Case Study: Plateforme de Collaboration Gouvernementale

What we did

Lead the development of a large-scale social network using WordPress, BuddyPress and bbPress.

The challenge

Allowing the creation of a virtually limitless number of communities in one large WordPress installation, all sharing the same members, a common theme, and a common set of plugins. Each community had to be fully customizable and was to be managed separately.

Our solution

WordPress Multisite

We achieved this with WordPress’s multi-site capabilities, supplemented by a custom plugin to make BuddyPress play along. We created a flexible theme with an easy-to-use WYSIWYG layout builder along with WordPress’s own theme customizer.

Content discovery

A very powerful (yet very lightweight) related content engine, based on taxonomy terms, allowing users to see contextual content suggestions.

Multiple communities

The features

Activity stream

Aggregates and records personal, group, and sitewide activities with an RSS feed for each. Additional features include threaded commenting and favoriting in the activity stream, @mentions anywhere in the site, plus email notifications and status updates.

Members

Allows the users to modify their account and notification settings directly from within their profiles. A powerful search engine enables users to easily find who they’re looking for amongst the thousands of members.

Groups

Gathers colleagues together by creating public, private, or hidden groups. Group members can invite others and exchange in the group forum, share documents in a private file library and create events in the group calendar.

Discussion Forums

Members can create new topics and post them to any of the public and group forums created.

Files Library

A sitewide library allows administrators to share important documents with the community. Each group can also have its own files library, enabling users to share private documents about specific topics.

Calendar

Administrators can add events to the sitewide calendar, allowing users to discuss the events and to RSVP. Members can also create events in their groups, allowing private events between group members.

Static Content

Administrators can collaborate on static content pages, with full WYSIWYG editing, custom taxonomies, page hierarchy, custom permissions, and an easy-to-use editing workflow. Members can favorite these pages and leave comments.