E.Webscapes Blog Design Studio » BuddyPress

Free BuddyPress Webinar from Lisa Sabin-Wilson

Lisa Sabin-Wilson — Wed, 16 Jun 2010 20:57:08 +0000

Earlier this month, I put through a special announcement to our newsletter subscribers about my upcoming webinar on BuddyPress on Wednesday, June 23, 2010 1:00 PM – 2:00 PM CDT. It’s a FREE webinar designed to introduce you to the fabulous suite of plugins available, called BuddyPress, to WordPress users that will turn your web site into a fully functional social community (ala’ Facebook).

If you’re not a subscriber to our Buzz! newsletter – why not sign up today? Make sure you get the valuable announcements like free webinars, book releases, specials, news and other valuable offerings that I make available here (and elsewhere!) – click here to sign up for the EWebscapes Buzz Newsletter – - and as a free bonus, when you sign up – you will also receive 2 weeks of free WordPress tips written by me, for you, absolutely free!

At the beginning of this month, my newsletter subscribers heard about my free webinar planned fro June 23, 2010 – hosted by my good friends over at WebDesign.com. Cory Miller (WebDesign.com) and I plan to use this webinar to introduce you to the BuddyPress platform and showing you how you can use this suite of plugins and tools to turn your WordPress powered web site into a great and dynamic social community. You’ll learn how different sites are using BuddyPress to create, build and strengthen their existing communities and how you can use it as a tool to step away (a little bit) from standard social networks to own your own content, community and traffic – right on your own website!

Click here to sign up for my FREE BuddyPress Webinar on Wednesday, June 23, 2010 1:00 PM – 2:00 PM CDT- – and don’t forget to sign up for my newsletter so that you will get the early announcements – delivered directly to your e-mail inbox!

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Post tags: BuddyPress, community, Cory Miller, network, newsletter, Social Media, webdesign.com, webinar

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iThemes Builder Bootcamp and some WordPress plugins you can’t miss!

Lisa Sabin-Wilson — Sat, 08 May 2010 18:00:46 +0000

This is re-posted from my personal blog. This month has been just a crazy month of travel for me. One of the really nice results of publishing several books over the past 3 years is that I do get asked to speak a lot at different types of industry events from WordCamps to social media and internet marketing events. I really love to do it, as I really enjoy connecting with people who read my books, and who are interested in the same things I am. This past month, I was in Austin, Texas; Vancouver, British Columbia, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma and San Francisco, California. I enjoy, and am grateful, for the opportunities to connect with people from all over who are passionate about publishing, marketing, WordPress and social media.

I haven’t blogged a lot about my travel experiences – and I do intend to. It’s been a crazy month, so hence the lack of posts here. However, I do want to tell you about my experience in Oklahoma with the crew from iThemes, including some of the exciting stuff that they have going on over there, and why you should pay attention. The folks from iThemes are putting out some amazing products that I want to bring to your attention here. Aside from their iThemes offerings of premium WordPress themes, they started up their PluginBuddy site a few months ago and made available some killer plugins that you should be using – - some of them are free, some of them are not, but all around, they are invaluable and fill a big void, as far as I’m concerned:

Backup Buddy – I downloaded this particular plugin on the very day they released it and love it! Now, I recommend it to everyone I know because I’ve found it to be an invaluable tool for the work I do. It’s called Backup Buddy and it gives you the ability to fully backup your WordPress blog easily. This isn’t like exporting your posts and content via the WordPress exporter – - this plugin backs up EVERYTHING – - your content, themes, plugins, settings, options – everything! It also has a built in importer option that gives you the ability to import backups to restore your WordPress powered site in a flash. From a developer and designer standpoint, this has made my life SO much easier. I often create ‘sandbox’ or ‘test bed’ development sites while working on my client projects. With Backup Buddy – I can now get my sandbox development site set up just right with the necessary themes, plugins and options settings – - then I create a backup copy of it using BackUp Buddy .. and then import it into a new installation of WordPress (using the Backup Buddy import script) and I’m done. I don’t have to sit there and activate themes, plugins and then go through and set the plugin options and theme settings all over again, because the plugin takes care of all of that for me. It also has an option to schedule regular backups of your site, automatically. A description from their own web site:

BackupBuddy is an all-in-one solution for backups, restoration, and migration. The single backup file created by the plugin can be used with the importer script to quickly and easily restore your site on the same server or even migrate to a new host with different settings. Whether you’re an end user or a developer, this plugin is sure to bring you peace of mind and added safety in the event of data loss. Our goal is to keep the backup, restoration, and migration processes easy, fast, and reliable.

Pluginbuddy Mobile – This fantastic plugin creates a really nice iPhone version of your site for mobile browsers. It has a built-in style manager that gives you the ability to create and customize a mobile version of your site that displays beautifully in several different mobile browser systems, such as : Apple iPhone, Apple iPad, Android Device, Palm Device, Blackberry Device, Windows CE Device, Mobile IE, Sony Playstation Portable, Sony Playstation 3, Nintendo Wii and Nintendo DS. Whew!

The team at Pluginbuddy, headed up by developer Dustin Bolton, have really worked hard on this one. It’s a really simple and easy way to make sure your web site renders well on mobile devices – I’m working with it currently on several client sites and it’s easy to use and an excellent mobile browsing plugin solution for WordPress.

iThemes Pluginbuddy has a few other plugins that you may also be interested in checking out:

So, speaking of the iThemes team – I had a really great time at their Builder Bootcamp weekend in Oklahoma and want to send out a big thanks to Cory Miller, Jen Miller and the rest of the iThemes team for inviting me down to their event. There were roughly 70-75 people in attendence, all of them passionate WordPress users, and all of them part of the iThemes community. Many were from the Oklahoma City general area – but there were a handful that flew in hundreds of miles away to spend the weekend with the iThemes crew to learn more about WordPress and how they can use the iThemes offerings to build their web sites with WordPress. Great stuff!

I had the opportunity to share experiences with the iThemes community in Oklahoma City in April, 2010

To kick off the event, I spoke on my own experiences with WordPress, spoke a little about opportunities that WordPress offers its users and spoke a little about BuddyPress. This was a crowd that was really engaged, passionate and curious about how they can leverage the publishing power of WordPress. Lots of great questions and feedback and I had a super time.

While there, iThemes did some give-aways of my BuddyPress For Dummies book to the people who attended Builder Bootcamp. I was pleasantly surprised at how many of the attendees brought their copy of WordPress For Dummies for me to sign for them – that was a bonus! Many of them even made the trek across the street to the local Barnes and Nobel to purchase a copy of WordPress For Dummies so I could sign it – - that was fun! I ended up signing about 50 books that weekend – - so I had the chance to brush up on my autographing skills!

The rest of the weekend saw iThemes team members like Matt Danner, Chris Jean, Cory Miller and Benjamin Bradley (of the iThemes WebDesign.com division) speaking on various topics such as design, plugins, marketing and promotions – along with a really helpful Q&A session with their community at the end.

I learned about their Builder theme, which is a WordPress theme framework that enables you to create several different types of layouts with just one theme. Chris Jean is the brains and developer behind the Builder framework and they’ve built a really cool community of users who are using the Builder framework to create dynamic WordPress sites. Check it out if you have some time – it might just fit into what you’re trying to do with WordPress, with 9 different child themes to choose from (and more coming), a built in style manager and a dedicated SEO plugin – - and the support team at iThemes is second to none – - this is really a super group of folks.

I also enjoyed the opportunity to meet members of the iThemes community, like Lynn Dye (pictured with me on the left) — who, by the way, expressed an interest in interviewing me for her own blog while I was in Oklahoma – - she published her experiences at Builder Bootcamp, as well as the interview she did with me on her blog.

I had the chance to sit and talk one-on-one with iThemes founder, Cory Miller, about what they’ve been up to and what the future holds for the iThemes brand – it was an enjoyable and enlightening weekend and very much worth the time spent in Oklahoma City. Cory, and his wife Jen, are super nice people – aside from being wholly impressed with what they’ve built…I just flat out like them. I’m looking forward to seeing them again at WordCamp Raleigh and talking with them more about some exciting future collaborations.

Some upcoming events that I’ll be attending in the next month:

WordCamp Raleigh – May 21-23
WordCamp Chicago – June 5-6

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Post tags: backup buddy, builder, mobile, pluginbuddy, plugins, Themes, Wordpress

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Nourish Network – WordPress / BuddyPress Community

Lisa Sabin-Wilson — Sun, 28 Feb 2010 22:05:14 +0000

Lia approached E.Webscapes for a cleaner, more professional design for her web site at NourishNetwork.com that is powered by WordPress MU and BuddyPress. Lia’s site was a challenge in that it’s more than just a web site with content – it is a fully interactive social community where her members interact, discuss, share and network on a regular basis through groups, forums, messaging and more

Project Details

Specs

Lia had her ideas all set and had put a lot of thought and planning into where she wanted her web site to go, in terms of her goals and content presentation. I did a lot of custom work for the display of her content that included custom featured content tabbed gallery, dynamically resizing images depending on which section of the web site you are visiting, custom navigation menus throughout the site, based on category, page and topic and customized social community features through the use of the BuddyPress add-on for WordPress.

By using BuddyPress on her WordPress powered web site, Lia is able to host several social features on NourishNetwork.com including: Member Profiles, Member Avatars, Groups, Forums, Private Messaging, Friends and more. She has build an exciting community around the topic of sustainable foods, cooking and recipe sharing.

Powered by WordPress
Social Community powered by BuddyPress
PSD to WordPress with some Custom Graphic Design
Customized Cascading Style Sheet (CSS)
Custom programming for

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Post tags: Blog Design, BuddyPress, Cooking, lia huber, Lisa Sabin-Wilson, nourish network, recipe blog, social community, Wordpress, WordPress MU

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Speaking at Think Tank Live – Milwaukee, WI

Lisa Sabin-Wilson — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 07:01:18 +0000

I am happy to announce that I am speaking at the Think Tank Live Search Marketing and Social Media Summit scheduled for February 23, 2010 in Milwaukee, WI. I will be presenting on the topic of building a niche community web site utilizing the free and dynamic software combination of WordPress and BuddyPress and how business, and individuals, can leverage the features and components to build a fully functional social community on your own web site. Exciting stuff!

This conference will focus on educating people on how to utilize internet marketing and social media to drive strategic business results, increase profits, and lower costs. Think Tank Live is committed to providing high level insights that will provide real-world results for your business.

Date: Tuesday, February 23, 2010
Time: 8:30am – 5pm
Location: Country Springs Hotel, 2810 Golf Road, Waukesha, WI
Tickets: Regular admission – $225.00 prior to the event, and $275.00 at the door. Includes Continental Breakfast and Lunch.

You can read the PR Press Release about the event, and visit the Think Tank Live! web site for more information on the event.

I am privileged to be sharing the speakers podium with other talented individuals such as:

	Mary A. DuQuaine: I.M. Think Tank Founder, Community Engagement and Events Specialist
	David Dalka: Search Engine Marketing Management Consultant, I.M. Think Tank Content Management Advisor
	James Bird: Owner, Marshal Firth – Affiliate Marketing
	Christopher Campbell: Owner, SEO Specialist at Lakeshore Branding
	Chris King: SEO & Web Analytics Specialist
	Mert Sahinoglu: Integrated Marketing Specialist
	Jo Stumpner: Pay-Per-Click Marketing Specialist
	Tony Verre: Owner, Silver Arc Search Marketing
	Seng Weiland, Marketing Consultant

I’m happy to be a part of Think Tank Live in February – if you’re in the Milwaukee area, I hope you’ll think about going – and if you do, be sure to seek me out to say hello!

Cross posted from my personal blog

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Post tags: BuddyPress, Lisa Sabin-Wilson, search marketing, Social Media, speaking, think tank live, Wordpress

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Relaxed, Redecorated and Relaunched!

Lisa Sabin-Wilson — Sun, 13 Dec 2009 19:21:28 +0000

Out with the old – in with the new! And we couldn’t be more excited! 2009 has been a really nice year for us over here at E.Webscapes – and towards the end of this article, you’ll find out how you can get 15% off our services from now through 12/31/09 to celebrate our relaunch!

For me, 2009 marks the end of a full decade of making things pretty on the web, for myself and my clients. This past year has been a very busy one, in terms of projects we’ve done and people we have worked with – considering the economical weather out there, I’m grateful! E.Webscapes continues to stay strong, so much so that I have had the delightful ability to extend opportunities to some pretty fab-tastic designers, and have added them to our team here at E.Webscapes. Have a gander over at the About Us and Our Blog Designers page and read through their profiles to get to know them a bit. Their talent is stunning and I”m really happy to have them on our team here at E.Webscapes.

Back in early October, we closed down our order form and stopped taking on any new projects. We were just overloaded with work and couldn’t possibly squeeze in one more project, at the time. I’ve since re-opened our request form – so definitely hit it up when you’re ready to place a new request for your new project! Many of you returning clients will also notice that we did away with the Client Desk system we had used for years, and are now using a much more powerful, productivity-inducing system that is not only easy to work with, but serves up our project management needs on a completely secured (SSL) connection. What that means, in non-geek speak, is that the connection between our servers and you is encrypted and completely secure – so when you share information with us – it is only with us, and no other potential sneaky web sniffer can get hold of any delicate information you give in your order form, or through any of the project ticket communications. Yay for the added layer of security!

People returning to this site may also notice a complete redesign, and re-branding of E.Webscapes! I’ve been hard at work on that for the past few months – - and still have a few tweaky things to mess with as I go, but it’s about 99.9% *there*. The branding hasn’t changed a lot – - the main color scheme is still the same (LOVE vibrant and exciting colors!). We lost the silhouetted people and opted for a fresh coat of paint, instead!

As well, I have re-written several areas of content – particularly our FAQ, Terms of Service, Our Services, Resources and Privacy Statement – for those interested in reading those sections here. I’m not sold on the new Portfolio page layout yet, though. If you have feedback on how it works – do let me know. It used to be when you clicked on a thumbnail in the portfolio – it opened a larger window where you could view a larger screenshot of the design itself. Now, when you click on the thumbnail – it takes you to the article where we’ve written details on the project, and does give you the ability to click to view a larger version of the screen shot. I’m torn on it – - and may change it if I find that it’s not user-friendly enough!

Aside from the re-design of this site, and finishing up several client projects – here’s a bit of what I’ve been up to over the past few months:

My family and I moved homes during the months of August – October. No small undertaking there! We’re still living in Wisconsin – but now in a very beautiful home in the country.. just in time for beautiful winter snow to drape itself across everything and make it all white and shiny. The move was a pretty large project for my family and I, since we only had less than two months to move all the stuff accumulated over 6 years! Sadly, I had to turn away several projects during that time because getting my family up and moved in in that short time frame was the biggest priority during those times! Thanks for everyone’s understanding and patience! It’s now December and things are *just starting* to get back to a sense of *normal* around here! yay for normal!
I finished writing the official BuddyPress For Dummies book for Wiley Publishing – you can click the link in the sidebar on the right to pre-order your own copy! If you don’t know what BuddyPress is — the real quick answer is that it allows you to add a social community layer to your WordPress powered web site – check out the official BuddyPress.Org web site to learn more! The book is due out the beginning of February 2010
I was a speaker at WordCamp NYC in November and spoke on the topic of BuddyPress – giving the audience an introduction into what it is and how they can use it on their own sites. I included examples of some very custom BuddyPress work I’ve done recently – such as: NourishNetwork.com, WeEarth.com, WeHeartThis.com and SportsGrants.Org. Fun stuff! If you’re interested, you can view the slides from my presentation on my SlideShare account.
I’ve signed the contract and have begun the writing of WordPress For Dummies, 3rd Edition, which I am very excited about! The 2nd Edition is out on the shelves now (why not buy one for your favorite blogger for Christmas, hmm?). The 3rd Edition plans will be current through and cover up to the 3.0 version of WordPress, which is not yet released, but is in the works. Considering 2.9 hasn’t been released yet – you can see my challenge here! haha

Now that we’re settled, my book project is done and we’ve cleared the plate to make room for new client projects – - with all these great new designers – we’re ready to hit the ground running with our clients to make the leap into 2010 – and make it as successful for us, AND our clients, as much as possible!

To that end – to celebrate our re-launch, re-design, re-decorating, whatever you’d like to call it – we’re offering a 15% discount off ALL services – no matter how big or small your request. A flat 15% to say thank you! Thank you for visiting us, thank you for your business and thank you for continuing to trust us as your source for custom blog and web site design over the past decade. (The 15% offer is good from today, 12/13/09 through 12/31/09)

Should you be interested in putting in your request – our Client Desk is now accepting them! For those who emailed during our short hiatus wanting to be notified when we re-opened – our fantastic assistant, Lindsey, has been hard at work making that happen! Should you have any questions at all – feel free to contact us directly with any questions you may have.

I will end this update by saying it’s great to be back in the saddle after a few months of playing serious catch up and revamping things around here! I am super excited and looking forward to 2010 – but, first – the holidays! Everyone here at E.Webscapes wishes you, and yours, a very happy (and safe!) holiday season and a happy new year!

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Post tags: Blog Design, Branding, BuddyPress For Dummies, E.Webscapes, Paint, Redesign, Wordpress for Dummies

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WeEarth.com – Custom WordPress MU and BuddyPress

Lisa Sabin-Wilson — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 21:35:46 +0000

WeEarth is a web site with a blog, social community and e-commerce store that has the goal of fostering social consciousness through art, activism and media. It is a network of socially conscious bloggers and blogs, brands and consumers, artists and entrepreneurs. The folks from WeEarth approached Lisa with their ideas for their social community that involved a custom deployment of the WordPress MU and BuddyPress platforms..

Before digging into their design project and implementing all the exciting WordPress MU and BuddyPress features – we discussed the intent and scope of their project, specifically their existing member base. WeEarth had an existing web site that was running on a proprietary CMS platform that did not offer any type of import/export of content feature – so, in building this new web site, we were truly doing it from scratch. WeEarth is completely sold on the concept of Open Source, and it was important to them to make this move to WordPress – so it was just a matter of getting it done. However, with an existing user base of 450+ – that required the import of all of their existing member data into the WordPress MU database. We accomplished this by creating an Excel (.cvs) spreadsheet of their existing member data and importing it directly into the WordPress MySQL database. Through our discussions on the size of their user base and their expected traffic and site usage, they also made the decision to host their site with our hosting services at Blogs About Hosting and are now hosted on their own dedicated server, which provides them with the space, traffic handling and resources they need now, and to accommodate their continue growth in the future.

Once all that was done, we could set about the process of bringing their social community to life!

WeEarth came to me with their own ideas on the design, having had some organic artwork created by a local artist, Hansomei, they had the basic idea in mind for their site design and base framework, including navigational architecture and content delivery – it was just a matter of bringing the WordPress MU and BuddyPress platforms together to make it all happen.

The first phase included the creation of the custom WordPress theme – which included a front page display of content that included such features as: Featured Content Gallery with a thumbnailing script that allows them to very easily create great visual imagery in their posts and display and spotlight that imagery in various areas of their website to call attention to their great content – the front page also presents the reader with the content sorted by topic, laid out in a grid-based design that keeps it all logical and organized.

The next phase was integrating the BuddyPress suite of plugins to add an exciting layer of social networking to their site. With BuddyPress, WeEarth visitors now have the ability to create an account, have a focused member profile and interact with other community members through Wire Posts, Groups, Forums, Private Messaging and adding friends and contacts from within the community. The WeEarth Community page gives you a snapshot of the current activity going on in and around the WeEarth web site, while the individual member profiles provide you with information that is specific to that particular community member.

In addition, the BuddyPress features give WeEarth very handy Member, Blogs and Groups directory pages where visitors can navigate to find new friends, blogs and groups to join and interact with. The directories are completely searchable – making it quite handy for new visitors, and existing members, to find what they are looking for.

The WeEarth Shop is powered by a great plugin for WordPress called the Shopp plugin, which is an e-commerce plugin that adds a feature-rich online store to your WordPress-powered website or blog. Shopp is not a free WordPress plugin, there are minimal costs associated with running it – - but after discussing the project details with WeEarth, we determined that it was the best solution for their e-commerce delivery. I installed it and integrated their custom design for their display of products, and product categories.

There are many other custom features and design bits to this design, including a very custom category template that presents their category archives in a very unique way (as an example – you can view their Eco Category here), the comments display, search results and many other content areas of their site have been tweaked and pulled in to incorporate their custom design work.

All in all, the site came out really well and WeEarth has achieved their goal of moving to a 100% Open Source Content Management System with all the dynamic features they were looking for to build their community on the web!

For those interested in the BuddyPress project, I am just about to publish the first ever book on BuddyPress – the official BuddyPress For Dummies with Wiley Publishing. The book is due out at the end of this year and covers the most recent version of WordPress MU and BuddyPress. You can pre-order it on Amazon.com today!

I am now in the process of developing several custom WordPress MU / BuddyPress web sites for clients that will be launching very soon. If you’re interested in working with me on a similar project, go ahead and Request a Quote today!

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Post tags: Blogs About Hosting, BuddyPress For Dummies, BuddyPress Theme, E-Commerce, Eco Blog, Environmental Blog, Shopp Plugin, WordPress MU

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We Heart This – WordPress MU, BuddyPress and bbPress

Lisa Sabin-Wilson — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 05:33:00 +0000

The fabulous ladies from We Heart This contacted me in the summer of 2008 wanting something a little unique, and quite challenging, for their website. Stef and Tyna were looking for more than a blog – they wanted a full out social community with membership capabilities and the whole lot! I had a really great time with their site – and they did too! Recently, they wrote about their experience with my work on their site – with an added bonus of a close-up interview with yours truly…but, for now, on to their site project…

What did they want? A web site where they could post articles of interest, attract a community of a certain demographic and invite those readers to join in the fun by registering for the blog, as well as creating their own. Without hesitation, I recommended the WordPress MU software – I’ve deployed that for several clients so they could build a community and network of blogs within their specific niche.

But – they wanted it to go a step further…and this is where I started to get a little dizzy! They wanted their readers to register as users. (Easy). Then, they wanted those users to have a very, very detailed Member profile that would include answers to a long list of questions (created by the community admins), in addition to listing their individual social network sites – - these profiles should be searchable and listed in an extensive members directory. MORE than that – they wanted:

Each individual member to have the ability to “friend” other members within the community.
They also wanted the ability for members to send private messages to other members within the community
To be able to post messages on each individual member profile
To be able to create new groups of interest – - display those groups in a searchable group directory and have a designated group admin that managed and maintained each individual group.
For each individual community member to have an “Activity Wire” that displayed what they were up to within the community – - just like your Facebook Wall. If you make a blog post, leave a comment, upload a photo gallery, leave a message on another member profile – - it’s all fed into your Activity Wire. In addition, that Wire should have an RSS feed that people could subscribe to if they wanted.
Give the members the ability to upload and crop their own avatar, create blogs, edit their profile and more.

Seriously – can you guess what my initial reaction was to their first RFP? Yep – you guessed it! I wanted to run.far.away.screaming.

But I didn’t. I took it on like a Gladiator – determined to prevail! THAT is when I found BuddyPress. It’s almost as if my client already KNEW about BuddyPress when they made their initial request because I simply could NOT believe that I found an application that would do just about 100% of everything they had asked for.

Am I dreaming??

Turns out, back in July – I was kinda dreaming, a little bit. BuddyPress was in very infant stages at that time. It wasn’t even beta. It wasn’t even alpha. It wasn’t ‘bleeding edge’ – actually, I’d say it was a hemorrhaging artery…but enough with the metaphors.

BuddyPress is comprehensive set of plugins for WordPress MU that gives the site administrator the ability to run a social network site that takes them beyond just running a community of blogs. It allows you to run an interactive community where members can interact with one another through a very smooth interface that gives you tons of options.

Did you miss the WordPress MU part? yea – at this time, it does not work for regular WordPress.org – so all you WordPress.org users stop drooling. Hopefully, one day it will be available for .org users…but right now, it’s not.

I proceeded to install WordPress MU and then I installed BuddyPress from the trunk, and also integrated a bbPress discussion forum on their site. BuddyPress, at this time, was chock full of errors and bugs – but we worked around them. I knew that the very talented Andy Peatling was heading up development on BuddyPress, and also knew that the development was very active – so I was hopeful, as were quite a few other excited users!

Through the months of September, October and November – I worked with my client on their design details, got them up and running with WordPress MU, bbPress and BuddyPress and we worked on getting the bugs ironed out by doing a lot of testing. On December 1 – we launched their site live, using the hemmorhaging version of BuddyPress – - I think we actually launched it using trunk-599, at that point.

I really loved watching the development of BuddyPress emerge into a really beautiful application. I religiously upgraded my clients site with each new version from the Trunk – which was actually quite often, as during the months of Oct-Dec, it seemed the BuddyPress developers were committing changes to the trunk on, almost, a daily basis.

I upgraded my clients BuddyPress to the Beta 1.0 Combo Pack, for its final launch and will be upgrading them to the latest, final version of BuddyPress as soon as it is hot off the presses . Want a peek?

My clients are Stefanie Andrews and Tyna Werner and their site is called We Heart This. They are a community of chicks who love stuff:

We Heart This

You can see their Members Directory of the community they’ve been building:

We Heart This Members Directory

Even I have a Member Profile on We Heart This:

We Heart This Member Profile

And here you can see my Friends within the We Heart This community, so far:

I have friends on We Heart This!

Stefanie Andrews is one of the site owners, and here is her Activity Wire that I can view from my own profile page and keep up to date on what Stefanie is doing (I can also subscribe to her activity RSS feed if I reaaaaaaaaaaally wanted to stalk her!):

Stefanie's Activity Wire

That is just a sampling of the things that BuddyPress can do – it’s really a slick application and not too difficult to get up and running…especially since you can now download a more stable Beta release and won’t have to go through the bugs and testing of the pre-pre-pre release like I did with this project, initially.

I also custom branded their membership login page so it coordinates with their overall site design:

One other custom feature that we did have to program for them is a feature they have called “Wishlists” and “Favorites”. On their main site (front door) – under each post, there are links labeled “Wishlist” and “Favorites”. The idea is that logged in community members can add posts from the main We Heart This site into their own Wishlist and Favorites list. When a logged in user sees something they love (errr….heart!) – they can click the “Favorite” link in order to add it to their own list of favorites. This gets added into a link list that then gets displayed on their Member profile so other users can see items and posts that the user really likes and can use that information for holiday shopping ideas!

An example of a post with the Wishlist and Favorites links:

Wishlists and Favorites

The Favorites and Wishlists are not a part of the Buddypress application at all. It’s something that we needed to develop for them and it, actually, hooks into the WordPress MU Link Manager. See, for every new user sign up – that user has a blog that gets created. We have created a function where WordPress MU will automatically create two Link Categories on each new blog – - one called “WishList” and the other called (you got it!) “Favorites”.

Now, when that user is logged in and clicks either the “WishList” or “Favorites” link – they are taken to the Add New Link page in their own user admin panel, and the Title field is automatically populated with the Post Title, the URL is automatically populated with the Post Permalink, and the appropriate Link category is already selected for them (either Wishlist or Favorites) – - so the only thing the user needs to do is click “Save”.

Wish lists and Favorites get automatically added to their blog sidebar, and I’ve also brought it in to display on the front page of their Member Profile. Here’s an example of the Wishlists and Favorites on my Member Profile:

My Lists on We Heart This

Pretty slick, really

This project was not without its unique set of headaches and issues – but Stefanie and Tyna were really wonderful…and extremely patient with me as I worked to fix issues, troubleshoot and address problem areas. The project, for the most part, is done – however, with the use of BuddyPress and the amazing development going on with that project, I suspect the future will bring more enhancements and improvements on We Heart This that simply could not be done with out BuddyPress and their amazing group of developers.

I’m hoping this post gives you some insight into the BuddyPress project – so much so that you may head on over and checkout the application for yourself. If you happen to – drop back here and let me know how much you like (err..heart) it and show off what you’ve done.

Great BIG kudos, respect and congratulations to BuddyPress for a simply amazing application – thank you for all your hard work!

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Post tags: bbPress, Blog Design, BuddyPress, social community, Women, WordPress MU

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