Much more than just connectivity. A fully featured community, with lots of options to dig from members, groups and activity.

Here I am talking about the most powerful WordPress plugin BuddyPress.
Following are the list of features BuddyPress includes, we will discuss in brief:
1) Profile – One can create and update his profile and as an admin, you can also extend profile by creating new xProfile fields and fields Group.
2) Friend Connections – One can send and receive friend requests.
3) Groups – One can create and join groups, can become an admin of the group and also send invites. BuddyPress also provides a dedicated page for group listing.
4) Activity – One can keep track of activities happening throughout the site. BuddyPress provides separate places for different activities they are as follow:
Sitewide activity stream.
Member activity stream.
Group activity stream.
5) Members – A separate member listing page. An easy way to find and send a request to known or favourites.
6) Messages – Public and private messaging features with inbox, compose, sent and starred messaging options.
7) Notifications – Helps you to keep an eye on important updates.
8) Dynamic member links – Member specific pages.
9) Emails – You can now easily edit the BuddyPress email content.
10) Forums – Fully integrated with a bbPress plugin to give an option of forum discussions.

You can install plugin in one of two ways:

Automated Installation
Step 1: Navigate to Dashboard >> Plugin >> Add New
Step 2: Search for BuddyPress
Step 3: Install and Activate the plugin.

Manual Installation
Step 1: Download BuddyPress from here.
Step 2: Via FTP upload the plugin inside the wp-content/plugins folder.
Step 3: Navigate to Dashboard >> plugin >> installed Plugins. Activate plugin.

There are two types of pages BuddyPress serves, directory pages and member-specific pages.
You can add both to the navigation menus.
Follow below steps to proceed further:

Add directory pages to the menu.
Step 1: Navigate to Appearance >> Menus.
Step 2: Create a new menu.
Step 3: Select the BuddyPress pages from page section.
Step 4: Select the location for the menus from menu settings options.
Step 5: Save the menu.

Add logged-in member specific links to the menu.
Either create a new menu or add these to the menu you already created above.
Step 1: Click on screen option at the top.
Step 2: Select the BuddyPress option.
Step 3: Select the items you want to add to the menu from the BuddyPress section.
Step 4: Click on “Add to menu” button.
Step 5: If you have created a new menu then select display location from Menu settings section.
Step 6: Save Menu.

For configuring BuddyPress navigate through
Dashboard >> Settings >> BuddyPress.

You will find three options here, they are as follow:

1. Components – Allows you to enable/disable components you want to include.
2. Options – Includes different setting options related to BuddyPress such as profile, group and activity settings.
3. Pages – Allows you to map BuddyPress pages accordingly.

Let’s discuss these three options in details.

Components
You will find the following options inside it:

• Extended Profiles – Allows you to Configure and customize your community with fully editable profile fields.
• Account Settings – Allow your users to modify their account as per their choice.
• Friend Connections – Allow your members to create friends and expand their circle.
• Private Messaging – Allow your members to share private messages.
• Activity Streams – Global, personal, and group activity streams with threaded commenting, direct posting, favouriting, and @mentions, all with a full RSS feed and email notification support.
• Notifications – Allows your member to receive notification of the activities related to them happening throughout the site depending on the customization of their notification settings.
• User Groups – Allows your users to organize themselves into specific public, private or hidden sections with separate activity streams and member listings in your community.
• Site Tracking – Track and record activity for new posts and comments from your site.
• BuddyPress Core – This is a must-use option and you can not deselect it. It‘s what makes BuddyPress possible.
• Community Members – This one is also a must-use option and you can’t deselect it, everything in a BuddyPress community revolves around its members.

Options
You will find four setting options inside it, here will discuss each one by one briefly:

Main Settings

• Toolbar – Allows showing the Toolbar for logged out users.
• Account Deletion – Selecting this option allows registered members to delete their own accounts.
• Template Pack – Allows you to select BuddyPress template pack.
  Profile Settings

Profile Settings

• Profile Photo Uploads – Selecting this option allows members to upload avatars.
• Cover Image Uploads – Selecting this option allows registered members to upload cover images for their profile.
• Profile Syncing – Enable syncing of BuddyPress to WordPress profile.
  Groups Settings.

Group Settings

• Group Creation – Selecting this option allows group creation for all users.
  Admin can always create groups, no matter what the setting is.
• Group Photo Uploads – Allows setting customizable avatars for groups.
• Group Cover Image Uploads – Allows setting customizable cover images for groups.
  Activity Settings.

Activity Settings

• Post Comments – Allows activity stream commenting on posts and comments.
• Activity auto-refresh – It automatically checks for new items while viewing the activity stream.

Pages
As all is done let’s proceed towards creating and mapping pages.

Create two pages register and activate by navigating through
Dashboard >> Pages >> Add New >> Register/Activate.
You will notice BuddyPress already made two pages activity and members.
You now just have to map these page here in BuddyPress settings.

• Members: Select members page for member listing.
• Activity Streams: Select the activity page for site-wide activity.
• User Groups: Select groups for group listing.
• Register: Select registration page and allow your members to register to the site.
• Activate: Select activation page.

Now save the settings by clicking the save button.

BuddyPress can handle millions of users. It will add rows to the database without problem, and that database can scale to a very large size.

However, there are things that might have an impact on that. Your hardware will play a big role.

Following are the minimum server requirements for the BuddyPress:

• PHP version 7.0 or greater.
• MySQL version 5.6 or greater.
• BuddyPress 3.0 supports WordPress 4.5 or greater.

BP avatar uploads will fail without one of these modules activated (WP will simply fail to create image sizes for posts but won’t show an error), so make sure that PHP must have the Imagick or GD modules installed (on the server) to allow re-sizing of images.

For release versions and WordPress version compatibility, give a closer look at the respective links.

A user can edit their profile by navigating through:
Profile >> Edit
You only have to fill this page based on how many profile field group were set by Admin. For the profile section, you can also change your profile photo and cover image.

Register members can delete their account by navigating through:
Profile >> Settings >> Delete Account.
Make sure you will only get this option if site admin has enabled it.
Account deletion will also delete all the content created by you in the site. Those will be irrecoverable.

Invite Anyone is an ultimate plugin to increase members easily and quickly on your site.
It allows every member to invite their friends by adding send invite tab on user’s profile page.

How to start:
Step 1: Install and activate the plugin by navigating through
Dashboard >> Plugin >> Add New.
Step 2: Manage settings by heading towards:
Dashboard >> Settings >> Invite Anyone.
Step 3: Send invite tab will appear on a user’s profile and single group page when a plugin is activated, allowing users to enter email or selecting from the list respectively to invite their friends.

BuddyPress allows you to send Public as well as private messages.
For sending a private message head towards your profile >> messages >> Compose.
Here, select a user name in autocomplete “send to” field, type your message and then click on send message button. All done.

For public messages, you can send the same by mentioning the member with “@” sign then your message anywhere within BuddyPress site it can be sitewide activity, group activity or your own profile page. The user will be notified by notification count and via email as well if enabled.

Following is the shortcode for activity listing you can use this in your post and pages:

[activity-listing]

Here is the way you can specify options

[activity-listing option_name=option_val option_name2=option_val2 and so on]

For Example: [activity-listing title=Chris_Group object=Groups per_page=1].

The accepted parameters:-

• title (string):- What should be the title of the activities section

Example: [activity-listing title=My_Activity-Listing per_page=2].

• display_comments (sting|bool):- How to handle activity comments.
• Possible values: – ‘threaded’ – comments appear in a threaded tree, under their parent items.
  – ‘stream’ – the activity stream is presented in a flat manner, with comments sorted in chronological order alongside other activity items.
  – false – don’t fetch activity comments at all.
  Default: ‘threaded’.
• include (string):- Activity IDs or string of activity IDs comma-separated to query. Providing an ‘include’ activity IDs will override all other filters passed in the argument. When viewing the permalink page for a single activity item, this value defaults to the ID of that item. Otherwise, the default is false.
• in (string):- Activity IDs or string of activity IDs comma-separated to limit the query by (IN). ‘in’ is intended to be used in conjunction with other filter parameters. Default: false.
• exclude (string):- Activity IDs or string of activity IDs comma-separated to exclude. Default: false.
• sort (string):- ‘ASC’ or ‘DESC’. Default: ‘DESC’.

Example: [activity-listing title=Chris_Group object=Groups sort=ASC].

• per_page (int):- Number of results per page. Default: 20.

Example: [activity-listing per_page=4]

• page_args (int):- String used as a query parameter in pagination links. Default: ‘page’.
• max (int):- Limit the maximum no. of activities to be included in the list.

Example: [activity-listing title=Max_Activity-Listing max=1].

• scope (string):- Use a BuddyPress pre-built filter.
  – ‘just-me’ retrieves items belonging only to a user; this is equivalent to passing a ‘user_id’ argument.
  – ‘friends’ retrieves items belonging to the friends of a user.
  – ‘groups’ retrieves items belonging to groups to which a user belongs to.
  – ‘favorites’ retrieves a user’s favorited activity items.
  – ‘mentions’ retrieves items where a user has received an @-mention.
  The default value of ‘scope’ is set to one of the above if that value appears in the appropriate place in the URL; eg, ‘scope’ will be ‘groups’
  when visiting http://example.com/members/joe/activity/groups/.
  Otherwise defaults to false.
• user_id (int):- If you want to list a particular user’s activity
• object (string):- object to filter on e.g. groups, profile, status, friends(what type of activity is this)
• action (string):- action to filter on e.g. activity_update, new_forum_post, profile_updated(why this activity was created)
• primary_id (int):- object ID to filter on e.g. a group_id or forum_id or blog_id etc. We will see the use in a minute.

Example: [activity-listing object=groups primary_id=2].

• secondary_id (int):- secondary object ID to filter on e.g. a post_id(I don’t think you are going to use it)
• search_terms (String):- In case you want to list the results of activity search
• allow_posting (int):- If you want to allow users to post. It will include the default activity posting form. It is experimental and may have issues on some of the themes.
• hide_on_activity (int):- Default 1. Hide/show the shortcode content on activity pages(If you are using it in the sidebar and want it to be visible on user/group/site activity page, set it to 0)
• container_class (string):- Default ‘activity’ . Allows changing the class of the shortcode contents wrapper. If you have the hide_on_activity=0, then please set it to some other value than ‘activity'(Maybe ‘activities’ or something else). If you do not change it, On the user/group/site activity page, the activity filter will affect the content of the shortcodes. It is suggested to change it if hide_on_activity=0 is set.

This shortcode can take the following parameters:

Examples:-

[activity-listing per_page=2]

This [activity-listing per_page=2] shortcode shows a list of Activity, and it accompanies a great deal of parameters to customize which activity is appeared and how they are spread out.

[activity-listing user_id=1]

You can use this shortcode to shows the content of the user activity list. The shortcode can be used on any page or widget area.

[activity-listing search_terms=’Arts and Science.’]

This shortcode uses to show list activities containing the search word “Arts and Science.”

[activity-listing object=groups]

This [activity-listing object=groups] shortcode uses to shows the List of all activities of the group.

[activity-listing object=groups primary_id=2]