It is well known that Wordpress is not only used for simple blogs around the web. Webmasters have found many ways to use this great platform in several ways as an advanced CMS.

Here, in Startup Scripts, we have written about how to make your own classified site based on Wordpress and even how to clone a site such as Del.icio.us with WP. So, again, Wordpress has no limits, you can build almost everything with it… like a social network!

Yes, now you can have an advanced social network running on your server with BuddyPress (for Wordpress MU), which it is not a simple plugin, it is a “suite of Wordpress plugins and themes, each adding a distinct new feature”, as it says in their site.

Facebook features in Wordpress

BuddyPress has some really cool features that all social networks such as Facebook has.

Some of these features are:

• Private Messages: this is the basic feature for a social network, private messaging allows users to interact between them rather than with the site (like the comments on a common Wordpress installation).
• Friendship: yes, of course your members will be able have other members as friends. Just like Facebook: they can search for people in your network (through different profile filters) and request friendship, which could be accepted or not by the other person.
• “The Wire”: this is a feature such as the comments on a normal blog, but you can comment other people´s profile, so imagine this as the “wall” feature in Facebook.
• Activity streams: this is one of those things that make this script really cool. Each profile is going to have each own streaming of the different activities they make in your site (such as commenting, adding a friend, etc).

If you are thinking to build your own social network, this is definetely an option to try. First you can see a working demo and then download BuddyPress 1.1, which has been released few days ago.

Also, please, remember that BuddyPress only works under Wordpress MU.

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