It seems as if everyone has a blog these days—whether it's a work-related one, a platform for launching a writing career, or just somewhere to upload random musings and holiday snaps. Many people maintain several different blogs, each one focused on a different subject. If you run a web site, offering your members the ability to run a blog is a great way to encourage repeat visitors and build a sense of community. Throughout this book, we will be working on building a web site called The SlayerCafe. This web site will use WordPress MU to offer its members the chance to create their own blogs. It will also use bbPress-powered forums and BuddyPress for social networking features.
The SlayerCafe is aimed at Slayers, their Watchers, and people (including good-aligned Werewolves, Techno Mages, and Wiccans) who would like to join in the fight against vampires. The blog network will allow the site's users to share advice and information in the form of blog posts, videos, and comments. The social side of the site will allow Slayers and Watchers to create special interest groups, engage in discussions in forums, and update their status feeds so that their fellow community members know what's going on at all times. The SlayerCafe will make use of Facebook Connect and tie in to the Twitter micro-blogging service, too.
A basic membership to SlayerCafe will be free, and there will be some advertisements on the site to support this, but there will also be premium memberships with special features available only to paying members.
In this chapter you will learn about:
WordPress MU—which allows you to offer blogs to your users
BuddyPress—which helps you turn your WordPress MU site into a social network
bbPress—which allows you to run forums from your WordPress MU site
The tools you need to get the above scripts up and running
So let's get started...