[flynn]

Thanks, I tried that to no avail. Turns out the theme I was using has a setting that can restrict group creation to admins, which is on by default :S

[flynn]

welp, that’s egg on my face.
I was being a bit creative with the naming conventions and I really shouldn’t have been.

The next question I have is:
Can one easily rebrand the tags used in plugins, for example, the Group Hierarchy plugin still shows “Great Member Group” instead of “Create Member Training Area”. Of course the BP lang files can’t have vars for every plugin, but if there’s a way that’s simpler than searching the plugin output files for phrases that would be fantastic

Thanks for all your help!

[flynn]

Ah ha!
Thank you very much!

[flynn]

I would imagine you’ll want to change a bit of the wording too- easiest way to do that is to make a language file, if you have a mac I would suggest getting PoEdit, it’s a free little app that really takes the pain out of it…

If you have a PC, go here: http://apple.com

[flynn]

Wow.

Talk about timely and helpful responses, you’re a hero!

Thank you for your detailed explanation. I’ve been working away at the theme, but i have another quick question: The code there, what file should I put it in? Having a bit of trouble tracking down where to stick it.

Thanks for your help!

~ Aaron

[flynn]

On themes,

Does the bp-groupblog have support for child themes? If so, can I copy my BP child theme, set it as a child theme for Group Blogs, and (hopefully) not have to re-theme bp-groupblog?

The readme instructs custom bp-groupblog themes to be put into the BP child theme folder and modified. Is there a bit more specific info on that?

Also, as I got a bit ahead of myself and posted in troubleshooting, is there a way to add a link to the group’s blog’s dashboard under the “Blog” link the group side bar? It seems the blog’s “My Sites” menu options only show up to contributes (default role of group members) after they have visited the group blog dashboard once. While not the end of the world, it might be confusing for less tech-savvy members.

Thanks for all your hard work! This plugin is a major hit for our network

~ Aaron

[flynn]

Yo. https://buddypress.org/forums/topic/mediawiki-edits-bp-activity-streams

[flynn]

Update-

I know this is a dead thread, but the code is all still functional, and it’s a good tip for people, so I’m just going to append the latest update of the wiki/WPMU integration theme.

More info, change log, and download here: http://aaron.dighumanities.org/2009/10/19/mediawiki-wpmu-deep-style-integration-update/

[flynn]

… hmm, yeah, the dev section probably isn’t the place for this… we were out of coffee…

[cough]

Basically, I just need a hint or two to get going in the right direction. There’s got to be a way to display videos uploaded to member blogs on a buddypress site’s page, yeah?

Basically, I need a way to display all the videos posted across my BP/WPMU install. So when user X and user Y post videos (and so on) they all show up (say 10 or 20 a page, or thumbnails, formatting is the easy bit) on a page of the main site. We could make a youtube channel I suppose, but we’d never get the academics on the site to use youtube, it just doesn’t have that old-stuffy-academic feel [sigh]…

Update: Something like this: http://tubepress.org/demo/ except instead of drawing videos from youtube, using the videos my users upload.

Again, I’m a pretty solid server guy, and a bit of a code hacker, but writing this from scratch… well, not sure. I’m going to keep plugging away, but any help from the community would be greatly appreciated!

Update2: Ok, beginning to feel a bit silly, but yeah… Found this plugin: http://wpmudev.org/project/post-from-all-blogs-category-filter which might be a better solution. If newly created blogs all have a “Shared Videos” category for teachers to post lecture video to, they can exclude videos of cats doing funny things… now the only question is how to strip away all the text and so on they might post with it, so only the video comes up…

Thoughts?

[flynn]

I had this problem adding extra site bar areas to the footer of my theme…

It’s not perfect, but if you backup your functions.php to be safe, you can edit the parent functions.php

Of course, this means that updates will erase your changes, so you’ll have to babysit any BP updates until a better solution is found.

[flynn]

Thanks for the input guys!

@John,

You’re right, it is very ‘bubbly’ at the time we were followig the whims of the powers that be, who associated anything to do with games with the Wii. It worked to getting some funding, but in the end, hurt our cause.

I like the tools idea, I’ve got the build a new 1.1 theme anyway, might as well change the emphasis to something a little more appropriate good tips thank you.

@Erich73,

Yeah… that’s what we ended up doing. It was a long story, and the powers that be weren’t happy, but in the end, it was the only option they left us.

Now I’m setting up a new install of 1.1 on our new domain. Hopefully a name change, and as John said, a shifting of emphasis, will keep up afloat.

Thanks for the tips guys!

~ Aaron

[flynn]

Hey John,

Thanks for the reply, but I’m having a hell of a time with this one. It’s just not clicking.

I was hoping there was a simple way to enable plugins / themes for specific users, but bleh…

I did find a good way of working plugings. Instead of plugin_commander for WPMU, plugin_manager (http://wpmudev.org/project/wpmu-plugin-manager) is really tip-top. It supports auto-started plugins etc, but it over rides the default plugin listing, giving users access to only the plugins marked as open to “all users” in the manager. I just installed the custom plugin and made it an optional plugin for members of the GSN.

Unfortunately, the theme thing needs to be a bit more precise. I don’t want to let fly with the self-installable themes as I would like to maintain a wee bit of branding. Suggestions?

[flynn]

I’ve had some immediate success with Twitter, which I have to say, I’ve found to be surprising. I’ve been playing with Twitter for years and never had this kind of response, I suppose the explosion of Twitter’s popularity is to thank for that.

I think you’re likely right Tore, budding up with currently established Ning communities might be the ticket. Advertising as a one-click site creation tool for academics seems to get peoples attention as most people in academics aren’t capable, or don’t care to build a site for themselves.

Andre, you have an interesting idea, using journals and academic publications as an advertising medium. There are a few fledgling gaming journals, getting published would likely not be difficult. Any tips in that area?

Also, for those using Twitter, after some looking I found TweetDeck (http://tweetdeck.com/beta/) which is like the Twitter command program! It makes managing multiple accounts, topic and user searches, and watching for mentions / messages super easy. It makes running a Twitter campaign almost too easy.

[flynn]

I’ve begun tweeting things from the GSN, it seems to be working a bit. And I’ve had a few sign ups from talks that I’ve done, but now I’ve found a problem…

Seems that a year or so ago someone already started a Ning account targeted to more or less my target market. While I feel that BP’s offerings are better (and the GSN damn sure looks better), how does one compete with Ning?

[flynn]

Hello all,

I’m building a BP install for use by people working or interested in new media research. For now, we’re targeting video game (so called serious games) studies, by may evaluate expanding later.

I’ve found that the most requested feature by teachers in the testing phase was being able to easy add reading material, including amazon lists, bits of their own work, and reading assignments.

Second to those are requests of grading and student management tools. There are a few good plugins available for WP (gradebook for starters) that all seem to work with client blogs. However, they must first be evaluated for FERPA compliance.

Any other suggestions, specifically those that would allow researchers / teachers to collaborate would be extremely helpful.

[flynn]

@Boone,

Thanks for the tips, I had been messing with it some and noticed that my error in the activity stream was completely PEBKAC… I miss-typed like four things…

[cough]

Anyway…

I’ll leave the theme up and post updates on the GSN and Twitter once the site is properly launched. As for now, I’m glad you guys may get some use out of it

[flynn]

@Sandeepdude,

I would love to give you some helpful tips here, but I didn’t really do anything to it. I just installed the newest version and entered my API keys and the like for the different messengers. If it helps, I can post file versions, settings and the like. But yeah, not sure if I did anything special. I had a hell of a time getting it to work with 1.0.2, but when I upgraded to .3 damn near everything starting going without a hitch.

~ Aaron

http://thegsn.org – A community of academics and persons interested in game, and new media studies.

[flynn]

Seems to work wonderfully on 1.0.3.

I wish there was a way to let the user enter an invite message though. As it is, the message appears to come from the BP admin, and it looks super skynet. Don’t want to give the appearance that my site is spamming people… At any rate, it’s a brilliant plugin, and I appreciate all the hard work!

http://thegsn.org

[flynn]

Ok, visual integration.

I made a theme that calls WP’s header / footer. Install it into your media wiki skins dir and change skin in LocalSettings.php to “dusk” and you should be good to go.

Basically the theme does this:

wiki header stuff

<?php require(‘../wp-config.php’); $single = 1; $siteurl = get_settings(‘siteurl’); ?>

Wiki content stuff

<?php get_footer(); ?>

It’s not classy, but it works… well, for me. To work with your site it may take some CSS tweaking, namely, width and background info most of which is in “main.css” around line 350.

I’ll update the zip as I make changes. I don’t really plan to make this a supported thing, but as I hack a solution together, I might as well share it.

http://thegsn.org/Extra/Archive.zip

[flynn]

Boone,

Thank you for your code, the single sign on worked brilliantly!

I’m building a Game Studies social site for the new media field (hopefully new media academics, ludologists, etc will take to it) for the University of Wyoming, and a wiki was a major concern. the WP wiki plugins aren’t up to the task, so this really helps.

Few questions if I may.

When I enable the site wide update plugin, my mediawiki page goes blank. Thoughts?

Also, how did you manage to make CUNY look so integrated, a mediawiki theme I suppose? I’ve never themed (or worked with really) mediawiki, is there a good theme site where I might be able to download something to modify, or is it a group up kind of thing?

Thanks for your hard work!

@Nicola:

I’ll look into your plugin when it comes out, but will it do anything more/different as Boone’s code is rather complete in what it does. Also, beta?

[flynn]

Hey guys, here’s one for you:

I’ve got BP 1.02, WPMU 2.7.1 (not updating yet :S) and BB alpha 6.

Followed TheEasyButton tutorial to the T. And single sign on works!

However, when creating a group, I still get this message:

Attention Site Admin: Group forums require the correct setup and configuration of a bbPress installation.

And I can’t post to the group forums.

I’m losing my mind here. My Dev server works like a charm, but for the life of me I can’t get the live server to work, and I swear they have the same version / setting info.

Thoughts

http://thegsn.org

[flynn]

… Yeah, all that stuff he said.

Seriously though, I’ve run out of ideas here too. I suppose we’re jumping the gun a bit using 1.01 before it is announced to work. But it seems like it should work ok.

Any ideas?

[flynn]

Hey all,

I posted briefly earlier, but I’ve now got something a bit more worthwhile to show you all

It’s a heavily modified version of a BuddyDress theme.

The Game Studies Network is a project from the University of Wyoming focusing on bringing together academics, students, researchers, and developers in the areas of new media and interactive media. We’re hoping to become something of a new media think tank.

Take a look and let me know what you think

http://thompsonjason.org/

Thanks everyone!

[flynn]

Hey all, sorry to bump and old thread, but it’s related, I promise

I’ve installed reCAPTCHA in the plugins folder, and it works brilliantly for comments. (For that matter so does wmpu-captcha in the mu-plugins folder) But neither seem to work on the registration page.

Working – http://thompsonjason.org/2009/04/11/hello-world/#comments

Not Working – http://thompsonjason.org/register

Is there a bit of code that I should be inserting into my registration page to make reCAPTCHA show up. I’ve been getting a lot of spam accounts being created lately, so I really need to get this going before we can launch the site. Any help is greatly appreciated.

[flynn]

BuddyPress is a more socially focused, but still blog-centric, solution to social networking. From what it sounds like you want something social that gives each person a page to post to. You might try Ning.com or Drupal’s social networking option.