[@mikepratt Participant 16 years, 10 months ago]

@DJPaul – Ok, then what do you do about the resulting bifurcation of the discussion? I guaranty that users will not universally (nowhere near) know that the comment they leave on the SWA is actually not part of the originating thread which, in effect, renders that comment as a “comment about a comment” and nothing more. There could be some utility in that but it won’t be obvious. Then, we’ll have to take steps to educate users that they are not actually replying to the post itself.

Maybe I’m wrong. maybe having two separately evolving threads isn’t such a big deal. I’m just leery of the forums suffering because everyone is leaving their comments in the SWA instead

[@mikepratt Participant 16 years, 10 months ago]

@Andy – Idea: what if you just ajax’d a window in the SWA into the actual forum posting when you reply to that forum posting so the feeling is the same but, in actuality, you are posting in the forum itself

[@mikepratt Participant 16 years, 10 months ago]

realizing this problem of syncing SWA posts and the real, original posts may be very difficult given the SWA is just a new table culled from the original posting tables and therefore not linked. Where are relational db’s when you need ’em!

[@mikepratt Participant 16 years, 10 months ago]

@r-a-y you’re right. I was confused. That is EXACTLY what I want as well. un-synced is a non-starter for me

[@mikepratt Participant 16 years, 10 months ago]

I had the same issue until it dawned on me to verify the settings for timezones in Settings->General. I ended up using a UTC manual offset and it corrected the problem (instead of choosing a city)

[@mikepratt Participant 16 years, 10 months ago]

@r-a-y You highlight exactly why this is an important issue. Including forum and blog replies is the lifeblood of our site and you want yours turned off.

I am hoping the auto join feature can be disabled for commenters in the SWA. I really think SWA in-line commenting will help our site explode with activity and I want people’s personal activity streams to remain a construct of their desire, as you stated. They key hurdle is accepting the concept that commenting on a group forum reply form an outside perspective such as the SWA doesn’t imply a desire to BE a part of that group. At least that’s how we view it. The other perspective also makes sense.

[@mikepratt Participant 16 years, 10 months ago]

I agree on the auto joining. It’s also a potentially very important distinction between what constitutes an “original posting” Is that “creating” a new topic in a Group forum? maybe that’s a good idea. group members can create new Topics but if you comment on the public SWA then you are adding to that forum thread.

Just remember, no one will make the distinction on their own…they will see a forum reply and see that they have the ability to add their own comment and will assume it’s part of the forum thread. Why would they assume otherwise.

I know it might be hard to sync. Bummer if we disable forum and blog in-line comments. That’s the coolest part of it all

[@mikepratt Participant 16 years, 10 months ago]

I started a new thread to pick up where this one left off now that the new SWA has tweaked the model -> https://buddypress.org/forums/topic/new-12-swa-and-blogforum-syncing-feedback-needed

I will add one parting thought here-> IMHO, BP was a welcome change from the old bbPress way which tossed every topic imaginable into a big collection of forum topics. Groups are a way to aggregate subjects and such. I for one am glad there is no giant site wide forum that I have to wade through to find what I want. That’s why I join groups. I have the SWA to browse the entire site full of activity. Bonus

[@mikepratt Participant 16 years, 10 months ago]

@Jeff – that involves either a core hack or writing a plugin to extract the action just to solve the problem of improperly set & passed variables

[@mikepratt Participant 16 years, 10 months ago]

These 2 concepts merge in 1.2, any day now. Hang tight and your problems will be over

[@mikepratt Participant 16 years, 10 months ago]

@mariusooms Now that was a response I can truly appreciate, and I do. I definitely see merit in both approaches and I am putting thought into an approach that satisfies my userbase’s needs. I don’t see any way around the problem you so eloquently laid out. Perhaps what we need is not so much a blog for groups, but a post-like-entry/edit mechanism to create content that is clearly part of the /group structure, lives inside that structure, has privacy and permissions consistent with that structure but gives users the opportunity to create content that falls into this category: more than a forum topic or posting, more than a wire posting -> sort of a “thought piece that has been traditionally the domain of blog posts ie with images, etc. that people then lend commentary to.

I need to figure out what vehicle/mechanism best lends itself to that structure. I’ll keep you up on what I discover, if anything.

[@mikepratt Participant 16 years, 10 months ago]

@djpaul sorry I left some things off. wpmu 2.8.5, directory install, no custom functions that go anywhere near register.php (a few widgets that’s all), screenshot provided, no register redirects, bbPress 1.0 (no relevant), no server error logs, host is Liquidweb.

[@mikepratt Participant 16 years, 10 months ago]

you should all check out the bleeding edge trunk 2161. It’s pretty stable and likely addresses all your SWA filtering and grouping needs, with the ability to be tweaked further.

SWA customization really boils down to the ability for a user to choose any combination of “who’s” and “what’s” which is what 1.2 does exactly. so, for ex. you can combine My Friends (who) and Forum Posts Only (what) You can create custom “who”s eg a particular group and add that button or combinations of “what’s’ if it suits your site’s m.o. Combine this with 1.2’s inline commenting and people will never leave your home page

You can see an example on my dev site -> http://mjpratt.com

[@mikepratt Participant 16 years, 10 months ago]

No. The problem I describe takes place right in the middle of register.php. Additionally, I have not made a single change to those files. it’s just not populating a couple of the fields (mentioned above)

[@mikepratt Participant 16 years, 10 months ago]

@Boone – that looks like a logical and necessary change

@Marisooms – I have some questions and thoughts regarding the Group Blog concept. PLease understand this critique is in the context of my particular use case, although I believe it to be a very common one.

The Group Bog plugin/tool looks to be quite powerful. In our case, our users are not looking for all that power. We just want to be able to write blog posts as “part of” a group. When you install and run Group Blogs (bp-gb for short), an entirely new blog is created with a url not subordinate to the group. Ex we have a group called USMA-1987 for the class of ’87 on my dev site (mjpratt.com if you care to see the issues). bp-gb created a blog at mjpratt.com/usma1987 instead of mjpratt.com/groups/usma-1987/blog or something like that. When you are viewing blog posts, you are looking at the standard individual blog and widget structure, NOT another section of the Group -> now this may be a bug/error as I once saw that but for the last 2 group blogs I created, there are no Group menus or sections for the group blog showing up. weird.

Bottom line is, the user should never leave the group menu/system environment when dealing with the group blog. In our case, group admins are more like moderators and should not have to do things like configure Akismet, widgets, etc. So I will have to go in and do that for every group. We’re just looking for a little extra group functionality as opposed to an entire group blog ecosystem.

I still think this is the best effort down this path and i am determined to figure a solution out so thanks for the work.

If anyone can hazard a guess why this group -> http://mjpratt.com/groups/usma-1987/ HAS a group blog, created by the plugin at -> http://mjpratt.com/usma1987/ but (as you can see) there are o references to it on the group home page, I would very much appreciate the insight. Thanks

[@mikepratt Participant 16 years, 10 months ago]

I have never experienced an invalid key, so for me it’s just a cosmetic thing (and a small usability thing as the activation email looks garbled and therefore suspicious)

[@mikepratt Participant 16 years, 10 months ago]

@bowe – agreed. Will still require a full custom re-work of the directories, though. Good heads up as I missed that plugin.

[@mikepratt Participant 16 years, 10 months ago]

@djpaul re poedit. I must be missing something. seems to work fine for me. what issues do you notice and is there a better mac po file editor you like?

[@mikepratt Participant 16 years, 10 months ago]

One thing to consider is that it is supposed to work that way, otherwise all you have is a standard old-fashioned bbPress setup. Groups give forum topics context, which gives user something to rally around topically. If a forum isn’t part of a group, then eventually all your topics will blur and you will be awash in a sea of unrelated postings. (which is the state of most b-board systems today, imho

[@mikepratt Participant 16 years, 11 months ago]

@sidianmsjones

I think you’re looking at this from the wrong perspective. BP is not so much about forums as it is about groups….that happen to have forums. That’s on purpose. If you want to crate a site that’s just a big forum with some sub-categorization then you already have the tools (style your own bbPress) to do that. BP lets a community of users create topically organized “groups” and aggregate content and activity around that group. The forum part is just one component of that. Soon, media, events – you name it – will all be a part of that group collective. With activity stream commenting, Andy is merely opening up avenues to add to those topical constructs from all over the site. The forums view that was added recently, imo, is more of a throwback to traditional bb styling that appeased the old way of interacting and helped make the transition smoother for some. On our site, users love the fact that engagement is silo’d when it needs to be and aggregated when it should be. Hope this helps.

[@mikepratt Participant 16 years, 11 months ago]

At the risk of being too negative, some of your statements don’t make sense to me and some seem purposefully (or naively) vague. If you’ve been at WP and BP for 3months now, then logic would dictate that you should be familiar enough with the 2 that you’d be able to answer your questions about their capabilities.

If you’re convinced you are onto some new idea of what people want in a new collection of networks, then you will get much better feedback if you added some detail/clarity in your request. So far, imho, the reason you are getting these nebulous opinions is because your request sounds more like “I wanna build this new car that no one has built, any ideas?”

WP/BP are ready for you to launch your project now. Do some styling and you’re off and running. See if that demand is really out there. Good luck.

[@mikepratt Participant 16 years, 11 months ago]

Right now, the best way to get an answer re support issues is on the plugin’s site: http://www.erwingerrits.com/?page_id=799. Erwin is quite helpful. I am assuming you installed it exactly as he states moving bp-events.php and the rest of the plugin where they should go.

[@mikepratt Participant 16 years, 11 months ago]

Good idea, Bowe. Funny enough, I secured bpuser.com with the idea of making a home for user level discussion (as opposed to developer) on implementing Buddypress. Not sure if I;ll ever do anything with it as I don’t want to re-invent the wheel, so to speak – but the need is there.

[@mikepratt Participant 16 years, 11 months ago]

OK. New development. Join this BP.org group -> https://buddypress.org/groups/wordcamp-ny if you are attending or care about WCNY. I will coordinate stuff from there to the extent I can. Bummer i couldn’t upload a nifty WCNY avatar (Andy – feel free

[@mikepratt Participant 16 years, 11 months ago]

@Erich73 I created a Last_Name and First_Name field so that I could do directory stuff just like you said. The only thing we’re stuck with is the Display name field, which some find annoying and some actually like. Considering all the over the top registrations we have all done before, this isn’t the worst. Facebook has it figured out, using emails as usernames and First name and Last Name when appropriate because it is more conducive to engagement. That’s the most important thing: what gets your users to engage – seeing LadiesMan269 doing an action or John Smith?