BuddyPress Get WordPress Single Install Friendly

Originally posted 2010-03-01 17:19:55.

BuddyPress is another awesome open source forum project that works great with WordPress MU.

BuddyPress reached version 1.0 last year but it was friendly only with the multi-use version of WordPress – WordPress MU. Those with single installations of WordPress, like myself, were unable to use BuddyPress with the same ease as WPMU users.

With the release of BuddyPress 1.2, single installations of WordPress can also use BuddyPress now for their forum needs.

We can install BuddyPress as just a plugin from within the WordPress installation. BuddyPress makes it very easy to integrate a forum in an existing WordPress blog.

And you can share your existing WordPress blog user base across your forum too, just like that. If you had tried to integrate user login with forum software like PHPbb or the like you might already know how painful that is.

BuddyPress makes that a breeze. But, there was one catch. BuddyPress comes with it’s own default theme and most WordPress single installation blogs already have their own themes.

The good news is that, Andy Peatling, founder and lead developer of BuddyPress has created a WordPress plugin – BuddyPress Template Pack.

The Template Pack walks you through the theme additions step by step that adds the necessary configuration to your existing WordPress theme in a non-destructive way so you can back out if you don’t like it.

I can’t wait to try out BuddyPress integration shortly in some of our sites. How about you?

Try BuddyPress