[@mikepratt Participant 16 years, 9 months ago]

@Dfa327 Is there anywhere we can see your plugin at work (demo) I have searched all your sites and found it a bit confusing to find what I am looking for. Thanks.

[@mikepratt Participant 16 years, 9 months ago]

My guess is you are not quite understanding the way private messaging was intended to work. As the name implies, it is a private message. When you send a “private” message to 40 friends, it’s not quite “private” anymore, by some definitions. The same occurs in email when one of your 40 recipients hits “reply all” assuming they were not bcc’d.

As such, when you send a bp message to 40 people, you are, in a sense, establishing a 40 person thread. That’s the way it’s supposed to work (which is great for smaller numbers) In other words, expect 40 replies to the thread and all 40 will get 40 messages. Seems ripe for trouble when you send it to 40! (btw, I am impressed you were able to have the patience to pull off 40 as you had to remember and type 40 names or usernames since this is the only way to do it in BP at the moment.

Second, if you send a message that, upon reply, many members will deem the response as “spam” consider not starting the thread. Just remember, BP messaging was not meant to be like email.

[@mikepratt Participant 16 years, 9 months ago]

@Andy as much as I don’t like it, if we’re going with the @username idea, we should probably move the cursor to after the username not before (+ a space) so that they begin typing naturally at the right spot.

I don’t know about the Twitter @ phenom fading but I promise you, s much as it’s used, people still are annoyed by having to remember a username’s real name. I follow Aaron Brazell a lot on Twitter and still have to memorize that he is @technosailor

[@mikepratt Participant 16 years, 9 months ago]

@Michael I hear ya, but let’s be honest (and you know I am a BP fanboy) BP is basically a set of tools to let us create our own niche Facebooks. I won’t beat this dead horse anymore, but along with @David, I will have major user confusion when I start forcing them to pay attention to real names as well as usernames.

I’m with ya though

[@mikepratt Participant 16 years, 9 months ago]

@andy Ok. I understand the model now and it’s good to see the username issue resolution on the horizon somewhere. A couple of thoughts:

1. Given that many activities on the stream get their own verbs “posted an update” “posted a comment” “uploaded a picture” (ok, dreaming!) it might help to tweak the verbiage here to “posted a public message to @username” since I’m not really updating anything. Posting an update smacks of status updates

2. @r-a-y’s point is key, a person needs to go see where all the public messages to them live so they can reply.

[@mikepratt Participant 16 years, 9 months ago]

I think @Alex’s idea is sound and would add one thing: pull the addressing of the target out of the message box. I get the Twitter analogy (I am a massive twitter user myself) but, as I have said before it starts to mix metaphors, and I don’t want users reconciling pretty user names in some places with “username”‘s in public messages

[@mikepratt Participant 16 years, 9 months ago]

John – I think your final solution there is what I will probably do. I will wait to see what sort of message generation you settle on, @ or otherwise. I just want to maintain a consistent user experience throughout and that means one display of a user’s moniker, whatever it is, not several versions

[@mikepratt Participant 16 years, 9 months ago]

any idea how your plugin might compare to the big gallery effort going on over at http://buddydev.com ? (see prev post in this thread) Just curious. I hate to see duped effort.

[@mikepratt Participant 16 years, 9 months ago]

the All in One SEO (https://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/all-in-one-seo-pack/) plugin allows for quite a bit of naming convention changes to your titles. It’s a good place to start.

[@mikepratt Participant 16 years, 9 months ago]

@jjj good points all. I would love your thoughts on my points re some of the finer implementation points of 1.2 updates

[@mikepratt Participant 16 years, 9 months ago]

@balbert if you look at 1.2 (on testbp.org) you will notice there are 2 types of Send Message. Public and private. the private is as you say. The public is merely a status update.

[@mikepratt Participant 16 years, 9 months ago]

Excellent point. Not all is lost but I will take this opportunity to provide some feedback to @jjj and @apeatling re 1.2 in it’s current state

1. I get the use of the Twitter @ metaphor and adding “mentions” to the filters. Cool. BUT, it introduces a potential UI snag for users. Throughout 1.2 you make nice use of Display Name which users will become accustomed to and identify with. Now, you are identifying users by their user name as well (mixing metaphors, so to speak) as in ->

John Doe

and

@jdoe

Given people’s tendencies to use whacky usernames, thee is a big risk of confusion when both start popping up around the site. Not sure what the solution is but I think it’s not a trivial point, imho.

2. Now that the wire has disappeared and along comes the concept of “Send Public Message” (I get it) let’s look at what vehicle we’re making use of and what it may mean to users. As it currently stands in 1.2, to “Send Public Message” you click that button on someone’s profile and you are taken to your own Status Update field with an @username filled in.

a. the cursor is highlighted just before the @username not after (don’t forget to include a space) – this will only cause people to write the pubic message and push the @username to the end of the message. clunky

b. You’ll probably need to include a @mentions on each person’s profile page otherwise, you’ll never be able to easily see the public message to @username you just wrote. The key point being, you want this to show up on THEIR profile.

c. Probably worth considering including a notification to @username of said public message via email (make optional)

d. Q: Will these @’s be co-mingled in your own status updates and, thus create confusion. Maybe that doesn’t matter and i am overthinking it.On the activity stream, it says John Doe posted an update, when he really sent @username a public message. In Twitter when @ leads a message as 1st character, it has different context than everywhere else in the Tweet. Perhaps -> John Doe sent @username a public message ? or something.

I know I am getting fine grained here but theses (excellent) feature adds need to be over the top intuitive when introduced or they will breed unintended usages.

[@mikepratt Participant 16 years, 9 months ago]

Given all the problems listed on this thread, the utter lack of responsiveness and vague claims on the plugin site, why even bother trying?

[@mikepratt Participant 16 years, 9 months ago]

@wordpressfan Are you looking for an events plugin thad adds not only events and a calendar but lets people rsvp and “attend” events? If so, You can use Erwin’s http://www.erwingerrits.com/?page_id=799 or head on over to the wpmu.org crew and throw down money for theirs (not an endorsement since the make you pay without even a test drive, not my game)

[@mikepratt Participant 16 years, 9 months ago]

Dennis – I applaud your effort and sometimes I am convinced having multiple efforts on the same quest makes for better results. It may very well in this case as well but there are a couple of things to consider before you dive into a monster project like this. 1. Brajesh just released screenshots of his exact same project which is days/weeks from release (http://buddydev.com) Yes, there’s a fee but it’s nominal. 2. This looks like it might make it into core sometime this year.

So you could get it right away for a small fee and avoid the work or you could wait until core (I prefer the former) Of course, the benefit for doing it all yourself is total customization to suit your own needs but making something for the community seems to be your priority so..

Just food for thought.

[@mikepratt Participant 16 years, 9 months ago]

I’ll bite, @Bowe, what am I looking for on my profile at testbp.org. I can’t see anything new lately.

[@mikepratt Participant 16 years, 9 months ago]

@jjj sounds great, thx

[@mikepratt Participant 16 years, 9 months ago]

seriously, @Peter, you give yourself too much credit.

I would, however, be curious to know if there is a reason bp didn’t make use of the rudimentary profile fields already available through WP? If it was inadvertent, that’s fine, but if there was a deliberate reason, Id’ find that of interest.

[@mikepratt Participant 16 years, 9 months ago]

This is not a complaint, I promise. @djpaul – that highlights one for the issues we all deal with with plugins and core and why more information (and I distinguish “information” from promises”) from everyone can be so crucial.

Case in point: #brajesh is close to completion on his photo component. I have paid for it and I fully assume all risk. If a core photo component is < 6 mo away then I will, no doubt, be left with a choice to make and I will feel a little sorry for Brajesh and all the work he’s done.

It is what it is. My biggest fear, however, is using a 3rd party photo plugin, getting users to load tons of pics, and soon thereafter seeing a core photo component that is just different enough that it renders all my uploads from the 3rd party plugin useless and in need of re-uploading.

What could be useful would be guidance to those building components that dance around core things (such as this topic) Guidance such as: Hey, mr Dev Dude, we’re planning on X in 3 months. It will do roughly a, b, and c as it’s core functionality. Duplicate that if you wish, but just so you know.

I’d bet you’d; find resources from 3rd party dudes shifted appropriately instead of many wheels being re-invented. I know this is the dearth of all open source 3rd party setups. Just thinking out loud

[@mikepratt Participant 16 years, 9 months ago]

@jjj can you expand upon which corner you are referring to user backing themselves into?

[@mikepratt Participant 16 years, 9 months ago]

@djpaul don’t worry, I don’t think he’ll do it

@bowe Here is an example of what’s in 1.2 right now (@Andy – is this what you were talking about?)

from single.php

<div class=”author-box”>

<?php echo get_avatar( get_the_author_email(), ’50’ ); ?>

<p><?php printf( __( ‘by %s’, ‘buddypress’ ), bp_core_get_userlink( $post->post_author ) ) ?></p>

</div>

So in the same code block we get the WP based avatar while getting the BP based Name. Hmm. Not sure why but I am going to use either bp_loggedin_user_avatar() or bp_member_avatar() instead, or possibly bp_core_fetch_avatar() feeding in the id via bp_core_fetch_avatar($post->post_author) but I am just flying by the seat of my pants and have not tried it yet.

I do know this. We know who the post author is. We know he has a username. That username is the same in WP or BP, so we can get his BP avatar and other info via that route. The rest is theming.

[@mikepratt Participant 16 years, 9 months ago]

@Andy cool. I should have highlighted the fact that blog posts and comments in 1.2 bring in BP xProfile field data quite nicely which tackles the crux of the problem.

I AM interested in your thoughts on the two sep data structures for user info and how we should approach that.

@Peter Good Luck to ya, pal. I would remind you of the “more flies with honey than vinegar” saying but you’re not here to catch flies then are you?

[@mikepratt Participant 16 years, 9 months ago]

I fixed my same issue this way: Went into General Settings and chose a manual UTC offset timezone, instead of my city. All is right in the universe now

[@mikepratt Participant 16 years, 9 months ago]

@Andy I think the central issue is that WP and BP store member info separately. For the uninitiated, it means that comments on blogs on a BP sire will not show the same profile info as comments on forums, etc. b/c the blog gets it’s info from the Wp table. So if you go into my admin on my site, none of the info is filled out except email and username, altho there’s AIM, website, First Name etc. But none of that is made avail into a BP install. On my site, the blog comments say ” username” commented….. instead of “Display name” commented.

Additionally, if WP has all those user fields, why are they not exposed to BP already? That’s what is being talked about. So I am writing functions to sync up that data.

[@mikepratt Participant 16 years, 9 months ago]

Dude – it was sarcasm. Or a more polite way of saying “We get your point. You don’t like the way he does names. Ok. No need to hammer it home on every single thread, every chance you get.” Just trying to help so you’re not completely ignored.