@Hysteriux Sorry if my comment assumed you weren’t familiar with open source projects. I apologize that it came across that way. My point was just to highlight that the shortcomings of the website, descriptions, possibilities, examples, etc are due to BuddyPress being open source that a lot of the descriptions of what it can do are done by volunteers (as you know). BuddyPress currently has a great group of programmers actively working on it, but doesn’t have nearly as many other people working on the “marketing” and “communication” side of it like many of the other large open source projects you mentioned have. This is still a major need in my opinion for the BuddyPress project.
Plus, as you mention, BuddyPress isn’t like many of the other open source projects where it was purpose built for something specific (blogging, forums, etc) or at least that’s not how it’s evolved. So, it’s quite a challenge to describe what BuddyPress can do since it’s being used in so many different ways. I think the Showcase page was/is an attempt at trying to feature the ways BuddyPress can be used: https://buddypress.org/showcase/
Outside of the showcase, I’m not sure anyone’s come up with a better way to show the various permutations that are possible with BuddyPress and how it’s being used or no one’s had the time to implement a new way to communicate it. I think the best way is to try it out and play with it to see.
“I’m just kindly asking for examples of constructive, every-day use of it. What the devs actually intended BP’s role to be and function to fill. “
Since you asked so kindly, here’s my take on a few ways that BuddyPress is being used (in no particular order):
-Group Centric – Communities organized around a BuddyPress group and interaction in the group while leveraging other things like profiles, messaging, etc lightly.
-Forum Centric – Communities organized around Forum discussions while leveraging other things like profiles, messaging, etc lightly.
-Blog Centric – Adding community features around a blog or network of blogs.
-Profile Centric – The profile is the centerpiece of the community and you create interactions between profiles.
-Wiki (plugin) centric – Some take a BuddyPress plugin and make that the core of their website (like the wiki plugin) and then lightly use the other things like profiles, messaging, etc lightly.
I’m sure there are more creative ways it’s being used. I hope this helps you better understand different ways to use BuddyPress. Another place to see some real world examples is: http://www.bpinspire.com/
@Hysteriux I think the challenge your facing isn’t necessarily with BuddyPress itself, but with open source projects in general. Open source means that everything you see here and all of the documentation is contributed by the community. If you don’t like the way that BuddyPress is presented then you as a member of the community can learn the system and work to change the presentation, tutorials, etc that are available to learn what BuddyPress can do and how to get the most out of it for a new person.
The point being that as an open source project it’s all community driven, so if something is missing then no one in the community has volunteered to do that piece. Maybe you’re the right person to help out with that part of the project. I’m sure it would be very welcome.
I don’t think that’s a bug. I think I’ve seen the same. The activity for sure isn’t deleted. I’m not sure they’re connected, so it might be hard to remove it.
Each group creates its own forum. So, just create a group for each category and a forum for that group will be created. That should work for you I think.
The first part is simple. Make sure you’re using WPMU (even if you don’t use the extra blog features). Then, there’s a configuration option to restrict registration to certain domains.
I haven’t tested the changing the email after the fact, but you’ll probably have to filter something to make it possible for them to change their email since I’m pretty sure it will still require the specified domains if you don’t tell it not to.
I’d have to look into how to send custom fields to Paypal, but then you could just add it to your child theme in the group-header.php (or hook it if you prefer). Then, just use bp_group_name() or something like that to get the name of the group and put that into the PayPal link as a custom field.
Unfortunately, there’s no way to do this. If you activate it, it activates for all. Although, there’s been a lot of discussion and people interested in what you’re trying to do. Just no developer that’s stepped up ready to build it.
Bluehost might be the best option for WordPress (I use it myself), but it’s far from the best option for BuddyPress. It can work with BuddyPress, but not with any scale and you have to deal with little things like configuring the mail from plugin, or setting up the email address that BP uses. Either fix works for Bluehost.
I’d say that BuddyPress is better for people that want to have their own identity on the network and they want to interact with other people on the network outside of the forum. A forum is better for discussion of topics.
@Mouchoirs Do a search for “Private Buddypress site” or something like that and you’ll find lots of threads on how to redirect non-logged in users to the login or registration page.
@djpaul,
Seems like you should be able to just replicate the user account creation calls on another page right? This is something I was considering doing for my project. Basically, someone could upload a list of email addresses and names, and it would create the person’s account, email them a temp password and they’d be good to go. Yes, I know WP use to do temp password and took that out, but in this case it might be useful to do.
That’s quite a few blogs you have your network. Nicely done. How are you tracking the Google Adsense across the network? You could use channels, but you can’t create that many channels and there’s no automated way to make channels. How do you know which blogs are generating the adsense revenue?
I’d also love to hear what social components you see used most between the various blogs, and if you use any other plugins to “connect” the blogs across the whole network.
One might say that only doing the ID and modifying the javascript for Google Adsense is against their TOS. I haven’t looked for a while, but I think when I saw a similar discussion they said something like Google doesn’t allow you to modify the javascript they provide.
Of course, the argument the other way is how would they know if you modified it that way?
