WordPress Blogs

Some of the most powerful features of BuddyPress relate to how it enhances your multisite network. Creating a network allows your members to start their own full-powered public or private WordPress blogs. Members can track new posts and comments from public blogs across the network of sites as they are posted in the sitewide activity stream, in the blog owner’s activity stream, and in the blogs directory page. These features help facilitate content discovery and social interaction on your network.

Note: When you are using multisite and blog creation is enabled for users, there’ll be an option for “I want to create a blog” when a user registers in your site.

Configuring Site Tracking

In order to use all of the network features of BuddyPress you must first enable the ‘Site Tracking’ component under the Components tab in the BuddyPress section of your Network Admin Settings.

Also make sure to check that your ‘Site Tracking’ page has been correctly associated under the Pages tab in the BuddyPress section of your Network Admin Settings.

Using Site Tracking

By default the blogs directory page lists the public blogs in your network in the order of the most recently updated to the least recently updated. You can re-order the list by either newest to oldest or alphabetically by selecting either option from the ‘Sort Order’ drop down menu. Use the ‘Visit Site’ button to visit the homepage of any site from the list. In addition to the site title and ‘Visit Site’ button each site shows the time of the last update and a direct link to the site’s latest post.

With ‘Site Tracking’ enabled, the Activity Streams of your primary site will also include activities completed on any site on your network which has not enabled privacy for their blog.

Blog Privacy

When a blog selects “discourage search engines…” as a privacy setting, the blog won’t show up in activity directories, etc.