Experimenting Social Networking Website for the local Creative Community

theopenlabs.com

The last couple of days, I’ve been toying around with Buddypress, the open source social networking plugin for WordPress MU. I’ve been planning for this to happen for a long time, ever since they released the WordPress MU (the code they used with Wordpress.com) to the public, and after a while Andy Peatling made ChickSpeak, a costumised WPMU installation with social networking. I’d knew sooner or later, there will be some plugins surfacing, and hence Buddypress. And I’d always wanted to implemented it to the local/indie music community with Deathrockstar.info.

However, I realized that for a site with heavy visitors like DRS, running WPMU behind it with a cheap hosting (if you decide to use them as well, enter MURAHAN as the promo code and you’ll get 1 free domain and 70$ discount) wouldn’t be as smooth. There’ll be a lot pressure because of the CPU time used on a shared hosting. And at the time Buddypress were still at its infancy. So I held back, and still (for DRS, at least).

Ideas arised when Emil, the chairman of BCCF, asked me if I would be interested to make a social networking site for the CEN’s project. At Helarfest 08, Raw Nerve offered to use their upcoming white label Creative Networking Platform to be implemented. However, up until now I haven’t got any updates on the project, but after looking at the test site, I’d definitely love to try it out.

Meanwhile Buddypress is out, and it started to feel a little tingly. After another successful implementation of WPMU on another project, I couldn’t have enough. This is it, the next logical step. I need a study case community, one with a very receptive talent pool for technology and social networking habits, my generation, the digital native. Moreover, I’ve been heavily involved with the community from the preconception and hangout with them intensively at Common Room. So, a couple of sleepless dawns, here it is.

My intention is purely experimental, so there’s no plan what so ever, just have a little fun, get bored and move on to the next interesting thing. There’s no ambitious agenda, folks! Be gentle to the server, okay?

Anyway, what I hope for the next is, this thing could spread out the other local communities and cities in Indonesia. To gain optimum advantage from this tool for their own networking. I’m just an early-jumper.

Tagged as: Bandung Creative City Forum, BuddyPress, Common Room, Creative Community, Creative Entrepreneur Network, Creative Network Platform, Deathrockstar.info, Dreamhost, Helarfest, OpenLabs, Projects, WPMU