Almost
every business entity now a days is spending a lot of efforts and
time to expand their reach in today's highly competitive and wobbly
online marketplace. But, having your presence on social media
networks can help you reach out to millions of users quickly than a
traditional website. Social media platform can help your business
gain spotlight you may have dreamed of.
So,
if you've made up your mind on creating a social networking site and
have selected WordPress as your choice of web development platform,
then choosing a plugin from the WordPress Plugin Directory is perhaps
the first thing that you should consider.
There
are a number of plugins out there good at building social network
sites with large community, but at times, managing a large community
can be distracting. Perhaps, you may need to create a small social
network that doesn't demand a wide user base but comes with powerful
functionality. In that case, “BudyPresss” is exactly what you
need. It is a free plugin and fully compatible with WordPress.
In
this post, we will talk about the steps involved in creating a social
network website using BuddyPress. But before that, let's first
discuss about a few benefits of BuddyPress.
Some
Major Benefits of BuddyPress
Large
Pool of Plugins Available.
BuddyPress is one of the favorite and widely used plugin of
webmasters. There are over 330 BuddyPress plugins to choose from,
which enable you to extend functionality of the BuddyPress.
Offers
Widgets. As we all know,
widgets are fancy and powerful tools that helps us integrate extra
functionality into WordPress website widget-ready areas. BuddyPress
offers eight great widgets that help you perform some important tasks
in a highly convenient manner.
The
widgets are listed below:
- Members
- Who's Online
- Groups
- Recent Network wide Posts
- Friends
- Sitewide Notices
- Log In
Exchange
Information in a Secure Manner
.
Security of WordPress sites has always been a major concern among
site owners. Thanks to BuddyPress, you can share critical business
information using a password-protected approach, so that the
information is available only to team members having access to it.
Turning
Your Site Into a Social Network Site With BuddyPress
Step
1: BuddyPress Installation
BuddyPress
installation process is quite simple. You just need to search for
this plugin in the WordPress Plugin Directory. Once the plugin is
located, click on install as shown below:
After
the plugin has been installed, the BuddyPress welcome screen will pop
up.
Before
getting started, it would be better to take a few seconds and think
about the functionality of your social networking site you're
creating with Buddypress. For instance, think about the core features
you would like to add in your site including profiles creation,
organization into groups, links, etc.
Step
2 - Configuring Features of Your Social Networking Website
Once
you are clear about the features that you would like to add into your
site, it's time to begin configuring BuddyPress functionality to fit
your needs. For doing so, from your WordPress dashboard go to
Settings>>BuddyPress and click on the Components tab.
When
the settings page opens up, you will first have to configure he
Components section. This section comes with a few default components.
Luckily, you can remove the pre-installed components or may even use
further components as per your requirements. However, it is
recommended that you should avoid removing some default BuddyPress
components, such as:
Extended
Profiles
:
It helps to expand the user profiles, by providing editable profile
fields.
Member
Account Settings:
This
option allows registered users to make tweaks to their settings via
their profiles.
Friend
Connections:
This
component option is similar to the “Facebook friending” or
“Google+ Circling” functionality. It enables users to customize
who they would like to keep within their feeds.
Activity
Streams
:
This component helps in generating customized streams such as the
Twitter feeds or Facebook Newsfeed.
User
Groups
:
This option enables your users to organize different activity groups
(public, private or hidden) who can talk about anything they wish to
discuss.
Site
Tracking
:
You may want to organize your social network website usage
statistics, you can do so using Site Tracking.
Step
3:
Configuration
of Pages and Settings
Next,
you'll need to configure the Page tab on the BuddyPress settings
page. This section comprises of two parts: Directories and
Registration. The directory part associates each WordPress page with
BuddyPress pages – such as Activity Streams, User Groups, and
Members.
The
Registration part, on the other hand, help you create a sign-up and
activation page.
Settings
is the last tab on the settings page, and as the name implies, it
helps in picking up the settings for profile, account deletion,
toolbar, group creation, and lots more. You can configure the
settings according to your needs.
Let's
Wrap Up!
BuddyPress
since the time of its inception has played a significant role in
helping WordPress sites and blogs evolve to engaging and
fully-functional social network. Hopefully reading the details
covered in this post, including the benefits and the process of
creating a social network site with BuddyPress will prove useful to
you.
Author
Biography:
Samuel
Dawson has contributed this content and he has explained each &
every step of how you can use social network in WordPress with the
help of buddypress. Samuel has top quality methods and strategies to
develop WordPress related things. He is the strong part of
Designs2HTML Ltd which is responsible to Convert
HTML to WordPress in few hours of time-frame. Samuel also shares
various things on the web regarding web design and development.
