Community With BuddyPress (WordCamp Orlando 2011)

Community with
BuddyPress
Ptah Dunbar & David Bisset
WordCamp Orlando - December 3rd, 2011

What We Will
Be Covering
What Is BuddyPress?
Typical Applications of BP
Maximizing The Potential of BP
Sites That “Think Outside Of The Box”
Plugins And Themes To Help You Think
“Outside Of The Box”

Who Are We?
“The Harold and Kumar
of WordPress”

LIVING IN WONDERFUL SOUTH FLORIDA

About Ptah Dunbar,
the Harold:
• Still Alive : )

• Web developer for 6 years

• WordPress, BuddyPress, bbPress Core Contributor

• Co-organizer of WordCamp Miami

• Co-organizer of WordPress Monthly Meetups
• @ptahdunbar

FATHER OF 3 BEAUTIFUL DAUGHTERS

HUSBAND TO A WONDERFUL WIFE
(WOMAN PICTURED MIGHT NOT BE ACTUAL WIFE)

About David Bisset,
the Kumar:
• Freelance web developer for over 8 years

• Worked with WordPress for over 3 years (since
version 1.5)

• Played and worked w/ BuddyPress since pre 1.0
beta.

• Co-organizer of WordCamp Miami

• @dimensionmedia / about.me/davidbisset

What Is BuddyPress?
In a nutshell: “Social Networking In a Box”

What Is BuddyPress?
Set Of Open Source Plugins For WordPress

What Is BuddyPress?
Conceived in 2008, 1st Release in May 2009

Activity
Streams
Global, personal and group activity
streams with threaded
commenting, direct posting,
favoriting and @mentions. All with
full RSS feed and email notification
support.

Extended
Proﬁles
Fully editable profile fields allow
you to define the fields users can
fill in to describe themselves. Tailor
profile fields to suit your audience.

Friending
Let your users make connections
so they can track the activity of
others, or filter on only those users
they care about the most.

Private Private messaging will allow your
users to talk to each other directly,
and in private. Not just limited to

Messaging one on one discussions, your
users can send messages to
multiple recipients.

Blogging Start a blog built on the best
blogging software in the world.
Even allow each of your users to
start their own full powered
WordPress blog. Track new posts
and comments across your site.

Groups
Powerful public, private or hidden
groups allow your users to break
the discussion down into specific
topics. Extend groups with your
own custom features using the
group extension API.

Forums
Full powered discussion forums
built directly into groups allow for
more conventional in-depth
conversations.

Pick and choose
Conceived in 2008, 1st Release in May 2009

What Does BuddyPress
Look Like By Default?

DEFAULT BUDDYPRESS THEME
WORDPRESS 3.2.1 / BUDDYPRESS 1.5.1

What Can You Use
BuddyPress For?
Obvious Solution:
A niche social network on your site for a
particular topic or business (cars, art,
football, underwater basket weaving, etc.)

What Can You Use
BuddyPress For?
Solution Gaining Popularity:
A niche social network for your local
organization, church, school,
meetup group, etc.

MY.TELEGRAPH.CO.UK
EXAMPLE BUDDYPRESS SITE

Why Use BuddyPress?
Open Source – Like WordPress, BuddyPress is an open-source content management system. It’s
free, but it’a also actively maintained and you can assist with the development.

Control your own data – You and only you will be in control of your member data and code. There
are no restrictions placed on what you can access. No worries about service changes (Ning,
cough).

Control - Sell and display advertising or keep your site ad free. Your members will never receive
unsolicited emails. All communication is in your hands

Customization - Tailor the features and functionality to your community’s needs with BuddyPress-
speciﬁc plugins and the vast WordPress plugin repository.

Is There More
BuddyPress Can Do?
Let’s Take A Look At Examples At Sites That
Thought “Outside The Box” When It Came To
BuddyPress

PEERBACKERS.COM
CROWDFUNDING (ALA KICKSTARTER.COM) USING BUDDYPRESS

PROJECTS PAGE
MODIFICATIONS TO BUDDYPRESS GROUP API

SUBMIT PROJECT PAGE
MODIFICATIONS TO BUDDYPRESS CREATE GROUP PAGE

What Can We Learn From
Peerbackers.com?

Peerbackers.com?
Groups Can Be Anything If You Think “Outside The Box”

Peerbackers.com?
Groups Can Be Projects, Educational Courses, Seminars,
Sports Teams, etc.

Peerbackers.com?
Sports Teams, etc.
Anything That Can Be Followed or Joined By Members
Could Be A Group

Peerbackers.com?
Sports Teams, etc.
Anything That Can Be Followed or Joined By Members
Could Be A Group
Anything That Has It’s Own Unique Activity
Could Be A Group

TASTYKITCHEN.COM
COOKING COMMUNITY USING BUDDYPRESS

TASTYKITCHEN.COM
CREATIVELY USING WORDPRESS BLOGGING, INTEGRATING INTO BUDDYPRESS PROFILES

TastyKitchen.com?
Don’t Forget The Power of WordPress Blogging

TastyKitchen.com?
Don’t Forget The Power of WordPress Blogging
With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility

CUNY ACADEMIC COMMONS
HTTP://COMMONS.GC.CUNY.EDU/

What Can We Learn From CUNY
Academic Commons?
BuddyPress is great for use in educational institutions

What Can We Learn From CUNY
Academic Commons?
BuddyPress is great for use in educational institutions
Power of BuddyPress Plugins
HTTP://DEV.COMMONS.GC.CUNY.EDU/2010/05/25/BUDDYPRESS-PLUGINS-
RUNNING-ON-THE-CUNY-ACADEMIC-COMMONS/

ZOMBIESVSHIPPIES.COM
USING WORDPRESS AND BUDDYPRESS TO CREATE A SOCIAL GAME

How Did They Use
BuddyPress To Make
a Social Game?
- BuddyPress Users Became “Players” In
The Social Game
- Leaderboard is a list of “top users”
sorted by points
- Using BuddyPress Achievements Plugin
To Record OnSite Actions And Assign
Points

Tips On Thinking “Outside
The Box” With BuddyPress

When Creating A New
Project or Site, Ask Yourself:
1. Do I need user registration and
proﬁles are needed on some level?
2. Are users interacting,
collaborating, or communicating with
each other?
3. Are users posting content (blog
posts, updates, etc.) that they want to
share?
4. Am I already using WordPress As A
CMS? (Duh.)

When Creating A New
Project or Site, Ask Yourself:
1. Do I need user registration and
proﬁles are needed on some level?
2. Are users interacting,
collaborating, or communicating with
each other?
3. Are users posting content (blog
posts, updates, etc.) that they want to
share?
4. Am I already using WordPress As A
CMS? (Duh.)

* Of course, BuddyPress won't ﬁt every situation.

Please excuse me... I’m
going to use the F word now.

BuddyPress sites don’t all
have to be like... Facebook.
The term “social network” has been
abused. Remember that BuddyPress
is not “all or nothing” and not every
site has to have all attributes of a
typical “social network”. Turn on/off
modules as you need them.

With custom coding and
elbow grease, in theory you
can create variations of
ideas found at these popular
social sites:

Foursquare
Flickr
Forrst.com

Don’t forget internal
uses for BuddyPress.
- Use BP as internal
communication tool for your
company or for a client.
- Use BuddyPress as a
Private Collaboration System
http://www.1stwebdesigner.com/tutorials/buddypress-
collaboration-system/

Plugins That Can Help You
Think “Outside The Box”
With BuddyPress

Achievements for
BuddyPress
Developer: Paul Gibbs

Inspired by video game achievement
systems, Achievements for BuddyPress
gives your community fresh impetus by
promoting and rewarding social
interaction with challenges, badges and
points. For example, reward users for
commenting on a blog post or uploading a
picture to their proﬁle.

Gravity Forms w/
User Registration
Add-On
Create a registration form that creates a
user account, and automatically populate
user meta data and BuddyPress proﬁle
data. The User Registration Add-On also
integrates with the PayPal Add-On to
require a payment before the user is
registered.

http://www.gravityhelp.com/gravity-forms-user-registration-add-on-
v1-0-beta-1-released/

Group Documents
Developer: Peter Anselmo

Group Documents creates a page within
each BuddyPress group to upload and any
type of ﬁle, attachment or document.
Documents can be edited and deleted
either by the document owner or by the
group administrator.

http://buddypress.org/community/groups/buddypress-group-documents/

BuddyPress Mobile
Developer: @modemlooper

Theme optimized for viewing on iPhone,
iPod touch. Will also work on Android and
some Blackberry devices.

http://buddypress.org/community/groups/buddypress-mobile

WP DEMO Creator
Developer: mrwiblog
Demo Data Creator is a WordPress, WPMU/
MultiSite and BuddyPress plugin that
allows a WordPress developer to create
demo users, blogs, posts, comments.

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/demo-data-creator/

BuddyPress Skeleton
Component
Developer: mrwiblog
Demo Data Creator is a WordPress, WPMU/
MultiSite and BuddyPress plugin that
allows a WordPress developer to create
demo users, blogs, posts, comments.

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/demo-data-creator/

BP Multi Network
Developer: John James Jacoby, Ron
Rennick
This plugin segregates BuddyPress social
networks in a multi network WordPress
install so that each WP network has a
different social network. The user base is
still shared across the WP install.

BP Group
Management
Developer: Boone Gorges

Creates a panel that site admins can use
to manage BP group membership by
banning, unbanning, promoting and
demoting current members of any group,
adding new members to any group, and
deleting groups.

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/bp-group-management/

Invite Anyone
Developer: Boone Gorges

1. The ability to invite members to the site
by email.

2. By default, BuddyPress only allows
group admins to invite their friends to
groups. In some communities, you might
want members to be able to invite non-
friends to groups as well. This plugin
populates the invitation checklist with the
entire membership of the site, rather than
just a friend list.
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/invite-anyone/

Where Can I Get
Inspiration For
BuddyPress?

Bookmark These.
You Know You Want To.
BuddyPress.org Showcase
http://buddypress.org/showcase/

BPInspire
http://www.bpinspire.com/

Buddy Dev
http://buddydev.com/

BuddyBoss Directory
http://www.buddyboss.com/buddypress-site-directory/

BP Tricks
http://bp-tricks.com

People To Stalk
@JohnJamesJacoby
@apeatling
@pgibbs
@boone
@ptahdunbar
@mazftw
@jeffsayre
@bpdev

https://twitter.com/#!/dimensionmedia/
buddypress-developers

Getting into BuddyPress
development

BP Template Pack
Developer: BP Team

Add support for BuddyPress to your
existing WordPress theme. This plugin will
guide you through the process step by
step. Once you are ﬁnished, your existing
WordPress theme will be able to manage
and display all BuddyPress pages and
content. The process is completely
reversible and does not modify any of your
existing template ﬁles.

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/bp-template-pack/

The Loop
Standard WordPress Loop
<?php if ( have_posts() ) : while ( have_posts() ) : the_post(); ?>

The Loop

WP Template Tags
<?php the_title(); ?>
<?php the_content(); ?>

The Loop

WP Template Tags

BuddyPress Loop
<?php if ( bp_has_members() ) : while ( bp_has_members() ) : bp_the_member(); ?>

The Loop

WP Template Tags

BuddyPress Loop
<?php if ( bp_has_members() ) : while ( bp_has_members() ) : bp_the_member(); ?>

BP Template Tags
<?php bp_member_name(); ?>
<?php bp_member_permalink(); ?>

http://codex.buddypress.org/developer-docs/buddypress-template-tags/

Conditional Template Tags
WordPress Conditional Tags
is_page()
is_single()
is_archive()

Conditional Template Tags
WordPress Conditional Tags BuddyPress Conditional Tags
is_page() bp_is_active()
is_single() bp_is_members()
is_archive() bp_is_my_proﬁle()

http://codex.buddypress.org/developer-docs/conditional-template-tags/

Pro Tip: Get Curent Template
add_filter( 'template_include', 'get_current_template' );
add_filter( 'bp_load_template', 'get_current_template' );

function get_current_template( $template ){
global $current_template;

$current_template = str_replace( WP_CONTENT_DIR, basename
( WP_CONTENT_DIR ), $template );
$current_template = str_replace( '/', '-', str_replace( '.php', '',
$current_template ) );

return $template;
}

add_filter( 'body_class', function( $classes ){
global $current_template;

$classes[] = $current_template;

return $classes;
}, 999 );

Pro Tip: Get Curent Template

http://codex.buddypress.org/developer-docs/group-extension-api/

BP Group Extension API


class My_Group_Extension extends BP_Group_Extension {
function __construct() {
global $bbp;

// Name and slug
$this->name = __( 'Custom Header' );
$this->nav_item_name = __( 'Custom Header' );
$this->slug = 'custom-header';

// visibliblity
$this->visibility = 'public';

// Set positions towards end
$this->create_step_position = 21;
$this->nav_item_position = 31;
}
}


function create_screen() {}

function create_screen_save() {}

function edit_screen() {}

function edit_screen_save() {}

function widget_display() {}

function display() {}


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