Hi, I'm wondering if anyone can help me. I am developing a site with WordPress that will exist as a directory of specialist musicians. I had initially intended to use the BuddyPress plugin, as it enabled me to achieve at least some of the functionality I required, but am now wondering if there is anything else that would be more suitable. To explain, I will give some background.
The main aims of this site are:
1) Providing information about these musicians. The musicians will themselves be able to upload information, such as 'influences', 'albums', etc, which should then be searchable.
2) Allowing these musicians to post current information (of the tweet or microblog variety), which is viewable by everyone.
3) Having links to commercial vendors (such as through the Amazon affiliate network) which sell these musician's music.
The site will not be used for:
1) Members of the public commenting on the musician's profiles or even joining the site at all.
2) Musicians using the site to communicate with each other directly.
It strikes me that BuddyPress is perhaps inappropriate for several reasons:
1) That it is mainly designed for sites that anyone can sign up for, and not just particular individuals or groups who have been invited or can verify their identity.
2) That there is a sign-in box on each page (at least in my current template) that would be useless for the majority of my users.
3) That I have so far found no way of changing 'Members' to 'Musicians' or 'Bands' wherever it appears on the templates.
3) I can so far see no way of placing profile-specific ads or links on each musician's profile.
4) I have not been able to verify how successful Google is at crawling BuddyPress profiles. (This is particularly important for me, as I anticipate most of my traffic originating from search queries.)
I know this is a very long and rambling post and I apologise for this. Although I have experience using WordPress for blogging and static sites, I have never attempted anything quite this ambitious, and am therefore slightly desperate for help! If anybody is able to give me any advice on this I would be hugely grateful. Alternatively, if I am posting in the wrong forum, please let me know where this would be better posted. Many thanks!