Hey Buddy(Press), lovin’ those plugins

If you are playing with BuddyPress, you may want to check out the Buddy Press Dev site. It’s a community site for BuddyPress provides developers to add plugins they have developed, and leeches like me to download them and ask annoying questions in the forums—it’s awesome, at least for me 🙂 This week there have been some cool additions to the available plugins for BuddyPress. For example, adding your latest Flickr photos to your Profile page (developed by Nicola Greco).

bpdev_flickr

Or adding your latest YouTube videos to your profile page (developed by Nicola Greco).

bpdev_youtube

And there’s the SimplePie plugin for BuddyPress that makes these other two go (developed by Nicola Greco).

Oh yeah, and there is the Twitter to Wire, that allows you to include all your tweets to your BuddyPress Wire (developed by David Aubin). Keep in mind that you need the Twitter Tools plugin isntalled and activated for this one to work, which you do in your blog on the BuddyPress site.

twitter_wire

There is also a BuddyPress Dev Site Admin plugin, which allows you to see the latest plugins on the BuddyPress site in the Site Admin area of your blog (developed by Nicola Greco)

I also tried the Community Blogs plugin by Burtadsit, which allows users to add themselves as authors to a community blog, similar to Andre Malan’s plugin Add Users, just integrated into the BuddyPress navigation bar. I like the idea of this plugin, but I haven’t been able to get the add user function to work in the navbar.

And there are more, I just haven’t tested them.  I’m impressed by how quickly integration with three major social networking services was accomplished in BuddyPress, and I also like that my various sites (and I am a Flickr, YouTube, and Twitter guy) can so easily show up on you profile page in BuddyPress. What I’m thinking is that they need a plugin for RSS feeds for the profile page from, say, another blog on some other service. They also need a way that you can widgetize and customize your profile page so that you can easily control the order of what people see and how that can explore your various identities online.

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12 Responses to Hey Buddy(Press), lovin’ those plugins

  1. Steve says:

    Another reason to explore BuddyPress more. I didn’t know plugins beyond the BP group were being developed. This might even lure me into a test WPMU/bbPress/BP installation.

    I need to find plugins that will make this work for k12. We already have WPMU and I’d like to slowly add BP features as appropriate.

    These make-your-own social apps intrigue me. I look forward to comparing Elgg and BuddyPress feature for feature. They are very different approaches.

    Steve

  2. Reverend says:

    Hey Steve,

    Yeah, it may be a good sign the the community is already producing some interesting plugins for BuddyPress–I hope the features continue and allow you to customize these member spaces and make them more dynamic and customizable landing pages.

    As for the Elgg/BuddyPress question, I don;t know enough about Elgg to really suggest the difference, what I have seen was over a year ago—so I am very interested in a detailed comparison in order to conceptualize how they approach the web differently–which is always what excites me me thinking about these applications. Not necessarily the tool, or the “brand,” but how it deals with interface issues and helps you to imagine and commune with the wide open web.

  3. Barbara says:

    Tell me again why would want to use Buddy Press alongside/inside of WPMu? I’m confused. Help me find my way, Rev.

    • Reverend says:

      Barbara,

      I really like BuddyPress because it easily builds in directory services fro WPMu, and creates a kind of dynamic way to see a person’s profile, which can aggregate their web presence from many services. I am also interested in the way it allows users to create more informal groups, which can then access the forum functionality of bbPress.

      None of this is necessarily earth-shattering, and it is modeled to some great degree on Facebook, but I like that it is open source, easy to add to WPMu, and a nice way to provide a more dynamic face to people on a pre-existing community of users.

      I don;t think it is a must, but I am excited because it solves many a question that we have been asking with UMW Blogs in one fell swoop—I’ll try and lay them out more clearly over the next few days as I integrate this into UMW Blogs 🙂

  4. Luke says:

    Modeled on Facebook. But nowhere near as scared of nursing mothers.

  5. Terry Hogan says:

    Thanks Jim for your insights into wpmu + buddypress. My host said they do not support wpmu, but I now realize it may work if I use the directory format, rather than the wildcard subdomains.

    How close do you feel you are to being able to create a production site with all three components working?

    I love the open format feeling that Buddypress has.

    It may be possible to get that with Elgg, but it doesn’t feel that way to me.

  6. Reverend says:

    Hey Terry,

    I think the sub-directories will work on most shared hosting, and while you lose a bit without subdomains, it’s pretty much the same thing depending on what you need it for.

    I think I am pretty close to production, and would be rather comfortable with calling it production on UMW Blogs if I didn;t have so many users, and so many other plugins. It runs quite well on my personal wpmu install, but bbPres is always the ?–it doesn;t always keep pace with WPMu, and can create issues.

    The open feeling, extensibility, and aesthetic choices are what always keep me coming back to WP, despite its issues.

  7. Jason Barone says:

    Awesome, thanks for posting this. I just decided to go with a BuddyPress install instead of using Drupal and this gave me and heads up on what is available. The Flickr plugin is just what I was looking for…

    Is it just me, or did BP not put a link to the developer website on http://buddypress.org ?

  8. Macario Ortega says:

    Hi, thanks for your post.

    I’ve just installed BPDEV plugins because I want flickr integration in my users’ profile. I’ve activated the flickr and youtube plugins but I don’t see them in the profile. What should I do? I can’t find any step to step instruction on getting this thing working.

    Thanks

  9. Reverend says:

    Are you using BuddyPress 1.0 and WPMU 2.7.1? Also, are you using the latest versions of the plugins/widgets? Any specific issues/error codes? I need a bit more to go on, and remember the plugin file structure for buddypress changes in 1.0 significantly.
    let me know,
    Jim

  10. Kyle says:

    What I’m wondering is whether or not the Wire for groups has an RSS feed attached. I’m thinking not – I can’t find it in the docs anywhere.

    any insight into this?

    @thecorkboard

  11. Dave Rosen says:

    I found this useful in setting up a new BuddyPress WordPress site. Thanks for sharing it Reverend.

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