[jose]

siteurl: sdcityrobotics.saltbored.com

Ok so this is my first try at buddypress, and it looks like it will work for what I need, I just can’t get it functional! Any help would be greatly appreciated. We’re a non-profit robotics team based in SD and are using (our host is Bluehost) a current version wordpress install with the buddypress plugin turned on, also with the Group Documents plugin for group collaborative storage. 4 issues:

1. When I an account gets created, I want the default role to be “author”, I con’t find where to set this, but even if I could……

2. when I try to create an account, I get to the “Accounted Created” screen, but never get a confirmation email, and cannot login because am never given the chance to authenticate. What do I need to do to get accounts working right?

3. When trying to redirect our url to the site, when editing in the wordpress General Settings, when I change the “Site URL” to be our pointed url, and not the url that is the location of the wordpress install…. The site breaks. How can I get our url to point at the site correctly?

4. The menu items at the top of the page are controlled where? It has groups, forums, the blog page, and any static parent pages by default… but I can’t figure out where to set these to display how/where they’re displayed. Is this control possible easily?

[Paul Wong-Gibbs]

Ah, Bluehost

1. If you are running the multisite version of WordPress, on the super admin’s options there is a setting for default profile. Alternatively, there are lots of plugins that control this sort of setting on. I use a couple of role management plugins on a few sites but I’m not sure what’s best. Hopefully someone can recommend one.

2. If you disable BuddyPress, and register an account on the site (via WordPress), do you receive the email? If you don’t, it is either ending up in your email’s spam or your server is not configured to send emails correctly. However, since you’re on Bluehost, have a look at the bottom of this message first.

3. That site URL setting should match the URL of your site. I’m not sure what you mean by “pointed url”, but you should probably only change it if you have moved the site from one_domain.com to another_domain.com.

4. Depends on definition of “easy”; they are in the theme’s header.php.

Bluehost: We have seen issues with Bluehost previously. I do not know if all the issues still apply, but in general:

1) I suggest that you do not use simplescripts to install (or even WordPress).
2) RE: your email problem. I suggest you search this site for “Bluehost” as we have had lots of discussion around it previously but, from memory, https://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/mail-from/ might fix the problem (it has to be a valid email account, so you may need to create it first).

[jose]

Paul,

Thank you so much for your insight! Here’s what I’ve got now:

1. I’m pretty sure we’re using the single site version of WordPress(maybe this is known as the MU version?). It was installed through our server using SimpleScripts. I was aware of the plugin option, but didn’t want to get into that yet until I had the account creation issues taken care of. Thanks for the info.

2. Disabled the BuddyPress plugin, as well as the Group Documents plugin (and reverted to the default non-BuddyPress theme). Created an account, and got the confirmation email right away. The WP account registration was just “username”, and “email”… and WP emails the password. The BuddyPress registration required much more info. So without BP turned on.. Accounts worked.. with it turned on.. The account gets created, but no activation email gets sent out.. thoughts?

3. I’m referring to the WordPress setting: Site Address (url): “Enter the address here if you want your site homepage to be different from the directory you installed WordPress.” I’m trying to point the domain to sdcityrobotics.saltbored.com , and it will display as http://www.sdcrobotics.org (our domain).

4. Got it. I was just curious as to if there were some settings I was just totally missing.

BlueHost Issues !?!?

1. Ok don’t use SimpleScripts or WordPress.. Just install WP manually on my server, and then install the BuddyPress plugin manually? And that will get it to work?
2. I’ll definitely search around for BH. Thanks for the tip!

[Hugo Ashmore]

In respect of role management plugins I would recommend Justin Tadlocks ‘Members 0.1.1’ . Tested three out of around four or five available and found the other two mildly confusing but Justins was the most featured and usable with a useful selectable modular approach. Roles and Capabilities need to be understood though as it’s extremely easy to get things badly wrong if not sure what capabilities do what. Ability to create new Roles though does extend the flexibility of things quite a lot, even if they have the same capabilities it would allow for a form of pseudo user grouping.

[jose]

Ok Great news. The “Mail-From” plugin totally worked. The default address was previously set to a default email that didn’t exist!

The account gets created, the confirmation email gets sent and in testing out the functionality of a test user joining a group, posting documents, replies, and forum topics… Everything works except the Forum Post creation. Logged in as a test user (permission set as “author”.. from the Group Forums Directory, click add post, enter all the required text/tags.. and when submitted get a red bar across the screen error that says… “There was an error when creating the topic”.. and nothing gets created. Any thoughts? Is this a permission or forum issue? The Test User account can post to the activity area for the groups the account is in with no problems.

[Hugo Ashmore]

I’ve posted on this forum topic issue previously, but in a nutshell this can cure the issue, go into the group as admin access the admin settings for the group – admin->group settings and ensuring the create forum box is checked re save that initial page then try again to post a topic; hopefully that will ensure the table exists in the DB.

[jose]

hnla! Thanks for the feedback! I just read your solution while digging around myself…and gave it a try through the admin account. Still no go. I tried saving it unchecked… and then rechecking and resaving. same “error creating topic” problem.

[jose]

Reinstalled the forum integration through the “Forums Setup” section of the BuddyPress options. everything seems to work fine now!

[Hugo Ashmore]

yep that’s the other option to try glad it’s working.

[jose]

So what I have left to try is setting up the default author role to be able to create blog posts. This is where I was trying to get with messing with the permissions through a plugin. I don’t know how much I care about this feature.. because this introduces group members to the entire wordpress backend.. and I’d like to just have each account only make blog posts and edit nothing.

also… this may seem simple.. but how do i get the site to show with the url structure i described before?

[Hugo Ashmore]

Why can’t the author role create blog posts it ought to be able to that’s the point of the role!

[jose]

Ok I figured it out. The author role does have the ability to make blog posts… Its just that through their buddypress interfaced account.. they’re never given a link to —-> http://www.saltbored.com/sdcityrobotics/wp-admin/post-new.php… to create one. Where in the buddypress front end can they choose to “create a new post”. or to get to the back end WordPress interface to see the dashboard?

[Hugo Ashmore]

bp adminbar requires a little work in that respect, I’ve created my own set of links for users with elevated roles from ‘Subscriber’ have a look at :
https://codex.buddypress.org/buddypress-site-administration/modifying-the-buddypress-admin-bar/

It will give you some guidance to modifying the adminbar.

[jose]

thanks for the info about the admin bar. So there is no workflow built into BuddyPress that enables someone to post on the blog? If thats the case.. how is an account supposed to be able to know where to make a post.. or get to the back end of WordPress at all? Is this something thats missing from my install.. or a feature that doesn’t exist in BuddyPress?

Also.. Anyone have any tips on setting up my domain/subdomain/wp-install directory correctly so its all named correctly. I have a external domain set to the Bluehost name servers… a subdomain – sdcityrobotics.saltbored.com – set up to alias to the publichtml directory my install is in.. so how do i get everything to look like http://www.sdcrobotics.com/activity .. instead of http://www.saltbored.com/sdcityrobotics/activity?