BuddyPress - Review Conclusion
05 August 2009 17:10 Filed in: Social Network Programming
The good news, BuddyPress is a Wordpress MU plugin and because of it you basically install it with the click of a button through the admin section.
The bad news is, WordPress MU is a simple system for launching a practically limitless network of blogs. In other words, WPMU and therefore BP are blog centric depending on the Dashboard for content management. Because the Dashboard theme is not integrated into the BP theme, the nice look and feel of BP is gone and users must learn and deal with two separate user interfaces.
There is also the issue that the Dashboard interface offers too many “admin” type setup options that will confuse users as they have no clue how WordPress actually works. From the feedback on the BP forum this drawback has been pointed out by many implementers in addition to the lack of a user access permission system.
Other issue I found is getting forums to synchronize. WPMU favors bbPress, but as a separate application, you need to share users from the WPMU database and sort out cookie integration (first with WPMU then also with BuddyPress). To overcome the forum synchronization issue one can setup access to the forum data on the BP side which uses the BP theme, but the forum features are limited. In order to utilize all forum features of bbPress one must switch access over to the bbPress application which has a totally different theme setup which again will confuse users.
On the BuddyPress.org website the implementers were successful in creating a new bbPress theme that reflects the overall BP default theme and therefore provides a consistent look and feel between the two applications without any hint to the users that they are using two separate applications. Sadly the developers have resisted the call from implementers to make available this theme to the public.
Last but not least, there is the issue of frequent updates. Because BP is still very new, updates are very frequent, almost every two weeks there is another minor point release (as in 1.0.1 to 1.0.2). Not only that, the latest version (1.0.3) now requires the use of WPMU 2.8.1 instead of 2.7.1, which is not a simple minor update. Further, bbPress is undergoing minor revisions. All in all, because of both BP and bbPress being very new and WP has undergone a major revision, to ensure that the three components work seamlessly together, implementers must update their setup for some time to come.
The way I see it - if you need a quick 80/20 solution, and the scope of the project is limited, BuddyPress will do you fine. However, if you want to build a social community and shield users from the inner workings of the system, I would wait until BP has matured to address the short comings.
For now I will suspend my setup of BP and go ahead in setting up a Drupal system as a Social Network Site. As I progress in that adventure I will post my findings here. So stay tuned.
The bad news is, WordPress MU is a simple system for launching a practically limitless network of blogs. In other words, WPMU and therefore BP are blog centric depending on the Dashboard for content management. Because the Dashboard theme is not integrated into the BP theme, the nice look and feel of BP is gone and users must learn and deal with two separate user interfaces.
There is also the issue that the Dashboard interface offers too many “admin” type setup options that will confuse users as they have no clue how WordPress actually works. From the feedback on the BP forum this drawback has been pointed out by many implementers in addition to the lack of a user access permission system.
Other issue I found is getting forums to synchronize. WPMU favors bbPress, but as a separate application, you need to share users from the WPMU database and sort out cookie integration (first with WPMU then also with BuddyPress). To overcome the forum synchronization issue one can setup access to the forum data on the BP side which uses the BP theme, but the forum features are limited. In order to utilize all forum features of bbPress one must switch access over to the bbPress application which has a totally different theme setup which again will confuse users.
On the BuddyPress.org website the implementers were successful in creating a new bbPress theme that reflects the overall BP default theme and therefore provides a consistent look and feel between the two applications without any hint to the users that they are using two separate applications. Sadly the developers have resisted the call from implementers to make available this theme to the public.
Last but not least, there is the issue of frequent updates. Because BP is still very new, updates are very frequent, almost every two weeks there is another minor point release (as in 1.0.1 to 1.0.2). Not only that, the latest version (1.0.3) now requires the use of WPMU 2.8.1 instead of 2.7.1, which is not a simple minor update. Further, bbPress is undergoing minor revisions. All in all, because of both BP and bbPress being very new and WP has undergone a major revision, to ensure that the three components work seamlessly together, implementers must update their setup for some time to come.
The way I see it - if you need a quick 80/20 solution, and the scope of the project is limited, BuddyPress will do you fine. However, if you want to build a social community and shield users from the inner workings of the system, I would wait until BP has matured to address the short comings.
For now I will suspend my setup of BP and go ahead in setting up a Drupal system as a Social Network Site. As I progress in that adventure I will post my findings here. So stay tuned.
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