Part I
Introducing BuddyPress
In this part . . .
If you’re ready to start building your own social community on the Web, you’re in the right place! This part introduces you to the wonders of the BuddyPress platform and the WordPress blogging platform that you build your BuddyPress community on. I tell you all about social communities, why you want to include one on your Web site, how to lay the WordPress foundation required to begin the magic and give you a tour through the WordPress dashboard to make sure you can find your way around.
Chapter 1
A New Friend Named BuddyPress
In This Chapter
Building a community-driven Web site with BuddyPress
Creating communities for niche industries
Discovering the benefits of BuddyPress
Laying the WordPress foundation
Exploring the BuddyPress community
The popularity of social communities on the Web is undeniable. If you picked up this book, most likely, you’re already familiar with WordPress. WordPress has created the world’s most popular blogging platform (no kidding, the world’s!), allowing millions of users all over the globe to freely publish content on the Internet and invite others to join the discussion. BuddyPress, introduced to the WordPress community in 2008, was the next logical step, enabling bloggers to expand their Web sites to include a social community for their visitors to participate in.
This chapter explores why you want to create a social community on your Web site and the benefits of using the BuddyPress platform to accomplish that goal. Because BuddyPress integrates with the WordPress blogging platform, you also discover some of the BuddyPress features that work in tandem with WordPress MU, such as member blogs and blog tracking features.
Building a Social Community with BuddyPress
Social communities are all over the Web today. One very popular example is Facebook (http://facebook.com). Facebook launched in 2004 and today is the largest and most popular social network on the Web, with more than 250 million users (and growing). Before getting into details of building your own social community with the BuddyPress platform, have a look at a few impressive statistics about Facebook (see Figure 1-1).
More than 120 million users log in to Facebook at least once a day.
The average Facebook user has 120 friends on the site.
More than 1 billion photos are uploaded to Facebook each month.
More than 10 million videos are shared on Facebook each month.
More than 45 million active user groups exist on Facebook.
The fastest growing demographic on Facebook are those 35 years old or older.
Those are some impressive statistics, no? You might be asking why I’m sharing Facebook stats (www.facebook.com/press/info.php?statistics) in a book about BuddyPress. The answer is simple: They illustrate the extreme popularity of social communities and the availability of a network where people can connect, share, and interact with others via a computer connected to the Internet.
Figure 1-1: Facebook is the world’s largest and most popular social community.
BuddyPress allows you to create a very similar type of social community on your own WordPress-powered Web site and helps you take your existing Web site to the next level by allowing your visitors to become members. A BuddyPress social community gives its members a handful of core features that are easy to set up and allows them to immediately connect with other members of the community. Members can have extensive profiles that contain personal biographical information that allows other members to find out more about them. Members share with other members any information they want, from personal information and news to Web site links, photos, videos, music, and more.
Why build a social community?
In March 2009, I attended a conference in Austin, Texas, called South by Southwest Interactive where geeks from all over the world gather for one weekend to network and discover the new, exciting, and innovative Internet trends and technologies. I attend this conference annually, and there is always a buzz about the major trend for that year. The buzz phrase at South by Southwest in 2009 was, “It’s all about the conversation.” The Web has become more than just a place to obtain information today; it has become a place to share information and connect with other people through ongoing conversations through different types of social media. Social communities give people the opportunity to be the media rather than just be consumers of the media.
One nice benefit to Facebook is its size — almost everyone I know has a Facebook account and I can find them there, add them as a friend, and connect with them easily (and probably more often than I would off the computer). A negative aspect of Facebook is that all the content shared on that site is stored on that site. Therefore...
