It’s been a long time coming, but it’s here: Commons In A Box. Today we’re releasing version 1.0-beta1, the first public release. For some background on Commons In A Box, here’s today’s press release, my Commons Dev Blog post explaining some of the features of Commons In A Box, and the 2011 press release announcing the project.

The primary goal of Commons In A Box, in my view, is to reduce the barrier of entry to setting up BuddyPress community sites. BuddyPress is an extremely powerful and flexible platform for developing social WordPress sites, but getting a BP site right takes knowledge (which plugins are worth installing, which ones work best together, etc) and elbow-grease (customizing your theme, keeping a complex system up to date). These practical requirements have made BuddyPress seem imposing to many users – including, and perhaps especially, the users that need free community software the most, such as educational institutions. Commons In A Box lowers these barriers in a serious way, by helping with plugin selection and installation, and by providing a beautiful and flexible default theme. My hope is that Commons In A Box will serve as a gateway for a swath of potential users into the world of BuddyPress, WordPress, and free software more generally.

The process of pitching, planning, and producing Commons In A Box has been interesting, frustrating, and rewarding. In the upcoming weeks and months, I may write more about this process, and what I’ll personally take away from it. In the meantime, I’ll say that I’m very pleased to be ending this first stage of development, and pushing it into the wild, since software – even imperfect software – is infinitely more valuable when it’s out there, being used, than when it’s mouldering on a developer’s machine. Shipping FTW!

Learn more about Commons In A Box.