BuddyPress

Edit: This is meant to be a discussion of what you would like to see implemented by this plugin…

I have recently been working on a buddypress group types plugin which is coming along fine…. but I keep finding myself wanting to add sooo much more… I just don’t know whether some of these features belong as an extension to buddypress groups functionality or should be a core feature in the first place because without core hacking this “Plugin” is impossible to make without it running very slowly… So I want to ask everyone what their thoughts are about where I believe buddypress groups functionality should be heading at a plugin level and hopefully a core level..

I want site admin created and run groups which do not show up in a users profile as groups that they belong to…These groups are meant to hold a category of groups and sub groups extend from this category groups. Basically what I am talking about here is a kind of group hierarchy.

This is what it looks like…
Site Wide Group->Category Groups->Sub Category Groups

Site Wide Group
-Users automatically belong to this group
-This group is automatically created because it is basically your sitewide forums your site wide everything..
-This group is basically hidden as being a group…doesn’t show up in users profile, users can’t leave this group, it basically doesn’t show up as a group at all
-Has all the basic features of a group plus a groups page so the slug would look like example.com/sitewidegroup/category
-The groups page holds all of the Category Groups…
-This group is meant as a place for all users to interact with every member of the site..Part of the problem with buddypress is that their isn’t any side wide interaction it is all done within small little niche groups.

Category Groups
-Users also automatically belong to these groups
-This group is also basically hidden as being a group…doesn’t show up in users profile, users can’t leave this group, it basically doesn’t show up as a group at all
-Has all the basic features of a group plus a groups page so that the slug would look like example.com/sitewidegroup/category/category_name
-The groups page holds all of the sub groups of this particular category group…
-This group is meant as a place for users to interact that have similar interests of this particular category.

Sub Category Groups
-User created
-Users do not automatically belong to these groups they must be invited or join depending on the privacy level of that group
-Has all the features of a basic user created group plus plugins can be used to extend functionality depending on options set by the site admin…<-still thinking of how I want to go about this

I like the idea of “Category Groups->Sub Category Groups”. This makes sorting by type of group so much easier.

It also allows a user to sort through activity much easier…Because you have sitewide activity… then category activity then sub category activity…

+1 I like this idea

@firetag

About your comment in the original post: “… still thinking of how I want to go about this.”

How about preserving the present group structure as sub-category-groups, but, during group creation, have users select a category from amid a selection preset by the superadmin? This way, the user-created groups could be added to a category directory of related groups in the same sub-category, with links to other categories in the site-wide group.

Then, rather than showing “All Groups” and “My Groups” in the group directory item-list-tabs, they could read “Sub-Category A”, “Sub-Category B”, “Sub-Category C”, and so on, ending with the ever-popular “My Groups”.

@pcwriter

I planned on preserving the present group structure for the sub category groups… but all these different ‘types’ of groups I believe still should be made by extending the current groups code… because otherwise wouldn’t I just be recreating the wheel? Also I love the idea of organizing group categories with the tabs great idea!

I’ve been thinking a little more about the way to reorganize the groups page for this and I have come up with something, but I’ll share it later because I have no more time to type anything out…. I’ll be back later…

support ticket #1706 is already addressing this….I am going to stop looking into this for now and I’m going to finish up some other plugins I’m working on…

edit: nvm decided this is too important for a site i’m making to wait…

Ok an update on this…. You can now categorize groups as much as you want… like game_consoles->game_publishers->genres->games or whatever…. but I have been thinking that for genres or something you may want to organize this by tags?

Right now the meta tags that this requires for each group are ‘parent_cat’ which holds the parent groups id (-1 if global category or 0 if it has no parent (the 0 value is meant for user created groups which don’t go under any category and are just a general group..)) and the other meta tag is ‘group_type’ which is used to check whether the group is an admin created group and is for a category or if it is a user created group (which means it can’t have any sub groups tied to it)

Do you think this is structured enough for pretty much all uses? Also would you like me to create a separate plugin which works with this one in order to add tagging to groups?

@firetag

Check out this plugin. It already provides the capability of organizing by tags. Might help.

http://buddypress.org/community/groups/third-party-components-plugins/forum/topic/buddypress-group-tags-is-now-available/

@firetag Any news on your plugin? I have been looking for a way to categorize different types of groups and this seems like it is exactly what I´ve been looking for.

@firetag I like the idea of Group Tags (plugin already available) AND Group Types (needed). I also like @pcwriter’s suggestion of having a drop-down with group types when members create groups. The groups types should be general, high-level categories. For example, if you look at BuddyPress.org’s Groups, you’ll see that some are labeled “Support Group,” “Plugin Group,” “User Created Group” — I like that (though I’d consider having some Group Type labels for the Admin to see and use only).

In the current version of the plugin there is a drop down of all the category groups and which I need to add in a checkbox for the admin to choose if it’s a category group or just a normal group… @agrundner @finni3

Nice, very interesting, hope to see it released soon.

I am very interested in this plugin.

I would like to use it to create Groups in the Admin site and have the users automatically added to the group based upon a response to a question in their account creation screen. Then the users would be able to create sub groups and have control over those sub groups.

It would also be nice to be able limit access to categories based upon the Main group the subscriber is assigned to.

This is something I have been struggling with for a couple of years now. I am just getting on the W/BP platform having ditched our old solution…

Your concept is perfect for what we are trying to do.

We are a philanthropic social network and we have four basic “types” of groups.
1.) Groups centered around Causes – Global Issues such as Clean Drinking Water, Child Trafficking, Climate Change, etc.
2.) Groups centered around Occupations – Firefighters, Medical Personnel, Airline Personnel, etc. They all come together to help a project or region by volunteering their services.
3.) Groups centered around a Project – Rebuilding a School in Nepal, Providing Shoes for Kids in Nicaragua, Creating a Sewing School in Indonesia, etc.
4.) Groups centered around a Geographic Location – San Francisco, Nepal, Buenos Aires, etc.

Each “group type”, although similar in nature has different nuances on how they work and what needs they have. For example, the Project group type usually has some project management needs along with specific deadlines. We usually have trips that go to these projects and those trips typically cater to one of our Occupation Groups and falls under a global Cause that we support. Different Geographic Location groups might be interested in the trip too if it is coming to their area or if we have special airline discounts from a specific city like New York.

What I like about your approach is that you are thinking of letting users create their own groups under specific categories or “group types”.

We could benefit from drop-down lists that require the user to choose a “group type” when they create a group and then follow up with further selections (that we create, or fill-in-the-blank) based on their selection.

For example, if they choose:
Cause – What is the focus? Clean Water (from list), What country? Indonesia (from list)
Occupation – What is the Occupation? Firefighters* (from list), What country? United States (from list), What City/Town? Dallas(fill-in-blank if international) *this group could be a sub-group of our global Firefighter group
Project – What is the project? Drill Clean Water Well, What country? Indonesia (from list), What City/Town? Kalimantan (fill-in-blank), How many people does it impact? 250, What occupations can participate? Construction, Medical, General Volunteers

Maybe you’re not going in this direction, but I wanted to share a real-world example of what we are doing. Maybe it will give you some ideas.

Thanks for your work!!!