Re: Problem w/ creating groups. Avatar step and Group Blogs does not work, can’t complete.
You will probably need to check that plugin doesn’t have any known issues reported (there should be a group plugin page for it?)
See you have found and joined that group. I’m afraid I don’t know the current state of play with that plugin, but it may well need updating by the author before it’s fully compatible with all current WP/BP?
From an earlier comment : this line worries me:
for example I have Register Globals off via .htaccess on another site I have on that host.
Register Globals should never be on really – it was and is a very insecure and dangerous thing and PHP changed it’s default status in php.ini years ago. I hope your host doesn’t have that set ‘On’ as default for all their client sites
OK they fixed it. They had to disable php safe mode to get it working
Yep safe mode was the issue (essentially it’s what controls open_base )
File and directory permissions do need to be set correctly and safely. Generally directories need to be 755 and files 644, and I think if you need to be able to edit theme files from the backend/dashboard then those theme files need to be 666. Always avoid 777 as that is world writable and dangerous.
https://codex.wordpress.org/Changing_File_Permissions
However permissions are only one half of the story, you can have them all set correctly and still not be able to create directories such as /group-avatars/. What is essential is that ownership permissions are correct and for these directories to be writable or for files to be able to be moved to their correct location you must have the correct groups set such as ‘apache’ for the parent wp-content directory.
