BuddyPress.org

This plugin is going to get a good nudge soon, I promise. The solution with removing the ampersand actually cropped up recently and I just patched it in the trunk, so it’s correct and won’t hurt anything.

I’m going to make a UI in wp-admin to allow you to select which fields are searchable, and it will include a bundled template to get you by to start with. ETA on this is a week or two at least.