[David Lewis]

OOPS!!! Sorry. Just found the setting. Seems odd that updating from 1.2.8 to 1.2.9 would have turned that component back on.

[David Lewis]

Now that BuddyPress runs on WordPress in single blog mode… what do people think about running BuddyPress on a shared host in single blog mode with a community of maybe 175 members. Again… there would just be the ONE parent blog. No sub-blogs.

[David Lewis]

I’m more than willing to pay for the plugin but do you then also have to pay $10 per month to gain access to a support forum?

[David Lewis]

There is an old plugin that auto-joins based on profile information, but this plugin is much simpler than that. All it does is add new members to selected groups automatically. That’s it. It would not be a solution for what you’re trying to do.

[David Lewis]

How to make it work with WordPress Single Blog:

Step 1
—-
Go into the plugin folder and open the bp-auto-group-join.php file. Line 67 should be:
`add_submenu_page( ‘wpmu-admin.php’, __(“Link Auto Join Groups”, ‘buddypress’), __(“Auto Join Groups”, ‘buddypress’), 1, __FILE__, “auto_group_join_plugin_options” );`

change it to this:
`add_submenu_page( ‘options-general.php’, __(“Link Auto Join Groups”, ‘buddypress’), __(“Auto Join Groups”, ‘buddypress’), 1, __FILE__, “auto_group_join_plugin_options” );`

That first argument just tells the action hook `add_submenu_page()` where your plugin menu item should go based on page slug. The options-general.php slug corresponds to the “Settings” menu. So you’ll get a link for the plugin settings under the Settings menu. I couldn’t figure out how to add the link to the BuddyPress menu since that menu works a little differently.

Step 2
—-
Go to line 147:
`add_action( ‘wpmu_new_user’, ‘update_auto_join_status’, 12, 2);`

Add add this new line below it:
`add_action( ‘user_register’, ‘update_auto_join_status’, 12, 2);`

I figured the wpmu_new_user action hook wouldn’t work with single WP. I was right. I tested with the additional user_register hook and it works. Joy

[David Lewis]

I guess it didn’t end up releasing over the weekend then, since this thread is now a month old. LOL. Oh well,

[David Lewis]

Fantastic news! I can’t wait. I also have mixed feelings about EventPress. Will your plugin offer activity feed integration and (less importantly) RSVP and recurrence?

[David Lewis]

Is there any documentation for this plugin? I can’t get the listing page to work at all. How do you get a list of events? When I go to /events/ it always brings me to the detail page of the most recently added event. Getting very frustrated. I’m using the latest versions of WP, BP, EP and BP custom posts. No other plugins.

UPDATE
—
Nevermind. I deleted the database from my test install and started fresh. Works now with the BP default theme.

[David Lewis]

Just don’t install or enable BBPress.

[David Lewis]

I use this plugin http://www.vincentprat.info/dev/wordpress-plugins/email-users/

[David Lewis]

Thanks! Works! This is actually basically what I had done but you accomplished it in a much better way!!! Thank you thank you thank you!!! Halifax Regional Search and Rescue thanks you

And by the way… I found out why my attempt “broke”. It actually didn’t break. Not exactly. I had been trying to send test messages to myself at a second member account with a BuddyPress profile name of “David Lewis (test)”. And it would always fail. I realized what was probably happening was the BuddyPress was thinking that “test” was the username… but it wasn’t. The autocomplete for that member was showing up as “David Lewis (test) (davidlewistest)”. “davidlewistest” was the username. I tried changing my BuddyPress name on that account to “David Lewis Test” and now it works.

Your code had the same issue of course. Not worried about it though. Who puts parenthesis in their BuddyPress name! Still… I think maybe I came across a REAL “bug” this time “Messages fail to send if members BuddyPress name contains parenthesis”.

Anyway… so either way worked (mine or yours) but I’m very grateful for a solution that doesn’t require me to touch the core.

[David Lewis]

Thanks! I’ll try that. I did get it working but I had to duplicate functions and hack the core… etc. Such are my limited skills. Then my “working” fix stopped working mysteriously a few days later. Argh. Anyway… thanks. I agree that this is plugin territory and the ticket should probably be closed.

[David Lewis]

greg makes good points about groups and friends.

There is almost no benefit whatsoever of Friends within BuddyPress. As far as I can tell it only enables three things.
1. Stream filtering
2. Group invites (altho’ there is the invite anyone plugin)
3. Autocomplete help on “Messages > Compose”

That’s it. You can still message anyone who’s a non-friend and you can still see the full profile of anyone who is a non-friend. The people in my small community (all of whom actually know each other in real life) simply don’t get it. They ask me all the time – “what the heck is the friend thing for? seems stupid”

You may counter that my case is a special case. I mean, who sets up a community site with less than 200 users?! Who all know each other! I’m not so sure about that. I see BuddyPress being used A LOT for micro-communities. I think in fact that there will be a new trend towards micro-communities. People have seen the value with things like Facebook and they want to see that now in their smaller online spaces… local mountain biking groups… local surf donkeys… your knitting club… whatever!

And with regards to groups – same thing – groups don’t really do anything other than group people. Once you’re in a group all you can really do is post on the “wall”. That’s it. Groups is a great idea but they need to to a lot more. My users ask me all the time – “why can’t we create events in the groups”. All the time. It’s the number one thing people ask for. That plus documents, wiki, photos, etc. would all go a long way. I know much of that can be added with plugins. But out of the box, BuddyPress groups don’t really do much.

[David Lewis]

@mikepratt Well, I built my first website in 1994… shortly after Netscape 0.9 beta was released… but I’m still a whining code monkey some days

[David Lewis]

I agree with Mike. It does seem like the community is not as active as it was. That may be due to the new website. I’m not sure all these groups are helping. I think the previous simple forum may have been better… for a developer site at least.

[David Lewis]

@andy: I agree there is much more to life than code… but soccer? Seriously? You mean that “game” where guys run around for 2+ hours and never score a goal? Now if you’d said hockey or any other actual sport… I’d be right there with yah. LOL

Sorry. Just teasing (obviously). I’m fine with the pace by the way. No worries here. Enjoy your summer!!!

[David Lewis]

Re: Forum vs. Activity – I have no doubt that it is harder than is seems, but that’s not relevant to the discussion. The issues being discussed are usability. Any good and usable design begins and ends with users… not programmers.

Re: Autocomplete (my pet peeve) – Sorry, doesn’t make sense to me. I’m free to message any member I want but I’m only given help and feedback when typing in friends names. Huh? If I compose a message to a non-friend by putting their username in “Send to” – I have no indication that I’ve gotten it right until after clicking send. And even then, the feedback is not that clear. An error message could be a wrong username or something else. I know you can more easily message non-friends by visiting their profile (instead of having to remember their username and type it without error) and clicking “Send Private Message”… but that only allows for one recipient. As for the spam issue – that’s a technical issue. We’re talking about usability.

And yes… I have tried to create a plugin and I got 99% there – but I’m not a programmer and I got stuck on how to remove / override the existing autocomplete ajax functions. I asked for help here but didn’t get a response. So I had to hack the core Oh well. And for some reason it stopped working the other day. Odd.

Anyway, BuddyPress just seems a little confused when it comes to it’s ideas around Friends, Followers and Members. It feels like an odd mix of Twitter (wide open) and Facebook (walled off).

[David Lewis]

I also hate buddypress.org since they started to “eat their own dog food”. Ironic. I find is very difficult to find past postings. And the whole “comment on a forum post in the stream *OR* in the original thread” is absolutely insane. When a user makes a comment… don’t make them THINK about where to make it. They should just make the comment and it should show up in *BOTH* places. I think that is by far the biggest usability problem with BP right now. It also drives me crazy how you can message anyone by typing their username in “Compose > Sent To” but only your friends show up in auto-complete. Makes no sense. So you get the proper feedback for friends… but not for other people who are equally legitimate recipients.

[David Lewis]

I don’t understand the question. To add new html, you need to add new same-named templates to your child. So to change the header HTML, add a copy of header.php from the default parent theme to your child theme and then modify. Alternately, if you only want to add HTML (not modify) you might be able to do that with a function in functions.php that echos content to an action hook in one of the default templates. Not sure how you intent to change HTML via CSS alone… other than with the content property… but I can’t imagine that working in IE.

[David Lewis]

p.s. This inglorious hack also depends on having the pointless (for us) “Friends” feature enabled. Oh well.

[David Lewis]

I solved this but only in a fashion. My solution is not update-proof. All I did was copy/paste/modify the relevant functions into my functions.php file.

Relevant functions (copy into child theme’s functions.php file):
– search_friends() in /plugins/buddypress/bp-friends/bp-friends-classes.php
– bp_dtheme_ajax_messages_autocomplete_results() from /plugins/buddypress/bp-themes/bp-default/_inc/ajax.php

Changes (in child theme’s functions.php file):
– renamed both functions (make sure to change all references within the code as well)
– changed $fids = implode( ‘,’, $friend_ids ); to $fids = implode( ‘,’, $wpdb->get_col( “SELECT $wpdb->users.ID FROM $wpdb->users”) );
– commented out the action hook from parent ajax.php file.

If someone knows a smarter way to do this… or at least a way to do it without having to hack the ajax.php parent file… let me know. Nothing I did in my child theme would remove that function. Nothing! Argh. At least the hack is simple. Just commenting out a single line at the bottom of the ajax.php file. I can deal with that.

[David Lewis]

How do I get my child theme to override a function in the bp-default _inc/ajax.php file? The comments at the top of the file say that you can simply create your own ajax.php file but that does not seem to be working.

[David Lewis]

I’m getting closer! I got it working by changing one line in the search_friends function. This function is found inside the BP_Friends_Friendship class in the bp-friends-classes.php file. This change will break all other friend searches but at least I got the autocomplete working so that it searches on ALL members instead of just your friends. Now I just have to figure out how to do it within my theme instead of with core hacking.

Here’s the change:

Line 154 of bp-friends-classes.php
change: $fids = implode( ‘,’, $friend_ids );
to: $fids = implode( ‘,’, $wpdb->get_col( “SELECT $wpdb->users.ID FROM $wpdb->users”) );

So basically… I’m just feeding the SQL query (a few lines down in the function) a list of ALL user ids instead of only friend ids.

[David Lewis]

Why the new thread?

Anyway:

1. Make a new folder inside “themes”. Call it whatever you wish
2. Make a new “style.css” file inside your new theme folder
3. Paste this code into your “style.css” file and then activate your new child theme

/*
Theme Name: My Theme
Description: My BuddyPress Child The,e
Template: bp-default
Tags: buddypress
*/

/* Parent styles */

@import url( ../../plugins/buddypress/bp-themes/bp-default/style.css );

/* Custom styles */
ul#nav {max-width: 100%;}

Bear in mind that IE 6 doesn’t understand max-width… only width. Then again, the BP default theme is no IE 6 friendly anyway (although it wouldn’t take much to make it so).

[David Lewis]

Access keys are cool but you’re probably one of about 0.00001% of web users / developers that actually use them :o)