GigaOM Pro launches on WordPress and BuddyPress
2009 is the year of BuddyPress. It’s also the year where online content providers have to figure out how to make money outside of the flailing “get a lot of views, sell ads” model. For the past couple of months, I’ve been working on a project that tackles both of those things, and I’m really proud to present it to the world:
GigaOM Pro is a WordPress/BuddyPress-powered premium research membership site, focused on four initial verticals: Mobile, Green IT, Infrastructure, and the Connected Consumer. A network of independent analysts provide in-depth research papers and research notes, which subscribers can view on the site or download as PDF documents. GigaOM Network contributors provide “long view” posts — topic-focused long form posts. And each of the topic verticals has a curator who provides weekly updates on the topic, as well as a constant stream of curated links to relevant external stories. Subscribers can access all the content, comment on the content, have a profile on the site, and send messages to Analysts, Contributors, Curators, or other subscribers using the BuddyPress messaging system.
Here’s what it looks like:
GigaOM Pro home page
The content is incredibly compelling. I’ve been especially impressed with the quality of the Long View posts. More than once when developing the site I would get distracted by one of these pieces and have to read the whole thing. The GigaOM writing staff and the analyst network are very talented people, and I think that $79 a year is a steal for this calibre of hyper-focused content and this sort of access to industry analysts.
From a technical perspective, it was interesting to create a site with such distinct content types. The Write screen for Curated Links looks nothing like the Write screen for Weekly Updates, or Research Briefs. The system makes heavy use of the category system, and custom WP_Query objects and loops. category__not_in, category__and and post__not_in are very powerful tools for getting the correct entries from the system.
Naturally, there are no core WordPress hacks — everything is implemented through plugins and the custom theme!
Let me know what you think. And don’t subscribe — I put in a lowball prediction in the internal betting pool for how many subscribers there are in the first week, and I think I’m going to lose. 
Nice site!
What plugins are you using?
Off the top of my head, looks like you changed the category slug to “topic”.
Ray
May 28, 2009 at 8:41 pm
A lot of it is custom, Ray. Changing the category slug is a core WordPress feature, but I’m using custom code to “collapse” the topics, so that it is
/topic/mobile/instead of/topic/topics/mobile/(as the topics are in an “organizing” parent category). Also, custom URLs for the archives.Pretty URLs for archive “intersections” (e.g. Weekly Reviews that are in the Mobile topic) are also custom.
Mark Jaquith
May 28, 2009 at 9:01 pm
[...] and it’ll be interesting to see how the social features influence the sites evolution. Here’s Mark Jacquith’s post about building it. [...]
GigaOM Pro — Matt Mullenweg
May 28, 2009 at 10:11 pm
Hi. Are you using Flutter or some other plugin or custom code for the different write screens. And do you use additional post_types or simply customized additional input screens? Good stuff, that’s not easy to do in WP, I suppose.
SamSeaborn
May 28, 2009 at 10:15 pm
Very cool site, congrats!
Toni
May 28, 2009 at 10:18 pm
Great work. A lot of people have had their eye on BuddyPress for as long as it has been in development and it is great to see a site like this out there!
jenz
May 28, 2009 at 11:08 pm
This is a very interesting business model. I will be watching with interest to see how this goes. I hope you’ll update us soon.
alwaysabounding
May 29, 2009 at 2:09 am
Awesome! Thanks for sharing the news and I hope this gets more and more popular. What interests me the most is the way the topics have been classified and the variety of coverage. Good work!
Mohan
May 29, 2009 at 2:34 am
Great Site, Good to see more and more professionally developed WordPress/Buddypress websites coming into existence.
Author
May 29, 2009 at 4:13 am
Hey Mark. Care to share how exactly you do this …. “I’m using custom code to “collapse” the topics”.
I have seen a few different options to do just this, but am curious as to what you think the best method is..?
iamcracks
May 29, 2009 at 6:04 am
[...] GigaOM pro on BuddyPress [...]
BuddyPress Links #14 · Buddypress Links
May 29, 2009 at 10:25 am
Buddypress is certainly a wave to follow while the surf’s up. I’ve been thinking about trying an installation and this might have just convinced me.
Paul Hastings
May 30, 2009 at 3:31 am
Using Flutter, but with huge parts of it disabled or modified.
We’re just using custom functions to generate the links, because we’re also doing things like topic/type intersections. A little known fact is that WordPress pretty much ignores the “parent” categories. So if you have
/categories/food/sandwiches/monte-cristo/, you could just point to/categories/monte-cristo/But on my personal site, I’m using this to collapse categories and still use the WP category link functions.
Mark Jaquith
May 30, 2009 at 3:45 am
[...] to produktene kan brukes til, og jeg tror nok det er lite prestisje prosjekt fra Automattics side. Mark Jaquith står bak tilpassingen av selve siden, og forklarer noen av innstikkene han har brukt for å få [...]
Norske WordPress-Utviklere — Blog — GigaOM med BuddyPress
May 30, 2009 at 5:18 am
Congrats, Mark. Awesome to get a project like this out the door. Can’t wait to see what’s next…
Devin Reams
May 30, 2009 at 5:37 pm
[...] Gigaom Pro [...]
WPWeekly Episode 56 - Back On Track
May 31, 2009 at 8:23 pm
[...] site was built by Mark Jaquith, who has written up a few thoughts and tech details on this very exciting [...]
GigaOM Pro Powered by BuddyPress « WordPress Publisher Blog
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July 13, 2009 at 9:18 am
GigaOM Pro launches on WordPress and BuddyPress
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July 28, 2009 at 3:30 am
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August 4, 2009 at 12:02 am
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market2easy
August 11, 2009 at 5:55 am
Hi Mark,
great work on GigaOM.
There’s been a bit of a challenge thrown down to you on the BuddyPress forums:
How have you managed to make sign up / login work for an email address rather insisting on a username?
Would love to be able to do that for a site we are developing: http://www.helloecoliving.com
Any pointers you can provide?
Thanks in advance, Roger
Roger Coathup
August 16, 2009 at 2:46 pm
Mark – do you mind sharing what you used to do the set up paid memberships on the site? Or the best solution you’ve come across.
Dave Forde
August 16, 2009 at 5:34 pm
What did you use for the subscription process / payment process? Is that a customization of an existing module or a whole new one?
Do any of your custom modules integrate with wpmudev plugins (if so which)?
Nightlyfe
August 21, 2009 at 6:42 pm
Yeah! I would be interested to know as well how you changed the login to the email rather a username.
I would also like to know how you implemented your payment process? As far as I know amember does not work with buddypress… or does it now?
Peter
August 25, 2009 at 11:57 pm
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weerachai
September 3, 2009 at 10:09 am
I’m definitely interested to know how the payment processing works. I have been desperately trying to figure out some sort of payment system with Buddy Press. I am trying to set up a Buddy Press site that has a free membership level and then a paid level that gives access to premium content. Great job with the site!
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September 13, 2009 at 5:31 pm
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