Customer Reviews

BuddyPress For Dummies

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

This book has a lot of filler in it. It is also out of date now with the integration of WordPress MU into WordPress 3.0 There is some helpful information in the book even with the advent of WordPress 3.0, but you have to dig to find it.

I hope the author comes out with an update for the book. She is a good writer, provides accurate information and some good tips and suggestions.

2 stars says I don't like it, I do like it, so 3 stars gets the "It's OK". But unless you get a great deal on this book I would wait, or find one that is current. BuddyPress is changing all the time and any book about it will probably be somewhat out of date by the time it is published.

Lisa Sabin-Wilson literally wrote the book on WordPress. I've read and used both editions of her "WordPress For Dummies" and pre-ordered the third edition today.

WordPress, if not the leading blogging application, is certainly a contender for the title. To use WordPress is to love it and Sabin-Wilson's book makes WordPress accessible to all.

BuddyPress is a new product, free like WordPress, but intended to allow users to create their own "social community" on their website. This book is already behind the curve in some ways because BuddyPress is very much a work in progress. Sabin-Wilson's book came out just a couple of weeks ago. During the time she wrote it and before it hit the streets, you needed to have WordPress MU (Multi-User) installed as the base for BuddyPress. As of a week or so ago, this is no longer the case: BuddyPress will now run on the single user version of WordPress. This change, in a way, means adjusting many of the instructions contained in the book, but it Is nothing a reasonably experienced person won't be able to deal with.

What does BuddyPress do for you? Well, the author explains that quickly and clearly: with BuddyPress, you can build a community with members having their own blogs, tracking of activities, discussion forums and more. Feature like this have been available in part through services like Yahoo! Groups and Ning. But now you can run them on your own server and customize them to your tastes.

That's the real power of BuddyPress - you can tweak it meet your needs and expectations.

And Lisa Sabin-Wilson shows you how.

Much of the book will seem familiar to "WordPress For Dummies" readers because, clearly, much of it was adapted from it. By the way, if you are new to WordPress, get and read "WordPress For Dummies" first. The education will serve you well as you approach BuddyPress.

Sabin-Wilson writes clearly. The only problem I foresee is that all the instructions are based on using WordPress MU (Multi-User) which may lead to confusion on some points, but I feel certain that the author will post errata to cover these differences.

BuddyPress may be overkill for most individuals - you can get many of the same features by using Ning or other web services. On the other hand, organizations and groups may readily appreciate the power of BuddyPress. Lisa Sabin-Wilson makes it easy to find out because she has essentially provided the "how to" manual on getting BuddyPress up and running with a minimum of hassle.

Jerry

I first started with the authors book on Wordpress and was led astray by the glowing reviews of those who had said they had read her book. After reading this, I am left to think that no one really reads Sabin-Wilson unless they have no clue about using a computer and web software. Further in this book, it is very clear that it should never have been published.

The author even knows she should have delayed her efforts. A dozen times throughout she cites how the software, Buddypress is due for an update that will integrate with Wordpress much more seamlessly and change everything that she is showing how to do. It would have cut or changed 1/3rd of the book. And she knew it was just a few months away from when she was writing. It is in effect now, and probably was before the book was published.

An editor or the author could have done a lot to make this a useful tool. Instead all the use of the book can be found on the official Buddypress site. I tried to use examples of plugins that the author shows, and found that she leaves off before showing how they in fact work. Thus when they did not work for me, and forced me to search elsewhere for solutions, again i saw that the author is actually making us more dumb by using her book, instead of making us better users, which is what the Dummy series has always been about.

Stay away from this book. It is an outdated resource. It has broken links for her examples are not followed through. You can do better for free at the Buddypress site. Lisa Sabin Wilson, I shall not read your books again.

This book is great for WordPress users that want to take social networking to the next level! I earned how to easily establish a community which allows users to register on my web site, create profiles, post messages, and give them tools to interact.

If you've read Lisa's WordPress for Dummies book, you'll be familiar with the style - it's extremely clear in the step-by-step approach to getting an fully-working installation on its feet. The book covers every feature of the BuddyPress platform to the point where many readers won't need to go through every single page but it also delves into some of the more complicated theme setups and plugins.

The big problem at this stage is that it's out of date which is often a problem for technical books tracking frequently changing platforms. Hopefully there'll be another release soon since BP has really changed substantially enough to make this extremely outdated.