Forum Replies Created
-
I think it’s worth considering turning optional components into plugins as long as discovery and onboarding are done REAL well. The plugin directory is definitely a way, but i’ve seen companies do one-click installs from inside the settings screens of the plugins themselves.
Also another subject – how often do we (the collective we) feature prominent, large, special, or niche BuddyPress powered sites? If developers see potential that might get them more involved in testing, etc. Problem is how to discover or find them on a constant basis. This goes back to a mention of mine of “marketing” earlier.
Thanks for the reply @imath. I was simply implying to look and see what they are doing – SOME of what they are doing I think fits into general interest (look at how they deal with media). They are doing research and it would be foolish to ignore some parts, even if it in the end it leads to ways we can mold it more toward BuddyPress thinking.
Sometimes you can lead my example, other times you can lead by taking something and making it better in some way.
There’s a balance with addons – too many and a user can get overwhelmed with choices and research but overall I lean toward simple as possible. Perhaps it’s something that is simple for a niche purpuse that uses BuddyPress “under the hood”. It’s not a great example but thinking about “how can I spin up a special kind of to-do app that I can add my friends and share and collab with, while still owning my data, control, etc”. Thought of this today while my kid was showing me what she does in Notion today.
Ok, so if the WordPress repo is our advantage – then how do we use that advantage? how do we stand out (from member sites and other social plugins)? how do we feature BB plugins that are trust worthy and maintainable that avoid people having to dive into thousands of plugins in this “important advantage”? Good questions, looking forward to hearing more from people about them.
I don’t believe BuddyPress is missing THAT many features. Part of this is also changing with the times. Which means maybe thinking a little differently – even if it’s me thinking differently from how I look at BuddyPress when I started with it so many years ago. ☮️
I might be too close to BuddyPress since using it since the 0.1 days (yes, that version is right). I do agree more with the comments so far about the “product fit” and some of that “vibe” feels like some people talking about where WordPress itself (which BP relies on) although I feel WordPress still fills many holes and has a long life to it. But there are two factors I consider to be competitors that offer attractive, “modern/hip”, and easier (in same cases) solutions:
– TikTok, Instagram, etc. social networks – the trend of posting content OUTSIDE your site and not truly 100% owning it. These are the “Wix” and “Medium” versions that WordPress exists with. They are easier to setup and the social mass effect can’t be beat. It would be neat though to have a BP-lite that could setup a TikTok like video sharing network (perhaps that could intergrate with 3rd parties). I’m not sure if there’s a “build this feature and it will help big” here, since if a user or client wants to use them you can’t stop them. But appeal maybe to the niche (which BuddyPress has always done well) and the customizers out there that maybe want something like them, or something that has a slimed down feature set with an attractive new theme/look.
– BuddyBoss. Surprised this hasn’t been brought up. Look at what they are doing in terms of features. The past few freelance projects that the cilents could have used BuddyPress on for new projects, they went and paid for BuddyBoss. My observations has been because of the (1) marketing, (2) features, and (3) continued support (the mobile app also maybe played a part although I’ve heard disappointing experiences about that). I know some don’t like BuddyBoss because they’ve forked BP and (as far as I know) really haven’t contributed anything back (GPL, open source, etc.) But if you’re looking for features, look at what this for-profit company is doing (big and small) because logically they are likely listening to their base and current customers and their actions and focus might be some input.
I do support a BuddyCamp (I used to have a BuddyCamp Miami way back… in 2010 I think?).
Some good BuddyPress plugins have been difficult to recommend because of their maintenance or lack thereof, with no fault to the authors. But BuddyPress always needs SOME plugins when being used for projects. Might be also nice for other plugin companies (say Yoast?) to promote their BuddyPress support.
I would love to see a new theme but not sure yet what direction to offer further $0.02 on that.
No real comments from a coding perspective – there are developers here with more experience in that. A “BuddyPress lite” plugin if you’re talking about “restarting from another plugin” might be worth some discussion. Imagine just spending 5 minutes with a few clicks and you have your own private, secure social network just for your friends/family. Simple. Easy. Modern looking, works with modern tech, etc.
I would love to be kept up to date on this (and even time permitting help). I’ll look at your comment/path as well. This would be something one would have to opt-in into – I can see this breaking plugins.
This request isn’t just for a single project – i’ve hit this same scenario more than once. Worthy of pursuit and allows BuddyPress developers to truly branch out even further what groups can do.
Thanks for the input @danbp and @sbradjesh.
Dan – thanks for the suggestion, but I was able to get the types all along. 🙂
Bradjesh – you’re right regarding the order but I thought i was able to do this before, especially working with plugins that I needed to work with the member type for some logic. I made adjustments based on your suggestion. 🙂Can you include a screenshot?
Are you sure this functionality isn’t coming from or be altered by another plugin or your theme?
Using Gravity Forms is one solution, yes. It’s easy once you have the plugin itself PLUS the “user registration” plugin they offer which i think is open only for the developer license. It completely replaces the BuddyPress registration form. I use it for a variety of sites that need more complex registration forms (there of course is a tradeoff, but one of the pluses is that Gravity Forms are rock solid against registration spam).
Thanks but that didn’t seem to do much either. I even checked back to other BP_Component examples and i’m using the same hooks. I’m guessing this is something “weird” (or something i’m not aware of) with bbPress. I just went ahead and created the bbPress forum and connected it to the BP group in my plugin manually. I hate to do that – if bbPress decides to change something my plugin is going to be out of date, but such is life.
Thanks for the attempts.
Thanks. Sadly this isn’t working out. I’m going to post this here in case someone can tinker with it (you’ll need BP and bbPress installed):
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/14006840/curriki-group-import.zip
Yeah, i’m trying to use the BP native functions and hooks. I have no problem with the BuddyPress flow – just when it comes to relying on bbPress to create the forums is when it falls apart.
If anyone figures this out, i’ll throw them some PayPal change for some coffee. 🙂
Thanks for the response. That in a nutshell is what i’m doing right now with the change you suggest. Loader.php loads the file that contains the code above via bp_loaded. Then i try to initialize my class CurrikiGroupImport. So it’s a chicken and egg thing – either I can init my class and get the plugin loaded and showing up in the WP admin menu and can’t get bbPress loaded first OR bbPress seems to load but my plugin doesn’t show up.
If it helps, I can zip up a simple version of the plugin and assuming you have BP and BBPRESS loaded you can give it a spin.
The change to ‘bp_ready’ gets past the “crapstop” but my plugin no longer shows up in the menu. Although i’ve always thought ‘bp_loaded’ was the proper hook here, for the moment i’ll take it.
Here’s the full bit of code. Perhaps i’m not init the class properly here?
function curgi_group_import_init() {if ( !function_exists('bp_forums_new_forum') ) { echo "crapstop"; exit; }
buddypress()->curgi_group_import = new CurrikiGroupImport();
}
add_action( 'bp_ready', 'curgi_group_import_init', 20 );
Furthermore, I can create a group with my plugin WITH the “this groups has a forum” checkmark (but remember – my problem is that i can’t ACTUALLY create the forum). I can go into the “groups” area in the WP backend and simply edit the group and hit ‘update’ and WordPress DOES create the group. So it works there, but not in myplugin. I’m thinking that bbPress simply isn’t being loaded or activated prior to my plugin but I can’t figure it where or why.
@shanebp – I have looked at that. function groups_new_group_forum is called by function groups_edit_group_settings which i’m calling. The “checkbox” for groups to have a forum is updated but no forum is created.
Here’s the lines of code in groups_edit_group_settings() in bp-groups-functions.php
// If forums have been enabled, and a forum does not yet exist, we need to create one. if ( $group->enable_forum ) { if ( bp_is_active( 'forums' ) && !groups_get_groupmeta( $group->id, 'forum_id' ) ) { groups_new_group_forum( $group->id, $group->name, $group->description ); } }I believe the bp_is_active( ‘forums’ ) never is true for when my plugin calls it. Therefore the groups_new_group_forum never gets run. I tried calling the groups_new_group_forum directly but that doesn’t work either. Here’s the key part in groups_new_group_forum:
$forum_id = bp_forums_new_forum( array(
'forum_name' => $group_name,
'forum_desc' => $group_desc
) );
That bp_forums_new_forum doesn’t exist. So I could change my oringial code example above to this to illustrate the same problem (the result of the code below is ‘crapstop’ showing):
function curgi_group_import_init() {if ( !function_exists('bp_forums_new_forum') ) { echo "crapstop"; exit; }
}
add_action( 'bp_loaded', 'curgi_group_import_init' );
Hi @henrywright. Thanks for responding.
BTW, I want to apologize a little… for some reason I thought you were the author of the plugin… but Jeff Farthing is. That’s what I was picking on you (thought you said it was your plugin in another thread?).
So with that being said – plus your response – i’m going to climb inside later and see if i can locate the issue. If anyone sees anything in the meantime, feel free to add to this thread. Either way, i’ll plan on updating the plugin’s support forum in some fashion soon (thanks @rosyteddy).
Just wanted to say thanks (sorry for the delayed response) and i’ll look into this. Report back one way or the other.
Sorry, when i said “trying this one more time” I had difficulties posting this to the forum. Got white screen. So ignore that attitude.
Thanks. I’m holding to make sure this is what the client wanted, but i do eventually want to remove the unused avatar photos.
Think i figured it out. There was some read/write permissions on the folders – i changed everything to full permissions (this is on my local server) and it SEEMS to be working. I’m also noticing that no additional files are added “one level up” either. Still, no past avatar photos (-bpfull.jpg, -bpthumb.jpg) deleted.
Here’s the before (current avatars created the normal cropped BP way):
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/14006840/before.png
Here’s the after (notice the additional graphic one level up):
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/14006840/after.png
I’m looking over the code again top to bottom. If i understood how in this process BP knows where and what to look for in an avatar (filename wise), i properly wouldn’t be asking this stupid of a question.
I’ll also take a look at bp_core_avatar_handle_upload ($file) as well.
The old avatar images, generated by the normal BP avatar upload process. This is for a single user (the logged in user) only. The $args array seems good before the core cropping function is called.
Awesome. Thanks for clearing that up. 🙂
Odd. I used the code you referred to in your first post and added a breakpoint. Saw the break on members directory but not on the group members page, which is why i concluded what i did.
I’ll give your new example and the old one additional consideration though. Thank you VERY much for your reply and with any success, i’ll update this ticket.
I personally hope my ticket request is considered though. 🙂
Ok, you can’t mean edit BP Core… what exactly do you mean by manually?
@shanebp – those examples and hooks don’t apply to group member pages (which you assumed correctly, that’s what i’m currently playing with).
