So what are the core developers thoughts then? I think it’s important to do something about all this soon as just releasing 1.3 with the whole pages system and then 6 months down the line changing it to something else just sucks.
@Travel-Junkie I wouldn’t call it innovation. Using pages for such functionality is a hack.
@MrMaz I like the idea of BuddyPress being split up, but not as a theme, I think it should remain a plugin, but just not so robust.
The problem the WordPress community is making is trying to make it so that literally anybody can build a website with a click of a button. While this may sound good, it means that we have too much automated crap going on and not enough flexible development. I really dislike that BP can be even added from the directory and has a default theme, it would of been much better manually done as a bunch of code you add to your own theme as the bp-template-pack does, and then the core code as a simple plugin. But that’s beyond the scope of this topic. The main problem at the moment is the whole WP model of using pages to fake stuff, when pages are for static chunks of content and nothing else. BP had it nailed before, we just needed more flexibility in the code behind to mess with the URLs more, the pages actually make it more robust than before as it means admins can mess the site up!
Content types sound interesting as Members, Groups, Forums etc are all types of content. Would be good to hear some input from the main developers and would be good to get this changed before releasing 1.3 and having everyone create fake pages.
Yes pages can be deleted, but that’s not the big problem, rather the fact that the plugin uses pages at all to accomplish something so simple. What was wrong with the current system? It’s important to make the software easy, but somethings should be left to the developer of the site and not the admin guy who just writes blog posts, I much preferred changing the URLS in the code behind, but a settings page would be much nicer and slicker than the messy pages.
Here is another point: The pages don’t add that much flexibility anyway as most of the urls are still coded behind e.g. all the urls inside the members directory such as settings, profiles, followers, etc.
I think their should be a proper coded page in the plugin somewhere that has the urls in the system where a developer can go and edit to their hearts content to get the system they want. So for example say I didn’t want the members slug on profiles and just wanted: domain.com/driz/activity, using code behind would give true flexibility instead of using the pages which are for static content and NOT url building!
A project I’m currently building uses the network feature of WP 3 (formally WPMU) so I have been able to set BuddyPress up on a second blog called ‘community’.
Would love to know how you would do it if you only using one blog like BuddyPress.org is. Any updates on this?
Using WP Pages sounds messy to me because then you would just end up with a bunch of blank pages that used special templates. You don’t have pages for other dynamic sections in WP like archives, searches, etc. It should be left as coded back-end, and if need be some option page if people feel the need that general people should be able to do it (personally I think it should be left back-end).
Any updates on this? What does BP 1.3 bring to the table that would change things regarding the permalinks? Using WP Pages sounds really screwy, especially seen as BP currently doesn’t rely on this so I can’t see why it suddenly would.
I doubt they are using WordPress pages. Would be a pretty odd thing to do creating a bunch of fake pages to mask the URLs for the different BP sections.
Haven’t tried it yet. The problem I see is that I will have groups with all of my groups and then say for example events or courses but those will also be viewable inside of the groups area as they will be part of it.
bugger why are they hard coded like that!
Works fine!
