WordPress® Bible, Second Edition

Chapter 24. Creating Your Own Social Network with BuddyPress

IN THIS CHAPTER

• What is BuddyPress?

• Configuring BuddyPress

• Comparing BuddyPress and WordPress development

• Looking at BuddyPress theme concepts

• Extending BuddyPress

For as long as WordPress has existed, it has been built as a blogging platform. Despite this, savvy developers have used the extensibility of the software to create new concept software around it.

In 2008, one such developer, Andy Peatling, used WordPress to create a social network for a client. The extensibility of the plugin architecture enabled him to create a concept that combined many of the features enjoyed on services like Facebook (www.facebook.com) into WordPress.

Soon, Automattic would hire Andy to work fulltime on the BuddyPress project. Since those early days, BuddyPress has seen a couple of releases and is seeing more adoption as a popular social networking platform.

What Is BuddyPress?

BuddyPress is a WordPress plugin with several components that can be enabled individually or altogether. Each component provides social network-like functionality to users. These features include private messaging, groups, and activity feeds.

Note

BuddyPress was originally developed only for WordPress Multisite. It is now compatible with standard WordPress as well.

For a long time, the guiding principle behind WordPress was that it was meant for blogging. BuddyPress lends implicit endorsement to the use of WordPress for completely different paradigms, though. The BuddyPress experience ...