[Aditya Singh]

Hi, I am new both to buddypress as well as wordpress, so i am not sure if this is the right place to ask…but I have a few questions. If someone can help me with them or guide me to the right place, it would be very helpful.
1. The groups that will be created should be available to all users of the site without the need to join the group. I do not want them to have any joining option
2. I would like a few recently active threads from forum on any group – both sticky as well as non-sticky – to appear on the group’s main display page as well.
3. I want to change the permalink style for both groups and forums. Instead of “/community/groups” or “/group”, i would like some option of my own; and likewise in case of “/forum”.
4. I want to add some extra fields in the description section of the groups.
5. I want to add some extra sections in the user’s profile section
6. For the groups, I want to straightaway upload data in the phpmyadmin backend using a excel uploader where-in I have data for all the groups I want to be auto-created once I upload the excel data into the table. My question on this is -> is it possible to do it this way? Also, can these groups have some default threads automatically created?

i had some other problems that i was able to solve on my own. just mentioning them here in case someone else needs a hand with them

Solved issues:
1. implementing autosuggest in the search field
2. Wanted the users to have their username as profile handlers, i.e. their profile-url to be “website.com/username”
3. When a user logs in, which page should he be redirected to.

its perfectly fine if there are no direct plugin options available for any or all of the problems, but even if i could be pointed in the right direction as to how and which files need to be edited, I might be able to do that on my own. I do have some knowledge of php.

Please help a noob. Much appreciated.

[Aditya Singh]

I am using wordpress 2.9.2 and buddypress 1.2.3

[Aditya Singh]

anyone??? guys..help me out here…

[r-a-y]

Here are some short answers to your questions:

1. A custom plugin is needed for this. Or you could use an auto group join plugin.

2. Could try modifying the group template in your child theme to add a forum loop.

3. Read this – https://codex.buddypress.org/how-to-guides/changing-internal-configuration-settings/

4. Requires a custom plugin. Look at the Groups API – https://codex.buddypress.org/developer-docs/group-extension-api/

5. What do you mean by this? Adding member information? If so, use BuddyPress’ xProfile setup located in the WordPress admin area.

6. You’ll have to code one yourself. There was an old plugin by Manoj Kumar that you could use as a reference point. Will need updating.
http://manojkumar.org/user-import-for-buddypress/

[Aditya Singh]

@r-a-y
Thanks. I did have a look at the auto group join plugin. I have a few follow-up questions though. As I saw on buddypress itself, it did not need me to “join” any group anywhere… The moment I posted on any group, I became a part of it…That would also serve the purpose to a large extent…
from the extra sections in the user’s profile section i meant -> there are some extra features that i am providing in my website…things that I have hard coded…I wanted to hard code them into the user’s profiles…

about everything else, i will do the needful and get back if there are further doubts…Thanks a lot…
and thanks about the plugin by manoj…i will have a look…and if i can code the plugin, I will share it here….

[r-a-y]

@stuffsone

re: #1. Auto-joining a group when posting in a forum already exists by default! Try it out on your test install.

[Aditya Singh]

@ray
I have created an excel parser/loader, that enables a user to import data directly into the table they want to from excel….as long as a user customizes the code-fragment depending on the fields present in the table, it is good to go…Will try to frame this into a plugin after 21st of this month…trying to get my site live by 21st…

re#4 (extra items in group header)
what i meant was : lets say I want to add “description2”, “description3”, “description4” besides the default “description”, and I want all of them appear on the group header page….now, I have modified the table structure so that it now has few more fields, i.e. “desc2”, “desc3” and “desc4”.
Here are my follow-up questions on this:
a. would it be a bad idea to do this way…i mean i have done it hoping that whenever buddypress is updated, my database will be left untouched…wouldn’t it?
b. I tried creating the functions for fetching desc2 etc based on function bp_group_description() in the bp-groups-templatetags.php, and calling it finally in group-header.php, but it does not work….am i doing something wrong??

Now this may be asking a lot but could you tell me what possibly could be going wrong here, or may be show be how this should be done, assuming a person has to
“fetch the details of a field XYZ in the table bp_groups”
OR
in case altering with the table bp_groups is a bad idea, I could create a second meta-table with my parameters that has the group_id of the group whom the values of these fields correspond to….but in this case also, how do i fetch the results?

[Aditya Singh]

thanks @r-a-y
the forum loop did solve one problem of mine…
that was great…when i saw the forum link on the homepage, i did think “if only i could pass an argument to take these group by group, and the link you shared had just that…

i needed them just on one of the pages….initially thought of adding a new one, but later clubbed it with home only…. one conditional statement+ur shared link, and this problem was resolved fully

[Aditya Singh]

queries 1 to 4 fully resolved…
5 and 6 almost…thanks everyone