What problems can BuddyPress make?

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I took a brief look into Buddypress yesterday and was just overwhelmed by the massive amount of template files that got added (during installation) to my theme.

After looking over the template files, I couldn’t get rid of the feeling that BuddyPress is – maybe only in parts? – written pretty crappy.

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If I’m planning on going with BuddyPress:

  • What are the minetraps I will be facing?
  • What are the weak points?
  • (alt.) Are there any alternative (messaging, grouping, friend requests) plugins?
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3 comments

  1. I think the question is: What do want to accomplish?

    For a subset of features e.g. an activity stream for your WordPress Network it works fine in my experience.

    If you want a full-blown social network, with messaging, events, groups, blogs, forums all working neatly together better invest a good amount of time.

    Some caveats I’ve encountered:

    • Lack of good developer documentation.. but it is getting better and there is support.
    • Some if not most external Plugins are full of subtle bugs and of dubious quality. So be careful and check functionality before relying on external plugins. But this is also true for WordPress
    • Updates (either Buddypress or WordPress) will break things in subtle and strange ways.

    Some tips:

    • Build the system in baby-steps, always check what impacts a change could make and test if everything is still working.
    • Use memcache object-cache for speed and also apc! (but beware of object-caching bugs, take a look at the trac) once set up, buddypress is reasonable fast, without these rather not so.
    • xdebug (tracing, profiling) & a php-ide are your friends for debugging
    • have fun 🙂

    I think it is great as an social addon for a wordpress network install, for a complete social network with lots of functionality i’d look somehwere else.

  2. i’ve been working with buddypress for more than year and half.

    i’ll start with the most significant weakness i had to deal with – spammers and splogs. this is a problem you’ll have to face as long as your registration form is open for everyone. i haven’t found any working free plugin that can actually help you with it. you can, if you wish, pay for anti-splog plugin. i’m working with one, it’s better but i still don’t have a 100% solution for the problem. you can also embed google’s recpatcha to the registeration form but so far i’ve avoided it as it’s not the best solution in terms of UX.

    besides of that, everything you do on buddypress – do it step by step and always remember to backup your root directory and database as things can easily go wrong. if you wish to use it on wordpress network, i suggest to install it as follows:

    1. install wordpress
    2. set it to wordpress network
    3. install buddypress

    oh, and avoid modifing the bp-core.php as any upgrade will remove your changes (this is also true for wordpress).

    feel free to ask me more specific questions if you like.

  3. As far as I know BuddyPress is really good for kind of social website, however if you are looking any forums kind of functionality than you also can try out some of below.

    1. Gravity forums
    2. bbPress Forum
    3. Server Simple:
    4. Press Forum
    5. Wp2BB

    Check details and might works for you..