[Joe Marino]

As I mentioned earlier, I already looked at the s2Member plugin but I did not see that it had the ability to restrict group creation. However, @gwu123 you have convinced me to give the s2Member a trial run. I’ll keep this thread updated with the results.

@nuprn1 could you perhaps describe the process of how to go about mapping the “restrict group creation” plugin in layman’s terms?

[Joe Marino]

@beckb Thank you for the plugin link and for your very helpful suggestions! I think I can certainly make due with doing things manually for now as you suggested and if the site is successful, I will definitely look into hiring someone to do some custom coding. If anyone reading this would like to offer a quote on such a project, feel free to contact me: jmarino715 (at) gmail (dot) com

As for your comment regarding mod status being an “enticement”, there are a number of benefits to joining my site’s VIP program other than group moderator privileges. It’s difficult to explain it all though without providing specific details or a link to the site which is something I am not prepared to do while the site is still under its current stage of development. I considered taking more drastic measures at the end of the subscription period such as disabling the group’s forum (or the group itself). However, since this is a new site, and there are other more “enticing” benefits that would cease to exist at the end of the subscription period, I figured it would look better to allow all of the groups to remain fully functional regardless if a specific group’s creator is paying their subscription fee or not. Also, before taking such drastic measures, I would need to figure out a way to disable the group/forum without deleting its relevant database entries. This way, if the group creator decides to re-subscribe at a later date, or if someone else would like to take over the payments for the group, they won’t have to start all over again from scratch. Of course, this is an entirely separate issue and I figured I would save this conversation for a later date when I could fully explain it but there you have it since you brought it up.

[Joe Marino]

I use W3 Total Cache on my site after having it recommended to me by @lincme. It’s more of a complete caching system as opposed to just a “minify” plugin. You’ll need to have a decent PHP memory_limit for it to function though so be forewarned as it probably won’t work if you’re on a shared hosting plan (unless you’re lucky and have some awesome server support staff like me).

I was told there are problems with the page cache and CDN features so I’ve been afraid to enable them on my site. I don’t even have a CDN just yet so this is something I’m not too worried about right at the moment. However, I may get brave one of these days and enable the page cache (after a fresh backup of course) to see what it does. I also hear that there’s a development version that’s even better than the currently released one so you may want to check into that as well.

[Joe Marino]

@hnla , @rogercoathup I installed the BP Xtra Signup plugin and it works great! However, it does sanitize HTML markup. Could I do something like @r-a-y mentioned in this thread to stop it from sanatizing?

There is a custom placeholder though that will only display a single link which is defined in the next textbox. Anyone know how to make it display two separate links instead of just one? I should probably ask the plugin author that question, huh? Hey @travel-junkie… join the party! Gotta love that “mentions” feature, LOL four in one post… I’m on my way to setting a record!

BTW: this plugin has an option to add an email confirmation too… this guy thought of everything! (well… almost, lol)

[Joe Marino]

@r-a-y When you said “only do this if you trust your user base” it got me thinking… should I trust my group admins just because they paid for the ability to create a group on my site? Also, what if I want to open group creation to all users at a later date (when I can afford a better server)? Considering such, I’ve changed my mind about this. However, I would still like to allow site admins (not group admins) to have full HTML functionality in group descriptions and forum posts (and yes, I definitely trust my site admins). I’m guessing that I would use the same code – just remove the “bp_group_is_admin() ||” part?

Thanks for bringing that plugin to my attention… I will certainly give that a try!

[Joe Marino]

@hnla Ah, sweet… I’m definitely going to install this BP Xtra Signup plugin then. I’ll let you know how that goes.
@rogercoathup Thanks for providing the link! Forgot to say that earlier… better late than never though, right?

[Joe Marino]

@r-a-y Thank you for the helpful information! To answer your question, I would like to give my group admins the ability to embed an iframe into their group descriptions to facilitate an external signup. Perhaps there is a way to limit the functionality of iframes to a specific domain or set of domains? I would also like to allow them to embed rich media into their forum posts such as youtube videos for example. In fact, I would like to grant this ability to all registered members on my site.

[Joe Marino]

@hnla that’s a good point! I guess I could do a localization after installing the plugin to make it say what I want. Speaking of which, is it possible to insert hyperlinks into a localization file? If not, I guess I’ll have to figure out how to make the edit from within the plugin files.

I understand that having my users read my privacy statement is not necessarily a “requirement”. However, it’s better to be safe than sorry these days as people are suing over petty issues like having their identity stolen. (Disclaimer: that was sarcasm by the way… in case any of you who are reading this didn’t catch on to that, lol)
– Press ALT+F4 to acknowledge that you have read the disclaimer above.

All jokes aside, my privacy policy describes the ways in which my company attempts to protect the privacy of our members and I would like to ensure that this information is admissible in court if the need should ever arise. Requiring that my members read the privacy policy before creating their account is simply a means by which to ensure that end is achieved.

[Joe Marino]

Hmm… that seems to take care of one of the three options I need. I may give that a try because I like the newsletter feature it adds too. Does anyone know of a more complete solution?

[Joe Marino]

@hnla Thanks again! I will give that a read as soon as I have the free time.

[Joe Marino]

@hnla could you provide an example of how to create a “child theme”? I am new to the WordPress/PHP community so I’m learning as I go here.

[Joe Marino]

Bump… anyone? Sorry, but it has been 4 days with no reply…

[Joe Marino]

@hnla I don’t believe the PHP is still parsing… it seems to be working as intended. Having the “unnecessary” markup in source view is fine by me as it helps me to remember what I need to do whenever I upgrade. Thanks again for your assistance!

[Joe Marino]

@hnla Thanks! I accomplished this by commenting the corresponding lines in my theme’s header.php like so:

*EDIT: hmm… guess bbcode doesn’t work on these forums. I took a screenshot of the solution in case anyone is interested: http://img715.imageshack.us/img715/4051/hideactivitystream.png

[Joe Marino]

@jeffsayre it wasn’t my goal when I started the topic, but as soon as I started to dig beneath the surface, it became clear that it would have to be all-or-nothing ordeal as renaming only the slugs might confuse some of my members.

[Joe Marino]

@jeffsayre I did see that and I considered only renaming the slugs but I was looking for more of a complete rename of the words “group” and “groups” site-wide. Poedit was helpful in that regard, but it would have taken me a while to manually edit each entry with those words in them. I may get around to doing that some day… just not today lol.

[Joe Marino]

Wow… that’s a lot of work (changing every mention of the word “group” in the po file one by one)! Even with that poedit program, it was a tedious and time consuming task because there was no “find and replace” functionality and with a text editor (I use TextPad), you have to be sure not to rename any file names. There needs to be s a simpler way. Maybe I don’t want to change it from “Groups” after all, LOL. But thanks for the links… I did learn a thing or two!

[Joe Marino]

I attempted to install the W3TC plugin again today and I was suddenly getting the memory error again. I spent several hours discussing the issue with my server support rep and he was finally able to fix the issue! He never divulged exactly what he did to fix the problem, but I really didn’t care much anyways because the problem was obviously on their end and it was not the fault of the plugin. So I finally have W3TC up and running on my site!

WOO-HOO!!!

Now to figure out how to configure it properly…

[Joe Marino]

I just spoke to my server support again because I figured out that the PHP setting for memory_limit was set at 32M on their end and no amount of .htaccess hacking could bypass that. I politely asked if they could increase the limit for me to 128M and they wound up setting it at 256M! I’m so lucky to be working with a hosting company that’s willing to do that for a shared hosting cheapskate like me, lol. The company is Servage by the way in case any of you are interested. If you go to them because of me, be sure to use this referral link so I can get some free months and some extra space for referring ya! Hope I didn’t break any forum rules by posting that. Feel free to edit that out if it does. Anyways… I’m going to install W3TC again tomorrow and I’m betting that it’s going to work this time.

[Joe Marino]

I would also like to have an age verification on my BuddyPress site. I have added a “birthday” field as a requirement in the user profile, but this does not prevent minors from completing the registration process. How would I go about implementing something like this?

[Joe Marino]

I regret to inform that my second attempt to activate this plugin failed with the same exact problem as the first attempt (memory error). I have submitted a support thread on the WordPress forums specific to the W3TC plugin and I am awaiting a reply from the author of this plugin or anyone else who may be willing to offer further assistance.

[Joe Marino]

I have just upgraded my BuddyPress installation to version 1.2.5. I will be giving the W3TC plugin another trial run shortly.

[Joe Marino]

Welp… this morning, I attempted to remove this plugin via the admin panel but I started getting the “some files appear to be missing or out of place” error again so I went into my FTP and deleted all the W3TC files that weren’t automatically removed and I got my admin panel back, but my site’s front-end was displaying a blank white screen. So I wound up restoring yesterday’s backup after all. If anyone has any idea as to what caused this issue, I sure would like to know your thoughts on the matter.

[Joe Marino]

My support rep was able to figure out a way to disable the plugin via the database.

Now to figure out exactly what went wrong…

[Joe Marino]

LOL there were some pretty pissed off people in that link. Didn’t learn much other than what I’ve already tried. It’s no biggie though… this is exactly why I make sure to do a backup every morning before I begin any work. And thankfully, I didn’t get much accomplished today as I spent most of my day researching caching options.