[@hnla Participant 16 years, 6 months ago]

Code tags work but they are producing malformed markup which will need sorting and they’re breaking lines with br tags for some reason, but at least they are using a monospaced font.

[@hnla Participant 16 years, 6 months ago]

Backticks broke with the upgrade and blockquotes don’t work either

[@hnla Participant 16 years, 6 months ago]

@r-a-y thanks, that’s the one. Obvious as soon as I saw it written that allows all top level pages to be viewed but doesn’t allow to further drill down.

[@hnla Participant 16 years, 6 months ago]

Yes it’s in the config settings, bottom panel iirc

[@hnla Participant 16 years, 6 months ago]

imho it’s always better or advisable to download/ upload manually – never quite trust things that are automated

[@hnla Participant 16 years, 6 months ago]

One is the original cubepoints configuration settings and need to be worked on first, points there are for blog posting and commenting – important bear in mind that cubepoints was primarilly written for single WP and will not work on sub blogs on a WPMU install only on the prime blog BP is installed to (generally wp_1_). The second panel is the BP integration and that provides point configuration for BP components like ‘groups’ etc.

[@hnla Participant 16 years, 6 months ago]

And… I see no mention of the actual cubepoints plugin? cubepoints-buddypress-integration is simply an extension to the original plugin to enable BP support.

From the guide on the groups page:

IMPORTANT You will need to install CubePoints (at least version 2.1.1) first.

[@hnla Participant 16 years, 6 months ago]

Have you read the installations instructions carefully?

[@hnla Participant 16 years, 6 months ago]

A start would be to follow the installation guides!
https://codex.buddypress.org/getting-started/setting-up-a-new-installation/

What have you tried thus far?

Buddypress is as simple as downloading the plugin to your plugin directory and in the dashboard enabling the plugin. You can download the plugin from within WP!

[@hnla Participant 16 years, 6 months ago]

@r-a-y is there any method of testing whether the page concerned is a root component, that is the page lives in the root directory e.g example.com/groups/

reason for asking is as the plugin stands anonymous users only ever see a login page, that can tend to put people off? they may base their decision to join based on what they see going on on the site to that end my preferred approach (or at least a further angle to take in restricting access) is to allow visual access to all top level pages but not deeper into the site.

I had thought that one could check on whether a page is a root component but can’t track that down, I can take various steps to getting closer to this by adding bp_is_front_page() to the :
if (bp_is_register_page() || bp_is_activation_page() || bp_is_front_page() ) and could add is_page(‘wp page’) for blog created pages – although oddly a page created to act as the blog page while setting front page to say ‘activity stream’ doesn’t appear to work??

Also of course one can add directory paths to the exclusion array:

$this->exclusions = array(
'wp-login.php',
'wp-signup.php',
'/wp-content/themes/child-theme-name/groups/'

But that isn’t best approach as it fails if one changes themes and child themes override bp-default so one can’t set that if suing child themes.

Overall and ideally a check to see if the page/directory/componant lived at root level would seem the best approach.

[@hnla Participant 16 years, 6 months ago]

@M no I realise you are not forcing anyone into anything and yes it would be wonderful if more people would bother to learn a little coding, not just PHP but general coding, but they won’t, it’s the issue of ‘Time’ and ‘Focus’ few can be bothered with either nowadays, it’s an instant gratification society where things are ‘Free!’ no effort required!

Forgive my comments, they were – in part – prompted by my feelings towards a well known outfit that offers paid support. I fact I agree 110% with your sentiments expressed in that last paragraph, I too am dismayed at what I see as a reluctance to appreciate the value in work done to provide such things as plugins (not only plugins or BP but coding provided across the development world online) I would argue that we have created a rod for our own backs in many ways and engendered a belief in non coders that this work is something trivial trotted of ones editor in no time with little effort. I wish that everyone using a plugin would understand that in fact there was an absolute moral imperative to ‘Donate’ towards that time spent developing it, considering the download stats one can observe sometimes that are in the region of thousands of downloads for something popular, if people only donated $1.00 that would still mean the coders time was recompensed, perhaps generously?

I’m no lover of the culture that has sprung up but it’s a culture that has been created by us providing the means for the many to find an easy in to running apps / sites without having to expend any / too much energy. To some degree I would argue in favour of the ‘Donate’ aspect being expressed in a much better manner perhaps with a note of the development time to create or even a stipulated amount of such low value, at least a quarter the price of a cup of coffee, that people would in fact feel obliged and happy to have to pay so little for something that has so much value to them? Of course a hundred contra arguments around this sort of subject though.

[@hnla Participant 16 years, 6 months ago]

Sad that they force a paypal donation on you before they will release it, in fact they should re label the button from ‘Donate’ to buy really !

Can’t believe something like this should be an issue i was trying to find a way to filter this activity posting out this morning but failed. There really needs to be finer control over the activity stream it simply looks terrible if loads of members have been accepting friendships.

Edit/ oh I see it’s your plugin M How much is the required ‘Donation’ then?

[@hnla Participant 16 years, 6 months ago]

As Jeff mentioned we ought not to derail foxlies thread any further. Perhaps we ought to start that thread suggested re-hashing all the approaches tried, implemented, proven or not and maybe a mod could extract a set of definitive steps that ought to be implemented by anyone setting up a new install.

[@hnla Participant 16 years, 6 months ago]

While you’re preparing part 2 I’ll make the comment (probably unpopular) that too an extent this is an issue that BP, WP, Automatic must accept some responsibility for in that WP has always followed the course of making it as easy as possible for inexperienced people to set up a blog/blogs the principle of ‘Out Of The Box’ and ‘5 Minute Install’ all designed to promote the app/s to those users who otherwise might be put off, it’s a marketing ploy to ensure that the app gains widespread and popular use (that is being deliberately cynical to make a point) It is due to that that I say there is a duty of care that falls on the App not on the user or community. I know how to get down and dirty with htaccess files, to read logs, enable various methods to deal with an issue – as do many others here – but lets not forget most don’t! I would suggest that it’s time to pull together all the various approaches to dealing with spam in one clear stickied post, make the steps as clear as possible but emphasize that these steps are of paramount importance to follow (thinking about it that may already exist?) Until such time as Foxly or the dev team comes up with the core improvements.

For the record I have enabled most of the steps found in various threads here and elsewhere and also disabled sub blog registration and receive no more than around 6 -8 spam sign ups a day, which we can deal with quite quickly and effectively, I’m still slightly puzzled as to why some appear to have such ongoing issues though, very sympathetic but puzzled nonetheless.

[@hnla Participant 16 years, 6 months ago]

You’re not simply copying the original functions file to your child theme though are you? functions file in a child theme does not overule the original, both are parsed, so you mustn’t duplicate the original files functions. The new child theme functions file must only contain new functions.

[@hnla Participant 16 years, 6 months ago]

It’s true that media tends to be a rather large weakness for BP and one of the obvious surprises migrating from Ning, however a lot of work has been done on an extremely well featured album plugin and which is still actively being developed and improved and as such I’m sure it isn’t going to be abandoned in any hurry

Check the community groups tab as all plugins have their own group and you’ll find Album there.

Events is something of a sore point, there was a plugin that handled events very nicely, sadly with upgrade of WPMU to 2.9 and then further, upgrade to BP 1.2 broke the plugin completely, there was supposedly going to work done to bring it in line with bp 1.2 but that appears to have stalled .

[@hnla Participant 16 years, 6 months ago]

Have you asked on their site? They are meant to support their premium offerings.

[@hnla Participant 16 years, 6 months ago]

And what direction would that be? What is the issue?

You might to need to pad out your question with a little detail. What is the other application? Is the issue that the fields do not match between apps? Is it simply how to transfer a mass of users without having to manually enter each one?

[@hnla Participant 16 years, 6 months ago]

@Mike Pratt yes there is really a distinction to be made between blogs and forums, but deciding on which to use? If one disables forums in groups one is simply left with ‘updates’ there is no blog functionality per se (I’m ignoring plugins in the context of this thread) and I’m thinking that the nature of ‘Updates’ is tending to be confusing to users?

“BP tends to be better at constructing grown up environments that focus on quality content contributions” I would agree but not sure why. Quality content contributions are what I perceive as the core of a community or social network as designed using apps such as BP or Ning whereas I tend to view FB as somewhat ephemeral nonsense (sorry not one of those that consider FB or Twitter as hugely vital) My biggest issue is that as things stand I’m struggling to see my way to a custom configuration based around default BP that does actually facilitate the quality content – this isn’t necessarily a BP ‘fault’ but there are issues that I feel need highlighting such as the confusion that tends to arise around the sitewide activity stream

@lph2005 This is the sort of feedback that I felt would play a crucial part in this thread, so it would be interesting if you could explore this further and update the thread. As regards the static front page I’m guessing that this static page did not include the hubbub that is the Site Wide Activity Stream?

[@hnla Participant 16 years, 6 months ago]

Rather than drag up a rather old thread , could you perhaps marshal your thoughts about the UI and general user experience in this thread:
https://buddypress.org/community/groups/miscellaneous/forum/topic/the-buddypress-ui-design-and-conceptual-approach-to-social-networking/

It’s a vague attempt at having a thread running to mirror the API developers thread but focused more on the presentaion tier or Frontend.

[@hnla Participant 16 years, 6 months ago]

https://buddypress.org/community/groups/miscellaneous/forum/topic/the-buddypress-ui-design-and-conceptual-approach-to-social-networking/#post-51851
Defining a Social Network / Community

I guess one of the major points is to establish quite what we all mean or refer to when using phrases such as social network or community and what type of content is deemed to be important.

Within that definition there must exist a set of core features that enable that concept and an understanding of quite what users expect from it.

Therefore it may be helpful to establish a set of criteria, roughly agreed, on that constitutes the concept. This criteria is essentially what is provided to the end user, or member; for example we might say that a community revolves around the members ability to interact through the exchange of views in a forum type manner. We might agree that ‘Updates’ are not necessarily that important or that they can tend to give rise to confusion.

To note is that this is not about added functionality i.e plugins but the core offering that enables the ‘Community’ to exist and begin interacting. To my mind plugins should only ever be a means of enhancing the app, but never absolutely essential in order for a given community to work.

Lastly, and this might prove impractical in reality, as a means of tracking responses that relate to this initial parent comment and given that ideally comments would be threaded to this parent we could preface a comment along the lines that I have at the top with a link to this comment?

Again an idea that might prove impractical in reality – but a crude attempt at aggregating any responses along the lines of the two main questions could be made in this post; a simple bullet point list, e.g top ten under two headings:

Defining the concept of Community and it’s activity.

Defining core features that facilitate that community activity.

[@hnla Participant 16 years, 6 months ago]

Reading these last two comments with interest; quick question, regarding the aspect of group blogs and group forums is there really a difference? a blog allows an entry/post to be made and for comments to be made on it, in a sense a running dialogue; a forum allows a post/thread/question to be made and people respond with comments, they are essentially one and the same thing in many ways, especially as applied to something such as a social network. I can’t envisage when one would ever need both existing in a group, thus which is better or more useful is perhaps an important issue; but this does raise the point that one can disable group forums or configure things as one wishes but in reality this leaves a group with simply ‘Updates’ or the ‘Wall’. At the moment I find Updates too ephemeral, lacking in perceived substance (In fact a member made an update that amounted to a company mission statement recently it was far too long and blew all other activity under the fold, I deleted it thinking it would remain in their profile, not so though, gone forever.)

I feel given some of the comments in the last two posts here that establishing two points could be useful, firstly what defines a social network and what features go towards establishing an app as a social network.

[@hnla Participant 16 years, 6 months ago]

While this is not entirely a ‘problem’ with the new site i would suggest that allowing group creation is perhaps not the best idea or at least might need some further consideration? However having said that I realise that it’s part of the core aspect of BP. Reason mentioned is the recent creation of a group for the sole purpose of making what amounts to a post asking for help that really should have gone in an appropriate pre-existing group forum such as ‘Help and Trouble Shooting’ It tends to highlight the confusion that can exist for a self confessed buddypress newbie in using the site? It also means that unchecked groups could grow at an alarming rate and responding to the forum post or update means joining an ever increasing list of groups.

[@hnla Participant 16 years, 6 months ago]

Do not change the markup directly, likely you have not added your ‘code’ to every instance of the pages that require it, regardless this isn’t the corect approach for many reasons that I won’t labour.
you should add images such as this using the background property but from the primary stylesheet for your theme with the graphic itself uploaded to whatever directory exists for iamges in that theme directory. If you find and open your primary stylesheet you will probably see examples of the background property used to place graphics on other elements so simply copy the example to the body element while replacing the graphics file name to the one you want.

[@hnla Participant 16 years, 6 months ago]

I would tend to agree with modemloopers take on the Activity Stream and of r-a-y’s notion of the Facebook/Twitter issue

I am presently quite concerned with the way that the activity stream might be shapping our communities general activity or possibly simply confusing users. Initially I saw the activity stream as an extremely necessary feature that had to exist in it’s site wide guise on the main page, acting as a beacon of the sites hive of activity, I wanted it apparent that there was ‘Activity’ on the site, but now my concern is that it simply acts to stall users from actually clicking through into the site, of visiting groups, making forum entries etc and in that respect feel that I’m in agreement in stripping out the Sitewide Activity Stream.

As for BP aping Facebook and Twitter in respect of conventions this is something I feel concerned by, I do tend to see why yet would rather it didn’t and attempted to conceive it’s own conventions which I think was partly my thinking in running this thread to explore these issues i.e are twitter like activity streams what are really required do they matter in respect of a communities cohesion? ‘Updates’? very often the question that springs to my mind is “Updates to what?” and I am aware that some users do find Updates confusing.

While I do agree that one aspect of what we do as site developers is to shape our particular site community vis a vis it’s features I do think that this shouldn’t simply mean that BP throws everything into the pot sits back and says “there you are, we’ve provided a little of everything up to you to make sense of it now” On the other hand that is what I tend to enjoy doing but perhaps this is less about us as developers that have the ability and knowledge to hack away and more about BP itself and how non developers (who will comprise – ultimately – the greater group requiring BP to work out of the box without undue hacking)

I think that a discussion/thoughts about two central concerns might be appropriate and to that end – at the risk of trying to mold this general thread too much?- am posting a sub topic to perhaps try and establish some consensus on general principles (if it’s just muddling up the main thread, happy to hear so and a Mod can pull it?)