Recently, I had a chance to work on BuddyPress again after a long time. I was surprised to see that things are not much changed since the last time I used it. It is a wonderful tool to build online communities and with the help of community support it can become even more wonderful. This post is about some things I noticed, and I feel that we should do something to improve these things.
The first thing that every one notices while working on BuddyPress is that it is not well documented. It uses the same coding standards and practices as WordPress. But due to lack of documentation it is difficult for users to change things on their websites. Most users trying BuddyPress expect that it will be well documented just like WordPress Codex. But it is not, so that’s a disappointment for new users.
I found etivite’s BuddyPress and bbPress action and filter API hooks very useful.
There are not many themes available for BuddyPress. Free themes in the WordPress Theme Directory are few and not very good. Many of them haven’t been updated in a long time. There are just a few BuddyPress themes that are actually good and can be used to build online communities.
Premium themes on various other websites are mostly terrible. Be extra cautious when buying a premium BuddyPress theme. The theme you are buying may only have sliders, and an insane amount of shortcodes and widgets but all of this will not be very useful for you to actually run an online community.
Lastly, I noticed that not many people are writing about BuddyPress. I think blog posts, tweets and other smaller social actions can really boost the project. More ways to get involved with buddypress project.
