Last I looked, no, it isn’t possible and the code to manually implement such a feature wouldn’t scale very well. Disabling the Friends component in this instance is probably the smart thing to do, like @danbp suggests.
Probably it’s just in the spam folder. The activation email quite often seems to be marked as spam, unfortunately.
Mail server configuration can be tricky and I’d suggest you also contact your web host for support, as there may be other configuration changes that you or the host could make to improve the chances of the email being received correctly.
It’s unfair to say that we (the developers) are denying it. If we can recreate an issue, then it’s something we can fix. If we can’t recreate the issue but you can, it means we’re not testing in exactly the same way that you are, or that there’s something specific to your WordPress installation that’s affecting BuddyPress in some way. Clear, step-by-step instructions on how to recreate the bug help us track it down.
If you can update here or on that bbPress trac ticket, @petervandoorn, with those precise step-by-step instructions and as much detail as possible about your WordPress configuration, we can figure out a solution together.
Not aware of any BP-specific form plugins, but hopefully the majority of existing plugins will work — obviously the issue is how you want them integrated, which I guess is the issue you ran into.
Where exactly is “anywhere else”? This function needs to be inside the Groups template loop, and group-header.php is always inside that. Other parts of your template may not be.
So to recreate this: I install CF7, make a basic form, and when I post with that form, it should use AJAX? And when BP is active, it POSTs the form instead of AJAX, etc?
Slow page loads could be caused by many things. I’d start by asking your web host for initial support, and if they have any observations on what exactly is slow.
Take a peek in your web server’s PHP error log, and tell us what the errors was. It should be fairly obvious if you read through the message where the problem was coming from.
