[Mike Pratt]

I think that’s a separate but related point. Most BP site owners don’t have the chops to just “decide” they want media functionality and up and build it. None…None..of the existing offerings come close to what has become the standard now. I am not saying we have to match FB but we have nothing at this point.

 

Don’t interpret “very few sites have media in them” as “no one wants media in their sites” There just aren’t suitable offerings  Thus we wait.

[Mike Pratt]

Paul – I would disagree. I am not suggesting that your point that just what constitutes a “gallery” varies by user. For sure it does. I don’t think that’s the issue. I think our friends at Facebook have demonstrated that the ability to upload, share and organize media (mostly images and video) is an essential ingredient to a social network. BuddyPress allows us to configure and design our network to suit the needs of our niche in ways FB and others do not. Therein lies its real value.

I can think of may use cases, tons actually, where this functionality is required (my community of gardeners, for example) to upload images and have proven functionality with them like tagging, sharing, commenting & activity streams.

 

The same goes for events given the social nature of the communities.

 

It’s not a light on the efforts done, just know the demand is DEFINITELY there

[Mike Pratt]

@ronia I completely agree with you. Now, I am a big fan and supporter of BP, its team and all of their efforts. I hope none of these comments are taken as being unappreciative of what’s been done. I will add, however, that IMHO what keeps BP from going from good/great to amazing is the lack of event & media capabilities into core. It’s just too important and, sadly no one has stepped in to fill the breach. The plugins mentioned cannot be called serious efforts because of their glaring holes. BP-Media is vaporware and has been for years. Buddyvents is damn near close but needs updating. Keep waiting is the best answer that can be given.

[Mike Pratt]

Paul – Do you know off hand if a hook exists to modify the place in core that records the name in the activity table? I know you suggested usernames to match core to @nicholmikey btu I’d like to look into modifying that so first Name Last name are recorded instead….site wide. for our purposes, usernames in the activity stream just throw people off. Trying to go full facebook with full names. Thanks

[Mike Pratt]

OK. I am embarrassed by how long I have been away. Just upgraded my sandbox (no harm) to 1.5, @djpaul and I have the same issue. it’s a redirect thing. cannot get activity to show ever. Actions are recordding fine to the db but nothing. When I set to home, I get a redirect loop timeout. Thoughts?

[Mike Pratt]

Dude – I want it. I have mixed feelings about the GSOC Eventpress effort. It’s kinda bloated and there is still too difficult a workflow process (I’d have to tweak all of the templates just to de-confuse my members)

How can I get my hands on this and take for a spin?

[Mike Pratt]

@hnla That’s exactly my point. I am not suggesting they take it on on their own accord – they need to be asked and guided in an engaged manner by the official leadership. If asked, I’d take on the responsibility with vigor. Instead, everything drifts. It should never be a one man show and no one is expecting that of @andy. Tragically, all this talent you guys have is left wasted on the sidelines (if this thread alone isn’t evidence enough) We’re all doing this because we care and are ready and willing to roll sleeves up and get to business once the right things are done. I’d point out that the chorus of voices you hear here comes from a group of folks almost entirely over 40. We’ve been around the block and understand what needs to be done. We’re not a bunch of bitching & whining teenage code monkeys. (Well maybe Sayre is)

[Mike Pratt]

I think the main point is being missed here. As much as I love them and their work, Andy and jjj can’t do this all by themselves. So guys, I would ask you to wrap your arms around whomever you deem best suited to help you lead this community. We all know who those people are. They are more then capable. But I can tell you from 1st hand knowledge that those very important set of Lieutenants goes very much ignored. Emails go un-responded and forum posts are dying on the vine. THAT’s why the community is floundering. Jeff Sayre, Ray, et all should know what the plan is. They should know why private messaging was turned off. They should know what the vision is for the new bp.org and therefore should be helping steer the community. BUT everyone is left blowing in the wind. So it’s not a matter of “everything is fine” Someone please lead the community. Leadership can even take the form of “I am too busy, , I need you to take charge for me.

[Mike Pratt]

I would agree with @hnla. I accept all that @apeatling and @johnjamesjacoby are up to. The pace is absolutely no issue. The problem is that the BP dev community is langiushing. We need to accept that this is the current state. I’ll make this an open plea to Andy and John, et all to work with us to bring it back to it’s once fervent state. We are all willing to be community sub-leaders but would ask that guidance, feedback and participation come back. Too many messages go unnoticed and unanswered and communities disintegrate when that happens. The new BP.org has issues that need to be addressed (design and flow, not bugs – altho those are present as well).

[Mike Pratt]

@jeffsayre ‘s right. We figured it out thanks to his McGruff The Crime Dog Hook Sniffer plugin. I highly recommend if you want to do some serious under-the-hood looking

[Mike Pratt]

@Dwenaus is spot on guy, (IMHO) sorry. Let’s face it, the examples he gave all put their listing here for viz purposes only. It’s almost spam-like. The photo gallery one is the worst infraction as it is the most misleading. Everyone in BP-land anxiously awaits a fully BP aware image plugin (we’re talking ones that integrate with xprofile, the activity stream etc) There are tons of gallery plugins on WP (I use NextGen Gallery a lot) but they are no different than this one. Why don’t they ALL get listed here? They shouldn’t. The only reason they added #buddypress to their listing was exposure. I have written that plugin dev many times to get clarity on this and they have disappeared. That’s because they just wanted exposure.

Are there useful WP only plugins in a BP world, of course. Should they be tagged as such? Debatable. Boone, Jeff, and others have done such great work in BP specific stuff that it becomes an insult and a disservice.

This is different than the WP plugin repo. It requires some moderation ( @jjj and @apeatling you listening?) because to build a BP plugin is non-trivial.

[Mike Pratt]

@hnla @r-a-y Thanks guys

[Mike Pratt]

I am the co-author of the original and I love seeing things improved so I look forward to taking a look. I’ll be the first to admit it was not clean code and we had a lot of our own hard coded urls in it. You talk about BP 1.3 which doesn’t exist so could you clarify? My version works on my 1.2.3 install just fine so I am also curious what you tweaked.

Best,

Mike

[Mike Pratt]

@Xevo, I totally support your prerogative to “hate” group forums. I find it interesting though. IMO, putting forums into groups was BP’s stroke of genius. When you run a community (and I’d argue, a bbPress install does not a community make. It’s just a collection of discussions by users who can’t interact in many other ways beyond crude messaging), if you don’t group things by their contextual nature eg topic or theme, then you needlessly force the community to pour through everything to consume and engage what they want. I for one, can’t stand browsing through the old fashioned bb’s to find or keep up on information. So having a forum in each group allows me to to that and the extensible nature of groups turns them into much more than a discussion container.

Don’t get me wrong, the recent release of bp.org’s new theme/organization blew it in terms of usability, organization and understanding of how people create and consume information on a topic/s they care about.

[Mike Pratt]

Take a look at my dev site with a concept you might like. Sorta speaks to what you’re talking about…I think: http://mjpratt.com.

Custom register and splash/login sidebar

[Mike Pratt]

Possible bug?: When on a displayed user’s profile page the “personal” tab shows all mentions of the user NOT just that user’s activity, this can be verified by clicking @username mentions a few links to the right.

bp-default does not duplicate this issue so I am guessing it found its way in via bp.org customization

[Mike Pratt]

@lph2005 The student’s reaction and feedback will be, indeed, interesting. So far, what you have related is not inconsistent with other platform’s experiences. Students tend to avoid twitter for several reasons. It’s not a place for immature and “student-like” behavior given its democratic nature (why follow someone who just puts out useless drivel – see Sheep Throwing!) To really survive and thrive on Twitter you need to add value to someone’s world.

To get back on topic: BP tends to be better at constructing grown up environments that focus on quality content contributions. That could be why they don’t see much value in it. “Refusing to interact” is a strong characterization. Is that correct? It sounded like they were “told” to interact so it may not be a BP problem after all Tell us what they “hated” about the default theme. Tell us why switching to a static page that did nothing made activity go up (not intuitive)
Looking forward to your feedback and how it could enhance UI design here.

[Mike Pratt]

Update. After lengthy chats yesterday with @boonegorges and @jeffsayre I will do the following

Find all of the functions I need to filter in order to force all member related URL creation to the domain of the main blog/site (Suits my use case) We will then see if that can be consolidated with a patch to make the effort easier. Will try @sbrajesh ‘s suggestion today.

More later.

[Mike Pratt]

@peterverkooijen @hnla I take the other side of your “little diff b/t blogs and forums” opinion. To me, a blog post is a significantly more “deliberate” piece of content . Blog posts do (and should) take much longer to write. They are thought pieces..with paragraphs/sections, and often media,etc You know what I’m talking about here. Forum Topics, however, are basically “here’s a topic/question I just thought of…discuss” On one of my prod site (1.1.3) I have people begging for group blog capabilities precisely because they are tired of using the Topic metaphor for all of their content. For ex, we have a group called the “12th Man Training Table” which centers on athlete nutrition. Folks want to post recipes for training means. Clearly, forum topics are the wrong vehicle. On the other hand, there are raging debates in that group that definitely belong in the forum construct..not a blog post with comments.

Can you use one or the other to suit your purposes? Sure. Is our use case different than yours? Perhaps. Just realize the probable best solution here is the existence of both with admins choosing what works best for them and driving on.

So Peter, please keep in mind that what you would do to BP would build a BP that works for Peter, but it’s not necessarily the only use case around, that’s all.

[Mike Pratt]

Actually, the author url is intercepted here -> bp_core_get_userlink( $post->post_author ) in the bp-defualt templates. I am going to try and go high enough in the url creation process to catch everything but only as high as I need to go so as not to create other problems

[Mike Pratt]

Well. Nowhere near finished. All the author links on the sublobgs have the sub blog in the link eg domain.com/subblog/member/username. The darn things are everywhere!

What i really need is a way to universally remove sub blog references from all user links.

I know I view things differently but the way I see it, you are a member of the site, not the blog. Sure you may have a role in that blog eg author, but your member profile should not point to a slew of different urls just because you happen to be viewing a blog that is not the main site. In practice, I see that the data remains the same so, in the end, we’re really talking about messy urls but I figured why confuse users

[Mike Pratt]

@sbrajesh the following function suits purpose #2 just fine. I think the var $user_url which seems tied to the main site url is safe enough (untested for sure). fingers crossed.

function bn_loggedin_user_domain() {
global $bp;
return $bp->loggedin_user->userdata->user_url;
}
add_filter(‘bp_loggedin_user_domain’,’bn_loggedin_user_domain’);

[Mike Pratt]

Brajesh – I will have no choice but to make adjustments to those functions. I have enabled multi blog mode because I have multiple blogs! I just control them all, that’s all. Thank you for all your help.

[Mike Pratt]

beautiful, Brajesh. Now I just need to figure out how to remove all the sub-sites when

bp_loggedin_user_domain() & bp_displayed_user_domain() are called

($bp->loggedin_user->domain is where that $value is set) for example

[Mike Pratt]

@DJPaul Your vigilant moderation prompted me to go back and look at post #1 where you, in fact, state that this is for problems associate with the new BP design. I would suggest tweaking the Topic title to reflect as much as it can cause a bit of confusion as to the real nature of the topic (I confess to thinking it was about the actual “design” of the site as per the title)