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Just this past week I was introduced to a new function of WordPress for the single user – BuddyPress, a function of WordPress that was originally designed to add social networking features.  Up until now, BuddyPress has only been available for WordPress MU (multiusers) and I must say, I had been quite jealous.  That is until it’s release last Tuesday.

Most of us are single user WordPress people.  We have our blogs and/or websites self-hosted and primarily have them set up for our own use.  But did you know that you can add your own social network by installing the BuddyPress plugin?  Though integration with standard WordPress blogs is made simple with this release, it may still require some customization — in particular, standard WordPress themes may require some tweaking to make BuddyPress happy. However, the steps required aren’t particularly difficult for anyone with a reasonable amount of experience working with WordPress sites. Or you could use a stock BuddyPress theme or create your own custom theme.

I was at the last TC Web Pros meeting in Minneapolis primarily for the guest speaker of the day, Toby Cryns of The Mighty Mo!.  Toby is one of these guys that is really up to speed on what’s going on in the WordPress world and is also a designer and builder of websites.  He demonstrated how BuddyPress could bring your WordPress website to the next level by integrating interactivity among your own network.  With BuddyPress, you can create public and private groups, create forums, manage profiles, and have the ability to send messages to one another just from the site.  In fact, you can actually build your own social network using this plugin.

If you would like to see a working examples of sites using BuddyPress, check this out: http://buddypress.org/demo/

If you are interested in seeing how we could turn your website into a social media platform using BuddyPress, contact me and we’ll discuss the options!

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