BuddyPress.org

Hi,
I’m new to Buddypress (but not WordPress), so I may be missing something obvious here. Our client wants to have several user profile fields that allow users to type in what are essentially tags, e.g., which instruments they play from possibly hundreds of instruments. WordPress tags are perfect for this. They provide an input field with autocompletion, sorting and indexing, auto-generated pages for tags, and so on. WordPress tags also can be set up so that only admin/editor user types can add new tags (e.g., so a basic user doesn’t accidentally add a ‘paino’ tag instead of ‘piano’ as an instrument).

I can get this working on the default WordPress user profile by creating a custom taxonomy. However, the default profile fields don’t show up when a normal user edits their buddypress profile.

So I guess there are two questions:

1.) Is there already a way to incorporate tags/taxonomies in a Buddypress profile? The only thing I’m seeing is a text box, but that probably wouldn’t have autocomplete, loses the searchability and sortability of tags, etc. The checkbox and multi-select options will be tough since they may need to pick 6 items out of a few thousand (one of these will be languages, and there are around 7,000 of them!).

2.) If not, is there any documentation or examples of how to get a standard user profile field to show up in Buddypress’ member profile? I’m definitely willing to try custom coding to get it working.

Thanks in advance for any input or suggestions!