Reply To: Adding Buddy Press Forums to Menu just generates blank page
Respect is EARNED. There is NO excuse for poorly written, sloppy, incomplete, often confusing, misleading instructions. While I’m new to Word Press, Buddy Press, bbPress I am a seasoned computer user, programmer, with over 30 years experience. If I get confused with the “instructions” I assure you others with much less experience will also.
One big gripe I have is those writing instructions for BuddyPress and bbPress make assumptions and throw out terms WITHOUT first defining them. That is the root of much of the confusion newbies to these plug-ins have resulting in much needless guessing, trial and error and time wasting.
I can say WordPress and it various plug-ins can be a nightmare to work with because of the above. Your comments actually confirm that.
Yes, I read the “instructions” and visited the shortcode page. Since shortcodes are typically “extras” one might add AFTER your site is basically working I glossed over the one that works.
My point here is since anyone installing bbPress or Buddy Press would logically want to make such additions a MENU CHOICE or what’s the point of having them that should be specifically explained in the instructions far more clearly that it is to avoid confusion.
What compounds the confusion is Buddy Press works very different than bbPress. The former automatically generates a listing of Groups by simply making a BLANK Groups page! That bbPress requires a shortcode to generate a list of forums isn’t explained anywhere in the main instructions and many like me will miss how to do it and spend countless hours hunting all over the web and asking for a solution. Again this points to sloppy incomplete instructions and yes, doing that does make me angry!
It would be illogical to assume anyone wishing to use bbPress forums would not make them a menu item. How to do that should be explained in the MAIN instructions not expecting users to wander off to various other pages and pick and choose some shortcode to see what happens. Even the correct shortcode [bbp-forum-index] is misleading in that “index” isn’t defined as to WHAT it will do. Again leaving end users to GUESS. Instructions that make users GUESS are incomplete and sloppy!
