Meet BuddyPress – Beginners guide and useful resources
If you haven’t heard of BuddyPress, now you have an excellent opportunity to get acquainted closer with this. BuddyPress is an open source plugin that adds the power of social networks to basic functionality of WordPress. So if you have a website on WordPress, you may consider about adding such interesting features as: the user registration system with the custom fields, with the ability to add user into friends and send them letters, to monitor the activity feed (friends or groups). Users can join groups and also write their own blogs. We have listed only the basic features of BuddyPress.
Initially, this plugin worked only with WordPresss MU, but fortunately later, it began to work with standard WordPress installation.
I would also note that since BuddyPress is usual plugin, you can modify it according to your needs (of course, if you know php and the basics of work with WordPress plugins). You may also take a decision on supplementing the site with new plugins and templates. More than 500 various plugins and templates are already created for this system. Today we look at the most interesting and popular plug-ins and templates for BuddyPress.
5 useful plugins for BuddyPress
WP-FB-AutoConnect
The simple concept behind WP-FB AutoConnect is to offer an easy-to-use widget that lets readers login to your blog with either their Facebook account or local WordPress credentials. Although many “Facebook Connect” plugins do exist, most of them are either overly complex and difficult to customize, or fail to provide a seamless experience for new visitors.
Super Socializer
Super Socializer is a complete package to provide your website all the social features (Social Login, Sharing, Commenting, Feed and more) in a single plugin
BuddyPress Activity Plus
BuddyPress Embed Activity gives your social network all the features and ease of Facebook when it comes to uploading and sharing media! The plugin adds 3 new buttons to your BuddyPress activity stream. Enabling you to attach photos, videos, and even share web links with everyone on your network!
WP2Cloud
WordPress-To-Cloud solution makes it possible for WordPress blogs to store all their data like pages, images, files in Amazon S3 or Google Cloud Storage. Now WordPress can seamlessly get all the benefits of cloud storage – high availability, high reliability, quick and easy disaster recovery, and serving content in a highly scalable fashion.
rtMedia
Add albums, photo, audio/video encoding, privacy, sharing, front-end uploads & more. All this works mobile/tablets devices.
10 great themes for BuddyPress
Arcade Basic
Create a truly unique design with Arcade, a lightweight and fully responsive HTML5 theme. Use the theme customizer to add your own header image, page layout, site width and more.
Matheson
Create a truly unique design with Matheson, a lightweight and fully responsive HTML5 theme. Use the theme customizer to add your own background, page layout, site width and more.
rtPanel
WordPress theme framework with Custom Menu, Header and Background along with Logo, Favicon, Featured Image, Google Custom Search Integration and more options.
MesoColumn
Mesocolumn is a Responsive HTML5 and CSS3 WordPress Theme that support BuddyPress, BBPress, WooCommerce and Jigoshop and comes with Unlimited Color Choice on Menu for category and pages, Background, Layout, Footer, Sidebar and Design packed 600+ Google Webfonts Selection.
Ward
Create a truly unique design with Ward, a lightweight and fully responsive HTML5 theme based on the Gridiculous boilerplate. Use the new Theme Options customizer to add your own background, page layout, site width and more.
iBuddy
Fast and Beautiful BuddyPress Theme.
Platform
Platform is an drag-and-drop theme-design framework for WordPress and HTML5. It will help you do amazing things with your site, faster & easier than ever before.
Fanwood
All-purpose, responsive (mobile friendly) theme with 12 optional layouts, per post layouts, multiple drop down menus, 18 widget areas, support for all 10 post formats, mobile compatible menus, and integrations for bbPress, BuddyPress, Jigoshop, and Hybrid Tabs.
x2
Create a professional WordPress, BuddyPress or WooCommerce site within minutes. Perfect for your next blog, shop, magazine, social network or portfolio site. 3 customizable sliders. Flux Slider with 3D effects. 3-columns widget homepage.
Expound
An awesome magazine theme for your WordPress site. Responsive layout, post thumbnails support, featured posts, an easy-to-use social menu and much more.