Forum Replies Created
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I don’t believe their is such a thing as “buddypress forums”, I believe buddypress requires bbpress for it’s forum capabilities.
WordPress MU will scale without question beyond the needs of any individual providing enough server backend power.
BBpress as a stand alone should be able to scale large enough for most people. Due to a the different nature of forum database structure, it isn’t as easy to breakup among many servers as a the mu blogs are. An active forum can easily have 100k’s of posts, and I’m not aware of a way to archive older posts into backup tables. BBpress uses 1 table for all posts, it would be possible (there might even already be a plugin to do this) to move each forum to a seperate table, and therefor possibly a separate server.
My concern would be for the XML-RPC mechanism used to talk to the forums. This was designed, with good caching, but on a very large buddypress install with 100’s of active groups and 10000’s of members I wonder how much overhead the xml-rpc adds compared to a straight database lookup. It does allow for the bbpress to be moved to a secondary server, which is good, and is safe as it stores a bbpress creditials and not database creditals if the admin account happened to get compromised. The nice part is, the it was written with the bbpress_live class, which could be replaced with any other class. So someone could, if so desired actually rewrite the class to talk to a vbulletin forum or other solution. It could even do direct database lookups and inserts if desired. I’m sure we will see this in the near future, as some large vbulletin sites may want to add the social abilities of buddypress, and maintain their forums, as buddypress groups.
I have only used BBpress inside of Buddypress, so I haven’t yet had to deal with scaling issues, as I beleive mine has about 45 posts total.
Any Thoughts?
Brad
The simple way, is just write them as static pages in the admin blog and then hardcode links to them in the horizontal menu below the admin bar. This would be a good way to add a help section, as it allows you to edit it in the wp editor, and can also promote other people as editors and allow them to edit it also.
What sounds backwards, but might be good for some sites, is use a simple wiki for help. As the software changes and methods and practices changes allow the visitors to change the documentation incase you don’t get a chance to update it. Also will allow them to write in non geek, so other members might understand better.
Brad
yes,
that is the standard theme applied to the initial blog.
Be warned, you may have problems with some features. It is not recommended to be used on normal wordpress.
I like the idea of having “thumbnails” of uploaded videos in the wirepost. Facebook does it, and does it pretty well. How sizable is the viewer? Could we embed a viewer into the wire?
Also date for release? Weeks, days months?
Thanks,
Brad
After a few more hours of head banging, I have figured it out.
bp-core.php
starting at line: 18
/* These components are accessed via the root, and not under a blog name or member home.
e.g Groups is accessed via: http://domain.com/groups/group-name NOT http://domain.com/andy/groups/group-name */
define( ‘BP_CORE_ROOT_COMPONENTS’, ‘samples,search,groups,blogs’ . ‘,’ . MEMBERS_SLUG . ‘,’ . REGISTER_SLUG . ‘,’ .
ACTIVATION_SLUG . ‘,’ . NEWS_SLUG );
by adding in samples to the list, it made all the difference.
Thank you Andy for the good job commenting, without your quality code we would all be lost.
Good Luck All,
Brad
Lets get the general public forum working, before we get greedy. I do like the idea, but for the general good I think you could just form your own cult group, make it private and be good.
Please post any progress you make on the privatization of group forums, I would like to do something so I don’t have to maintain 2 installs of bbpress.
Thanks,
Brad
Major issue, not sure if you modified the code, or what happened, but the admin option under groups shows up for site visitors even without logging in. As you will realize pretty quickly, someone, namely I, was able to edit the group without even an account.
http://theodoremedia.com/groups/grizzly-montana/home
Would be best to get the newest version of the group code, and check to see if you made any changes to it?
SVN:
I know svn is complex, but do your self the favor, between now and when buddypress launches, and learn it. The hours it will save you from doing ftping up files will be worth it in the long run. The first time you roll back to a previous version, and don’t have to “unedit” dozens or hundreds of lines of php code you will be glad you learned how to use it.
Brad
It can, but the amount of spam accounts will increase dramatically. The reason for sending the account password via e-mail is to prevent spammers from simply entering a known username and password and creating 1000’s of spam blog posts on wordpress mu.
I have a similar situation, where I have a current site with 15k users, username and passwords. What I used is this plugin. It works well on wordpress and buddypress.
https://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/external-database-authentication/
When a user logins, it checks my “other” database for the username, and validates the password against it. This means they don’t need to do the e-maiil thing, as their e-mail was already validated on the old site. It then creates the user in wordpress and the user doesn’t notice anything.
How you could do this for your friends, just make a table of all the friends, and set the same password for everyone initially, and ask them to change it. I only suggest this for very small beta sites with friends you trust, like less then 10 people.
Brad
Hopefully this will make sense
I have 4 directories, which I download the svn update to, and then copy them over to the live site:
/bbpresssvn
/buddypresssvn
/wordpresssvn
/privatedevsvn
By logging into the command line, I can do this
svn up
inside each of those 4 folders and it will update them to the newest trunk release. Then I run this command (or similar for buddypress)
cp -R * ../beta
and copy the files to the dev server. So far this has worked really well.
The private dev svn is where I upload my own plugins and themes I’m doing development on. This method is extremely fast as I never have to ftp any files between the internet, my laptop and back up to the web server. It does require command line access and knowledge of svn.
Hope this helps,
Brad
Did you use the same e-mail address that you used to register for this forum? I believe you maybe able to list multiple e-mail address under gravatar, so you may need to use the one which you registered for this forum with.
Brad
This post maybe a little more clear, as it has a full working music player.
https://buddypress.org/forums/topic.php?id=604#post-3382
#1, the 2 is priority of the filter.
#2, I have been lazy and just made everything inside of the “social details” group active links. In the future I maybe validating them with some regular expressions or substring checking.
#3, check for an @ and at least 1 period in the string and no spaces? There are some very complex regular expressions which can validate e-mail addresses, but regular expressions are slower then substrings.
Brad
Those “steps” are for using the buddypress code, ie xml-rpc communication inside of groups. If you theme the general bbpress install to match your buddypress site then you won’t need to enable xmlrpc on the general site, just do the intergration.
I think someone will develop a modification of the groups, to be a general group pretty soon. If this is the case, then you would need to do those steps for both bbpress installs.
Hope that makes sense,
Brad
Here it is, save as bp-music.php and copy into your muplugins
you must create a profile details group “Audio Details”, and all values will be replaced by a music player.
Check out a working copy on:
http://gorgeousgamers.com/beta/members/bradmkjr/
Brad
http://gorgeousgamers.com/beta/
<?php
/*
* Created on Dec 29, 2008
*
* Project Buddypress Addons
*
* File bp-music.php
*
*/
function bp_profile_music_player( $field_value =””, $field_type = “”, $field_id = “” ) {
if($field_value == “”)
return “Nothing to show”;
else
{ // clean up input
return “<script type=’text/javascript’>
var amzn_wdgt={widget:’MP3Clips’};
amzn_wdgt.tag=’gorgeousgamers-20′;
amzn_wdgt.widgetType=’ASINList’;
amzn_wdgt.keywords='”.addslashes($field_value).”‘;
amzn_wdgt.title=’What I’ve been listening to lately…’;
amzn_wdgt.width=’250′;
amzn_wdgt.height=’250′;
amzn_wdgt.shuffleTracks=’True’;
amzn_wdgt.marketPlace=’US’;
</script>
<script type=’text/javascript’ src=’http://wms.assoc-amazon.com/20070822/US/js/swfobject_1_5.js’>
</script>”;
}
}
function bp_profile_music_groups( $group_name =””) {
if($group_name == “Audio Details”){
remove_filter( ‘bp_the_profile_field_value’, ‘xprofile_filter_link_profile_data’, 2);
add_filter( ‘bp_the_profile_field_value’, ‘bp_profile_music_player’, 2, 3);
}else{
add_filter( ‘bp_the_profile_field_value’, ‘xprofile_filter_link_profile_data’, 2, 3);
remove_filter( ‘bp_the_profile_field_value’, ‘bp_profile_music_player’, 2);
}
return $group_name;
}
add_filter( ‘bp_the_profile_group_name’, ‘bp_profile_music_groups’, 10, 1 );
?>
very simple
remove_filter( ‘bp_the_profile_field_value’, ‘xprofile_filter_link_profile_data’, 2);
That removes the autolinking
I have developed a nice plugin (now a pair) which changes profile values rendering depending on the name of the group. I have not yet released the code, as I’m offering it as beerware.
Here is my profile on my beta site:
http://gorgeousgamers.com/beta/members/bradmkjr/
I made the social details, normally clickable so people can enter myspace, facebook, or personal sites.
I also made a fun mp3 player plugin to allow people to suggest music for their profiles and listen to samples.
Brad
Well, as the developer for http://gorgeousgamers.com/beta/ I figured I should answer this question.
I have 2 instances running of bbpress, 1 is .com/beta/forum/ and the other is in a different location. Currently it is not safe to combine them, as private groups would be visible to all members, which is still an issue but would be harder to find these hidden forums.
The menu bar, which lists the general forum is actually as simple as uncommenting the code in the header.php file in home theme.
I’m still not sure if I should theme bbpress to match the site, or modify a copy of the groups forum tools to allow general discussion. This wouldn’t be a quick development, but would be easier down the road as the theme develops.
Thanks,
Brad
There are some easy hacks, one could be as simple as
‘
remove_filter( ‘bp_the_profile_field_value’, ‘xprofile_filter_link_profile_data’, 2);
add_filter( ‘bp_the_profile_field_value’, ‘bp_profile_link_profile_data_with_urls’, 2, 3); ‘
Then create a function, similar to xprofile_filter_link_profile_data, but have it search for substr($field_value,0,7) = “http://”, then create a normal hyperlink, not a buddypress link
Just a thought,
Brad
Finished,
Wrote it as a customization to the profile fields, managed to do it in about 10 or so lines of php. Read my complete post here:
https://buddypress.org/forums/topic.php?id=604
or check out the running example here:
http://gorgeousgamers.com/beta/members/bradmkjr/
Thanks,
Brad
It maybe fun to look into the amazon mp3 widgets. These would allow people to pick music, from thousands of artists to put on their page, at the same time you could earn a small commission if people clicked through to amazon and bought the music.
It doesn’t have the auto play functionality, which is good in my opinion, but would be a fun way to add music to your members without any costs/overhead to you.
Here is a link to the amazon widget info:
https://widgets.amazon.com/Amazon-MP3-Clips-Widget/
Here is 2 pages which I use amazon mp3 information to build up a website:
http://hiphop.appleitunes.net/2008/12/01/review-of-amor/
All the widgets are dynamic, so i didn’t have to hard code them one at a time. This could help make a little money for a small social network, where you don’t want to force banner ads on your members.
Brad
No, you can not easily do that.
I’m not sure your reasoning, but php will not allow you to just change the file name, as it will not allow you to have the same functions twice.
Right now groups are pretty basic, and you can add more functionality by expanding on the group packages, but as updates are rolled out you may find it hard to keep up if you make too many modifications inside the group packages.
Brad
Those links you see are hard coded in the home theme. You can check out my beta site where I have started to play around with adding more links and doing some fun stuff with the standard theme.
http://gorgeousgamers.com/beta/
I’m a little confused about the widget part? If you are thinking about building your own …. (shopping cart, arcade, radio station), then you should be able to follow any of the standard examples floating around about how to build custom pieces, and add a link to that custom piece in the home theme.
Brad
The long term solution would be to have them add a filter, so you can replace the standard function with your own.
https://codex.wordpress.org/Plugin_API#Filters
Their may already by a filter in place you can use, which would either modify the output of a function, or replace it’s output all together.
The other option is to just write your own widgets, You can see what I did, it is a basic copy of the default members widget with a little customization for my needs:
http://gorgeousgamers.com/beta/
By writing my own widget, I can bypass those functions and just make my own, for example, I may only want to show popular members which don’t have gravatar avatars, would be very easy with my own sql calls.
Let me know if this makes sense,
Brad
Have a look at optimal title, I think it does a similar thing to all in one seo, but maybe more compatible for buddypress? I know the older versions of optimal title doesn’t use a title hook, they have you edit the php in the template, this maybe a better solution, as it won’t be called in buddypress templates, only wordpress template pages?
Also you may want to check out:
http://premium.wpmudev.org/project/sitemaps-and-seo-wordpress-mu-style
They have a wordpress mu version combining seo and sitemaps.
Brad
You may want to try a larger image. There are still issues, but currently buddypress doesn’t have anyway to “upsize” images before cropping. The early beta had a minimum image size of 450x450px, and generally have had pretty good luck when using images of that size or larger.
There are 2 things you need to change, 1 in custom.css, 1 in home.php in the buddypress-home theme folder (and /css folder)
remove lines 14 to 25 (or comment out) of home.php
`<div id=”center-column”>
<?php if ( !function_exists(‘dynamic_sidebar’)
|| !dynamic_sidebar(‘center-column’) ) : ?>
<div class=”widget-error”>
Please log in and /wp-admin/widgets.php?s=&show=&sidebar=sidebar-2″>add widgets to this column.
</div>
<?php endif; ?>
</div>`
This will remove the center column from the layout.
Next you need to adjust the css right margin of #left-column
#left-column {
margin-right: 280px;
}
Also you could adjust the body width, with this addition to your custom.css
body {
max-width: 1100px;
}
Hope That Helps,
Brad
You could always use the RSS widget, and bring in the RSS feed for the forums. Would be a simple solution.
Brad
