First, you should make sure that you have WordPress MU installed on your hosting account. For detailed step by step instructions on how to install WordPress MU, please refer to our tutorial.

As soon as you have WordPress MU installed and configured you should download the BuddyPress latest trunk version. This can be done via the following URL:

http://trac.buddypress.org/browser/trunk

On the bottom of the page you will find a link via which you can download the zip archive of the latest BuddyPress version.

Unzip the archive on your local computer and access your hosting account via FTP. First you will need to create the following folder on your account wp-content/plugins/buddypress. Please upload all the content from the BuddyPress archive except the bp-themes/ directory.

As soon as you have all the files and folders uploaded under the wp-content/plugins/buddypress directory, please proceed with the upload of your themes. You should upload the bp-themes/ folder under the wp-content/ folder of your account.

Additionally, to install the default BuddyPress home theme move /wp-content/bp-themes/bphome/ to /wp-content/themes/bphome/.

Now you should have the following paths:

/wp-content/bp-themes

/wp-content/themes/bphome/

When you complete with the upload process, please login as administrator in your WordPress MU and activate the BuddyPress plugin via the plugin menu. Then, navigate to the “Site Admin > Themes” menu and select the “Yes” radio option for “BuddyPress Home Theme”. Next, go to “Appearance > Themes” and activate the “BuddyPress Home Theme” for the root blog.

Now you should proceed with the bbPress integration. Please download the latest trunk version of bbPress from the official site here. Be advised that you need the Trunk version. When you have the archive downloaded on your local computer, please unzip it and upload all the content of the archive under a subdirectory of your WordPress MU called forum.

Then access the installation wizard of your bbPress at http://yourdomain/forum. Click on the link to proceed with the installation process: “Ready? Then let’s get started!”. On the first step input the MySQL database name, username and password tht you have used to install WordPress MU into. These values can be found in your wp-config.php file. This file can be accessed and edited via your cPanel -> file manager -> navigate to your WordPress MU folder and click on the wp-config.php file, then edit it via the Edit option from the top menu.

On the next step, you will need to integrate bbPress with WordPress. Check the “Add integration settings” box, and leaved the “Add cookie integration settings” box unchecked.

- Add your table prefix (usually always ‘wp_’)

- Add your WordPress database settings found in wp-config.php

- You can usually ignore the “character set” and “collation” boxes

- Leave the “Custom user tables” section blank.

On the 3th step enter anything you like for your site name and first forum name. Select “Admin” from the dropdown to use as your keymaster user. Now you will need to login into your bbPress via /bb-admin with your WordPressMU/BuddyPress admin username and password and then refer to the settings menu. Check the “Enable XML-RPC” option, additionally, please check the “Enable Pingbacks” option just below.

From the following page download the buddypress-enable plugin via the Download in other formats: Original Format link on the bottom of your page.

This file should be uploaded under /bbpress-plugins/ folder of your forum directory. As soon as the file is uploaded (via your FTP client or cPanel -> File Manager) you should login into your forum and activate the plugin via the Plugins tab from the menu on the left.

Head back to your BuddyPress installation and sign up as a new user. Once you have activated the new user, make a note of the username and password given. Having the newly registered user, refer to your bbPress installation and login as administrator. In the Administrative panel of your bbPress refer to the “Users” tab and look for the new user you signed up. Click edit next to the user and select “Administrator” as the user type for this user. Save the changes by hitting the “Update Profile” button.

When the user is applied as administrator you should edit your bbPress configuration file via your cPanel -> file manager or by downloading it locally on your computer and then reupload it. The following line should be added after the opening php tag:

$bb->bb_xmlrpc_allow_user_switching = true;

After the line is added, please log into your WPMU admin interface and head to “BuddyPress tab > Group Forums” and fill in the details on that page. Make sure you don’t leave out the ending slash on your bbPress URL. (http://example.com/bbpress/). Enter the username and password for the user that you signed up in and set as administrator for your bbPress.

Once you have saved those details you can create group forums. Existing groups you will need to head to the group admin settings page, disable then enable the group forum setting to generate a new forum.

Be advised that if you experience any difficulties to perform this integration our technical support will be glad to install bbPress for you. Additionally, if you are not an existing customer you can take advantage of our free website transfer promotion and unused months compensation and sign up for your professional BuddyPress hosting.

You may also review our BuddyPress tutorial.

If you need professional assistance to choose your BuddyPress hosting, please do not hesitate to contact our representatives via our live chat.

Have you ever thought to make a website that would help your classmates and professors keep track of lectures, homework and curriculum activities? If this sounds boring to you let me explain how to turn your web page into the coolest and most visited site your school has ever had.

First and most important element about your community website is your content. Web content consists of all documents, data, applications, images, audio and video files that you publish on your web page. It is crucial that you update regularly your website content and publish information that is interesting to your readers. For example, if you are building an academic website you can speak to your teacher about his/hers lectures and ask permission to publish them online, where everyone can read them at home. You can also find out which are your classmates’ favorite books, games, and movies and ask them to write short reviews. Or you can start up a competition and publish the best school essays so everyone can log in, read them and vote. The best ideas about your website content you will find around yourself by asking friends what they like to read and learn more about. Your content is also a key element of your web page because search engines can index text easily and if the information is close to what a searcher is seeking it can be delivered as a site for the seeker of information. This will eventually result into growing number of visits to your site and high search engine ranking.

Secondly, you can place a news page. In order to do that you have to be an excellent reporter. A professional reporter is someone who splits his/her time between working in a newsroom – writing news – and going out to witness events and interview people. Imagine yourself writing news about upcoming events, interviews with professors and school mates, small articles about your community, life at school or in the city where your school is. This type of information you will find from your school’s administration, in the local newspaper or simply by talking to your friends at school. Once you start a news column, however, you have to update it regularly. Soon you will find out that your schoolmates read the news section frequently and you cannot afford to stop publishing more and more interesting news. Later on you can even offer your readers the option to subscribe to your website and receive newsletters by email. A newsletter is an extremely powerful tool when you need to spread the word instantly to a large number of people.

Thirdly, you can include a calendar of events on your community website. In this section you can write about exam schedule, mid-term test, or school program. Most importantly, you have to include all sorts of extra curriculum activities such as day trips, holidays, sport events, city concerts, school carnivals, music festivals, art exhibitions, science meetings, and anything else that takes place in your community and is of interest to your audience. If you spend enough time on this section and update it often it will soon become the most trusted event calendar your school has ever published.

Furthermore, you can create a web forum on your site. An Internet forum is a web application for holding discussions and posting user generated content. Internet forums are also commonly referred to as web forums, message boards, discussion boards, discussion groups, discussion forums, bulletin boards or simply forums. Web forums have become so popular among online communities that nowadays it is impossible to imagine a community website without a forum. If you manage to gather enough readers to your website soon your forum will become its most visited and read section. As an administrator of your forum you can invite friends to comment on different subjects, discuss interesting topics and share personal views about school life or anything else. Web forum is a lot of fun because it gives everyone the opportunity to give an opinion in a friendly and real-time environment.

Finally, on your community website you can upload your favored photo albums, videos and images so everyone can see them. You can divide your images into different categories: let’s say summer holidays, school trips, sport events, city landscapes, favorite images and many more. Do not forget to write captions to your images. A caption is a short and descriptive piece of text that labels your picture. You can also include the date and place where the image was taken. By doing this everyone who visits your gallery will know when and where the picture was taken. Very often people like to comment on pictures and soon your web gallery will turn into a mini-forum with funny comments.

All the above can be easily achieved with the help of the moder open source systems. For example, if you decide to build a e-learning website where you would like to include online courses and study materials you may relay on one of the most popular e-learning systems (LMS applications):

Moodle

Moodle is a learning management system (LMS) – a free, Open Source software package designed using sound pedagogical principles, to help educators create effective online learning communities. You can download and use it on any computer you have handy (including webhosts), yet it can scale from a single-teacher site to a University with 250,000 students.

Atutor

ATutor is an Open Source Web-based Learning Content Management System (LCMS) designed with accessibility and adaptability in mind. Administrators can install or update ATutor in minutes, develop custom themes to give ATutor a new look, and easily extend its functionality with feature modules. Educators can quickly assemble, package, and redistribute Web-based instructional content, easily import prepackaged content, and conduct their courses online. Students learn in an adaptive learning environment.

Dokeos

Dokeos is a learning suite that allows you create, organise, follow and coach learning activities. Here is a quick preview. For a demo, register as a course creator in Dokeos Free Campus.

… and many more from our LMS hosting solutions list

You can also use a Content management system such as Joomla for your informative/news front end of your website and Gallery application for your academy gallery website.

If you are not sure how exactly to organize your website and which applications to use or where you can host your website, you can always consult with our friendly and experienced representatives.