Installing the BuddyPress Plugin in Wordpress

To return to the parent post, click here: Convert a WordPress Blog into a Private, Facebook-like Social Network.

The BuddyPress plugin converts a WordPress blog into a social networking site, similar to Facebook.

Installing a plugin in WordPress is a straightforward process. You install the BuddyPress plugin in the same way you would any other plugin, and vice versa.

This tutorial assumes you are using a version of WordPress installed locally on a Desktop of Laptop computer.

Since you will be downloading the plugin, you will need to be connected to the Internet for this process.

(1) Launch XAMPP and start the Apache and MySQL services.

(2) Open a browser window or tab and enter "http://wordpress/wp-admin to log in as the administrator. (For wordpress, use the name you gave to the folder containing WordPress that you copied into the C://xampplite/htdocs folder on your hard drive.)







(3) In the login screen, enter the Username and Password of the administrator, then left click on "Log In."
















(4) The WordPress Dashboard will now appear. Left click on "Plugins" in the left column.






















(5) On the next screen, left click on "Add New" to the right of the word "Plugins" near the top of the page.













(6) The next page offers you the option of searching manually for plugins by selecting from a list of headings or by searching more directly by entering a keyword. Since we are looking specifically for "BuddyPress," enter "buddypress" as the search term, then left click on "Search Plugins."
















(7) The search will return a list of plugins that meet the criteria. To install the primary BuddyPress capabilities, left click on "Install Now" for the BuddyPress plugin.

















(8) A popup will appear, asking you to verify that you want to install the plugin. Left click on "OK."
















(9) On the next page to appear, the progress of the install will be displayed.














(10) After a plugin has been installed, WordPress allows you to activate it and deactivate it at will, without having to uninstall and reinstall it. Before the BuddyPress plugin can be used, it needs to be activated, so, left click on "Activate Plugin."














(11) After the process is complete, a message will appear at the top of the screen, indicating that the plugin has been activated. An entry for BuddyPress will appear in the installed plugins list as well as one for administering BuddyPress, just below the "Dashboard" entry at the top of the left column.












(12) To administer BuddyPress, left click on "BuddyPress" under "Dashboard" in the left column.










(13) A menu for changing various BuddyPress settings will appear.
















(14) You can also change the appearance of BuddyPress by choosing from several predefined formats. To do this, left click on "Appearance" in the left column.















(15) A page will appear that contains thumbnails of the currently active theme plus others from which you may choose. If you wish to see how your blog will look with another theme, left click on "Preview." To make a theme current, simply left click on "Activate." Your blog will now appear with that new theme.

Convert a WordPress Blog into a Private, Facebook-like Social Network

By installing the BuddyPress plugin (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BuddyPress), it is possible to convert a WordPress blog into a private social networking site that is very similar to Facebook, but with much more control over privacy. Moreover, with a local installation of WordPress (see Installing WordPress Locally on a Windows Desktop or Laptop), it is possible to use this upgrade to demonstrate how to use a social network in situations where an Internet connection is not available.

(1) See Installing the BuddyPress Plugin in WordPress for instructions on how to download and install the plugin that converts a normal WordPress blog into a social network.

This post is a stub. I have done quite a bit of testing on this feature with highly positive results. I'll add the "recipe" with screenshots to this post as soon as I've had a chance to do a little more testing.

Complete Local WordPress Installation on Windows

[Go back to the parent post: Installing WordPress Locally on a Windows Desktop or Laptop]

The last steps in installing a local version of WordPress on a desktop or laptop computer are to create a database and a user account for the WordPress administrator.

(1) Launch the XAMPP Control Panel Application from the Start Menu or by double clicking on the Desktop icon. When the control panel appears, left click on the "Start" buttons for Apache and MySQL. NOTE: You will need to start Apache and MySQL in the control panel whenever you wish to use your local install of WordPress!














(2) When Apache and MySQL have been successfully activated, "Running" surrounded by green will appear next to their names in the control panel.














(3) Open a browser window or tab and type in the address: "http://localhost" exactly as if you were typing in the address of a website on the Internet.








(4) When the XAMPP welcome screen appears, left click on "phpMyAdmin" under the "Tools" heading.













(5) On the next "web page" (it's not a real web page, because it's on your computer), left click on "Databases" near the top left of the page.














(6) Next, give the new database a name (Write it down, so you don't forget it!) and left click on "Create."
















(7) When the database has been successfully created, a message will appear.













(8) Now, left click on "Server: localhost" at the top left of the page.













(9) On the next page to appear, left click on "Privileges."















(10) On the following page, left click on "Add a new User" to create an administrator for the WordPress blog.














(11) On the "Add a new User" screen,

(a) under "Login Information,"

1. make sure "User name:" and "Password:" are set to "Use text field:" and "Host:" is set to "Local" in the left column, and

2. in the right column, assign a User name and Password for the administrator and type "localhost" for the Host.


(b) For "Global privileges," left click on "Check All."



















(12) When everything looks OK, left click on "Go" at the bottom right of the page.


















(13) If the user has been successfully been added, a message will appear.















(14) You are now finished setting up the database. Close either the browser window or tab to exit.









(15) To install WordPress within XAMPP:

(a) navigate to the where you installed XAMPP on your computer and open the "htdocs" folder, and



















(b) Download WordPress from wordpress.org, unzip the file, and copy the entire extracted folder into htdocs.




















(16) Next, open a browser window or tab and type http://localhost/wordpress in the address bar. When the error message appears, left click on "Create a configuration File."















(17) Gather the information requested by the next screen (you should have been writing this down as you were building databases, etc.), then left click on "Let's go!"














(18) A blank form will appear:
















(19) Enter the information you assigned to the database a few steps earlier, then left click on "Submit."
















(20) On the next screen to appear, left click on "Run the Install."











(21) You will now need to enter the blog administrator's login information and a few other things for the WordPress "web site" you are creating on your computer:






















(22) Give the blog a name. (This can be changed at any time you wish, so don't get hung up on finding the right name.)

Give the administrator a name for logging in. I usually stay with "admin."

Assign a password to the administrator. You can use the same one you assigned to the database earlier.

Enter a valid e-mail address.

Uncheck the box next to "Allow my site to appear in search engines like Google and Technorati."

When ready, left click on "Install WordPress."




















(23) A screen will appear, showing you successfully installed the blog on your computer.

Left click on "Log in" to log in to the blog as the administrator.


















(24) The administrator login screen will appear. Enter the Username and Password for the administrator to log into the control panel (the administration screen) for your blog.
















(25) The "Dashboard," which the administrator uses to manage the blog, will now appear.














To access the Dashboard after you've completed this installation process:

(a) Start Apache and MySQL in the XAMPP Control Panel,

(b) open a browser and enter http://localhost/wordpress/wp-admin in the address bar and

(c) enter the administrator's Username and Password.


To view the blog as a normal visitor,

(a) Start Apache and MySQL in the XAMPP Control Panel and

(b) open a browser and enter http://localhost/wordpress .

Downloading and Installing WordPress on Windows

[Go back to the parent post: Installing WordPress Locally on a Windows Desktop or Laptop]

Unlike proprietary blogging tools and services, WordPress is open source software that you can download to your computer, modify if you wish and freely distribute.

Note: you will need to install XAMPP on a Windows computer (or one of its equivalents on an OS X or Linux computer) to install a local version of WordPress. See the tutorial: Downloading and Installing XAMPP for Windows

To download and install WordPress on a Windows computer:

(1) Go to wordpress.org.


















(2) On the homepage, left click on the "Download WordPress . . ." button.















(3) After the download has finished, navigate to where you saved the file on your computer. Note that the file is in ZIP format and needs to be "unzipped" (uncompressed).




















(4) I use free software called "ZipCentral" to extract my ZIP files. To unzip the file, I right click on the file name and left click on "Extract Here" in the menu that appears. This will place the extracted data in the same folder as the original ZIP file.




















(5) Green bars will show the progress of the extraction.





















(6) A folder containing the extracted data, with the same name as the original ZIP file, will appear in the folder.





















(7) Navigate to the hpdocs folder in the location you installed XAMPP on your computer (See the post: Complete Local WordPress Installation on Windows) . . .




















(8) and copy the entire unzipped folder containing WordPress into the hpdocs folder.

Downloading and Installing XAMPP for Windows

[Go back to the parent post: Installing WordPress Locally on a Windows Desktop or Laptop]

XAMPP is a set of software packages that can be installed on a desktop of laptop computer that make the computer appear as if it's a web server. This allows website designers and programmers to test their work on their own computers without being connected to the Internet. (See the Wikipedia entry on XAMPP for more information.) Because WordPress is a web application, it can be installed on a computer running XAMPP and used as if were actually on the Internet.


XAMPP (or its operating-system-specific variants) can be installed on computers running the Windows, OS X and Linux operating systems. As of this writing, I have installed it on desktops and laptops running Windows Vista and Windows 7. The following screenshots were made from an install I just did on a desktop running Windows 7:

(1) Go to the XAMPP for Windows site (http://www.apachefriends.org/en/xampp-windows.html) and scroll down the page.



















(2) Continue scrolling down until you reach the heading "Jump-off point." Under the subheading "Download," left click on "XAMPP Lite."





















(3) This will jump down to the download section of the page for XAMPP Lite. Left click on "EXE" for the "Self-extracting RAR archiv." (RAR is a way of compressing a file to make it smaller, like ZIP.)






















(4) After the file has finished downloading (a) navigate to where you saved it on your computer, (b) right click on the name of the downloaded file (or double click with the left mouse button and skip step (c), and (c) left click on "Open."
















(5) When the menu pops up, left click on "Run."





















(6) In the next menu to appear, note that the destination folder is your C (C:) drive.















(7) Modify the default so that a folder named "xampp" will be created on your C drive (C:/xampp).
















(8) Next, left click on "Install" to begin the extraction and installation process.
















(9) A green bar at the bottom of the menu will show the progress of the extraction and the installation.
















(10) On completion, a Windows command-line terminal will appear. It will ask you a series of questions to which you will need to reply "y" or "n" and then press enter.

You will first be asked if you want to create a Start Menu entry and a Desktop shortcut for XAMPP. Type "y" and press the "Enter" key.















(11) The next question asks if you want to make an XAMPP without drive letters (e.g., for installation on a flash drive). Type "n" and press "Enter."
















(12) When you receive a message saying XAMPP is ready to use, just press the "Enter" key.















(13) The install will determine your time zone from your computer. Press "Enter" to accept this.
















(14) If you wish to launch XAMPP Control Panel at this point, enter "1" and press "Enter."
















The XAMPP Control Panel will then appear.















(15) Otherwise, type "x" and press "Enter" to exit the Windows terminal.

















(16) Now, the XAMPP Control Panel can be launched the same way you would any other Windows application, by either double clicking on the XAMPP icon on the Desktop or by going to the Start Menu at the lower left corner of the screen.