By the time you’re reading this, it is quite possible that the BuddyPress revolution will have happened, but if you’re reading this soon after this was posted, I can safely say that the BuddyPress revolution hasn’t happened yet. It’s under way, but is hasn’t happened.

What on earth are you going on about?! I’ll go back a step. You’ve probably got some idea what BuddyPress is and will have heard about it, but chances are you don’t really know what it is exactly. Well, in a nutshell, BuddyPress turns your WPMU (the version of WordPress that allows you to have multiple blogs, i.e. the software WordPress.com uses)  installation and turns it into a fully functional social network! In other words (from BuddyPress.org):

BuddyPress will add a social networking layer to a new or existing installation of WordPress MU. BuddyPress is a suite of WordPress plugins and themes, each adding a distinct new feature. BuddyPress contains all the features you’d expect from WordPress but aims to let members socially interact.

But WordPress MU isn’t as popular as WordPress.org… No. It’s not, which is probably one of the reasons that a version of BuddyPress for the standard install of WordPress is in the works. There’s no official release date yet, but word on the.. er… web. is that it’ll be available in a couple of months. Taking a step back here, how awesome would that be! For those of you who have multiple writers or even just readers signing up on your blog, you can now message them with exciting stuff happening on your site and all of the other exciting stuff that comes with BuddyPress (although features will probably differ slightly between WP and WPMU).

But I want to try it out now! You do?! That’s lucky, as I’ve just written a series of posts about BuddyPress on my blog, Nometech.com! The series, in three parts takes you through the installation of WordPress MU in part one, then the installation of BuddyPress in part two and finally customizing and ‘getting to grips’ with BuddyPress in part three.

I’ve got something to say about this. Leave a comment below then. And you heard it here first. The BuddyPress revolution is coming!

This post was submitted by Alex Denning, a Twitter fan and WordPress blogger on Nometech.com.

For all you fans of WordPress, this weekend has been a good one.   Although I personally wasn’t able to attend the WordCamp San Francisco event, many were able to go and we’ve been receiving a lot of great information.

As a result, I wanted to do a quick post to bring to your attention a couple of the things we are hearing from the event, and in particular, from Matt Mullenweg’s “State of the Word” address, which he does at each WordCamp event:

• WordPress 2.8 Coming VERY Soon!
• There have been hints from the WordPress team about adding a section to their theme repository for GPL-compliant premium themes (paid themes which comply with GPL).  I haven’t gotten clarification yet if their will also be a similar site setup for premium plugins that comply with GPL.
• WordPressMU and WordPress.org will be merging.

To those of you that attended the event, let us know about anything we missed in the comments!

Information Sources:

• The WordCamp Report from the event.
• Various tweets from a number of web desginers in attendance.

Being a long time domainer, I’ve always understood the value of a strong domain name.   It can literally make or break a product before it even launches!     Automattic appears to understand domains as well, and wants to protect their brand.   In a brilliant move, it seems they recently completed the purchase of WP.com, the common abbreviation for WordPress, which was previously owned by Yahoo.

Here is what Matt had to say about the acquisition of WP.com:

Yes it’s true, Automattic is now the proud owner of WP.com, which we acquired from our buddies over at Yahoo! We’ve been using WP.com as internal shorthand for this site for years now, and ever since we figured out four or five years ago that Yahoo had that domain (as opposed to the Washington Post or something) we’ve been doing our best to get it, a journey that culminated in ultimate success a few days ago.

WP.com seemed like a great fit: people’s attention spans are getting shorter every day.  Wow the weather is great in San Francisco today. Also it’s seven keystrokes shorter to type in, which multiplied by the hundreds of millions of times people visit the site every year will be a huge productivity boost to our troubled economy and prevent RSI in a large percentage of the population.

Matt has also thrown a question out to the WordPress community.    What should they do with this outstanding domain name?   You can leave a comment on their post here with your suggestion!

My recommendation?   People are going completely mobile these days for everything and that trend is only going to continue over time.   After seeing what is in store for the iPhone 3.0 and the BlackBerry Storm 2.0, I am as convinced of this as ever.   At the same time, people are also loving Twitter and sending Tweets from their phones.

Why not take WP.com and build it into a mobile blogging platform, or a Twitter competitor of some sort that ties into your WordPress.com blog?     What other ideas do you guys have?

Note: It appears Automattic has also acquired Blo.gs.  It will be interesting to see if they decide to try to improve or somehow integrate this service.

Are you a Twitter user and WordPress fanatic?   Theme Playground recently published a great list of 50 WordPress peronsalities to follow on Twitter.   Their list includes developers, WordPress bloggers, etc.

I was excited to see our friend Jean-Baptiste Jung make the list, showing he is finally getting the recognition his hard work deserves.   There are also a number of other people included in the list that are worth following, so Twitter users will want to make sure to check Theme Playground’s post.

Finding a good web host for your websites or WordPress blogs can sometimes be difficult.  In the past I’ve had a lot of success with HostGator, but sometimes found that working with a large web hosting company can sometimes leave some gaps, as their service wasn’t designed specifically for the needs of a WordPress blogger.

Recently I came across a web hosting service called WP Web Host, which is web hosting designed with WordPress bloggers in mind!    Their servers were designed to support one click WordPress installation and their support is also focused completely on WordPress.  They also recently added support for WordPressMU (for running multiple WordPress installations).

Some additional information about WP Web Host:

Fast & Stable Server and Network

We invest heavily in ensuring our servers are not overloaded, have the fastest network connections, and guarantee 99.9% of network uptime (and 99.5% of server uptime) to all of our customers.

100 Days Money Back Guarantee

We take pride in making sure our customers are equally satisfied and happy. If you are not, within 100 days from when your initial order was placed, you’ll get your money back.

If you are worried about WP Web Host being a new service, let me ease your worries.  They currently have over 20,000 different satisfied users and a couple of years experience under their belts.  They also have the guarantee quoted above, showing they are a reputable business.

Probably my favorite part about WP Web Host is the price!  Your hosting is only $5.00 a month and includes up to 50 domain names, 50GBs of web space, and 500GBs of monthly bandwidth, which should be plenty for most WordPress bloggers.

If you’d like to give WP Web Host a try, we were given permission to give a special offer to our readers.   If you use the coupon code WPHACKS, you’ll receive a one-time 30% discount on all hosting plan (and all billing cycle).   Click here to take advantage of this offer!