BuddyPress has officially hit version 1.0. BuddyPress is a collection of components and plugins for the WordPress MU platform that turns your MU installation into a full fledged social network. I’ve been watching the development of this project for some time now and I’m excited about the possibilities for niche networks.
One of the great advantages to using BuddyPress is that, as the owner of the site, you control the data and you make the rules! How many people are truly happy to create a “group” on sites like facebook, knowing that you have to agree to their very broad terms of use and what they can do with your information?
There’s a whole new world of possibilities with BuddyPress and WordPress MU. A gallery component is in the works and should be available later this year, giving it what I would consider an essential piece of the social network platform. Until the gallery is ready, I’ll be implementing BuddyPress on a couple of my own sites to immerse myself in it’s capabilities. I’m looking forward to helping my clients use BuddyPress for their web marketing strategies.
I ran into an issue I’d never experienced before and thought I’d share this new snippet of knowledge with you. I was installing WordPress on a client’s Godaddy Economy Hosting and after changing the permalink settings to a more appealing format, which is usually the first thing I do when installing WordPress, I discovered that the new urls didn’t work. The reason this caught me by surprise is that most of the clients I work with have used the Godaddy Deluxe Hosting which doesn’t present this problem.
A quick Google search brought me to Zac Vineyard’s Blog, which provided the exact answer I was looking for. With the Godaddy Economy Hosting, the .htaccess configurations are updated on the server every hour, on the hour. So, I simply waited until five minutes past the hour and, true to Zac’s advice, the permalinks began to work.
It appears that many people believe that mod_rewrite doesn’t work with the Godaddy Economy Hosting and are quick to upgrade to the Deluxe package. But before jumping the gun, take a look at your clock and wait until a few minutes past the next hour to check your .haccess changes.
“WordPress.tv is Your Visual Resource for All Things WordPress” says the folks over at Automattic. Today, they launched a new website chock full of video tutorials and resources for using your WordPress blog site. The videos cover such topics as writing and publishing a post, adding pages, and setting your post to publish at a later date. The site promises to add new videos and resources on a regular basis, so WordPress.tv should quickly become a valuable resource for any WordPress blog owner.
WordPress is so versatle, that I’ve spend the last couple of days giving my family website a complete overhaul. What used to be a blog managed by blogger with the coppermine gallery for photos has now been converted completely to WordPress, utilizing the NextGen Gallery for the family photos. Various common plugins are also in use, such as cformsII and akismet. I’ve modified the freely available Oriential theme to create the look. Visit oneproudmama.com and take a look.
