the new design at BuddyDress each day for 10 days we’re featuring something you may not know about BuddyDress.

Number 9: BuddyDress themes have built in options
Whilst each theme has different options we always make sure the themes at BuddyDress go beyond the basic theme.

Here is a selection of things you can do without touching a line of code (varies depending on theme):

Use the Google Font Directory
Change colors of layout and text
Set up featured categories
Set up slide shows
Change branding – add a logo or image
Custom headers
Custom adverts
Social site interaction (Facebook, Twitter etc)
Simple SEO (BuddyDress’ own SEO)
…. and so much more