[@lincme Member 15 years, 11 months ago]

@alanchrishughes; That makes sense to me, and I think that’s the way social networking will go soon, though it’s in its infancy right now. I think the very concepts of ‘forums’, ‘groups’, ‘blogs’ and so-on will merge, and fade into history soon enough.

I like the information filtering provided for user in the activity streams. For example, ‘All Members’ shows all activity, while ‘My Friends’ or ‘My Groups’ shows only what has been posted by friends, or in groups you belong to. That’s simple enough for almost anyone to grasp, and easy to use. When that sort of thing is extended into “What sort of information do you want to see, and how do you want to see it?” we’ll be making further progress. Currently, something like a forum is not easy for most people to grasp and use, and very restrictive for developers.

[@lincme Member 15 years, 11 months ago]

@peterverkooijen said; “There is also zero privacy/security in Buddypress”. Care to expand upon that Peter? Our site isn’t ‘open for business’ yet, but when it is our members will expect some privacy, ie., profile stuff set to private and private group posts actually being private. Are you saying it can’t/won’t be properly private?

[@lincme Member 15 years, 11 months ago]

@alanchrishughes; What we’ve done – and it’s making sense to a few testers so far – is to ditch the forums and just use groups. So people know, for example, that they can create a cycling group, or a business group, or a flower arranging group. They understand that they can post messages in their group, and invite others to join in, accept new members, etc., and also that if they want things in the group to remain only there then they can make it private.

Apart from the varying negative reactions I see from people regarding forums and blogs, one of the things which puts people off with forums is the layout style. They don’t want to ‘go into’ a new area and then have to sub-navigate, as they frequently become lost and end up hitting the Home button and starting again. Or worse still, the browser’s Close button, because it’s just another minor stress in life they can do without. Seeing an activity stream, and then entering a group knowing that it’s much the same thing, but either publicly displayed or kept private, they can handle. (Funnily enough, one tester said today when looking at the activity stream, “This is a really great idea…a local forum”).

Personally, I’m very much pulling away from all the “Oh how cool is this?!” side of technology, as you may notice from other posts I’ve made. It’s not because I’m ready for pipe and slippers yet, nor because I don’t like it all, but simply because those who are or become site and software developers are usually far removed from those they’re developing for, yet they don’t realise it. ‘Screen blindness’, perhaps. Developers are producing highly complex helicopters, while what most people really want are bog-standard 4-gear cars. Some are even happy with a horse and cart! (Afterthought; I guess the trick is to produce the complex helicopter, but make it so simple to fly that all you need is a steering wheel and 4 gears. I know; the analogy falls down hard if stretched further!)

[@lincme Member 15 years, 11 months ago]

@johnjamesjacoby; I don’t suppose this is the place to report an issue, so I’ll make it a question. When creating a Group, the tags are lost and have to be re-input after the final step. Is this fixed?

[@lincme Member 15 years, 11 months ago]

My currency calculator says that’s over £85 GBP. I doubt most people building start-up sites as we are, with little or no income, will go anywhere near such a service. Anyway, there are free php chat scripts which work well, and no doubt WP plugins as wrappers too.

[@lincme Member 15 years, 11 months ago]

@alanchrishughes said: “What is the idea even behind this “groups” concept? I have been trying to understand it and figure out a way to just work with it, but it just doesn’t make sense, it’s backwards.”

Just waking up Alan, so I hope I haven’t completely misunderstood. Personally, I’ve always been interested in how people respond to software systems. I think one of the main problems these days is that techies are so into, and used to, all things forum-ish, etc., that it’s second nature. People who get into systems like WordPress and BuddyPress quickly become techies, often without realising it, and take up the common language and perspectives of the software system they’re using. However, from the average user’s point of view, everything is very different.

We’ve done a lot of research with local people regarding using community websites. They know what a community is, and they know what a group is, at least in the real world. But mention a forum or a blog and we hear, “A what?! Oh, don’t give me all that computer-speak, and *don’t* try to make me understand all that rubbish”. This from some young people as well as older ones not so used to technology.

In building a social network as we are right now, forums are pretty much useless, and so are blogs. Why? Generally speaking, because in community organisations a forum is a face-to-face meeting of different service providers, and in business an online forum is seen as a bunch of people talking constantly about nothing on the Internet, ie., not much real use in terms of serious networking and increasing profits. Blogs are perceived as even worse: people blathering on and on about nothing of much interest to the world because they haven’t anything better to do, and love to see themselves racking up the page count and traffic day by day. This is our experience here in the UK, at least in our locality.

Groups, on the other hand, everyone can relate to. People form groups in real life, and the word ‘group’ is one everyone readily understands. Consequently, if I tell a local voluntary group that they can have their own online group, and even keep it private if they wish, they respond positively and grasp the idea of posting messages in a group. That’s all a group need be: forums and blogs don’t come into it. The response I’ve personally had to the question of whether someone would like a blog is, “Why?” and to the question of whether they’d like a very useful online forum it’s almost always, “But we already have a forum, twice a month”!

Whether the take-up on our site is good once it’s completed and advertised is dependent upon many factors. One thing I’ve learned to do over the past few years though, is switch off from the latest cool thing like forums within blogs within groups within posts related to other blogs which pull in every social network on the planet because you typed a certain key phrase. OMG yes it’s all so cool, but OMG do you end up with only users who also think it’s cool. The rest of the world don’t flaming well care, and the rest of the world IS the world.

Just my two-pence worth as they say here, but I’d look at what your users will find useful, and how what you’re building will make sense to them in terms they currently understand. In the recent past I’ve tried to enthuse people about all the cool stuff we have available, but unless it relates quickly and simply to their real world tasks it’s a waste of time and effort.

Groups are cool and useful because they reflect simple public/private real world entities.

[@lincme Member 15 years, 11 months ago]

@jmarino; If all else fails, you can just pull the plugin folder. WP and BP are neat that way, as they just report that the plugin is gone and deactivated when you go to the plugins page again. (Other systems we’ve tried freeze and die totally, which is no fun).

[@lincme Member 15 years, 11 months ago]

Oh good grief! @LPH2005; thank you. I’d installed W3 Total Cache, set it up and forgot about it. Then noticed terrible lagging on my BP site. Just switched off page caching and zippeee… This should go on a BP Wiki page entitled, “Things that will bite you in the ass without any warning”.

[@lincme Member 15 years, 11 months ago]

Edit: PoEdit is a great utility for creating the required language file from the BuddyPress basic .pot, and is available for various systems at http://sourceforge.net/projects/poedit.

@crashutah; Thanks for the link. I was just pondering the idea, and what might already exist, but I’ll create a language file now which will save me a lot of time later. Seems to me that any system which uses or will in future use multiple languages, should be designed from the start to have a central way to translate every string. Though from past experience I know that it’s not as easy as it might sound.

[@lincme Member 15 years, 11 months ago]

@nuprn1; I’m switching off and taking a much needed break, but again, thanks for your help. That function means little to me in terms of where it goes (I’m assuming in an overridden theme file). I’m also guessing that the guy who asked the original question might also say, “What?!” Yes, there’s the codex, and god knows how many more hours wasted just trying to do something *really* simple like remove a useless link! As I said, it’s *not* simple, is it? And if people who download WP and BP to build a site find it isn’t as simple as they were lead to believe, guess what? They disappear after a very short while. Right now, if I have the choice of spending 14 hours a day for months on end trying to untangle a massive ball of string or getting the knife out, I’ll get the knife out. Coding *isn’t* poetry, it’s sometimes fun, sometimes a waste of life. Sometimes both!

[@lincme Member 15 years, 11 months ago]

@nuprn1; I know you’re trying to help, but you might as well have said “Just create world peace; end of problems”. For those who aren’t used to creating plugins, hooking into WP and BP functions, etc., (and more importantly, who don’t have the time to learn it all right now) this is quick, and it works. Also, in not just one opinion here, the View link and the improperly formatted page it leads to are not required, and confuse users who don’t play around on blogs and forums all the time. Thanks for the help and all, but it would also save time if perhaps you just posted a link to a quick way to do what you suggest..?

Edit: I thought it worth adding an extra note to say that I hope this doesn’t come across as ungrateful. We all appreciate the time and work you and others put into WP, BP and plugins. One issue that’s obvious reading around this site is that not only are people finding things confusing for end users, they’re also confused themselves, and they’re trying to build sites! All the advertising of “Famous 5 minute install” are pretty worthless to those who aren’t programmers (and don’t want to be) when they find weeks and weeks of work is required to produce something workable.

Most of us just want to build sites end users find simple and effective, and we’re using WP and BP because they’re presented as being the quickest, easiest, and most powerful way to do so. Having to continually slave away at making it all simple is time wasting, and often very frustrating for those who believe what code authors say about it being simple. Turns out, it isn’t, is it? I love the WP+BP combination, but I’ll take the shortest route to a working system that I can, because somewhere away from my hot computer there’s a life I used to lead!

[@lincme Member 15 years, 11 months ago]

We aim to please. And also strip 60% of BuddyPress away so it functions in ways ordinary users can understand.

[@lincme Member 15 years, 11 months ago]

@corell; The View link confuses people, we find, though others here said it’s useful as a permalink for bookmarking. Without it, people could lose track of posts in the Activity stream. However, for non-techie users and those not used to Internet blogs and forums, etc., the Favourite link does a better job and means more to them. Plus, My Favourites is always there on the Activity stream page for easy access to what they’ve saved.

So, I modified a few BP core files, and saved them separately so I can overwrite the core or restore it as required. (I’d been having problems with the theme’s View page layout, and was modifying it with help from others). You can see the result at our still developing site at http://lincme.co.uk/activity/

I used a fast file internal search and hunted down the string “View middot” (“View” AND “middot”, not “View” + space + “middot”). Then I just remmed out the permalink insert line with /* & */. There aren’t too many files to change, but obviously, keep them separate and don’t overwrite your BP zip installer! If it helps, I use a freeware file search tool for Windows called Agent Ransack.

[@lincme Member 15 years, 11 months ago]

“I hope I’m not the only one who waits for bp 1.4” … Now THAT’S enthusiasm!

[@lincme Member 15 years, 11 months ago]

Hi @thekmen, @nuprn1. I got mixed up about how the theme lays out pages, trying to fix a number of things all at once, as you do. I think the BP theme issues others have faced too are because its layout in terms of file structure seems over-complicated after modifying ordinary WP themes. I may get some time to return to this later today, but the feeling still hanging around in my mind is, “Why doesn’t header.php just create the header bar and links for all pages, as you’d expect in a WP theme? Something to look at again in a wide-awake mood! Thanks for taking the time to help with this guys.

[@lincme Member 15 years, 11 months ago]

@johnjamesjacoby; G’morning mate (or not, as may be your geographical case!) I’ve just been modifying some BP core files, as I do, and keeping them separate so I can overwrite and restore as seems best. The main reason is that I’m very finicky about how things read English-wise for site users, as I’ve found it can really put them off if it isn’t easy to read, or looks wrong because of syntax or extra spacing, etc.

One of the main things I’ve changed is the English in the Activity steam. For example;

“X and Y are now friends: 4 hours ago”

That makes no sense to most not-techie users, and gives them the uncomfortable subconscious feeling that something is wrong. Mine now reads;

“X and Y became friends 4 hours ago”

I know it might seem over-picky, but I’ve done a fair bit of study into the psychological impact of software interfaces and website layouts on users, and small things really do make a difference. It’s amazing what the brain spots unconsciously, making the user feel either comfortable and relaxed, or increasingly more tense as the minutes go by in use.

So, though I haven’t looked into it yet, is it possible to override core BP files in some way, or could it be made possible without huge amounts of work? I mean a bit like theming, where you can just clone the Default theme into a new folder and hack away merrily.

One other option, of course, would be to keep *all* strings used in formatting in the /bp-languages/buddypress.pot file, and user them in all php files, so that modifying the .pot file would change the output instantly. At present, much of the string formatting is hard-coded into the php files (at least in English), so just changing the .pot file doesn’t work globally. Hmm… now I think about it, does using another language .pot file cause that to happen, ie., the formatting in the core php files is overridden? (I don’t speak any other language, and haven’t tried changing it). If this *is* the case, then creating an ‘English Modified’ .pot file would do the trick, yes..?

[@lincme Member 15 years, 11 months ago]

@thekmen; I’ve lost the plot now as I’m falling asleep, but will have a look tomorrow. Right now, I can’t see why the header links don’t show as they do on all other pages, the various php files filling in, as it were. It’ll probably make sense after a good sleep. Thanks for checking it out.

[@lincme Member 15 years, 11 months ago]

@nuprn1; Sorry, ‘dumb’ sounds rather insulting reading it back. Too tired. Yes, I’ll filter it somehow so it makes more sense, as it’s very useful. Thanks!

[@lincme Member 15 years, 11 months ago]

@thekmen; Yes, it’s at http://lincme.co.uk/conversation/. The View permalink page works now (thanks for the css tip Rich) but the display is still a bit odd, and there’s no header bar links. I’ll leave it up until tomorrow morning, then back on ‘maintenance’ so it doesn’t scare anyone.

[@lincme Member 15 years, 11 months ago]

Thank you! A bit of a dumb thing to do I’d have thought, adding another time stamp to the display? Fixed, though I’ve lost the ‘bump’. May have to hack that one.

[@lincme Member 15 years, 11 months ago]

@thekmen, It’s pasted at http://pastebin.com/KZhQ1mU3. That includes Rich’s additions (except I forgot the last line, but it makes no difference when in). It’s basically a clone of the Default BP theme. (I’ve tried switching to the Default, and it comes up with the same mess in View permalink). Every other page, including WP pages I construct, or Post pages, all appear perfectly well and within the normal theme page structure, ie., correct width, header, sidebar, content, etc.

@nuprn1; Update the css width? Sorry, but my head’s a shed at the moment, with trying to sort out a stack of other inconsistencies.

Edit: I added the following line and the sidebar appears, but in the wrong place. And there’s no header bar and links. My head’s gone!

[?php locate_template(array(‘sidebar.php’), true); ?]

[@lincme Member 15 years, 11 months ago]

@elizawhat; Your post made me think, and I checked our (not yet) live site, which does require email confirmation. Mostly I’m thrashing around at home with a local xammp installation, and can’t remember what I did to make the live one require email conf. The plugin linked to below should do it, although it’s not activated in our site..! Something in WP or BP lets you require email confirmation, but I can’t remember what.

https://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/bp-xtra-signup/

[@lincme Member 15 years, 11 months ago]

@johnjamesjacoby; It works now. I’ll hack a couple of things like the profile message being wrong, and also the View permalink (which also shows on the page you clicked to View, so you can view recursively!) Many thanks.

Now, where can I see a lit of what’s changed in this version..? Edit: Found trac, no worries.

[@lincme Member 15 years, 11 months ago]

Sheesh. Just got back, downloaded and tried the new bump, and every plugin is failing one after another. Messages like;

Fatal error: Class ‘BP_Group_Extension’ not found in C:xampplitehtdocswp-contentpluginsbp-edit-group-slugbp-edit-group-slug.php on line 27

Removing them fixes it, adding them back; fail.

Edit: Has something changed function-wise? One plugin on reactivation, for example, is giving the following error (shortened);

Fatal error: Call to undefined function is_site_admin()

[@lincme Member 15 years, 11 months ago]

@johnjamesjacoby; Just a quick note, as I’m off out for a while. I noticed in the previous version of BP that the ‘?’ symbol on the profile age next to the avatar was reporting names wrongly. I hacked it in core, but now it’s back in the new version.

Eg., with a user ‘fred’, when logged in as fred the message is correct. But if I’m logged in as ‘admin’ I get this when looking at fred’s profile (notice ‘admin’ in second sentence);

@ fred is a unique identifier for admin that you can type into any message on this site. admin will be sent a notification and a link to your message any time you use it.

When I hacked it I removed the extra names, as they’re not required;

@ fred is a unique identifier for this person that you can type into any message. He/she will be sent a notification and a link to your message when you do this.