Mingle vs. Buddypress

When it comes to social net­work­ing, many peo­ple have tried to use their Word­Press blog. But many of them have failed to do so. Bud­dy­Press and Min­gle are two of the most pop­u­lar Word­Press plu­g­ins to cre­ate a social net­work­ing site with Word­Press. But these two plu­g­ins are not the same how­ever. While Bud­dy­Press offers more options, Min­gle is more sim­ple. Min­gle is more “out-of-the-box” plu­gin, as opposed to Bud­dy­Press who has more options, which make it really con­fus­ing at times.

Min­gle

Cre­ator: Blair Williams

Demo: http://wpmingle.com

Pros:

• Works with WPMU
• Works with Stand­alone Word­Press Installation
• Works with stan­dard Word­Press Themes
• Doesn’t require any spe­cial themes.
• Works “out-of-the-box”.
• Very Sim­ple
• Great for a fan blog.

Cons:

• Not tested with a lot of plugins.
• Still have bugs because it’s in early stages.
• Not tested with WPMU
• Not tested with bbPress

Bud­dy­Press

Cre­ator: Automattic

Demo: http://buddypress.org

Pros:

• Works with WPMU.
• Very good support.
• Cre­ated by cre­ators of WordPress
• Works per­fectly with bbPress.
• Great for large WPMU sites.

Cons:

• Very com­pli­cated.
• Spe­cial themes needed.
• Spe­cial plu­g­ins needed.
• Doesn’t work with stan­dard Word­Press Instalation.
• Doesn’t work “out-of-the-box”.

So after all, I don’t think we should com­pare these two, because they look like they are two totally dif­fer­ent things. They do have some things in com­mon, but after all, Bud­dy­Press is more for large com­mu­ni­ties, whereas Min­gle is more for small, fan-type, communities.