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@mercime The tags are not needed in bp-custom.php because “unexpected “<" is referring to the tags, "unexpected" means there is an error in the code of where of it simply shouldn't be there. (tested, removed tags solved parse error)

Maybe I have the special bp-custom.php, but from my understanding you only need opening tags is of when you are creating or calling a brand new function, otherwise being split up in the file by a “}”

I could be wrong, but this is how I make php work.