If you have ever considered adding a social element to your website, BuddyPress is a great choice. It has been designed to work seamlessly with WordPress and you can be up and running in minutes. As you would expect from anything WordPress related, there are hundreds of plug-ins available to make it even more powerful. Here are 7 plug-ins you should consider adding straight away.
Adding BuddyPress to your existing WordPress installation is easy, simply download it from here and follow their instructions. Alternatively you can install it at the same time as WordPress with our BuddyPress one click install in eXtend.
Achievements
https://buddypress.org/community/groups/achievements/home/
Give your community an extra incentive to become more interactive by rewarding points for performing specified tasks.
BuddyPress Like
https://buddypress.org/community/groups/buddypress-like/home
A simple Facebook – style like button automatically added to all your status updates etc. No more, no less.
Events Manager
https://buddypress.org/community/groups/events-manager/home
Create events for people to sign up to or give groups the ability to create their own.
Invite Anyone
https://buddypress.org/community/groups/invite-anyone
A great way to spread the word. This plug-ins adds a new tab to BuddyPress that allows your members to invite people they know via email.
Welcome Pack
https://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/welcome-pack/
This welcome pack will provide new users with guidance on how to use your social network, and encourage them to refer new members.
Group Plus
https://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/buddypress-group-plus
Adds loads more features to your BuddyPress groups – Add a extra tab to your groups, group maps, info into the group header and more.
Default Data
https://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/bp-default-data/
If you are just getting started, this plug-in will create dummy users, messages, friends connections, groups, topics and activity items testing purpose.
If you use BuddyPress on your website and there are any plug-ins you couldn’t live with out not on this list, let us now in the comments below…
Nice list, and it’s great to see more plugins becoming available – plus having used the Heart one-click install on my own sites, it’s always worked perfectly so far….
There is one great extension not on the list though – if you want to run an online store and include your community, there’s the ‘Jigoshop for BuddyPress’ extension available: https://jigoshop.com/extend/jigoshop-for-buddypress/
Thanks for this list Matthew.
I’ve got the Welcome pack and Invite anyone installed on a BP site and can say they both work very well indeed. I’ll be looking in to the Events Manager now as that could prove pretty useful.
@Dan.. Is Jigoshop any good? I’m looking for a good ecommerce plugin for a WordPress site I’m in the process of doing for a customer at the moment.
Trying to find a Dummy Content for BuddyPress.
This link seems broken: https://buddypress.org/community/groups/bp-default-data/home/
Turn out to find this: https://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/bp-default-data/
Is it the same as the one you mention, Matthew?
Hi Eric,
Yes that is the plugin, I have updated our link as well.
Thanks
Matt