So here’s the explanation of exactly what I mean. Background: I’ve taken over a large site where the original admins let things slide for years, including never really keeping up with social media. (If anyone wants to see it, Here’s the Fire and Ice Site. There are about 20,000 members. EVERYONE on the site who’s expressed an opinion is very interested in updating things, and we’ll have FB and Tumblr pages very soon.
But a huge major problem is the forum section. It’s still run on efiction, which is very very very dated by this point. I’m not the tech person (she stayed on, THANK GOD) so I can’t do anything about that. The way the forums are set up is just NOT going to work now that it’s not 2006 anymore. But getting rid of them and going to new forums wouldn’t work right now, because some toes might be stepped on… (Cat herding…) So one thing I’d like to do fairly soon is to set up a WP page for the group that would go under my main account as a subdomain. HOWEVER… here’s where the problem comes in.
Everybody wants a FB page, but nobody wants a* group *(yet.) There are too many concerns about staying anonymous to other members, same with Tumblr. A lot of things used to be done on LiveJournal-- I’m just NOT keeping anything up there. So I could make another simple WP blog. The consensus is that WP would make people FEEL more secure (whether it actually is or not isn’t the issue.) The problem is that people really like the FORMAT of FB or Tumblr-- basically, community journaling rather than comments tied to the original author’s post.
HELP. I can’t seem to find an app that would do this for WP (kind of like a FB format, but with the functionality and better privacy options of WP.) It seems like it should be so simple… but I’ve looked everywhere and posted the question on the WP boards, and NOTHING. And then I thought of the brilliantly smart and helpful people here!! Somebody HAS to know the answer! Yay! All advice appreciated.
First up: are you talking about WordPress in general, or WordPress.com specifically? The former is open-source software you host yourself; the latter is a managed WordPress host with some social networking features (broadly similar to Tumblr in many respects).
In either case you can easily invite many contributors to a WordPress site to write their own posts.
There are some WordPress themes that are more forum-like, without actually being forums - P2 for example.
bbPress and BuddyPress bring forum and social network features to a self-hosted WordPress.org site.
There are other plugins that have various community/social features. But I’m not very clear on what you want.
If it’s something like Tumblr, then your community members could each create their own blogs on WordPress.com; you’ll have features like reblogging and likes available. Is that what you’re after, or something else?
Thanks for replying! It’s wp.org. Trying to get each person to create their OWN blog on wp.com… well, I think it would bring cat herding to new unexplored levels. I’m just not up to the attempt.
Having a FB group would probably take care of this entire thing, but people have been very clear about not wanting that-- the fact that the persona on FB uses a real name (or is linked to a real-name account) is a deal killer right now. I would personally like to completely replace the extremely outdated forums on the site, but it’s not going to happen right now.
Hmm. The P2 theme… I did go and look at it. THIS might be the way to go, because the FIA blog will be completely new. HOWEVER… here’s one question, because I can’t figure it out. If you know the answer, please share! Would each comment need to be approved, and could people post under different accounts, as they can on the wp theme I have now? (I guess that was two…) Anyway, thanks again.
Under the hood, P2 threads are just WordPress posts and comments. The regular WordPress comment settings and user roles still work - you can turn on moderation if you want, give people Author/Editor privs and so on.
If you want a quick way to try it out without installing it on your site, it’s available as a theme on WordPress.com.
Incidentally there’s a successor to P2 on its way called o2. It’s not out yet but it already exists and I think it should be released fairly soon - it’ll be announced here. There’s a presentation here about both P2 and o2 if you’re interested.
(Full disclosure: I work for the company that makes wp.com, P2 and o2)
I definitely think I’ll try this out. Do you know if this vid is on Youtube? The reason is that I convert a lot of videos to mp3’s and then listen to them while I work… it works surprisingly well most of the time. I think it might solve the problem of dual net personas not leaking into each other, which is what people seem to really be concerned about when it comes to FB.
I think it might solve the problem of dual net personas not leaking into each other, which is what people seem to really be concerned about when it comes to FB.