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Buddypress where to disable account activation by email. BuddyPress and bbPress: two WordPress plugins for conversation. What is BuddyPress

/ July 22, 2018 / , /

Today I’ll tell you about the problems I encountered when installing this plugin on my site network. In a nutshell, this is a plugin that allows you to create Personal Area user on your website without logging into administrative panel. This allows you to improve the security of your site and improve usability for end users. It is worth saying that this site is developed by guys who are directly involved in the development and improvement of the WordPress platform itself. That is why this plugin has high compatibility and integration of themes and plugins.

There is also a description of the plugin on the Internet – this is perfect plugin to create your own social network. Let's be honest, you won't create Facebook or VKontakte with such a plugin, but you can provide a number of new opportunities for your readers, including in terms of interaction with each other.

Now about the problems

If you have only one site on the network, then there will be no problems with installation, but... If you have created a multi-site, then get ready for problems. For some time I even wanted to stop using it, since I could not find a solution on the Internet.

Problem #1: 404 error

Since I enabled the multisite function already on a running system containing a large amount of content (and this is possible), the first thing I encountered was a 404 error instead of user accounts. On this moment There are only two proven solutions:

  1. Re-select and save in the “Settings” - “Permanent Links” section the “Post Name” tab
  2. You must have a “Users” page created, and in the address bar its name must be written as “members”

Problem #2: The plugin did not work in Multisite mode

This means that user accounts had to be synchronized across all sites. This did not happen. Only later did I read on the official website and in the ReadMe file (all on English language), that you need to perform fine-tuning in the wp-config.php file, which is stored on the server in the folder of your site.

It was necessary to paste the code

Define("BP_ENABLE_MULTIBLOG", true);

If you are still afraid to go into the server file system and make changes to system files, then you can use the BP-multi-network plugin. Its function is only to insert the code for you, which is why it has so few installations and has not been updated for so long. Please note that when you deactivate it, the inserted code is also deleted.

Problem No. 3: Lack of translation into Russian

One of the most pressing problems. The most interesting thing is that I don’t remember whether there was auto-translation when I first installed the plugin, or whether there was a treasured language selection button. The fact is that when new installation I got the purest English language. And this problem can be solved, although only through the file system console of your site.

Step 2: Download it with the name buddypress-ru_RU.mo

Upload this file to the BuddyPress plugin directory in the folder bp-languages(you may need to create one)

Give the site a little time to process all the changes you made and everything will work as it should.

If you've been using WordPress for any length of time, you probably know that you can use various plugins to extend the functionality of your site.

Some plugins help increase revenue for your business, while others focus on building a community around your website. In a sea of ​​plugins, there is one in particular that has a number of benefits for small businesses.

Plugin about we're talking about, is called BuddyPress and it adds a lot of community building features. You can create your own social network for your company and use it to facilitate communication and collaboration between employees.

Another advantage of BuddyPress is that you can allow everyone who visits your site to register and create a profile, which is in a good way connecting with your target audience, clients and users. This can help you create buzz around your website and you can use it directly for customer support.

How to set up and use BuddyPress. (

In today's article, I'll show you how to install and configure BuddyPress, how to create the pages you need, and how to add them to your menu. I'll also talk about the different user roles and how to extend the functionality of BuddyPress further.

What is BuddyPress?

BuddyPress is promoted as a "social network out of the box" and helps you create any type of community website using WordPress, with member profiles, activity streams, user groups, messaging, and more.

Plus, you can take advantage of numerous great features to add additional functions to your social network. It allows you to use attachments in messages, general work with documents, “likes”, a wall like Facebook, and much more. It focuses on simple integration, ease of use, and extensibility.

BuddyPress website.

Users can create their own own profiles, send messages, create groups, share status updates and more. BuddyPress comes with several components that integrate directly with your existing WordPress site and even work with the version you have installed.

There are also themes designed specifically to work with BuddyPress, which allow for more customization and extension. functionality, available on Envato Market:

Popular BuddyPress theme available for sale on Envato Market (ThemeForest).

Now let's look at how to use BuddyPress, from installing and configuring it to working with it and customizing it to suit your needs.

How to install and configure BuddyPress

If you have ever installed a plugin on a WordPress website, you will have no problem installing BuddyPress. On your WordPress toolbar, click Plugins > Add New and then search BuddyPress. It should appear as the first result, so click Install and then Activate.

Installing the BuddyPress plugin

You'll immediately be taken to the BuddyPress welcome screen, which contains links to help you set up and manage your community.

BuddyPress welcome screen.

The first thing we'll do is set up BuddyPress. Clicking on the "Get Started" button on the welcome screen will take you straight to the Buddypress settings area.

Setting Up Your BuddyPress Installation

As you can see in the screenshot (above), there are three areas that need to be configured:

  1. Selecting the components you want to include
  2. Creating and assigning pages
  3. Setting BuddyPress Settings

Let's go through each of these points, step by step.

Step 1 - Activate BuddyPress components.

By default, BuddyPress comes with some of the components pre-activated. You can activate or deactivate all but two components. The BuddyPress Core and Community Members components cannot be deactivated as they are required for correct operation plugin.

BuddyPress components.

Other components include:

  • Advanced Profiles- Users can customize their profiles.
  • Account settings- Allows users to edit their account settings and notifications.
  • Friends Connections- allow users to establish connections with each other.
  • Private messages- allows you to send private messages between users.
  • Activity streams- global, personal and group activity streams with multi-threaded comments, direct publishing, favorites and @mentions.
  • Notifications- notifications to participants in the relevant activity using the toolbar and/or by e-mail.
  • Group of users- allows users to organize themselves into specific public, private or hidden sections with separate activity streams and participant lists.
  • Site tracking- allows you to record actions for new messages and comments from your site.

You can choose as many components as you like, depending on the needs of your site. In addition, some components can be easily enabled later. Once you are done selecting components, click Save settings.

Step 2 - Setting Up Pages

The next step is to set up the pages that BuddyPress will use. Most of the pages are already created, but you need to manually create the pages for user registration and activation.

Keep in mind that you will also need to allow user registration in the section Settings > General > Allow to allow everyone to register on the site if you plan to have a public community.

Setting up BuddyPress pages.

If you want your community to be private, you will have to add new users manually and can skip the next step.

On the toolbar, click Pages > Add new and then create a blank page Registration, and then Activation. You don't need to add any content to these pages as BuddyPress will automatically display the relevant content.

Once your pages are created, return to Settings > BuddyPress and select a tab Pages. In chapter Registration select the pages you just created for the relevant functions.

Step 3 - Tweaking BuddyPress settings

Now that the basic parameters have been configured correctly, it's time to tweak the settings. Go to the tab Options. Here you can configure various parameters related to user profiles, groups, activity and basic settings. The settings themselves are quite self explanatory, as you can see in the screenshot below:

Additional BuddyPress settings.

Select the ones that are appropriate for your community and click Save settings.

How to use BuddyPress

BuddyPress is designed to work with users. We mentioned earlier that you need to allow user registration on your site if you want to have an open community where your visitors can freely register on your site.

BuddyPress itself does not have default member roles. Therefore, it is safest to set the role for new users as Subscriber or Member.

1. User profiles

When someone registers, they are given their profile, which they can control from the admin area. In addition to the usual profile options, each user can access settings Extended Profile, if this component was enabled in the previous step.

BuddyPress user profile.

Here they can enter as much information about themselves as they want. You can create various profile fields in the section Users > Profile Fields to allow users to enter their name, birthday, short bio, links to their other profiles, etc. You can also group different profile fields to better organize them.

Advanced profile options in BuddyPress.

Once your users have finished entering their profile information, they can access their public profile, which has a large number of possibilities:

  • Last Activity
  • Profile
  • Alerts
  • Messages
  • Friends
  • Groups
  • Settings

This page also serves as a personal tool where anyone, including you, can message other users, update status, join groups, change global settings, and more.

Users can post status updates.

Apart from user registration permissions, you can also add users manually from the toolbar WordPress In chapter Users > Add new.

2. How groups work

If you previously selected a component Groups, you and your users will be able to create groups. Groups can be set to public, allowing anyone to join the group. Open groups will also be visible on the site, and their activity will be displayed in the feed Activities.

Setting up a BuddyPress group.

Private groups require users to request membership and will also be visible on the site. However, activities private group visible only to group members.

Finally, hidden groups are invite-only, they are not visible on the rest of your website, and group activity is only visible to group members.

Each group, regardless of group type, can be configured to issue new invitations in one of three ways:

  1. only by group admin
  2. group admin and moderators
  3. any member of the group

Like the members, each group can have a logo and header image, making it more recognizable.

3. Adding widgets and menus

To make the community as user-friendly as possible, as well as easier to navigate, you can create own menu and take advantage of the widgets that come with BuddyPress.

Let's take care of the menu first.

Go to section Appearance> Menu and click the link Create new link menu. Give a name and assign the menu where you want the menu to appear.

Add the pages you want to appear in your navigation in the section Pages, add your desired BuddyPress pages. Here's what our custom menu looks like:

Setting up BuddyPress custom navigation.

Now let's add widgets to our sidebar, so that our users and site visitors can more easily navigate the site and can immediately see site activity.

Click Appearance > Widgets. Default WordPress Theme - TwentySixteen- has a sidebar widget area and two widget areas that appear below the content. For simplicity, we will add widgets to our sidebar Entrance And Who's online, but depending on your theme, you can add them to any area of ​​your widgets on your site.

BuddyPress widget options.

Keep in mind that the widgets available depend on the components you have previously activated. They allow your users to log in or register, see notifications, see who is online, and you can also use them to post notifications on behalf of your entire community.

How to Extend and Customize BuddyPress

Now that your community is set up correctly, you'll need a theme to make it visually appealing. In our theme market - ThemeForest, there are big choice high-quality premium BuddyPress themes that are sure to take your website to the next level.

They can be used to create any type of website, but they are designed and developed to be fully compatible with the BuddyPress plugin to ensure that all your pages, user profiles, groups and all functionality will work without errors. Be sure to check out our editor's picks for the best themes for BuddyPress community sites:

There are also a number of amazing plugins that complement BuddyPress even further. Most of them are easy to set up and maintain. They give you the ability to add attachments to private messages, allow users to collaborate on documents, and much more.

Here are a few of the most notable BuddyPress-related plugins:

1. BuddyPress Links

The BuddyPress Links plugin adds media sharing functionality to BuddyPress. This means that if you share a link to another site, it will automatically display some of the data contained in the link. Typically, images, videos, thumbnails, and excerpts are displayed so that your members can understand what the link is about.

2. BuddyPress Docs

BuddyPress Docs is a must-have plugin if you plan to build corporate network. This is the version Google Docs from BuddyPress, which allows members of your community to collaborate on documents and much more.

3. bbPress

BbPress adds a great forum solution to an already powerful management system WordPress content. This great way expand the functionality of your BuddyPress site and encourage user interaction. Additionally, bbPress integrates perfectly with BuddyPress.

4. Simple Terms and Conditions for BuddyPress

With simple terms and conditions for BuddyPress, it's easy to enhance the BuddyPress registration page with a checkbox to accept the terms and conditions of use. You will need this if you run a business website. It can also save you from a lot of headaches in the future.

BuddyPress Adds Community to WordPress

WordPress is a very powerful platform, but when you combine it with BuddyPress, it becomes even more powerful.

You can quickly turn your website into a fully functional social network, company network, and more. This will allow your target audience discuss and comment on your services and products, and get immediate support if they encounter any problems.

By combining BuddyPress with a few additional plugins and a great looking theme, you can open up your site to a completely new experience. new audience. If your company needs a place to facilitate communication and collaboration, look no further than BuddyPress.

Are you looking for a modern, reliable and sophisticated social network engine? BuddyPress is a set of components that make up a social network, with great additions from the extensive WordPress plugin library.

BuddyPress is easy to integrate, easy to use and extend. It is an incredibly full-featured and infinitely simple social network engine created by the developers of WordPress.

Users can register on your website and create their own profiles, conduct private correspondence, establish contacts, create their own groups and much more. As a social network in a box, BuddyPress allows you to easily create a home for your company, school, sports team, or other social groups.

Built for Developers

BuddyPress helps website developers and developers add community features to their websites. It comes with a robust theme compatibility API that makes sure every page of BuddyPress content looks and feels right with any WordPress theme. You may have to tweak some of the styles yourself to keep things looking clean.

BuddyPress Themes Made Easy WordPress themes with additional templates, and with with little effort you can easily create your own too! Several instances of BuddyPress are readily available for download from WordPress.org, and many more are available from third-party theme authors.

BuddyPress also comes with built-in support for Akismet and bbPress, two very popular and very powerful WordPress plugins. If you use them, visit their settings pages and make sure everything is set to your liking.

BuddyPress Ecosystem

WordPress.org is home to great BuddyPress extensions such as:

Search for "BuddyPress" on WordPress.org to find them all!

Join our community

If you're interested in getting involved with BuddyPress, we want you to join us. Go to the BuddyPress Documentation site to learn how you can apply.

A larger BuddyPress community means better software for everyone!

Screenshots

Installation

Requirements

  • PHP version 7.2 or higher.
  • MySQL version 5.6 or higher, or MariaDB version 10.0 or higher.
  • HTTPS support.

Automatic installation

Automatic installation is the easiest option since WordPress handles everything itself. To execute automatic installation BuddyPress, log in to your WordPress console, go to the Plugins menu and click Add.

In the search field, type “BuddyPress” and click “Search Plugins.” Once you've found it, you can view information about the latest version, such as community reviews, ratings, and description. Install BuddyPress by simply clicking "Install Now".

After activation:

  1. Visit ‘Settings > BuddyPress > Components’ and change some components to suit your community. (You can always return them.)
  2. Visit ‘Settings > BuddyPress > Pages’ and set up all your custom pages. We have already created some automatically, but we suggest you customize it all for your site.
  3. Visit ‘Settings > BuddyPress > Settings’ and take a moment to customize BuddyPress to suit your needs. We have already activated many things by default, but each community is individual.

FAQ

Can I use existing topic WordPress?

Yes! BuddyPress works out of the box with almost any WordPress theme.

Will the plugin work with WordPress Multisite?

Yes! If you have multisite mode enabled on your WordPress, BuddyPress will support general tracking of blogs, posts, comments, and even custom post types (with a little extra code).

BuddyPress can be activated and run in almost any environment you need:

  • Activate at the site level to make BuddyPress work only on that site.
  • Activate at the network level to get full integration with all sites on your network. (This is the most popular installation type in Multisite.)
  • Activate multiblog mode to allow BuddyPress content to appear on any site WordPress networks using the same data.
  • Extend BuddyPress with a third-party multinet plugin that allows each site or network to have its own, separate community
Where can I find documentation? Where can I report a bug?

Report bugs, suggest ideas, and get involved at https://buddypress.trac.wordpress.org.

Where can I get the development version?

See how we develop BuddyPress in Subversion at https://buddypress.svn.wordpress.org/trunk/, or on the same Git repository: git://buddypress.git.wordpress.org/.

Who creates BuddyPress?

BuddyPress is free software created by an international community of volunteers. Some are hired by companies that use BuddyPress, while others are consultants that offer services around BuddyPress. No one receives money from the BuddyPress project for their efforts and time.

If you'd like to support BuddyPress financially, please consider sending money to the WordPress Foundation, or ask your favorite core developer what kind of reward would be preferable.

Discussion forums

Try bbPress. It is integrated with BuddyPress groups, profiles and notifications. Each group on your site will be able to choose whether they want to use their own forum, and every user thread, reply, favorite, and follow will appear on their profiles.

Reviews

Brute force attack off user names in directory

Felty

I discovered that someone was brute forcing every single name with a single attempt per IP address of every user in the directory. Seems like its a bad idea to show the actual log in names in the public directory. I confirmed by changing a user name and the log in attempt name switched. Removing the directory and then changing their name resulted in them not knowing the new name. Ah well. It was a nice comfy plugin until now. Switching to Profilegrid which has more privacy options.

Have questions? Write a comment!

Hello! Ilya Zhuravlev is in touch, today I will sort it out super plugin– BuddyPress, which is designed to create a social network. Yes, these are not just words, you can create your own social network! And I’ll just help you and tell you how to do it. After a little digging into the plugin, I realized that it is very simple and cool, respect to the developers, it’s really cool. Not everyone manages to fully understand this plugin, because not everyone is ready to devote their time to studying the plugin, but there’s nothing special to study here, everything is just like twice two. Plugin features:

Plugin on In Russian, everything is simple and clear!

The plugin automatically creates the necessary and already configured pages!

Activity feed where displayed records of all social network participants.

All users will be able to upload their profile photos and covers for groups.

You can customize the registration page, select which fields should be displayed.

In general, everything is there like in a full-fledged social network!

You can install the plugin directly from wordpress admin panels. Go to the tab: Plugins – Add new, enter the name of the plugin in the search form, press Enter, install and activate the plugin.

After installing and activating the plugin, you will be taken to the page: Welcome to BuddyPress. Here you can read information about the plugin.

Note that: BuddyPress looks and performs significantly better with the Twenty Thirteen and expected Twenty Sixteen themes. But, of course, the plugin can be used on any WordPress theme.

Plugin settings

To configure the plugin, go to the page: Settings – BuddyPress.

– Components, here you can enable or disable features for your social network. Be sure to read the designation of all functions to better understand the capabilities of your social network. We recommend enabling all features to provide the best possible experience for your users. After enabling the functions - Save settings.

– Pages, here you can configure the necessary pages for your social network. When the plugin was activated, all the necessary pages should have been created automatically. Check that they correspond to the pages specified in these settings. You can change the name of the pages; I’ll tell you about each page a little later. Save your settings.

– Settings, here you can configure the basic settings of your social network. The settings are quite simple and clear, so I don’t see the point in describing them. Read the description for each parameter and you will understand everything, there is nothing complicated here. I recommend checking all the boxes.

Pages

You must have 5 main pages created for the normal functioning of your social network. Make sure that pages appear in your theme's menu, on the Appearance - Menus page. You can specify any page as the main page on the page: Settings - Reading.

– Activity, on the Activity or Activity Feed page, the latest published posts from the entire social network will be displayed. Here you can publish posts that all users of the social network will see.

– Users, on the Users page you can view users using a search filter or just search. If you select a filter – Activity, then all will be shown active users, which are now present on the site.

– Groups, the Groups page will display all created groups. Here you can also search for groups using a filter. Tabs are displayed here for – Create a group, for going to the page – My groups, and All groups.

– Registration, on the Registration page, any user can register and create their own account. You can either add a registration page to the menu or use the login and registration widget. If you use a widget, then the Registration page must be removed from the menu so that it is not displayed in the menu, but is present on the site. Registration fields can be customized, I’ll talk about this a little later. By default, the necessary standard fields for registration. When checking your registration, be sure to log out of your account.

Activity

In the WordPress admin panel, on the Activity page, will be displayed Last messages and notifications about social network activity. For example, if someone has changed their profile picture, a notification about this will appear on this page, etc. You can use the filter and see certain actions that were made on social networks.

Groups

In the WordPress admin panel, on the Groups page, all created groups on the social network will be displayed. You will be able to view and edit groups. To create a new group, click on the button at the top - Add.

After clicking on the Add button, you will see the creation page new group. Enter the name and description of the group, click on the button – Create a group and continue.

Next, in Settings you can specify the group type, public, private or hidden. You can specify which members of this group will be able to invite other users. Click on the button - Next step.

Next, you can upload your group's profile picture, which will be displayed as a profile picture. Drag the image into a special selected window, adjust the area of ​​the image and click on the Crop button.

After adding a profile picture, click on the button - Next step.

On last page, read the notice and click on the button – Finish.

That's it, the group is ready! On the group page, you can manage the group by clicking on the Manage button, configure the group, change images, view users, etc.

Users

On the page: Users – Registration management, you will be able to view registered users. Users who have not yet verified their account will also be displayed here.

Profile fields

On the Profile Fields page, you will be able to change the fields that appear on the Registration page. You can change the location of fields by simply dragging the field with the mouse. You can specify a required field or not, except for the required ones by default. You can customize the visibility of fields for specific users. You can select the field type, etc.

You can add new fields if you want, for example, on the account creation page to display any additional fields, phone number, city, age, gender, etc. All newly created fields will appear on the Registration and Account Creation page.

Widgets

On the Widgets page, you will have 7 new widgets for your social network.

– Groups, dynamic list of groups. The widget will display active, popular and new groups.

– Who is online, avatars of users who are currently online will be displayed.

– Recently active displaying avatars of recently active users.

– Announcements, announcements from the site administrator will be displayed here for all users.

– Users, dynamic list of active, popular and new users.

– Friends, a dynamic list of active and popular friends, shown for specific user, on his profile page.

Tools

On the page: Tools – BuddyPress, you can use tools for calculating and restoring data on your social network. It is not recommended to run multiple processes at the same time.

Leave questions about this article in the comments, or write to Feedback.


Plugin setup BuddyPress WordPress new instructions updated: January 25, 2019 by: Ilya Zhuravlev

Turning your WordPress site into a community with BuddyPress has never been easier, thanks to improvements in the latest versions of this great social plugin.

BuddyPress works great with a huge amount free and paid themes, and BuddyPress components also look great in responsive themes.

If you want to turn your site into a community of users and add features to it social networks, free plugin BuddyPress makes this possible. In this article, I will show you how to install and configure BuddyPress on your website. You'll learn how to create pages for BuddyPress, how to add them to your menu and widgets, and how to test your site with test data.

If you want to know more about BuddyPress, you can use the official BP website; We also offer a lot of different articles about BuddyPress.

Installing BuddyPress

The first thing you will need to do is install the BuddyPress plugin. I'll be installing it on a fresh build of WordPress, but you can install it on an existing site.

In your WordPress admin panel, go to Plugins > Add New and you will see BuddyPress in the list of available plugins. Click on the Install button, then Activate, and the plugin will be installed on your site.

You will immediately see the BuddyPress welcome screen:

BuddyPress Configuration

There are three aspects to setting up BuddyPress:

  • Selecting the required components
  • Creating Pages
  • Change settings

You should start with the selection of components, as this will affect other parameters.

Activating BuddyPress components

To select the components you want to use, either click the Set Up Components link on the Welcome screen, or go to Settings > BuddyPress and activate the Components tab.

By default, some components will already be selected for you:

Depending on what exactly you need to organize your community, you can choose the following items:

  • Extended Profiles: changes user profiles and configures the available fields
  • Account Settings: Allows users to edit their account.
  • Friend Connections: Allows users to connect with each other.
  • Private Messaging: Allows users to send private messages
  • Activity Streams: displays an activity stream on the site with direct posting to the frontend, tree-like comments, mentions and email notifications.
  • Notifications: Your users can receive notifications about their latest activity in the way they choose.
  • User Groups: Allows you to create user groups
  • Site Tracking: allows you to track events on the site (posts and comments)
  • BuddyPress Core: You cannot cancel this component, without it BuddyPress will not work
  • Community Members: Again, without this component BuddyPress will not work.

You can choose any of these components for your site, or add them later if you decide to expand your community.

I will select all the components for this manual, because I want to show them all to you. You can select only those that you require. Once you have done this, click on Save button Settings.

Setting up pages

The next step is setting up the pages that BuddyPress will use. Before moving to the Pages tab, you will need to create several pages: for registration and activation.

Note: If your community is private and people cannot register accounts (you add users manually), you can skip this step.

In the WordPress admin, go to Pages > Add New and create two pages, as we always do. Let's call one Registration, and the second Activation (you can give them any other names).

Once you do this, you will see all these pages in the main page list. BuddyPress has already added two other pages for you: Activity and Members. I deleted standard page Sample Page, so I have four pages at the moment.

Now that all the pages are created, you can set them up for BuddyPress.

Go to Settings > BuddyPress and click on the Pages tab.

Select pages for each function:

  • Members – select Members
  • Activity Streams – select Activity
  • User Groups – select Groups
  • Register – select Registration
  • Activate – select Activation

Click on the Save Settings button. BuddyPress will automatically use these pages to display relevant content on your site.

Setting up parameters

Now that you've selected your components and created your pages, it's time to move on to configuring your BuddyPress settings.

Click on the Settings tab

There are a ton of options on this page that you can enable or disable:

  • Main Settings: you can turn on/off the toolbar at the very top of the screen for registered users, set whether users can delete their accounts themselves.
  • Profile Settings: You can allow members to upload their own profile pictures, sync BuddyPress and WordPress profiles.
  • Groups Settings: You can allow users to create groups, set whether users can change group avatars.
  • Activity Settings: You can allow commenting on blog and forum posts in the activity feed, and automatically update the activity feed in real time.

Select the items that correspond to your site, and then click on the Save Settings button. I have selected all options.

Setting up WordPress settings

Now that BuddyPress is set up, it's time to configure WordPress settings. In the future we will add a navigation menu and widgets.

In the Settings menu in the WordPress admin panel, edit the following parameters:

  • Permalinks: Make sure nice permalinks are enabled
  • Reading: we make the home page a static page, namely an Activity page. This will ensure that when users open your site, they see fresh activity. I'll leave the Posts page option unchanged since I don't have a blog on my site. If you have one, select the appropriate page.

Note: If you are adding BuddyPress to an existing site and want to keep your existing home page, you don't have to set a static page as the main one. However, make sure that the Activity page can be easily found by users.

Change the settings and save the changes.

Installing a theme

Now you need to find a theme for your website. If you're working with an existing site, you can skip this step (if you're happy with your theme).

A few years ago, you could only use a BuddyPress compatible theme, and if you wanted to install the plugin in your own topic, you would have to add additional templates to it. There is no need to do this today. Since version 1.7, BuddyPress works great with any quality topic, although there are themes whose design and layout are not very suitable for BP.

I'll use the Spacious theme, which is free and has a clean design that highlights the content your users will be creating. It also has customization options, i.e. you can customize the design for yourself.

Go to the Appearance > Themes section and click on the Add New button. We type spacious into the search field and see the topic:

Click Install and then Activate to install and activate the theme. If you want to customize the theme, you can do so through the theme options or through the customizer.

Adding menus and widgets for navigation

Creating a Navigation Menu

If your site doesn't have a navigation menu, you'll need to create one and link it to the main area of ​​your theme.

Go to the Appearance > Menus section and click on the link: create a new menu. Give the menu a name, check the box next to Primary Navigation and save it.

If you don't find a section called BuddyPress on the left side of the site, you will need to enable it by opening the Screen Options tab at the very top of the screen and selecting BuddyPress.

Now add BuddyPress pages and your regular pages V navigation menu. I have added the following pages:

  • Activity (with Messages and Notifications as second level links)
  • Friends
  • Groups
  • Profile (with Settings as a second level link)
  • Log Out
  • Log In
  • Registration

All of these items except the last one are taken from the BuddyPress list on the left: the Registration link is taken from the Pages list. I changed the link text for Registration to Join to make it clearer.

Now click Save Menu to save the menu.

This is what the site will look like with new topic and menu:

Then I'll add some widgets to display activity and help users navigate the site:

Adding widgets

I will be adding widgets to the sidebar and widget areas in the header, as well as 4 widget areas in the footer. If you're using a different theme, you most likely have different widget areas. It's also worth noting that the widgets you have available depend on the components activated at the very beginning.

Add the following widgets to the sidebar widget area:

  • BuddyPress Log In
  • BuddyPress Sitewide Notices
  • BuddyPress Friends

Add a Search widget to your header widget area if your theme has one. If not, you can add this widget to your sidebar.

This is what my widget areas look like:

  • BuddyPress Who's Online
  • BuddyPress Recently Active Members
  • BuddyPress Groups

Finally, let's add a text widget to the fourth widget area with some text about the community and a link to the registration page:

Now my site looks like the screenshot below:

At the moment everything is empty. Hopefully as the community grows my members will add content to it over time and the community will feel more vibrant, but for now I'll add some dummy data that will allow me to test the site.

Testing the site using fictitious data

Before you launch a BuddyPress community, especially if you make it available to the public or charge for membership, you will need to test it with dummy data.

You can use a plugin that generates such data on your site and will add content to all BuddyPress pages. Once you understand that the site is working properly, you can remove all bogus content, i.e. your users won't see it.

Go to the Plugins > Add New section and install BuddyPress Default Data.

The options listed here depend on the BuddyPress components that are installed on your site:

  • Import Users: includes dummy users for testing
  • Import user profile data: adds profile data for users
  • Create friend connections: creates friendship connections between users (if the Friend Connections component is enabled).
  • Import activity posts: fills the activity feed (if Activity Streams is enabled).
  • Import groups: Imports groups (if User groups is enabled).

Click Import Selected Data and the plugin will automatically import the dummy data for you.

This is what my site looks like after filling it with test data:

Footer widgets also look better once the site is populated with users and groups.

If you have tested all the pages and found everything to be working fine, you can delete the test data by returning to the plugin page and clicking Clear button BuddyPress Data.

BuddyPress Site Management

Now that your website is in order, you can promote it and attract people in every possible way. What you do will depend on the nature of your community: if your site is built for a small, pre-existing group or team, this will be relatively easy; if it was created for an already existing community, then you will just need to talk about it; If you want to reach a wider audience or sell memberships, then you will need a more thoughtful marketing plan.

Once people start joining the community, you will need to complete the following tasks:

  • Keep your site up to date, including WordPress, the BuddyPress plugin, your theme, and any other plugins installed.
  • Test the site after the update so that there are no problems (first it is better to test the update on the development version of the site, and then install it on the production version).
  • Make regular backups using plugins such as Snapshot Pro
  • If necessary, moderate the community and resolve any complaints and disputes

As your community grows in size, moderation will become a very important activity. It is best to define some community standards or rules in advance by creating a page on the site for them. This may include instructions regarding spam, trolling, swearing, attacks, spam links, downloads, etc. What you include is up to you and your community, and may be added to over time.

As an administrator, you can delete user accounts if they violate the community rules, but it is best to delete certain posts and prevent any actions that violate the rules by explaining to the user exactly what they did wrong. You have to find a balance between preventing unwanted behavior and blocking everyone - if you've followed the rise of Facebook and Twitter, then you know what I'm talking about.

If you find that the metadata associated with your community is out of order after updating or restoring, you can use the BuddyPress Tools page to correct specific data:

  • Number of friends for each user
  • Number of groups for each user
  • Total number of participants
  • Restoring a user's "last activity"

Use these tools only when necessary as they make some adjustments to the database. It's best to first set the site to Maintenance and make a backup.