[justbishop]

Hey all

I’m on the home stretch of getting my WP+BP site officially opened, and thought I’d post it here for critique. The idea of the site is a BP based community of buyers and sellers of crafts and “work-at-home-mom” (WAHM) made items, as well as hosting for WAHM shops using WP 3.0.1 in multiuser mode.

http://www.clothunderground.com

The Community: based on Buddypress. Pretty self explanatory.

The Shops: each shop is a child blog of the main site. I’m using WP Custom CSS to allow users to make cosmetic changes to the Blix theme, and eShop for the eCommerce solution. WordPress seems pretty overwhelming to my users, so I’ve also written a custom library of tutorials (in the footer of the main site pages). I haven’t yet found a plugin that makes the hosting term payment/shop creation process automated, so I’m doing that manually at this time.

Extras: I know that I haven’t really done much in the way of customizing the default BP theme, but it’s only because I’ve been busy doing functional customizations…

* The Street: I’m using the main site’s blog function as a classifieds post for members to buy/sell their used items on (a very popular feature for this type of audience). I’ve used Adminimize to limit what the users see on the add post screen, custom fields that allow them to enter URLs to 4 remotely hosted images (Photobucket), disabled file (image) uploading to keep my disk space, and another plugin to keep them from seeing everyone else’s posts in the admin panel post list.

* Member Feedback System: It’s important on a site like this that buyers and sellers can leave feedback for one another with details on how the transaction went for others to see. I pieced something together (see the ridiculous process here: http://wordpress.org/support/topic/any-plugin-similar-to-ebays-user-feedback-member-rating-feedback) that seems like it will work beautifully! Check out the “feedback” button on my test user’s profile: http://www.clothunderground.com/members/test

* Customized Groups Page: I just pieced this together the best I could. Nothing else out there was working for my audience, who are more often than not coming from vBulletin based sites. Buddypress’ group/forum system is still uber confusing for them, but this was the best I could do.

* Sitewide Search: Using the Sitewide Search Pages plugin, I’ve created a child blog that pulls in info on posts published across the CU network. Shoppers are able to search using the form in the header, and browse a list of all CU shop items matching their search. There’s also a wordpress.com style tags page that displays all tags used in item posts sitewide, for a different shopping experience.

* CU Points: I’m using Cubepoints and CP Buddypress integration to award points to members for activity. Normal members can use theirs to buy anything that anyone (in a CU shop or on The Street) is selling for points, and shop owners can use points to purchase featured shop ad space or up to 20% off of their hosting fees.

Anyway, please check it out and let me know what you think! Small changes might be happening throughout the day, but it’s pretty much ready for the world right now!

[modemlooper]

I would remove the border radius from the top of the content area. Looks good.

[justbishop]

Gah! Forgot about that. Should be done now. Thanks!

[techguy]

Looks great. I’m in the same home stretch. I’m finishing 2 more features planning to officially launch it on Monday. Woot!

Anyway, just a few thoughts on your home page. I like how you have the 3 things that people can do on your site listed there at the top. The problem is that all 3 look the same and so I skipped over them and kept going down. I’d create a different image for each of the 3 things that will attract my eye and make me want to read what it is. Then, I can identify which I belong with and go from there. Along those same lines, you might want to consider changing it from the verb to the noun. Say Shopper instead of Shop and Seller instead of Sell. I think people relate to that better and will click through knowing which noun they associate with when they visit your site.

I hope this helps.

[justbishop]

That does, actually! I’m involved in a trade right now with a graphic designer, so I’ll ask her what she could come up with as far as individual graphics for “shop” “sell” and “connect”. Great Idea! She did the grungy take on the recycle symbol that’s up there now, so maybe she can come up with little icons in the same style

Thanks for the feedback, and good luck with your site!

[techguy]

It took me a second to get the recycle symbol. I thought they were birds at first. Then, I got they were arrows. Then, I saw the tagline and made the connection. Maybe if it were more triangle I would have gotten it quicker.

[justbishop]

Hmmm…thanks. Maybe I’ll ask if she can show me a triangular version

[Shifra]

I love your site, both the concept and the look. I’m going to pass on the link because I know a lot of WAHM/crafters and others who would love it too. Good luck with it!

[justbishop]

@shifra: thanks so much! I appreciate any traffic I can get right now

[justbishop]

Added a modified version of the groups widget that displays group avatars for the groups a member belongs to (the top 10 most recently active) on their profile, directly under their user avatar. Hovering over the group avatars shows the group name and number of members in the tooltip

I’ve also recently added a “mark as favorite” link (in my case, a small heart graphic) next to the title of all posts sitewide (except those tagged as blogs or galleries) to allow members to “favorite” items in the shops. Currently looking for code that would allow me to display the top X most favorited item posts in my main site sidebar, if anyone knows how to do that!

[justbishop]

“Mark as Favorite” icon has now been moved into the admin bar, and only displays on child site posts (it’s used to power a “wishlist” feature for items from the shops of my child sites).

[techguy]

I like the groups their apart of. Would you mind sharing your code for that? I’d probably want it in a widget in the sidebar instead of under the profile, but could be adapted from your code I’m sure.

[justbishop]

@crashutah: no problem, here’s what I have in my theme functions.php to create the new widget (I have it named “profile_BP_Groups_Widget”, but you could change that to whatever, of course):

http://pastebin.com/AUnUNbpM

It just creates a normal new widget, so if you wanted to put it in an existing sidebar, you could just drag it on over. I just widgetized the area under the member avatar for my site. I do have the size of the group avatars being controlled by a div wrapped around the widgetized area, so you might want to add something of the sort around the code in the actual widget so that you can control those via CSS.

[apwinthrop]

What calendar plugin are you using?

[justbishop]

https://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/calendar/

[apwinthrop]

Thanks – i assume the submission form was custom via Contact Form?

[justbishop]

yep, trusty old Contact Form 7:

https://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/contact-form-7/

[Felipe Gomez]

Can anyone help me set this up for my buddypress site? I’m a broke college student so I can’t pay anyone to do it. I wish I could, would anyone out there like to help a kid out? contact me please: noisetrend @gmail.com