[@suchaqd Participant 16 years, 4 months ago]

Not sure if there’s a template tag for this yet, but I’d go with the activity stream widget (plugin) http://buddydev.com/buddypress/buddypress-sitewide-activity-widget-for-buddypress-1-2-and-above/ … it’s still a work in progress since you can’t post directly from it (only through your profile), but it works right out of the box.

[@suchaqd Participant 16 years, 6 months ago]

@simoncreative This is absolutely STUNNING! I can see subtle differences from the older version, so it’s really impressive how you were able to keep everything consistent with the upgrade. Big question though: How many hours do you anticipate spending on upgrading h-mag.com with every major release of BP?

[@suchaqd Participant 16 years, 6 months ago]

If I remember correctly, previous BP versions always had separate themes for BP members’ blogs. The Default BP theme was only a theme for the main blog of your BP installation. The members’ blogs would typically default to Kubrick (a regular WP theme, not a BP theme). Now, if you’re activating a BP theme for your members, then it would seem logical that it would try to pull all your links through a relative path in the navigation (ie. broken links), as that is how BP calls its nav list items. A suggestion that I had made to someone else — and forgive me if there’s a better way of doing this, since this is clearly sort of a *hack* way of going about it — would be to duplicate whichever BP theme you’re using and then using a custom header, which has all the correct links (hard-coded) in the navigation. This theme would then be used for all BP members’ blogs.

[@suchaqd Participant 16 years, 8 months ago]

This should help you… https://codex.buddypress.org/how-to-guides/customizing-labels-messages-and-urls/

[@suchaqd Participant 16 years, 8 months ago]

I got it up an running on an MU installation, but it’s a bit quirky, because you have to use the Log Out link in the Dashboard to log out of FB — not the one in BP. Might be worth a try using the current plugin and see if it’ll work for you.

[@suchaqd Participant 16 years, 8 months ago]

I’d delete the buddypress plugin folder, refresh your site to make sure it works properly and try a different way of uploading the bp plugin folder (if you did it through the Dashboard >> Plugins >> Add new, then try it manually or vice versa).

[@suchaqd Participant 16 years, 8 months ago]

You can also go to go to your Dashboard >> Appearance >> Custom Header >> upload your 1250x125px header image (and maybe hide the text), which will include your new background image + logo

[@suchaqd Participant 16 years, 8 months ago]

You could also do this in CSS with the existing code, albeit you’d have to abide by a few parameters, which could very well be deal breakers. For one, your blog posts would have to be relatively short (think 1-2 sentences or shorter) to keep everything looking somewhat consistent; if you’re just writing blurbs this just might work, but anything longer and I’d probably use the excerpt. This could be a starting point for you…

#blog-latest .post{

width: 33%;

float: left;

max-height: 400px;

margin: 0 20px 20px 0;

}

You’ll probably want to get rid of the Avatar images and bylines to make more room, but if you’re a bit shaky on your CSS, the plugin method mentioned above sounds like a very great alternative.

[@suchaqd Participant 16 years, 9 months ago]

np… also, @andy just updated the bp codex way at the bottom. thought you might wanna know

https://codex.buddypress.org/how-to-guides/building-a-buddypress-child-theme/

[@suchaqd Participant 16 years, 10 months ago]

also, two other big factors are timeframe (ie. know your launch date) and number of people involved. generally, if you’re the middle person/project manager who reports to your c-level folks, they’ll want to put in their 2 cents — sometimes even conflicting feedback (eg. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EgDWwahgsYk … ‘bigger logo but feel small’ type of thing) which will also affect your timeframe/cost/marketing budget. there really are sooooo many factors that play into getting an estimate for a scalable website.

[@suchaqd Participant 16 years, 10 months ago]

hola, sorry guys – wish i’d get an email notification every time someone had a bug with this theme. anywho, i’ve moved all the project files to google code at http://code.google.com/p/avenuek9-bp-theme/ where I have several FAQs and patch files available.

*please note* that bp 1.2 will improve things dramatically by adding a boatload of new features, which includes theming. if you go to testbp.org you’ll see how the default theme has changed. consequently, the avenuek9 theme will change accordingly near BP 1.2 release.

if you are not running bp 1.1.x on a development server (with the avenuek9 theme), please hold out on theming your installation, as it may become a royal pain in the arse once you upgrade. also, if you need any additional help, i usually respond better to private messages (because they fire off a notification to my personal email account saying that i need to bug squash )

[@suchaqd Participant 16 years, 10 months ago]

a bit more food for thought… http://daggle.com/facebooks-microsoft-moment-1556

[@suchaqd Participant 16 years, 11 months ago]

you can also use css to accomplish this like so for your h1#logo a element…

text-indent: -9999px;

background-image: url(http://blogs.nyu.edu/blogs/jr197/japan/Newsweek_logo.gif);

width: 335px;

height: 78px;

In this case, the text-indent will move your h1 title link -9999px out of view. The

second line calls your image logo as a background property; in this case, I just used

a Newsweek logo. The last two lines define the dimensions of your logo.

[@suchaqd Participant 16 years, 11 months ago]

i thought about taking that completely off the d/l list, but it looks like there are still some people who might need it! well, in case you are running BP 1.0 or earlier — where you’re using two themes to style bp (home + members) — you can find the downloadable version here…

http://code.google.com/p/avenuek9-bp-theme/downloads/list

[@suchaqd Participant 16 years, 11 months ago]

you can also check out my bp 1.1.2 theme. it’s a basic rework of andy’s and still needs a lot of tlc, but it might clue you in on how to style some elements and get you the look you want. i’ll probably wind up creating something entirely different down the road, but this might help in the mean while — http://code.google.com/p/avenuek9-bp-theme/downloads/list

[@suchaqd Participant 16 years, 11 months ago]

for those of you running the Avenue K9 BP 1.1.2 theme, i uploaded several files that might help you in case you have issues with your homepage widgets or the 2-column layout..

http://code.google.com/p/avenuek9-bp-theme/downloads/list

[@suchaqd Participant 16 years, 12 months ago]

tried sending you a message but it failed every time, so i posted on your wire instead.

[@suchaqd Participant 16 years, 12 months ago]

Delete all your plugins, so that you’re left with the index and readme file, which should enable you to gain access to wpmu. once you’re in there, add your plugins through the plugin manager (Add New). Hope that helps!

p.s. at some point, you’ll need to hop on a dedicated server for this stuff… just fyi

[@suchaqd Participant 16 years, 12 months ago]

this is a bit off-topic, but would any of you mind taping NYC WordCamp for wordpress.tv pls? would love to hear what’s to come in the future… and feel free to include the b-roll (ie. drinking debauchery)

[@suchaqd Participant 16 years, 12 months ago]

you’ve actually got the same files on your server as i do, so i’d have to take a look at your site first to see what’s up. can you post or pm me your web addy pls?

[@suchaqd Participant 16 years, 12 months ago]

first question is, do you have buddypress up and running and does everything work like it’s supposed to (eg. forums/messaging/status updates/etc.)? also, are you on a dedicated server at godaddy?

[@suchaqd Participant 16 years, 12 months ago]

i’ve gone ahead and uploaded the files here… (it’s the 2-column theme patch)

http://code.google.com/p/avenuek9-bp-theme/downloads/list

[@suchaqd Participant 16 years, 12 months ago]

quick update: demo site for the Avenue K9 BP theme has been moved from http://www.michaelkuhlmann.com to http://members.avenuek9.com

the theme download (http://www.avenuek9.com/avenuek9-bp-theme) now also points to the Google Code repository

[@suchaqd Participant 16 years, 12 months ago]

quick update: demo site for the Avenue K9 BP theme has been moved from http://www.michaelkuhlmann.com to http://members.avenuek9.com

the theme download (http://www.avenuek9.com/avenuek9-bp-theme) now also points to the Google Code repository

[@suchaqd Participant 16 years, 12 months ago]

All I can share from personal experience is this: It’s real easy to get lost in all the gloss. About two years ago when I was hunting down low-cost, self-hosted, white label social networking software, I narrowed it down to two choices, Elgg and Dolphin. What I loved about Dolphin was how intuitive and pretty the whole backend was — you could easy drag/drop/rearrange different menu items and easily swap out your pages/columns/widgets. You could even change the sizes of certain page elements with just a few mouse clicks. It was almost like a Square Spaces for social networks. But then came more research. And upon that research, I found that Dolphin has some of the ugliest code ever written. On top of breaking tons of add-ons during upgrades, there also wasn’t (and probably still isn’t) an active support group available — more like a commune of helpless, p/o’ed customers who were all experiencing the same bugs. That’s not to say that it’s useless. I’m sure it works fine for a good handful of users who dumped a lot of money into development. But it became apparent that I needed to look into Elgg instead.

Now, Elgg does everything it says right out of the box 100% and we had instant love affair — http://www.michaelkuhlmann.com/category/elgg-vs-buddypress/. The whole installation took me about 10 minutes and there wasn’t a single problem… until I tried to re-design it. It was virtually impossible creating an entirely different layout. In fact, I have yet to see an Elgg-powered site that looks completely custom-made like the BuddyPress-powered VW TDI Truth & Dare site. Again, I’m sure Elgg fulfills the needs of many of its users – and probably a lot more so than Dolphin – but when it came to theming the software, it just fell a bit short. Although I could see how it could seem *ahead of the game* with its ease of use and drag’n’drop capabilities, it really isn’t compared to BP.

So BP came right along just as I finished *theming* — I should actually just say “colorizing” – my Elgg installation. Immediately, I dumped Elgg and switched to BP. I had seen what Andy did with ChickSpeak several months before the BP/Automattic venture was announced, so it looked quite promising. Then, the first release came out. First, I had trouble installing WPMU. Next, I had trouble installing BP. Following that, I couldn’t figure out how to get forums up and running. I sounded just like Mythailife – frustrated to the core. But I also remembered what an amazing difference a few months of development did to WordPress going from version 2.3 to 2.7, so I decided to stick around.

Up until now, I can easily say that BP has made strides in development. Out of the dozens of forums that I’ve visited, BP has *consistently* given the most support to its users in a timely fashion – FOR FREE. I have to stress the complimentary tech support part, because a lot of people tend to demand an answer to every single question immediately after they’ve posted their question, which is ridiculous. And if that speaks to you, here’s what you are getting – again – FOR FREE:

– A social networking system built on top of one of the best open source publishing systems, which means you’re also inheriting tons of great functionalities like WordTube/MapPress/eCommerce/Facebook Connect

– Loads of documentation including WordPress for Dummies and the upcoming book BuddyPress for Dummies (books are not free, of course, but they do count towards documentation)

– Support forums, development roadmaps and overall project transparency

– Ability to customize/theme BP exactly the way you want it to appear

– Dozens of available plugins

– Did I mention that this is built on WordPress?

If you don’t have the luxury of time to wait for support-related questions or still feel like this project is lagging AND you have deep pockets, there’s always Crowdfusion and Anahita. Otherwise, don’t get lost in the gloss, because BuddyPress is the next-best-thing to come out of the Automattic vault.