[@stwc Participant 16 years, 8 months ago]

Widget logic is awesome and extremely useful. I was using it with a subdirectory install on BP1.1 with no issues, but have yet to install it on my 1.2 testbed. If I remember, I’ll report back after I give it a try.

[@stwc Participant 16 years, 8 months ago]

Oh, yeah, I reported this elsewhere (the 1.2 plugin compatibility thread), but I’m also getting errors on adding RSS streams when creating a new Group, but I’ve found if I back out through the ‘wizard’ and do it again, it ‘takes’.

[@stwc Participant 16 years, 8 months ago]

Thanks Andy — looking forward to the updated plugin.

If it updates itself without being touched and throws stuff into the Activity stream, with a filter that you can apply in the dropdown, I’ll be happy as. I’d still like the option to be able to see the RSS item stream (as a filtered activity stream or whatever) in the actual Group interface, too, if possible, as well as being mixed in with global activity.

[@stwc Participant 16 years, 8 months ago]

To be clearer, I’d expect to see a menu item for ‘Blog feeds’ in the Group submenu above the view filter dropdown and activity listing et al, so that we’d have something like

Home * Admin * Forum * Members (234) * Send Invites * Blog Feeds

The Admin item would only appear when logged-in as one, of course.

[@stwc Participant 16 years, 8 months ago]

I assume that people told you this before when you reported, but just in case: this is a WordPress issue rather than a Buddypress issue, I’m pretty sure.

Reporting the bug here won’t help much — if nobody has an answer on the forum here, you’d be better off seeking some help through the WP/WPMU support system.

[@stwc Participant 16 years, 8 months ago]

Two of the suggestions above, changing the register slug and changing known text in the footer, are things I outline in my article Bowe links above (http://www.bp-tricks.com/tips_and_tricks/stopping-the-sploggers/).

[@stwc Participant 16 years, 8 months ago]

Quick update — backing up through the wizard and trying again made it go through happily, and it seems to be working fine, so YAY!

[@stwc Participant 16 years, 8 months ago]

Just tried External Group Blogs on a localhost.localdomain XAMPP install (really need those RSS feeds before I make the jump to 1.2) and it failed when creating a group at the Add RSS feeds stage with the following errors

Warning: array_map() [function.array-map]: Argument #2 should be an array in \xampp\htdocs\community\wp-content\plugins\buddypress\bp-groups.php on line 2454

Warning: Cannot modify header information – headers already sent by (output started at \xampp\htdocs\community\wp-content\plugins\buddypress\bp-groups.php:2454) in \xampp\htdocs\community\wp-content\plugins\buddypress\bp-groups.php on line 1107

Warning: Cannot modify header information – headers already sent by (output started at \xampp\htdocs\community\wp-content\plugins\buddypress\bp-groups.php:2454) in \xampp\htdocs\community\wp-content\plugins\buddypress\bp-groups.php on line 1108

Warning: Cannot modify header information – headers already sent by (output started at \xampp\htdocs\community\wp-content\plugins\buddypress\bp-groups.php:2454) in \xampp\htdocs\community\wp-includes\pluggable.php on line 868

[@stwc Participant 16 years, 9 months ago]

Let me concretize what I’m getting at a bit — I just had a sudden thought.

Taking what is probably the largest active Buddypress install — this one right here — as a test case, I just realized that I don’t really use any of the Buddypress social-networky stuff here (realizing it’s an oldish version of Buddypress and a unique case in some ways), other than the occasional personal message functionality. I don’t look at Groups or anything else, much: every time I visit, I head straight here, to the forum, which isn’t really all that featureful when it comes to forum implementations, but still does the job admirably.

I’m not sure if the way I use this site reflects the way that most people do, but that’s my experience. Sure, I’m an old fart, and am more interested in finding and sharing useful information than I am in just hanging out and socializing, to some extent, and that’s the major part of why this install of Buddypress exists, but hopefully you see my point.

I have a feeling that traditional, threaded forum structure might be an important centerpiece, as it is here, for many sites that will use Buddypress, if, of course, not all of them.

Nothing we’re talking about — and I admit this is getting a little off-topic, but it’s germane, I think — is going to destroy that. I’m just raising it as a consideration in moving forward.

Maximum flexibility, as Bowe and JJJ and others talk about above, is probably always the best thing to aim for.

[@stwc Participant 16 years, 9 months ago]

I’m pretty much good with all of this.

Back to what Mike was saying in response to my woolgathering: I do tend to think that there is a good intersection between traditional forum/thread/comment structure and the kind of social-networky way of (not) organizing things, and that Buddypress is heading in that direction, particularly with the new activity/threadedness stuff.

But traditional forum-like structure, to some degree, is still what most un- or semi-sophisticated users who haven’t grown up with social networking kind of expect, I think. That doesn’t in any way mean that it’s the best way of doing things, though, as you say.

The optimum path, as you suggest, I think is to continue to rethink things a bit (as Andy and everyone else who’s contributed to Buddypress has been doing) so that we can leverage the best of both worlds — the structured, heirarchical, predictable (if hard to search) architecture of the traditional forum along with the interconnected, non-heirarchical, loose-coupled, folksonomical, social, person- and activity-focussed interconnected peopleweb New Way.

Hit that point just right in terms of architecture and UI design, and we’re not just reinventing Facebook or PHPBB or mashing them up, we’re doing something that’s made of awesome and sauce.

[@stwc Participant 16 years, 9 months ago]

20,000-foot thought here, but possibly germane.

I’ve been thinking as I’ve gotten from ankles- to knees- to nipples-deep in Buddypress is that there may be a little fuzziness conceptually (or perhaps it’s just my own lack of understanding and need to hammer things down, mentally) around some stuff at the highest level as BP has evolved.

What I mean is something like this: forums and groups seem commingled in a way that is pretty darned counterintuitive, I think, for most users accustomed to traditional forums structure or to social networky ways of doing things. This is not entirely to the bad — I’m not suggesting that — but I think it confuses people who are not ‘techy’. This initial confuzzlement means a lot of people give up without trying to figure out the Buddypress Way, which is a Bad Thing. For my part, as someone who’s highly technical and been working on and off in designing user experience stuff for decades, even me, if a site doesn’t present its ‘expected’ interaction mode after a few seconds, I’ll probably give up and go elsewhere. Little things like a lack of an easily found search box will have me closing a site tab, my patience level is so low — I think that ordinary users tend to be a little lost in the groups/forums melange of Buddypress, sensible as it may seem to those of us who are building the sites, and just give up and go back their Facespaces and Mybooks.

Part of the issue I’m describing badly probably comes from the bolt-on and eventually plugged-in nature of BBpress as part of Buddypress, but I also think it might have been a bit of a result of not starting from top down, boring old use-casey thinking. I could be wrong there, of course, it could just be me, and no offense to Andy or anyone else meant by saying it. It just seems a little… wrong to me, a bit, thinking as a user.

So, finally, about this latest idea and thread: there seems to me, as part of the shift in 1.3, to be a changing conceptual focus. That is, we are directing the focus of users from other individuals, other users on the site (as ‘objects’), to the activity of those individuals, as the engine of interaction, if you will. ‘Following’ activity and so on. Now there’s nothing wrong with that, and I actually feel it’s a very good idea, because engaging users and keeping them actively using a site and interacting with others is what it’s all about, and Facebook, like it or love it, understands that perfectly.

But there are downstream consequences of activity (actions) being the focus of site use as opposed to, for lack of a better word, objects (people, groups).

I’d just like to hold up a hand and say that considering what those consequences might be is a wise thing, I think, if only to avoid a kind of frankenstein’s monster situation, with different conceptual drivers for user engagement ruling over different parts of the app, and further stirring up cognitive dissonance in already-possibly-bewildered users.

OK, that’s enough words now.

[@stwc Participant 16 years, 10 months ago]

You can try this. Worked for me (I wrote the post): http://www.bp-tricks.com/tips_and_tricks/stopping-the-sploggers/

[@stwc Participant 16 years, 10 months ago]

I sense the presence of machine translation.

[@stwc Participant 16 years, 10 months ago]

I use a plugin called widget logic that allows some sophisticated conditional display of widget stuff. You might find that it helps you in getting this work…

[@stwc Participant 16 years, 10 months ago]

Looks good Detective — are there specific benefits to using Thesis integration, in terms of your Buddypress sites, or was it more that you were familiar working with Thesis?

[@stwc Participant 16 years, 10 months ago]

Thanks!

[@stwc Participant 16 years, 10 months ago]

Sounds good, but I can’t seem to find the invitefriends functionality anywhere! Is it not live yet?

Also, since we’re here, where’s the best place to get current versions of bp-events? I get dizzy every time I try…

[@stwc Participant 16 years, 10 months ago]

Thanks, DJPaul!

[@stwc Participant 16 years, 11 months ago]

Site looks great, man! I’ll have a post for you… soonish.

[@stwc Participant 16 years, 11 months ago]

YAY!

[@stwc Participant 16 years, 11 months ago]

I’d rather have a new version of the plugin without icon art now than one with later, for what it’s worth!

[@stwc Participant 16 years, 11 months ago]

I can’t even figure out where to download updates to the plugin anymore, and even though I’ve left it installed, kinda given up.

[@stwc Participant 16 years, 11 months ago]

What about a twitter-like function that with a @username the person gets an email and my message occurs in his/her activity… Just dreaming, but woulöd be GREAT

I put in a feature request ticket for this a while back.

[@stwc Participant 16 years, 11 months ago]

Glad to hear it, levin! Hopefully that’ll hold the floodwaters back until the next generation of bots finds a way around it.

[@stwc Participant 16 years, 11 months ago]

Excellent, Andy! Looking forward to it!