Businessteamrn

I like WordPress and i like the way i can do things in WordPress. This is the reason i always look for ways to do greater things with WordPress. Few weeks ago i proved that you can make a full featured Social Bookmarking Website with wordpress. Today i will show you how you can build a Social Network with WordPress. Really!

The theory behind a social network is huge, but WordPress makes everything so simple: just install a plugin and you’re done. That plugin is called BuddyPress and it is very customizable.

If you wonder how BudyPress looks, you can see an example here. You have people, you have groups, friends, wall, almost everything you have in facebook. Even the facebook design!  I bet that in most cases you will not use the facebook design, as it is not professional to copy a design from a popular website.

You read this because you want to build a community. A good questions that is raised: “Why not just build a group or page on facebook instead of installing budypress on my own server”. There is not universal answer to this question. If you want just to build a small community around an event or website the facebook group may be the answer. You can have most of things you need inside facebook. But, if you want to develop a real community around a topic you should build a separate website. People visit facebook to see what their friends are up to, but when they are really interested in a topic they would like to see what people with same interest do, even if they are strangers.

You can’t have all your friends interested in the same topics as you are, so posting a message that is seen by all your friends is useless. They will ignore it. Joining a social network where are only people interested in the same subject as you are is priceless. You can talk and get advice from strangers, you can make new friends based on topics of interest.

So, if you are really passionate about a topic, you can set-up a community as easy as you set-up a blog. Long live WordPress.