I’m having the same issue regarding the buddypress welcome widget.
I have buddypress working 100% on server_1 and I moved it to server_2.
I used gzip through SSH to compress the html directory containing the entire WordPress Mu and Buddypress installation. Then I used scp through SSH to transfer the tarball to server_2 and then extracted it.
I exported the MySQL database from server_1, and opened it in Notepad++. I did a search and replace for the olddomain.com changing it to the newdomain.com. I also search and replaced the directory path from /usr/local/apache/htdocs to /var/www/html. Then I imported the database to server_2 in a table with the same name as the old server, then edited the wp-config.php to use the new database.
In theory all this should work, but the only thing that isn’t is the text on the welcome widget, I can change it etc but it only displays the first character. Other widgets save and work fine, it’s seems to be just an issue with this one. I also haven’t altered any of the core files. I’ve also tried removing commas, etc in the MySQL for the welcome widget content portion before importing it.
I’m going to tinker with it further, such as disabling all widgets/plugins before moving the database to the new server, then enabling them. I know WordPress suggests this when migrating to a new server, although I have never needed to before. I’m using WordPress Mu 2.7.1 and Buddypress 1.0.
