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Duplicating the Wire, adding fields

  • Avatar of Paperrobot
    PaperRobot
    Participant

    @paperrobot

    4 years, 1 month ago

    I’m not a programmer at all, and my attempt to simply rename the directory and bp-wire.php didn’t work out, so I’m coming to you all to ask for advice.

    I’m looking for a plugin that takes user data, specific to their user account, and posts it just like the wire. I need added fields instead of just the one wire field, but that’s a side problem for now.

    Ideally, I could just clone the wire, name it wire2, and have two pieces of functionality that are basically complete dupes of each other.

    On top of having the wire functionality, you could have something like special story posts, restaurant reviews, whatever. Like twitter asks “what are you doing right now”, you could duplicate the wire functionality to ask all sorts of questions on the same site, keeping them separate and distinct.

    That’s the broad usage description. To make it more functional, adding fields would be amazing. Instead of having one block of text, you could ask the question “What are you listening to right now?” and have separate fields for the band and song, for example. From there you could add a rating, a block of text for notes or a review, whatever form fields you wanted.

    In the long term, a plugin that does this would be amazing. For my problem in the short term, doing it manually is just fine. I just have no idea how to do it, and my one guess didn’t work out.

    So, first of all, how do I get two wires up and running — let’s say wire and wire2. From there, I think I can figure out the additional fields, but I’m sure you’ll hear back from me if I can’t.

Viewing 4 replies - 1 through 4 (of 4 total)
  • Avatar of Paperrobot
    PaperRobot
    Participant

    @paperrobot

    4 years ago

    Hey all–

    Any thoughts on this? I figure there has to be a simple way to have something like wire2 run right along side of the wire. Any guidance would be helpful.

    Avatar of Paperrobot
    PaperRobot
    Participant

    @paperrobot

    4 years ago

    so, in thinking about this more, the wire is actually entirely wrong for this. where are the status updates for BuddyPress? THAT’S what would be most effective in adding an additional field to.

    I saw they’re on their way as part of the core package, but has anyone built a good plugin yet?

    Avatar of David Lewis
    David Lewis
    Participant

    @takeo

    4 years ago

    It would only be awesome if people actually answered the pre-set questions and if the others on the site cared about the answers. How much structure do you want to impose on people’s social interaction? It’s a good question. For instance, I rarely if ever use the “buckets” in the buddypress.org forums… I only look at the “latest posts” area.

    As for implementing what you’re talking about… you need a programmer. I’m not sure exactly what your goal is but from what you’ve said… it does not sound simple… there would be programming involved.

    p.s. Wire vs. Status seems like semantics to me… same difference.

    Avatar of Paperrobot
    PaperRobot
    Participant

    @paperrobot

    4 years ago

    I think if you look at how many people (including myself) look at a BP site, it actually does seem reasonable to assume that people would conform to the questions and care about the answers. As I see it, rolling your own facebook is nice, but probably not entirely practical or necessary — once a true alternative pops up, there’s usually a standard alternative for a while until the next comes along.

    Personally, I feel BP is wonderful for smaller niche communities where that structured social interaction is, in many ways, the selling point. A music site that asks “what are you listening to right now?” a cooking site that asks “what are you cooking right now?” etc. Connecting people along that shared niche interest, I think, provides value.

    In some ways, BP already supports this by giving admins the option. I’m thinking specifically with respect to the profile options you have with categories and questions for users. “What’s your favorite song?” or “What’s your favorite food?” would be totally logical there, and I’d love to see (and plan to try to implement one way or another) the same thing for status.

    It would be amazing to see it built in for status updates when that rolls out (which I’m hoping is still this summer). The ability to add fields, mark their importance, and even customize the way they render in search results and things would be very, very nice. Sort of like how you template a WP entry and can customize how it displays in various places. I realize all of that is much harder than a simple text area and pulling the most recent data out of the db, but it would add a lot in terms of flexibility for niche networks.

    Thanks for the guidance on programming. I’ll figure it out somehow.

    (I actually thought wire v. status was semantics too at first, but wire is more like facebook’s wall, where people can post and conversations can be two-way. Status is more personal for users, something larger and untouchable by others.)

Viewing 4 replies - 1 through 4 (of 4 total)

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