[Halo Diehard]

Pretty sure your WordPress members have to post after BuddyPress has been installed, or they don’t show up as BuddyPress members 🙁 I’m currently looking into this as well, to see if any updates have remedied this. It’s very confusing to my members when they click the BuddyPress members link and everyone isn’t there. Some of my members keep in contact even if it isn’t through my site. It’s really not a true integration with WordPress set up this way, so I hope it’s been updated.

[Halo Diehard]

I followed the links above, and yes! Entering my site’s name in Appearance > Customize appears to have worked for me. Thanks!!

[Halo Diehard]

I would like to add that I am not using a bp-custom.php file, either. I thought maybe that was the issue, so I checked and didn’t find it.

[Halo Diehard]

I am using the theme Matheson, but I tested it on Twenty Ten with all plugins deactivated except BuddyPress and it still happens.

[Halo Diehard]

Just realized that the forum posts are mixed in with activity in Simple Press, so if a member posts a blog post or a forum post, both will show on the sitewide activity page. This is just how I want it, so it’s ok there is no forum tab.

[Halo Diehard]

Thanks for your quick response, @danbp. I did not include the support information, because I just needed an answer to my simple question; didn’t think anyone would be able to help me with my actual issue, since I am using Simple Press and not bbPress.

Simple Press has a BuddyPress plugin, that integrates some of the functionality of their forums into the BuddyPress activity, and allows the forum owner to elect to use the BuddyPress profile, for example, over the SP one. But I am not seeing any forum posts in activity. I contacted them, but I also was not seeing the forum tab like I see here. I was here for a separate issue, and noticed that forum tab, so I opened this topic to ask about the tab.

Maybe that tab disappears if bbPress is not active, I’m not sure, but I really thought I remembered with the bbPress forums that my member’s posts were mixed in with all the other sitewide activity, and I don’t remember ever seeing a forum tab. I’m on my second BuddyPress supported theme; the first was Custom Community, and now I’m using Matheson.

I’m familiar with how to set up BuddyPress, but thanks for the links. Here is the rest of the info, in case it helps:

1. Which version of WordPress are you running? 4.0

2. Did you install WordPress as a directory or subdomain install? If this is either or, than it’s a directory install

3. If a directory install, is it in root or in a subdirectory? Again, not sure of the question. My url points to the root wordpress folder, but that folder is not in the root of my server, but a few folders in.

4. Did you upgrade from a previous version of WordPress? If so, from which version? Have had WordPress and upgraded every release for a couple of years

5. Was WordPress functioning properly before installing/upgrading BuddyPress (BP)? e.g. permalinks, creating a new post, commenting. Yes.

6. Which version of BP are you running? 2.1.1

7. Did you upgraded from a previous version of BP? If so, from which version? 2.1.0? I don’t know, the same: Have had BuddyPress for at least a year, upgrade it as releases come out.

8. Do you have any plugins other than BuddyPress installed and activated? If so, which ones?

(Ones followed by asterisk are not active, since I’m not committed yet to Simple Press. Others I’m getting around to testing, or only use occasionally. Yes, I know it’s a lot.)

Add New Default Avatar
BadgeOS *
bbp buddypress profile information *
bbPress *
bbPress Enable TinyMCE Visual Tab *
bbPress Go To First Unread Post *
bbPress Stay Checked *
bbP Signature *
Black Studio TinyMCE Widget
BuddyPress
BuddyPress Groups Extras *
Content Aware Sidebars *
Email posts to subscribers *
Google Analytics by Yoast
iFlyChat
LenSlider *
Link Library
NextScripts: Social Networks Auto-Poster
Posts for Page Plugin
Quick Chat
Simple: Press
Simple: Press v5 Importer
Simple social share
SlideDeck 2 Lite *
Social Login
Stop Registration Spam
Subscribe/Connect/Follow
T(-) Countdown
ToTop Link
Ultimate Posts Widget *
Video Thumbnails
WangGuard
WordPress SEO
wp-Monalisa
WP Ads Within Contents *
WP Custom Login
WP Overview (lite)
WP Symposium Toolbar

9. Are you using the standard BuddyPress themes or customized themes? I am using Matheson, a theme listed as working with BuddyPress, and it is further customized via css by myself.

10. Have you modified the core files in any way? No.

11. Do you have any custom functions in bp-custom.php? I don’t think I have that file.

12. If running bbPress, which version? Or did your BuddyPress install come with a copy of bbPress built-in? bbPress is deactivated, using Simple Press.

13. Please provide a list of any errors in your server’s log files. I’ve searched to try and find these, and I have no idea how to find them.

14. Which company provides your hosting? 1and1

15. Is your server running Windows, or if Linux; Apache, nginx or something else? If this might be relevant, I will try to find out. Think it’s Linux.

[Halo Diehard]

Kk, sorry it took so long to get back to this; I had to walk away from it all for a bit as my whole setup is taking more of my time than I am able to produce any content, and I’m ready to throw in the towel.

I just took a peek in my database and it looks like the plugin just takes the person’s account name from whatever account they log into and uses that for everything, the login, nicename and display/nickname, so no way of knowing which one it pulls the @mention from.

I’m assuming in a normal registration it takes it from the person’s first and last name, though? This probably works on a lot of “business”-types sites, where people use their birth-names anyway, but the vast majority of forums I’ve visted show that people prefer to use quirky, expressive names that reflect their personalities. For this reason, I think BuddyPress would better serve a lot of forums with the @mentions if there were at least an option to use the nicename instead of the username.

I understand it gets really complicated with people being able to change their nicename, but on most forums people don’t get to do that, only Admins can do that for them, because it confuses the other membership; they don’t know who’s “talking”.

So for a ton of people who are used to phpbb3-type forums, it would be great to turn off the ability to change nicenames and have nicenames be @mentions. Or even have nicenames be @mentions, and if you change your nicename, your @mention just has to stay the same, because it’s just too complicated to get the coding to do that, but still, nicename over “real name”, because when you put your real name in a forum you don’t expect it to be used as your forum name, you just don’t. And hand-holding or no, it *will* discourage people from using a forum.

There’s mah feedbacks, lemmie know if there’s anymore database peeking you’d like me to do, and thanks for trying to help 🙂

[Halo Diehard]

I don’t know, but it sure would be cool if someone who has done it could verify. I’ve not done a lot of playing around with filters, either in WP or BuddyPress, and it’s overwhelming and makes me nervous.

I’ll contact the plugin creator on the issue of the automatic user_login name, but there are a lot of posts dating back quite a few years with forum owners crying out how confusing it is for their members when their members can change their nicename but the @mention is something else; sure would be nice if the option to synchronize them were part of the core BuddyPress functionality.

[Halo Diehard]

Yeah, I still will get the odd mention from old posts, have absolutely no idea what triggers them. And now that I’ve changed my display name recently, it will even occasionally send me ones where I’ve included myself in a quote, before the username change! It’s weird.

The good news is it slows down! ;D The bad news is before it does it can drive your members to turn off their notifications, and if your server can’t handle it the process can crash your server.

Does that code only stop old notifications, or does it stop all, or what?

[Halo Diehard]

If you see the first post, you will find that the issue begins when the members are imported from another forum type. Apparently my conversion issue was different than the original poster. After finally tracking down the issue, I learned that during *my* conversion, something happened where the nice name was entered without a dash, so:

Tom Thumb instead of Tom-Thumb

This was resulting in the 404 when visiting the profile page, although the member could log in and post.

I finally found a fix, and that was to go into the database, find the nicename and change it, replacing the space with a dash. Fortunately for me, there were only about 20 of them 😉

Now that there are no spaces, I don’t have the %20 issue anyway.

[Halo Diehard]

Thanks so much for your response! First I created bp-custom.php and pasted define( ‘BP_ENABLE_USERNAME_COMPATIBILITY_MODE’, true ); into it, then I put it in my plugins folder, and I got the same 404 except this text was across the top of the page:

define( ‘BP_ENABLE_USERNAME_COMPATIBILITY_MODE’, true );
Warning: Cannot modify header information - headers already sent by (output started at /homepages/33/(database here)/htdocs/(mywordpressfolder)/wp-content/plugins/bp-custom.php:1) in /homepages/33/(database here)/htdocs/(mywordpressfolder)/wp-includes/pluggable.php on line 1121

By sheer luck I recognized that the ‘ and ‘ were the curly ones, and I had JUST read about that last week, so I deleted the apostrophe’s and typed them in myself in notepad++, crossing my fingers. But when I saved and ftp’d the new file, I had the same thing across the top, just with the fixed code!

define( 'BP_ENABLE_USERNAME_COMPATIBILITY_MODE', true );
Warning: Cannot modify header information - headers already sent by (output started at /homepages/33/(database here)/htdocs/(mywordpressfolder)/wp-content/plugins/bp-custom.php:1) in /homepages/33/(database here)/htdocs/(mywordpressfolder)/wp-includes/pluggable.php on line 1121

I went and took a peek at pluggagle.php, line 1121, and it is the third line up from this:

	/**
	 * Filter the redirect status code.
	 *
	 * @since 2.3.0
	 *
	 * @param int    $status   Status code to use.
	 * @param string $location The path to redirect to.
	 */
	$status = apply_filters( 'wp_redirect_status', $status, $location );

	if ( ! $location )
		return false;

	$location = wp_sanitize_redirect($location);

	if ( !$is_IIS && php_sapi_name() != 'cgi-fcgi' )
		status_header($status); // This causes problems on IIS and some FastCGI setups

	header("Location: $location", true, $status);

	return true;
}
endif;

So 1121 is this bit: header("Location: $location", true, $status);

That block of code is just above “Sanitizes a URL for use in a redirect”, using function wp sanitize redirect.

Not sure if any of that points to any clear problem, but it’s pretty much Greek to me 🙁

[Halo Diehard]

I just found this thread, and I have the exact same issue. So glad there is a fix, but I don’t know where to put this that was posted above:

define( ‘BP_ENABLE_USERNAME_COMPATIBILITY_MODE’, true );

Also, like is asked above, if anyone knows how to fix the url afterwards from %20% to a hyphen for spaces in the name, like what BuddyPress does, that would be amazing.

Yes, I can do database edits, if I know what needs to be changed.

Thanks 😀

[Halo Diehard]

Ok, thanks. I was having trouble finding the default url so I could figure out if I had access to this mystery page, and I found the Community Navigation widget that comes with BuddyPress, that lists Activity along with Members and Groups. It’s just confusing because I have “Activity” in my userbar, but when I click on it, that just takes me to my profile page, so it was looking like I couldn’t see a page with a list of sitewide activity unless people were on my friends list.

Thanks for your quick response 🙂

[Halo Diehard]

@tietoep the Group Forums I am speaking of *are* bbPress, as chosen by the BuddyPress Group in the Group’s settings. I explained this quite clearly in the first post 😉

[Halo Diehard]

Found a reference to changing Permalinks in WordPress to “reset” them (then changing them back to your preferred), tried that, and then my group was redirecting to it’s forum instead of a post (progress!) went back to deactivating plugins again, and it turns out it was NextGen Gallery. No idea how, just thought I’d pass it on if it’s helpful to anyone.

[Halo Diehard]

Aaaaaaand now I have my group MMHC redirecting to a post that starts with MMHC instead of to the group :/ What is this? This can’t be BuddyPress or it’d be happening to everyone 🙁

I don’t know what to do.

[Halo Diehard]

I… don’t think they are deprecated, in fact, they’ve received a freshening up…

Anyway, I found the issue, and it has to do with redirect conflicts in the BuddyPress code itself. I’ve responded here w/ moar infos:

https://buddypress.org/support/topic/url-behavior-warnings-on-setup-pages/

[Halo Diehard]

@ubernaut, I guess I wasn’t clear: I’m looking for resources to explain what’s supposed to be *inside* htaccess for the most recent BuddyPress installation, as in the code. All the posts about it have different code, and after hours and days of research I can’t find what it’s supposed to have for the latest version, thanks for your response 🙂

[Halo Diehard]

Hey, @agundabbo, I’m new to BuddyPress but have been doing WordPress for a couple of years, and was happy to find two plugins that work with BuddyPress that have been stopping the fake registrations on my site. They are WangGuard and Pie Register. Good luck!

[Halo Diehard]

I just installed WangGuard today on a new site I’m setting up that’s been getting slammed with several an hour, and it stopped the new faker registrations immediately. Also, I’ve been using Pie Register for a couple years on another site, and that alone has done a great job of keeping most spammer registrations out, so I put it on the new site, too. I didn’t have Akismet or anything on my other site, just Pie Registration and I was pasting a bunch of IP’s and certain words in the Settings > Discussion > Comment Blacklist, and no spam.

Pie Register has the best Captcha I’ve seen in the plugins, but what I really like is you can program random questions that the user has to put the right answer in, and that’s fun. I choose stuff that is relevant to my sites, and amusing. I was really glad it works with BuddyPress!

And I’m not affiliated with either of the above plugins, either, just another site owner who knows what it’s like trying to track down help.

[Halo Diehard]

@cpagan2000 thanks SO much for coming back and posting that code! I have literally searched for hours to try and fix my problem that my site, which has been running over a year spam free, all of a sudden was getting SLAMMED with spam registrations because BuddyPress hijacked my registration page and I couldn’t figure out how to make it stop.

For anyone else who finds this thread, you have to create the bp-custom.php file and put it in your wp-content/plugins folder (contrary to all the other information out there on the web – – SO CONFUSING!!) I tried to put in in my functions.php and it just wouldn’t work. You can find more information on customizing BuddyPress by following the link above that @bp-help posted above.

This information should really be easily accessible. No one should ever have to search this hard to fix this type of issue. That is why I made a point to come back and thank pagan and add the missing info that I had to track down to fully understand the situation.