[Denise]

Hi, I am a newbie to WP and CBOX. I am so thankful for CBOX, it is what it is says it is — Commons in a Box! The site I am creating is for students and artists who love to write.

The premise behind it is that writers will be able to group up around their writing in their own writing groups. I would like the writers to be able to share their writing, art and information in a public profile that is under their username URL. Would BuddyPress Group Blog with a MultiSite be the best avenue for this? I have already installed CBOX, and I have also begun using and editing Profile Fields, BP Profile Widgets, BP-Portfolio, Social Articles and more. Ideally, I’ll be able to get into the code and design how this all comes through. It’s pretty great out of the box though!

The main question is, for what it sounds like I want to do with public facing frontend for users, is making our site a multisite and using BuddyPress Group Blog the best way for writers to show their writing and profile on our site? And is the route for this uninstalling, making a network multisite and reinstalling?

I looked over this thread, thank you.
https://commonsinabox.org/groups/help-support/forum/topic/potential-issues-with-wp-multisite-bp-multi-network-cbox-theme/

Here’s the site coming along in alpha! WritersTemple.net/com

~Denise

[Scott Voth]

Hi Denise – Sounds like you have already have a keen grasp on how CBOX works. If you go the route of multi-site, each writer can have a unique and configurable WP site. You might want to tie these sites together in your writer’s group using the “Buddypress External Group RSS” plugin (https://commonsinabox.org/documentation/plugins/buddypress-external-group-rs). That will bring posts from all the writer’s blogs into your group’s activity stream, and notify group members when peers post content.

Or, maybe easier – you can just have the writers become members of the group blog, and set permissions for each to post content there. That works nicely and maybe easier for those who don’t want to set up a site.

And I’m sure there is a hybrid option to the above…

[Christian Wach]

One hybrid option you might consider is BP Group Sites which enables multiple BuddyPress groups to comment on multiple sites/blogs in a multisite install. This would allow your writers to have a number of groups comment on their work, rather than a single group as per BP Group Blog. Groups can also “read/comment with” other groups, such that members of one group can read and reply to comments from members of the groups they are reading with as well as post new comments into those related groups. It is primarily designed to work with CommentPress but also works without it.

I guess your strategy will be shaped by whether your focus is on discussion or publishing as the main goal. BP Group Sites was developed for a site which focusses on reading Thoreau’s Walden, a static text encapsulated as a blog/site in a multisite install, but there’s no reason it couldn’t be applied to your scenario, where content is more fluid. The main difference would probably be in your main site and how that showcases the content and discussion that goes on in the network.

Cheers, Christian

[Christian Wach]

@denise, I forgot to say that the thread you read about multi-network multisite is probably not relevant to you unless you are trying to set up multiple BuddyPress communities in the same WordPress install. Think of multi-network as being multiple multisites in a single WordPress instance.

It sounds to me like you only need a single multisite instance (probably configured for sub-directories rather than sub-domains) – in which case your process for converting from WordPress single site to multisite should be straightforward enough. Backup first, of course, if the existing data is important. If you don’t care about the data, then a fresh WordPress install converted to multisite before you enable CBOX would be my recommended route.

Cheers, Christian

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