BuddyPress FAQ

BuddyPress provides profiles with custom fields and visibility levels, account settings, extensible user groups, activity streams for members and groups, notifications, friendship connections and private messaging. It can also be extended with hundreds of third party components.

From version 1.2 BuddyPress is no longer limited to WordPress MU installations and works with both WordPress and WordPress MU 2.9.1 and higher. The only difference between them is the tracking of blogs, which requires WordPress MU.

BuddyPress 1.2 added standard WordPress support, a simplified three-step installation, a new default theme, and greatly improved activity streams with permalinks, threaded comments, direct status posting, favourites and @username mentions.

A good starting point is the BuddyPress Skeleton Component, which provides all the basic starting points needed to build brand new BuddyPress features. Existing plugins are listed on the BuddyPress plugins page.

Back up your installation first and deactivate any dependent or third party BuddyPress plugins before upgrading to avoid conflicts and errors. The simplest route is the plugin browser in your WordPress installation, though you can also download the files and overwrite the existing plugin manually.

The BuddyPress support forums are staffed by community members willing to answer questions, and the Codex covers everything from installation steps to extending BuddyPress and building your own features.

"BuddyPress For Dummies", written by community contributor Lisa Sabin-Wilson, was the first BuddyPress book. It introduces what BuddyPress can do and how to customise it, and a sample chapter is available to download.

The project runs a development blog covering roadmaps, features, APIs and technical details, plus a weekly developers discussion in #buddypress-dev on Freenode IRC on Wednesdays at 19:00 UTC.

Open source social networking software for WordPress, providing profiles, groups, activity streams, messaging and more.

Open source social networking software for WordPress, providing profiles, groups, activity streams, messaging and more.