I was looking for a simple forums plugin to add to a wordpress site and initially I tried bbPress, which seemed to meet my requirements very well.

Unfortunately when I discovered that it lacked private messaging, I was pointed in the direction of BuddyPress with the instruction to install it and then turn off any extras that I don’t need.

I’ve installed it, it works okay, so now I need to ‘turn off the extra bits’ – this is the part I need help with!

A bit of background about the site, it’s going to be support for patients receiving medical treatment, so they can discuss their treatment with other patients and also send private messages with their clinician.

As these people may not be too computer-savvy, it needs to be as simple as possible to use, with all unnecessary features turned off / hidden.

Also, as it’s discussing sensitive information it needs to be as anonymous as possible, so real names, avatars, identifying information etc, needs to be kept hidden.

I’ve looked and can’t find a general guide to ‘cutting down’ BuddyPress, the administration is quite limited to what is hidden and shown, so I presume I may have to go on a function by function basis.

Here’s the list of things which I would like to remove:

1. Real Names
2. Avatars (remove display of them all and options to change)
3. Only admin can create groups
4. Think the random ‘visit’ on top right of the bar might be confusing
5. Search box in the BuddyPress pages – is this duplicating the searchbox in the main site navigation?
6. I’m also little unsure of whether the Activities / Members / Groups / Forums navigation also unnecessarily duplicates the top admin bar. If I was just to have one link to go straight into the most important page, would it be ‘Groups’ for me?

If there is a guide to removing some of these things, please let me know, if not, I would appreciate help on a step by step basis!

Thanks
Ashley

[@djpaul Keymaster 13 years, 5 months ago]

Some of the changes you will need to make in your own theme. To start, have you turned off the BuddyPress Components that you aren’t using? Find these in wp-admin, in the BuddyPress menu, under “Settings.”

[@gobangashley Participant 13 years, 5 months ago]

Hi Paul, turning off Extended Profiles got rid of Real Names and Avatars (just need to change the CSS to remove the actual avatar placeholders) – any advice on removing the ‘Visit’ dropdown from the top right of the Buddy bar or removing the duplicate search box?

[@andrea_r Participant 13 years, 5 months ago]

Or, go back to using just bbpress and install a private messaging plugin if that’s all the extra you need?

https://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/private-messages-for-wordpress/
that’s just one i found.