How about making a single group and then keep everything here. Silly workaround, i know.
There must be some way of using it without the group.
BTW why do you wanna use BuddyPress if you don’t want to use any of its feature. bbPress might be a better choice. Would like to hear from your side.
Discussed in this thread. You’ll have to install bbPress separately and integrate it with WordPress.
the other solution is to block others to create groups, and you as admin create as much groups as needed, with a forum for each, and disable all other features from it.
groups help subscribe to a forum, so people can participate freely and subscribe to receive news from it.
@nexia
How can group creation be restricted in 1.2 ?
@nexia – Wouldn’t that also eliminate anyone NOT in the specific group from being able to use the forum though?
@ashfame – I don’t think there is an option in BP. Searching I found this topic regarding a plugin, but it looks like it’s only partially effective as some people were posting that it was not allowing any group creation.
@Cyndy, nope actually, as we’re refering to creation, not usage…
btw, i bumped an old thread related to that exact situation, i know there was a plugin version for 1.1 that was doing that exact thing…
Hi,
thanks for the answers so far!
Setting up a separate bbBress is not really what I want, because it somehow would be overhead and a lot of additional for maintaining and everything.
Restricting Group creation sounds good. However this would require that all users are automatically created as members for the default group which will be used for getting the Forums. Additionally that would require some work on the theme, so that the users don’t get to see any Group related stuff.
I guess all this would be possible and I’ll look into it, but it’s not really what I had hoped…
@ashfame:
Just because I don’t want to use Groups, BuddyPress is still well suited for my project. I currently have most of the other components disabled as well (like Blogs, Friends, Activity Stream), but nevertheless there are enough features that I can use for a private community. I especially like the easy administration (from within the WordPress Frontend basically), because I don’t want the users to be in the WordPress admin area.
All of this is superior to a plain bbPress installation, because I get all the WordPress features with it “for free”. So basically this enables me to keep the current website for the project but add some community features to it.
Regards,
Tobias
@cyndy @nexia
yes I know about the code for 1.1
That didn’t work for 1.2
@tobias
Ok! I get it.
There is a plugin which redirects every user (other than admin) back to the homepage or the last page on request to the dashboard
Hi,
@ashfame
Really? It would be really cool to have that plugin! Unfortunately I couldn’t find anything. Do you have a link or name for me?
Thanks!
Tobias
Hi,
thanks for the link. I hadn’t found those plugins before, because I was looking for a plugin specifically for BuddyPress.
And most of those plugins do only redirect upon login through the original form, however they do not redirect when manually adding the “/wp-admin/” to the URL after being logged in. However, I was able to solve that with a custom filter hook, that checks if the visitor has admin rights in “admin_init”.
Regards,
Tobias
I need a developer to make a version of BP with no groups, only a forum, where someone can compose a posting, and when it is submitted be asked to login or register, if not logged in already. It is very important that login/register take place at the backend. I am willing to shell out. Thanks, Roger
The idea that you must be in a Group to post to the Forum seems incredibly odd to me. All the above workarounds and solutions are messy, no? Why can’t we just have the forum behave like a forum, allowing anyone who has an account to post a thread?
Am I missing something here?
It’s like Facebook.
There are no open forums in Facebook, is there?
@r-a-y
In a perfect world, it would be nice to have both, fully-integrated. In some communities, there are some forum subjects that apply to everyone…for example, Support Forums.
It would be nice NOT to have to join a separate “support” group to participate.
I do buy that group forums are the way of the future…but i see a need for non-group forums as well.
I would hope BP doesn’t simply ape Facebook as it’s model?
Look at Ning as an example of how another SN does things; they have a single dedicated site forum if you want that and I think to some extent it’s easier for users to grasp that concept?
Parts of the necessary plugin:
1) Upon activation, create “General” BP group, with forums enabled
2) After creation, have a script add all existing members
3) Hook into registration so that new members join the group
4) Write a function that filters the content of bp_has_groups everywhere it appears to remove the General group from all group listings
5) Sit back and watch the (free and open source) jack roll in
Someone please build it so that I can stop seeing this argument recur on these forums every few weeks. If I didn’t have seven thousand other things to do I’d do it myself but hey – I just took all the thinking out of it by drawing a map 
or just install BBpress on WP 
Some people are just refusing to understand the BuddyPress Groups concept. If you want something that acts as a site wide discussion forum, create a Group. As Boone’s suggested, it’s not hard to auto-add new and existing members to it; he’s even listed what a plugin would need to do for it.
Someone please build it so that I can stop seeing this argument recur on these forums every few weeks. If I didn’t have seven thousand other things to do I’d do it myself but hey – I just took all the thinking out of it by drawing a map
i’m wrapping up a buddypress group forum extras plugin which brings in some bbpress plugins to the bp-group forums (sigs, bbcode or shortcode, quote)… this might be tempting; especially the support forum plugin. i’ll look into it.
@djpaul
Do you mean the “auto group join” plugin?
Anyone want to work on Boone’s plugin idea?
I’ve gotta think this would be really popular…
DJPaul … without wishing to cause offence,
it is not that we “do not understand the BuddyPress Groups concept”, it is that we don’t think it is a good idea.
Most of us think it is a much better idea to have the ability to have a general forum, or general forums, that all members can use without having to join a group.
+1 for an option for forums without groups. I have a client who wants to move to BuddyPress, but he (reasonably) fears that groups would confuse his users.
