WordPress MU and BuddyPress

I have a lot of big ideas in my head for different types of sites that I think the masses would find very useful. What I've been struggling with over the past few months is deciding where to start with these sites. There is so much involved in making a site successful and even more involved in running a successful site.

What I really wanted was some type of platform that allowed me to turn my idea into a reality without worrying about basic things like the underlying user account database structure or basic functions like creating a blog post.

A few weeks ago I was pleasantly surprised to learn about WordPress MU, which basically allows you to run hundreds of thousands of blogs using a single installation of WordPress (it runs wordpress.com). And then it got even better.

Today I came across BuddyPress, which takes WordPress MU one step further by developing a collection of plugins that turn your WordPress MU installation into a social networking platform (see John's post about the differences between the two). BuddyPress is just getting started, but I already see the huge potential behind it.

I can see the Internet eventually being full of little social networks covering every niche imaginable -- much like the huge mess of web pages and forums on the Internet are today. The best way to find what you're looking for on the Internet now is to either know of a forum or website, or to search Google and hope you find what you're looking for. Imagine being able to join or browse an area of the Internet that has been designed, authored, and created by the very people who have the same interests as yourself.

Maybe that isn't the final goal of BuddyPress, but I can definitely see how WordPress MU combined with the BuddyPress plugins will make bringing my ideas to life that much easier. WordPress MU + BuddyPress basically solve 75% of the problems for many of the sites I have in mind, so besides making me feel comfortable about scale, they will definitely save me time.