[MrMaz]

@johnjamesjacoby

As leader of this project, you have a difficult role. Lots of people have complaints. Many have merit and many don’t. Whether they have merit or not, every complaint is *real* to the complainer.

You have put a huge part of your life into BuddyPress, so its hard not to take complaints personally. At the same time, you have people who develop plugins which they have invested a huge part of their life into, so its hard for them not to take it personally when they feel their complaints are discounted.

This project is a community of human beings all working their asses off. As leader of the community you must be the most tempered, the most humble, the most gracious. I feel that sometimes you react in a bit of a combative way, instead of trying to diffuse things and let a healthy debate ensue. This leads to lots of frustration in the people which the project depends on for its life.

I am thankful for all of the hard work you put into the project, and without you the project would not be where it is today. Don’t tear it all down by alienating people who have made large (or small for that matter) contributions over the past years.

[MrMaz]

ok, i better go download some bp templates from the interwebs… can someone halp me find a good devsigner… oh look a piece of candy…

[MrMaz]

I just think its wrong that a plugin takes over the entire WordPress theme. When you do that its not WordPress anymore its BuddyPress. It adds an additional layer of complexity that is not necessary. Additionally, keeping the theme inside of BuddyPress makes it too easy to couple the functionality of BP to its theme. This cohesion is what makes it so infuriating that your theme has to be “perfect” or it breaks all of the advanced BP functionality achieved with javascript. Separating the two would force BuddyPress to play nicer with WP.

[MrMaz]

I feel very strongly that a big part of what makes BP difficult to theme is the fact that the default theme is located under the plugins/ folder. I would be interested in helping to move it back to themes/

[MrMaz]

@r-a-y

I am a big fan of Justin’s and have read that particular post several times in the past. I mostly agree with his arguments, but my view is even a bit more extreme, since even when you remove the term “framework” they still box you into an API that is impossible to break out of, which is not developer friendly in the long run.

There are a lot of themes that I think do this on purpose, because it fits their business model

[MrMaz]

@driz

BuddyPress is already a theme. Look at bp-default. That is a full WP theme that for some reason was bundled with the plugin. There is a huge mess of code devoted to making this setup work. It is nearly impossible to freely modify the templates, even if you roll your own BuddyPress theme, because the javascript is so tightly bound to the ids and classes in the markup.

I don’t think its reasonable anymore to call BP a plugin, since it does not enhance a WP site in the purest sense. It completely takes it over and defines an entirely new set of rules for how to customize the look of your site. That sounds like a theme to me.

If you think about BP as a theme, then the only acceptable ways to solve the issue and stay true to WP is pages or custom post types. This only doesn’t make sense though because BP is made up of many components that should be making their OWN decisions about how they get displayed.

So back to my original point. BP is defining too many rules, and forcing components to adhere to the default theme itself, instead of a theme prototype (which is how WP works). If BP was doing it the “right” way, then this whole issue would be moot, because each component would be deciding how its URL was determined, and the end user could decide if they liked it or not.

I think this is in the scope of the topic because it gets into defining the problem that needs to be solved, which is important before working on a solution.

[MrMaz]

If you really want to take this where the root of the issue is, the underlying problem is that BuddyPress is actually a theme that has been jammed into the plugin directory and then tightly coupled to what should be multiple plugins (aka components) in one massive package.

I am starting to feel like the only way to restore any kind of reasonable extensiblity of the BP interface it to split it into a theme, and the components into plugins which all adhere to a very strict API defined by the THEME, not a “core” plugin.

Of course this would break every existing install. It would have to be an internal fork that was deemed to be the new way forward.

[MrMaz]

I am busy with a very pregnant wife and a two year old, but I took the time to read this thread and I want to comment about one thing.

The “grab a shovel” quote is being poorly used here. If you have a bunch of guys digging holes, and nobody telling them where to dig, eventually they are going to start throwing dirt in someone else’s hole. Sooner or later they are all going to look around and the giant mess and walk away when they realize they aren’t getting anywhere.

You also end up with a situation where guys are putting in time to write code that has a good chance of never being used, and that is endlessly frustrating.

I don’t have a solution, but let’s please come up with something better than “grab a shovel.” Software is much more complicated than ditch digging.

[MrMaz]

Have you seen this plugin yet? https://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/buddypress-links/

[MrMaz]

In case anyone hasn’t come across it yet, there is a new sub-blog entirely dedicated to the future of the BuddyPress API.

Please check it out! https://api.buddypress.org/

[MrMaz]

@M

It doesn’t work for me either. I must have removed the ajax-loader by accident at some point.

[MrMaz]

Oat sodas ftw

[MrMaz]

@dennis_h

It would be great if you could get some useful feedback from a hosting company and share your findings so the issues can be addressed.

[MrMaz]

@dennis_h

No, nothing has changed.

[MrMaz]

@M

I use a waiting/loader icon in several other places. There is supposed to be one there, and I’m not sure what happened to it. The e_loader.toggle() is actually the ajax-loading icon call.

[MrMaz]

Yay?

[MrMaz]

Just tagged 0.4.1

https://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/buddypress-links/changelog/

[MrMaz]

@billygin

I just tested that link and it loaded the image just fine using FF. What browser and version are you seeing the problem with?

[MrMaz]

@stwc

If you check out the 3rd or 4th post in this thread I gave the details on how it selects the images. It should not have allowed them to pick a 200kb file, so not sure what happened there. I would need some more details to try and replicate that.

[MrMaz]

@dennis_h

Starting with 1.4 when we begin to improve the API, improving the code for efficiency is going to be taken seriously.

That being said, I don’t think its fair to make a blanket like “BP php is extremely inefficient” without qualifying it. If you want to help improve the code, perhaps start a new thread and cite some specific examples of what code you think should be improved.

As far as the plugin repo goes, I would give similar advice, except it would probably be better to contact the authors directly first.

[MrMaz]

@gibbyesl

That looks like a bug. I can’t believe that nobody caught that during the beta testing.

@Shnooka30

Since the link thumb can be edited it is not possible to synch it up with the activity stream which is one reason why I have not added it yet. I hope to add that feature when 1.4 comes out with some API improvements.

[MrMaz]

@agrunder

Already done https://buddypress.org/forums/topic/buddypress-links-04x-releases-and-support

[MrMaz]

@warzan

put this in wp-config.php

define( ‘BP_LINKS_SLUG’, ‘yourslug’ );

A warning. If you already have activity in the activity stream for links, they will have the old slug.

[MrMaz]

I just tagged 0.4 final.

Thank you very much to everyone who helped with the testing, translations, and bug reports.

Not much has changed since the beta.

* Changing the component slug is now officially supported

* Do not show my group links or create link form unless user is a group member

As soon as the repo updates you can upgrade from your dashboard. If you have a ton of links, make sure you let the page load all the way after upgrading since every link needs to be updated to populate a new field.

Only two languages are up to date for 0.4. Those would be FR and NL. If you are interested in updating or adding a translation, you can download the .pot file here…

https://plugins.trac.wordpress.org/export/229924/buddypress-links/tags/0.4/languages/buddypress-links.pot

Enjoy the 0.4 branch!

[MrMaz]

@gian-ava

its easy to change that by overriding the style.

@billygin

see if you still have the problem if the default theme is activated, if not then your theme is breaking it.