[Sam Steiner]

Wouldn’t it be cool for a plugin to remove wp-signup.php and xmlrpc.php from a BuddyPress installation in a way that these changes would be kept through an upgrade of WordPress (which now of course replaces the deleted files)?

[Sam Steiner]

Sad, that every time you get the courage together to update any part of a BuddyPress installation, the whole system explodes. (OK, you can say: “There are hack in Trac!” – seriously: come on!) I was hoping, these problems would be tested more thoroughly in the meantime but I am losing faith in BuddyPress here. Was hoping to recommend BuddyPress to actually be used soon – but how can one recommend a system that very well may crash and waste huge amounts of support-time at each upgrad?

[Sam Steiner]

I am also having this problem – I guess everybody is. I also followed the tips you mentioned and initially, it reduced splogger registrations a lot.

However, I disagree with Terry: there are not real people setting up blogs and answering captchas, these are bots. As kiwipearls mentioned, if you go and try to sign up manually, you have to fill in the required fields.

There is a leak somewhere in BuddyPress/WPMU registration and all methods to stop the oil have failed until now. BP (haha) people say it’s WPMU and the other way around, I guess. The leak has been here for months and nobody seems to want to fix it. Maybe it’s some kind of corruption since the premium site Terry mentioned has a way to fix it.

[Sam Steiner]

Maybe we should ask this question in a spammer’s forum

Andy Peatling once told me it was more of a WPMU problem (are you using WPMU?). But I have also heard people reporting the problem only arises once BuddyPress is activated. I don’t know, sorry.

I reduced Sploggers to about 20 per day, which is OK for the time being to handle (but of course quite annoying). Looking forward to solutions – as we all are, I guess. I can’t imagine anyone not having this problem – since I have so much spam on a hardly known site.

[Sam Steiner]

There may be a plugin for something like that. Or else you could maybe persuade someone to build such a plugin.

[Sam Steiner]

I’m wondering if this has to be fixed in a BuddyPress version or in a WPMU version (coming closer to WP Single)? I agree it is a huge issue since most/all installs that are active in the meantime (meaning the “older” installs) will be running WPMU.

[Sam Steiner]

Wow, I was just about going to upgrade but checked here quickly because upgrading BuddyPress always has a kind of bad feeling attached to it (at least for me) – and sure enough, it seems I wont be able to upgrade just now…

[Sam Steiner]

I’m having 300 spam registrations a day and having to mark them all as spam manually 15 in one go in the user list. The plugin wordpress Hashcash (updated today to 4.5.1) should now work for BuddyPress registration but it stops EVERYBODY from registering.

David Lewis, one week later, is your solution still working for you?

[Sam Steiner]

@21cdb – I’m very much with you on that one! Albums in Group!

Social Media is about connecting (groups) and sharing. In my bass community on http://basshive.net the group creators would like to call people to show photos in a better way than with the “Group Documents” plugin…

[Sam Steiner]

Most of all, I would like to see:

– BuddyPress Album+

– Welcome Pack

…in the “good plugins” list. Many of the other BP-crashing plugins don’t even work Now which is better: not working at all in BP 1.2.x or BP crashing in 1.2.x? I say: not working at all may be better for BuddyPress reception – because it is clear that the problem is a plugin problem and not BuddyPress.

The first time I got a “white-out” I was frustrated with BP, didn’t immediately think of the plugin developers.

My offer to bring this a step further: for “Welcome Pack” and “BuddyPress Album+” – based on an hourly rate of $60 and the 5 minutes needed to correct the plugin, I will donate $5 via PayPal each if they get corrected by the end of the month (2 or 3 days). Even though I have already updated to BP 1.2.3 by deactivating those plugins temporarily.

[Sam Steiner]

Cool plugin. Some ideas:

– A setting to prevent the shoutbox opening in the admin backend would be great

– The “V^x” symbols in the top right of the shoutbox are not very sexy

– A setting to switch off the full page mode (hide “Chat” in the buddybar, hide “Go to full chat” in shoutbox)

[Sam Steiner]

Any readers here – better post in this new more general thread by Andy Peatling:

https://buddypress.org/forums/topic/plugin-hall-of-shame-plugin-devs-please-read

[Sam Steiner]

I guess there are no experienced BP plugin authors because BP hasn’t been around for a long time.

It’s important to get this topic out there and the frequently used plugins fixed quickly. Otherwise people will have strange feelings every time an update for BuddyPress comes out. That hurts BuddyPress.

(I don’t understand though: is there really no way to take care of “white screens” from the other side – from WordPress side? Like a try…catch fatal error thing which would deactivate the plugin causing the error?)

[Sam Steiner]

@ Andy – do you know if https://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/buddypress-group-activity-stream-subscription/ is good or bad?

[Sam Steiner]

List of Update Friendly Plugins (in most recent version):

– Tweetstream

– Facestream

– BP Group Management

– Enhanced BuddyPress Widgets

– Invite Anyone

– BP GroupBlog

Please make a note of any BuddyPress plugin you know is update-friendly (which means: doesn’t break when BuddPress is deactivated).

[Sam Steiner]

@Boone – and that other plugin you recommend (Activity Stream Subscription), is that one update friendly?

[Sam Steiner]

[Sam Steiner]

This is getting worse and worse. I just launched my first BuddyPress site and am getting spammer registrations although I have additional required profile fields and SI Captcha installed.

Sadly, the article mentioned (linked) above is not available anymore (I guess the spammers took down that site) and judging by the responses here there still seems to be no known solution to the spammer problem with WPMU/BuddyPress.

I spoke to someone on Twitter who confirmed that the spam problem started when activating BuddyPress – this would be in contradiction to remarks from Andy, I’m afraid. Anyhow: after reading comments here there seems to be a hole in the system somewhere.

(I guess the spammers have been clever enough not to spam testbp.org )

[Sam Steiner]

@Andy – so you don’t know of a solution to this? How is it solved on testbp.org?

[Sam Steiner]

This is actually one of the greatest issues with WPMU/BuddyPress at the moment. Many people seem to have this problem and when I ask in Twitter nobody seems to have a solution to this. I noticed the problem on a community website I was (am) a member of and then again on a new installation for a community website I am building. Spammers just keep registering.

Is this more of a problem with WPMU than of BuddyPress?

Is somebody out there NOT having this problem?

[Sam Steiner]

For whoever is looking desperately for a chat for BuddyPress – here is one more I just found and it seems to be finished and working. It is not a small Facebook-like-chat though (and the free version has ads in it), so there is still some waiting to be done for this plugin here to be finished…

– http://dynamicendeavorsllc.com/premium/

– see screenshot here: http://dynamicendeavorsllc.com/premium/bp_chat_no_adsense/

Maybe this can help someone.

[Sam Steiner]

This looks interesting but seems to have time resource problems. If this is ging to be a free plugin, why not release the code in order to let other build upon this and drive the plugin ahead? Maybe there is a possibility of releasing a version with some not yet finished features missig?

If this is going to cost something, why not discuss the price with those of us who will soon need to employ developers to create such a plugin?

Nobody seems to have a working released chat plugin for BuddyPress yet. These are the ones I have come across so far:

– this one of course: http://simplercomputing.net/bp/

– one is promised over at http://buddydev.com/

– there seems to be something here: http://soderlind.no/archives/2009/02/27/toksta-chat-plugin-for-buddypress/

Anyone know more?

Maybe we could get together and employ someone (or even “M”) to bring such a plugin into existance? I guess there are a few projects out there (like mine) that absolutely NEED a chat feature to go online (in my case, BuddyPress will have to replace an existing system thaat already includes a chat).

[Sam Steiner]

Is this legally OK to have groups in BuddyPress that are not even visible for the administrator who is responslible for the contents of his site?

Worst case, a terror cell could open a hidden group on our church network and use that to organize attacks without even the administrator knowing of the existence of such a group. I think this concept is a bit strange.