yes that’s correct by default (without modifying things) all of the buddypress settings are applicable only on a network level. most of the front end buddypress features/content are meant to show only on your primary hub site of the network but the activity and other activity on the sub sites will be recorded and listed in the main activity feed for your main site. Some of the features can show up in sub sites as well (mostly in the form of widgets i believe).
easiest way is probably by redefining the element as hidden through an overriding css rule, should work but i’m not sure i’d never personally tried, it’s sorta counter to the whole idea of a social network to do that i think and it’s possible it’s not quite that simple.
you may be able to hide the element but you won’t be able to obscure the profile url so there’s really no way (at least that i know of) to make usernames truly private.
wait maybe what i said was overkill if you are just looking to have two sites with one list of users id go with multisite unless you have a good reason not to, but not multi network.
multisite if you haven’t tried it is pretty easy actually and i’d go with the subdomain method personally.
the file is part of the core files you don’t want to modify it but rather your theme’s (or child theme’s) css file. But be advised if you don’t know where to look for these files it is unlikely you will be able to edit them without assistance.
ok i guess its over my head technically but it would seem to me there should be some kind of fail safe preventing the server lag causing the problem. then again it’s probably not that simple or something. 😛
switching themes temporarily should not cause you to have to change any settings on your normal theme (at least i have never seen that to be the case) and it will tell you if the problem is related to your theme or if the problem is coming from somewhere else.
this is actually a problem with the latest version of bbpress it going to be fixed in the next update. you should be able to downgrade to 2.3.2 to temporarily fix the problem until 2.4.1 comes out.
