BuddyPress.org

Okay, so I’ll probably create a plugin for this in the coming week or two. Please remind me if I don’t get to this!

@dougjoseph – Your ideas have been discussed before.

Read this blog post on BuddyDev.com to post on a user’s profile (mirroring the functionality of bp.org):

Using activity as wire in Buddypress 1.2 themes

@thelandman, @hitler

With some template coding, you can enable writing on other people’s walls – it’s done on this site for instance… click through to any member, and you’ll see the post box at the top!

I haven’t looked in to the coding, but suspect it’s just a ‘simple’ case of hiding the @mention ‘behind’ the post form

Wow! @mercime !!!!!!! Thanks so so much for your post. Heading to modify what’s necessary right now. Regards!

Here’s a tutorial to do that – http://buddydev.com/buddypress/using-activity-as-wire-in-buddypress-1-2-themes/

I’d love to have that feature too! buddypress.org has that feature. Under each profile there is a form for us to post comments directly to friends. I’d like to be able to do that in my site.

Regards.

Martin

@contoaberto

Its better to notify using @mention feature.So that you will get your reply faster and also the notification goes to the user you intended to ask.Anyways I will do it for you.

@boonebgorges
hi, Boone Gorges,

Thank u very much for the info. But I have to confess I’m very much a newbie to understand what I might have done. Would you mind please explain a bit more – maybe in a dummie way?

Hey Simon,
Are you mentioning a user in a group forum?

Someone can correct me if I am wrong but you won’t receive a notification email or note in the user bar if that is the case. You will only receive an email if someone users your username @mention in a status update that then hits the activity stream.

Click on settings in your BP profile and look at notifications. It will list everything you get an email for. @mentions in forums isn’t one. I imagine if it was your inbox would be full of messages if you participate in a busy forum.

Simply click on the @mentions link in your BP profile when you first login to get upto speed with @mentions.

As I say, I’m sure a mod will correct me if I am wrong but you don’t get an email or notification in each instance when using @mentions.
Hope this helps mate,
Ross

I can see the @ mentions when i click on the @mentions section in my profile but I don’t get a message in the notifications bar.
Could you @mention me on this site and I’ll see if it pops up on this site. On mine I don’t get one.
Cheers
Ross

Yeah, it’s a bit of a change, isn’t it?

My strategy for making the transition easier for my users is two-fold:

1) Make the profile the default view for users (rather than activity), by adding

define( 'BP_DEFAULT_COMPONENT', $bp->default_component = 'profile' );

to wp-config.php

2) Adding the @mentions profile tab, plus some explanatory text, to the members/single/home.php template in my child theme. Thus, right below

<?php locate_template( array( 'members/single/profile.php' ), true ) ?>

I’m adding

<h4><?php bp_displayed_user_fullname(); ?>'s mentions</h4>

<p>Whenever anyone posts an update on this site containing <?php bp_displayed_user_fullname(); ?>'s handle (<strong>@<?php bp_displayed_user_username() ?></strong>), it shows up as a public message below.</p>



<p>Want to leave your own public message for <?php bp_displayed_user_fullname(); ?>?



<div class="generic-button" id="post-mention" >

<a href="<?php bp_send_public_message_link() ?>" title="<?php _e( 'Mention this user in a new public message, this will send the user a notification to get their attention.', 'buddypress' ) ?>"><?php _e( 'Mention this User', 'buddypress' ) ?></a>

</div>

followed by the activity loop, taken right from bp-default/activity/activity-loop.php, but with the following relevant modification: the arguments for bp_has_activities are

<?php if ( bp_has_activities( 'scope=mentions' ) ) : ?>

(You’ll have to do some styling to make it look right, but you get the idea.)

It’s not an exact duplication of the Wire – I’ve tried to embrace the new @mention stuff, while still capturing the “leave a note for me” spirit of the Wire.

I definitely agree with this. I’ll have a look around and see if I can find something myself, but other than that, I hope they add something back in.

I understand that they wanted the @mentions to become the new way of commenting on someones wall, but you can post directly onto groups… so why not a member page as well.

Like you said it’s more familiar to people. They just need to bring back the “wire”

That works for me with a couple of isssues. The first user to log in via fbconnect is assigned the name “@facebookuser”, later signups seem to use the fb name for the @mention id, but their displayed name can be changed in the BP profile. The fb profile picture is skewed in the activity feed (twice as long as high).

@modemlooper It’s similar but it’s inconsistent and confusing for users. I have to agree with nickrita that this appears to be a case of ‘Verschlimmbesserung’. It makes it unnecessarily complex to do something as simple as to leave a comment on someone’s profile and continue a conversation from there.

If the user activity stream is really meant to be purely about activities of the user as Andy said, why are we able to leave replies that show up in the user activity stream? If this principle were to be applied consistently, the user should also not be able to post replies into a user activity stream (or at least they should not show up in the user activity stream but instead at the @mention subsection).

As a result of these inconsistencies we have we have this confusing hybrid of Twitter and Facebook. I really like the idea of @mentions as an added feature to the way users can interact, but it shouldn’t be the sole method of (semi-)public user to user interaction. One of the major weaknesses of Twitter (and one of the major reasons Twitter clients are so popular) is that it’s extremely difficult to initiate and keep track of (semi)-public conversations on their website. Just try using twitter.com to hold multiple conversations if you have a group of active friends on there, it’s extremely frustrating and labour intensive. Buddypress doesn’t have the luxury of anything that resembles twitter clients to cover up these kind of limitations that are inherent to the twitter system.

I feel that the current implementation of buddypress leaves these weaknesses of the design of the twitter system intact and even further exacerbates them by inconsistent application.

I therefore plead for a consistent design that allows users to post both messages and replies into a user activity stream regardless of whether it’s the site, group or user activity stream. This would take care of the issue of the missing wire while at the same time providing a consistent user interaction design for the activity streams across a buddypress site.

@motionsw What would you think of a system where a user would be able to leave a message directly on the page of the user at the activity stream, similar to the way Facebook does it (and consistent in design with how you can leave a message on the buddypress group & site activity streams with a textbox near the top)? Whether such a message would then turn up in the group & site activity stream would be handled by privacy settings.