Yesterday we learned how to install WordPress MU so today we are going to add an incredible element to WordPress MU. Today we are going to install BuddyPress and create a Cyber Quilt Guild on the www.quiltingwithmoxie.com site. This is how you can accomplish the installation:

First make sure you meet the requirements for installation:

To run the BuddyPress plugins you will need a couple of things:

• A working installation of WordPress MU version 2.7.1 or greater. Which we did yesterday.
• PHP version 4.3 or greater. Hostgator has this all ready for you.
• MySQL 4.0 or greater.  Hostgator has this all ready for you.
• The mod_rewrite Apache module enabled. Hostgator has this all ready for you.

Installing BuddyPress

is a very simple process once you have WordPress MU up and running. Here’s how I did it and how you can do it:

1. Make sure you have WordPress MU set up and working correctly.
2. Log into you WordPress admin area as a site admin and head to the “Plugins” menu. If you see a red error message saying that the menu must be activated first, please click the link and activate the plugins menu (check the box at the bottom of the page).
3. Once activated, select the ADD NEW submenu under the plugins menu. Type “BuddyPress” in the search box and locate the BuddyPress plugin entry in the list. Click the INSTALL link, and then the INSTALL NOW button in the popup.
4. Enter your FTP details so BuddyPress can be downloaded and installed. If you cannot use FTP, please manually download BuddyPress and install it in “/wp-content/plugins/buddypress/”.
   1. Open your FireFTP in Firefox or your preferred FTP program.
   2. Browse to your domain – for me this would be quiltingwithmoxie.com – by
   3. In the upper left of the FireFTP window click on CONNECT
   4. In the right window click on Public_html/yourdomain.com/wp-content/plugins
   5. In the left window browse to the location on your hard drive where you stored the unzipped BuddyPress files. Select the folder buddypress that directly contains all the BuddyPress files.
   6. Now click on the green right pointing arrow in the center of the windows to move the file into the Public_html/yourdomain.com/wp-content/plugins.
5. Head back to the plugins admin panel. You will need to activate the “BuddyPress” plugin by clicking the ACTIVATE SITE WIDE or ACTIVATE link (both will work).
6. The plugins are now activated and running, but you will need to move the themes to the correct locations. Move /wp-content/plugins/buddypress/bp-themes/ to /wp-content/bp-themes/
7. You can use any WordPress theme as your root blog theme, but BuddyPress comes bundled with an extra “home” theme that you can optionally use. To install it, move /wp-content/bp-themes/bphome/ to /wp-content/themes/bphome/.
8. To activate the BuddyPress home theme, head to the WordPress admin area as a site admin, then to the SITE ADMIN menu, and to THEMES. Check the YES radio button by the WordPress home theme, and you will then be able to activate the home theme under the APPEARANCE menu.

Other Information

1. You can enable and disable BuddyPress components by heading to BUDDYPRESS/COMPONENT SETUP in the WordPress admin area. BuddyPress themes will automatically adapt to only show the components that are enabled.
2. In BUDDYPRESS/PROFILE FIELD SETUP in the WordPress admin area you can set up profile groups and fields for users to fill in. Any fields you add to the “Base” group will appear on the signup form along with an avatar upload option (if enabled).
3. If this is a brand new WPMU install you will need to enable registrations. Head to: SITE ADMIN/OPTIONS. Check the ENABLED radio button under ALLOW NEW REGISTRATIONS and click the update options button. You can enable/disable blog registrations if you wish.
4. You can customize some BuddyPress options in the SITE ADMIN/BUDDYPRESS menu item in the wp-admin area.
5. Please note: The forums component will not work without an installation of bbPress and some further set up. Please see this file for more details

This was as easy as pie to install and get up and running. Now it is just waiting for me to setup the customized profile fields and add some content.

Voila! You’re almost finished!

We have now installed WordPress MU and Buddy Press. We will move onto the last phase of the installation with installing bbPress…check back tomorrow for more help!

See the progress so far on www.quiltingwithmoxie.com.

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