[@peterverkooijen Participant 16 years, 4 months ago]

Would mm forms work?

Buddypress profile fields are not standard WordPress though. They’re in complicated database tables called xprofile, so if you want to integrate it with anything else fuggedaboutit. You’ll need custom coding.

[@peterverkooijen Participant 16 years, 4 months ago]

@Paul Gibbs, can you point out which pieces of code have been fixed, which functions etc? Is it also WP 3.0-ready? Is it documented somewhere, on trac or something like that? I’m not a developer, so I’m not sure where to start.

[@peterverkooijen Participant 16 years, 4 months ago]

@eric, current versions of BP are not WordPress 3.0-ready.

I’ve upgraded a BP 1.1.3-based custom theme to WordPress 3.0. The only problem I’ve found so far is avatars upload, so I guess WP 3.0 changed how it handles avatars?

Can someone point out which change broke the functionality? Were function or hook names changed? Were functions moved to other files? Or something more complicated?

Is this already being worked on for a 1.2+ version? Is there a trac (or whatever it’s called) that I can use as reference to try to fix it in my custom theme?

[@peterverkooijen Participant 16 years, 4 months ago]

I agree…

There are login redirect plugins (bpdev-logout-redirect + bp-redirect-to-profile). I’ve integrated them into my theme. User/member management is fatally underdeveloped.

[@peterverkooijen Participant 16 years, 4 months ago]

@dennis_h (“If you believe BP causes more problems that it solves why do you use it?”)

I chose Buddypress primarily to manage member lists for my projects and give members online profile pages and ways to interact with other members online.

The first version of my site was a mix of WordPress + PunBB for the members list. When Buddypress appeared it made sense to consolidate everything on WordPress/WPMU/BP.

An early annoyance that cost me six weeks last year was lack of built-in support for firstname + lastname, which made Buddypress hard to integrate with my mailinglist script.

I now have the basics kinda working; all the dumb stuff that should work out of the box, like a user-friendly registration process, etc. Upgrading to 1.2 would mean having to start all over again.

[@peterverkooijen Participant 16 years, 4 months ago]

@dennis_h (“What is so lacking in BP that would cancel out everything that is right with it and cause it to die out?”)

Member management, privacy/security, a coherent vision of what Buddypress is and isn’t, …

I was never 100% happy with Buddypress 1.0, but worked around the problems in my custom theme and hoped the issues would be fixed in 1.2 and beyond. But the issues are not being fixed. The newer versions only add more confusing features and BBpress seems to have taken over.

So I’m sticking with 1.1.3 and develop that further in a direction that works for me. It seems to work fine on WP 3.0. I need a reliable base for my projects. BP is all over the place.

[@peterverkooijen Participant 16 years, 4 months ago]

“Slowing down does not mean dying. It means they get tired. Tired devs make mistakes. they also have a big job – half the users want faster dev, the other half doesn’t. Vocal people want this change, two months later, more vocal people want the last change ripped out. See the problem there?”

Very understandable. Solution: Stop listening to all the feature requests and all the questions about forums/bbpress, event management, galleries, etc. Focus on the core: users, posts, comments. Make those solid and flexible, standardized as much as possible on what is already in WordPress, but with the member management and privacy/security you need for a social network. What are the minimum requirements to run a social network on top of WordPress? Boil it down. All the rest is for theme and plugin developers. Activity stream etc. is just one way to display data. Without a solid, coherent core it will only become a bigger mess as everybody piles on their hacks and ideas.

[@peterverkooijen Participant 16 years, 4 months ago]

A social network is not the same thing as a forum. I agree real names should go together with privacy controls.

[@peterverkooijen Participant 16 years, 4 months ago]

@Erich, (“t does not have to be a “REAL” name…”)

The standard on social networks (Facebook, LinkedIn, etc.) is to use real full names. That should be the default imho and then there’s a plugin for those who want something else.

[@peterverkooijen Participant 16 years, 4 months ago]

Is this thread only about buddypress.org or about the Buddypress script?

[@peterverkooijen Participant 16 years, 4 months ago]

@Andy Peatling (“If you want a new feature or something changed, write a patch…”)

It’s not about new features. Less is more. Buddypress needs to decide what it is and what it isn’t. At the moment it’s the kitchen sink. The problem is in the architecture and underdeveloped core features like member management and privacy/security. More community activity won’t fix that, it will only build on the confusion. Only Automattic can bring clarity.

[@peterverkooijen Participant 16 years, 4 months ago]

@Erich, yes, I use an older version of Marius Ooms group blog plugin and have integrated P2 into my theme, so it is used on all the blogs. For a visitor who is not logged in or part of the blog team, the blog looks normal, without a post form at the top. P2 has lots of options to configure how that looks and works. I still have to figure out how to hard code some of that into the theme instead of using the settings in wp-admin.

There are probably many different ways to integrate and configure P2. Mine is probably a bit messy. I’ve added the p2 functions to functions.php, p2.js to my js folder, kept other folders as they were. I had to add code to header.php to load the p2 stuff only where needed, because it clashed with another jquery script I had somewhere. Plus a few other hacks to solve weird problems. It sorta works now, even on WP 3.0 so far, but there is still a lot of clean-up and fine-tuning to do.

There are also a few flexible WP front-end posting plugins available that may be usable to create a more user-friendly member profile page. Also on my to-do list as I hopefully start to understand better how p2 works.

[@peterverkooijen Participant 16 years, 4 months ago]

“There is almost no benefit whatsoever of Friends within BuddyPress …”

Buddypress was supposed to be social networking added to blogging. Friends could form groups and work together in blogs. Friending itself is probably most relevant for internal email. The one thing you need to make that work is beefed up member management beyond default WordPress:

– full real names instead of anonymous meaningless usernames
– extendable, flexible member data fields
– ways to manage member lists
– ways to manage member roles
– ways to manage relations between members
– privacy and security controls on member data
– front-end functionality for members to manage their own profile data
– front-end functionality for members to manage their relationships
– etc.

None of these points get the attention they deserve. Again, if you have the three solid elements (1) members (“users”), (2) posts, (3) comments, all the rest is just a matter of displaying the data in different views, including forum view.

The shift in focus from blogging to the old-fashioned bbpress forum structure further derailed the project. Adding social networking to blogging should have been the main focus.

“the best setup is having either Forums or Activity.”

I use neither. I’m trying to structure my custom 1.1.3-based theme around member profiles, blogs and groups with group blogs. My activity stream just reflects what’s happening on the profiles, blogs and groups; it’s not a discussion thread in itself – I think I originally broke the ajax and had to remove reply buttons etc…

[@peterverkooijen Participant 16 years, 4 months ago]

“Andy is the only employed person working on the project. It’s so easy to ask for something. … it’s mostly a thankless and ungratifying task, but we do it because we want to help!”

Andy/Automattic is too responsive! Their focus seems to be on delivering all these requested features out of the box. It’s pulling them in too many different directions. They should have said NO and followed a strict plan to develop a coherent, solid core; users, posts, comments + privacy, security, management, API. Then let the community take over with themes and plugins.

[@peterverkooijen Participant 16 years, 4 months ago]

There is a lot of discussion about symptoms. I believe the core problem is the pile-up of similar features that all get their own database tables – blog posts AND forum posts etc.

You really only need three basic building blocks; users, posts, comments. Less is more. Most of the issues discussed in this thread are just different ways of displaying data from those three building blocks.

Because the confusion starts in the core, you can’t really fix it in custom themes. If Buddypress was more coherently architected it would be a lot easier to provide a forum view or a blog view or a group view etc.

[@peterverkooijen Participant 16 years, 4 months ago]

I don’t understand this site myself since the latest changes. I have no clue which messages are internal mail, or part of a group, or a forum post. I have a hard time finding my previous posts or threads I’d like to follow.

I’ve argued this before: Bolting old-fashioned forum logic (bbpress) on top of the newer social networking structures has thrown Buddypress into disarray. Flame away…

[@peterverkooijen Participant 16 years, 4 months ago]

Buddypress has become an extension of BBpress.

[@peterverkooijen Participant 16 years, 4 months ago]

I’m having wrong times all over the place as well. Can anyone tell me where I can set the time zone in wp-admin, all three or four different places? And why it’s messed up?

[@peterverkooijen Participant 16 years, 4 months ago]

“Is this post by Andy Peatling (“”No firstname/lastname because this does not work for a lot of international users.”“) still the official position or have things moved on?”

Nothing has changed, so I assume it remains the official Automattic position and have given up on Buddypress. I’ll continue to develop my sites as “custom code” on WordPress 3.0.

[@peterverkooijen Participant 16 years, 5 months ago]

@r-a-y (“Usernames are unique.”) Only when they are required to be unique. You could also require display/real names to be unique. The emerging standard is that the email address has to be unique. The @mentions system could check by the email address connected to the real name. There really is no excuse to keep a username at the center of all things.

[@peterverkooijen Participant 16 years, 5 months ago]

@thelandman, in my solution I use javascript to generate the username from the weird semi-optional xprofile fullname field, hide the username field on the form, use the email login plugin so members don’t need the username to log in, add more custom code to synchronize the fullname and the fullname-derived username to all the various similar fields in the database, etc. It’s messy, but somewhat workable.

The point is that it should not be that hard. Using full names, Firstname Lastname, should be part of the core. Seeing that none of this is fixed in 1.2+ and probably will never be fixed, I have no plans to upgrade to newer versions of Buddypress and will continue developing my version as a fork, more suited for professional and business use. If anyone is interested in working with me on that, please contact me directly.

[@peterverkooijen Participant 16 years, 5 months ago]

@eborg9 (“I’m not going to insult the decision to code it that way…”) I have argued your point for over a year, more diplomatically at first, with zero effect. The developer community here doesn’t care about this issue. In my comment I simply gave the reasoning I got from Andy (Automattic). Anonymous usernames rule in the WordPress world. Don’t hold your breath for it to change anytime soon. You’ll have to custom code around it.

@r-a-y (“There are no conspiracy theories involved.”) I think my ugly hacked solutions were deleted because they used a deprecated hook and parts of it were supposedly fixed in 1.2+ according to one moderator. Don’t remember the details.

[@peterverkooijen Participant 16 years, 5 months ago]

It is a conscious design decision by Andy Peatling not to support full names as “Firstname Lastname” or synchronize the various names fields, because it would run into international cultural sensitivities – or something like that…

I have added lots of custom workaround code in my sites to fix this mess and had posted my solutions on this forum somewhere, but they have since been removed.

[@peterverkooijen Participant 16 years, 5 months ago]

Streamlined member management should have been a core feature of Buddypress. Thanks for picking this up.

[@peterverkooijen Participant 16 years, 5 months ago]

@21cdb (“The only thing is missing is the ability to choose if you want to post an “Update” or an “Discussion” (or Forum Post, or whatever you want to name it).”)

You could achieve that using categories and some if/else PHP. I did something like that in my P2 group blogs, that I use instead of forums. WordPress 3.0 will apparently have custom post types that will make this easier.