Facebook Clone – BuddyPress WordPress plugin

Create your own social networking website.  You can make your social clubs or social groups website easily and with Wordpress and BuddyPress.  BuddyPress is complete with:

• Activity Streams
• User Groups
• Multisite blogging (users can create their own blogs on your site)
• Friend connections
• Extended profiles
• Discussion Forums
• Private messaging
• User settings and more.

The cost? This is all FREE.  Below I will show you how to create your own Wordpress BuddyPress website completely from scratch.  The only thing is you will need to purchase Webhosting.  I will be showing you how to create your BuddyPress website with Dreamhost.

6 Steps to Make a Social Networking Website like Facebook with BuddyPress:

1. Install Wordpress
2. Configure WordPress
3. Search & Install BuddyPress Plugin
4. Activate BuddyPress Plugin
5. BuddyPress Installation Wizard
6. View Site

Below are the steps to create your own group social networking website.  As mentioned above, I’m using Dreamhost web hosting server.  Also replace my domain name with yours and configure your settings as it pertains to your website.

1.  Install WordPress

Dreamhost has One Click installs with make installing WordPress easy and fast.  This takes about 1 minute to complete.

• Login to your Dreamhost web hosting server
• Click on One-Click-Installs
• Scroll down and click on ‘WordPress‘
• Click on ‘Custom Installation’
• Under the ‘Custom One Click Installer’, I set the following values:
• Install to: http://www.cmsmind-Joomla.com/
• Directory: Facebook    ** you can choose to leave this field blank
• Select Database: Automatically Create Database
• Click on ‘Install it for me now‘

2.  Configure  Wordpress

You have finished installing WordPress at this point and now we are configuring the site settings.  You will need to open up your web browser and go to the URL and directory that you installed WordPress on.  If you forgot, this is what you entered in Step 1.   This should take you about 3 minutes.  Fill in the information below with your own.

• Open up your web browser and go to the URL that you “Installed to:” + Directory above.  i.e.:
• mine would be: http://www.cmsmind-Joomla.com/Facebook
• In the WordPress Information Needed screen, enter the following:
• Site Title = Facebook BuddyPress
• Username = cmsmindfacebook
• Password = <Enter your own password>
• Your Email: <Enter your own email address>
• Privacy : Check and Allow my site to appear in search engines like Google and Technorati
• Click on ‘Install WordPress‘

 3.  Search & Install BuddyPress Plugin

You are done installing WordPress on your website.  Now you will log in to your WordPress Administrator site and search and install the BuddyPress plugin.  This will take you about 5 minutes.

• Go to your website URL and suffix it with ‘/wp-admin’.  This is how you will access your WordPress Administrator backend. i.e.:
• http://www.cmsmind-joomla.com/Facebook/wp-admin

• 

  Enter in the Username and Password you chose in Step 2

• Along the left navigation, Click on ‘Plugins‘, ‘Add New’
• Under Install Plugins, search for Term = BuddyPress
• Under BuddyPress, click on ‘Install Now‘, Click on ‘OK’

4.  Activate BuddyPress Plugin

After you found the BuddyPress plugin and installed it, the next screen is to activate the BuddyPress plugin.   This is the easiest step ever.  Done in 3 seconds.

• Under ‘Installing Plugin: BuddyPress‘, click on ‘Activate Plugin‘

5.   BuddyPress Installation Wizard

After you activate your BuddyPress plugin a message will show up at the top of your screen to go through the Installation Wizard.

When you run the installation wizard, it will take you to another screen with your BuddyPress Setup.   Here you can manage how your BuddyPress website privacy settings, group settings, messaging, user groups, activity streams and much more.  There are 4 pages of BuddyPress settings to go through.  If you want you can just keep on clicking on ‘Next”.

 6.  Visit Site

Done installing, activating and setup with BuddyPress.  You can now view your BuddyPress website.

• Type in your URL, i.e mine would be:
• http://www.cmsmind-joomla.com/Facebook

Now you are done.  You have a fully functional Social Networking Website like Facebook.   This was all done for free at no cost to you.  If you need more details about BuddyPress, go to BuddyPress.org.

Thanks,

Elaine