BuddyPress

(This is a re-post as I could not re-edit the original and the last post does not appear to be repliable to).

Although touched on in topics such as:

http://buddypress.org/forums/topic/how-do-i-create-a-plain-ol-normal-forum#post-38447

http://buddypress.org/forums/topic/how-to-create-a-forum-that-isnt-associated-with-a-group

and elsewhere.

• I was wondering how to create a general, or a number of general discussion forums for all users that did not require them to be invited or sign up for a group, e.g. a ‘newcomers’ forum, tech support forum or ‘commonroom’ type?

That is, a forum or forums for which membership is automatically given to all. If not, could I suggest it as an option to offer?

In one topic, it was suggested to install a second BBpress, copy and paste the config file and then use it to add plugins and add forums etc.

I find this does not work. It DOES work for creating forums in the second installation but they do NOT show up in the integrated forum installed with Buddypress 1.2.

• Is there more detailed discussion of the philosophy and direction behind the new integrated forum design than, here:

http://codex.buddypress.org/developer-discussions/buddypress-forum/

e.g. will an admin dashboard re-appear or be integrated with WPMU/BP in the future?

Thanks.

bump … thanks.

Perhaps one solution would be a default with which ALL users were automatically subscribed to a single shared sitewide group? … Custom forum groups could be created later.

I find it hard to conceive of why a social networking site would NOT have a single place of communication, e.g. for tech support, newcomers, general discussion.

Why does discussion have to locked up into custom made groups.

This goes against the general level of understanding of most users many of whom will not get technical things and overcome difficulties like joining groups and so on.

“KISS … keep it simple stupid.”

I agree– any answers?

I find it hard to conceive of why a social networking site would NOT have a single place of communication, e.g. for tech support, newcomers, general discussion.

Create groups for “Tech Support”, “Newcomers”, “General Discussion”. I consistently fail to understand how people don’t get this. I’m in the process of converting BuddyPress.org to this model, perhaps then people will get it.

Also — you DO NOT need to join a group to post in a public group forum. If you post, you join automatically.

This is the sort of thing I’m talking about: http://help.deanjrobinson.com/

I do agree with the way you are making things work/want things to work but a lot of users (myself included) find it a bit difficult to adjust to. It would be nice if there was a simple way to make certain groups be excluded from most of the display filters and/or make their forum appear to be ‘sticky’ at the top of the forum directory. I was planning on writing a plugin to this effect actually.

It would be nice to make it so the groups are hidden to everyone but site admins (or users with some kind of global forum moderation cap) so it would also be possible for these admins/mods to ban people from specific forums…

I’m getting a bit carried away with myself here. I’ll look at making a small/simple plugin first I guess.

Nice layout on the Dean Robinson site (linked above). I think that’s probably a large part of the answer, it’s about how we present groups / forums to our users. A lot of usability is tied up in the presentation – something I’m having to work on for my own site.

@D Cartwright do you need to completely hide the groups, or could you just remove them from the menu(s) if you only want users to use the forums? Or turn groups / forums off and install stand-alone forum even?

see this

http://buddypress.org/forums/topic/wp-with-bp-plugin-how-do-i-get-rid-of-groups-and-keep-forum#post-39818

I don’t particularly want to install bbpress separately. I’d quite like to extend the functionality for ‘standard’ buddypress setup.

The setup on http://help.deanjrobinson.com is good, but with various group extensions you may not want the group itself being visible to general site users. I can imagine that this will become even more of an issue now that the activty stream functionality is starting to outstrip the forum functionality – I’m finding lots of users aren’t bothering with their group forums anymore and are instead using activity stream to hold discussions.

Andy am I understanding it correctly to think of it in the following way because I think I get it now?:

Think of each group like a forum category or section on other traditional forums and suddenly Buddypress is like super forum on steriods.

So in other words you will be turning all the forum categories like “Installing Buddypress” , ” How-to and Troubleshooting”, “Creating and Extending” etc etc in groups with the same name?

If that is right I think what is throwing people off is the use of the term “group” especially since many people are used to it being used in other ways on other social networks

zageek: Yes, exactly. It’s just terminology. A group is like a forum, but with a whole lot more power.

OK that makes a lot more sense when you think of it like that. I can see a lot of potential in this because normally with a forum category all you can do it post, groups add extra features.

The only thing I would like would be to make groups that are public in the sense that you don’t have to subscribe to them, sort of like a type of group that any registered user is a member of without having to subscribe

The welcome pack plugin can do this. I’m not sure if it’s been updated for 1.2 yet though.