BuddyPress.org

I also have found myself torn about using pages for BP directories. In the end, though, I think it’s a compromise that works out for the better in the short- to medium-run, and does not have awful long-term consequences.

In my view, it is a gross overstatement to say that this move ‘ruins’ BP. However, there are a few things about it that are unappealing:
1) It forces the creation of what are, essentially, dummy pages – whatever content you might add to the page through the normal WP editor is totally ignored
2) Related – It uses part of the WP page infrastructure (URLs) without using others (in particular, WP page templates)

Problem (1) is unappealing, but it is mitigated by a couple of points. First, the current system is not a whole lot better. Instead of having ‘dummy’ pages that you can see in the admin (like BP trunk has), the current version of BP has ‘phantom’ pages, so that when BP detects a URL like example.com/groups, it essentially hijacks the page load in order to do its own stuff. This is a bit jarring, and not at all transparent. So there is a trade-off, but it’s not all bad. Second, while the idea that ‘Pages in WordPress are supposed to be static content’ seems right to me in broad strokes, it doesn’t seem to me to be a hard-and-fast rule. Many plugins (gallery plugins, ecommerce plugins, etc) display their content by means of a shortcode that is manually inserted on a page or post, with pages being used for their pretty URLs.

On the other hand, there are some real benefits to directories-as-pages:
A) Easier URLs (as @driz has noted)
Integration into WP 3.0-type menus (this is the big one IMO)

How important are things like (A) and (? For sites maintained by folks with some PHP chops (and organizations with money to pay people with PHP chops), they could be fairly easily accomplished with BP_GROUPS_SLUG, etc, and with some other finagling. But – and this is just a guess – this profile does not match most of the users of BP. Nor should it, necessarily. To the extent that BP can be easy to use and install for people with little technical knowledge, without at the same time making it less flexible from a developer’s point of view, it should be. This change is good for end users, and is no more difficult for developers than the current technique, so it seems like a net win.

Another more theoretical argument for the directories-as-pages move (especially as compared to the new admin panel @driz suggests for changing slugs) is that BP shouldn’t reproduce functionality that WP could provide, unless there is a convincing reason for doing so. Using WP pages for BP directories is a step toward greater BP-WP integration. It’s not perfect (see my problem (2) above) but it is a start.

As for custom post types: It’s likely that at least some of BP’s components will be refactored to use custom post types in the future. When that happens, part of the upgrade script will probably involve removing the dummy pages at issue here. So from the user’s point of view, the transition will be seamless.

I should say that I am in agreement with a lot of the sentiment in this thread about making BP a bit more lightweight, framework-y, and disjointed than the sometimes hulking behemoth it is now. However, that kind of transition can and probably should be gradual (at least more gradual than the 1.3 release).

Thanks @r-a-y , I’ll give it a go.

@r-a-y

I am a big fan of Justin’s and have read that particular post several times in the past. I mostly agree with his arguments, but my view is even a bit more extreme, since even when you remove the term “framework” they still box you into an API that is impossible to break out of, which is not developer friendly in the long run.

There are a lot of themes that I think do this on purpose, because it fits their business model

@bgrun80 I’ve added you as an Editor on the codex. (The script that is supposed to handle this setup automatically has been acting buggy lately.)

When you load a URL that matches a pattern that BP is looking for (eg /members/boonebgorges), BP first finds the corresponding data in the database (in this example, the profile data for a member matching the name ‘boonebgorges’) and then loads the theme file designated for this kind of data (members/single/home). In broad strokes, it’s not that different from how a standard WP post query works.

The relationship between core files is conventional. For something like the groups component:
– bp-groups/bp-groups-templatetags.php contains all function that are called from theme templates, along with the loop builder classes
– bp-groups/bp-groups-filters.php contains the functions that modify the output of the groups component via apply_filters(), plus the application of any WP-native filters like kses
– bp-groups/bp-groups-classes.php contains the database classes (for the most part, the -classes.php files should be the only place where SQL statements appear) as well as any other miscellaneous classes (like the BP_Group_Extension class, in the case of groups)
– bp-groups/bp-groups-notifications.php contains the functions that format and send email notifications related to the group
– bp-groups.php contains some setup functions for the component (like groups_setup_globals() and the functions that set up navigation), as well as any other functions that don’t have a natural home in any of the other files listed above.

Sounds like you’re using an older version of WordPress.

Deactivate BuddyPress and upgrade WordPress:
https://codex.wordpress.org/Upgrading_WordPress_Extended

This is because the BP Template Pack plugin needs to be updated, particularly the JS variables.

Read this for a temporary solution:
https://buddypress.org/community/groups/how-to-and-troubleshooting/forum/topic/buddypress-template-pack-and-buddypress-1-2-6-things-break-but-i-have-a-solution

See:
https://buddypress.org/community/groups/how-to-and-troubleshooting/forum/topic/12-6-upgrade-date-offset/

It’s already been filed as a bug here:
https://trac.buddypress.org/ticket/2779

No need to hack BP.

Put the following in your theme’s functions.php:

`
function ray_bp_get_send_public_message_link() {
global $bp;

return wp_nonce_url( $bp->loggedin_user->domain . $bp->activity->slug . ‘/?r=’ . $bp->displayed_user->userdata->user_login );
}
add_filter( ‘bp_get_send_public_message_link’, ‘ray_bp_get_send_public_message_link’ );

function ray_bp_get_send_private_message_link() {
global $bp;

return wp_nonce_url( $bp->loggedin_user->domain . $bp->messages->slug . ‘/compose/?r=’ . $bp->displayed_user->userdata->user_login );
}
add_filter( ‘bp_get_send_private_message_link’, ‘ray_bp_get_send_private_message_link’ );`

I believe this is fixed in trunk.
https://trac.buddypress.org/changeset/3591

@driz

BuddyPress is already a theme. Look at bp-default. That is a full WP theme that for some reason was bundled with the plugin. There is a huge mess of code devoted to making this setup work. It is nearly impossible to freely modify the templates, even if you roll your own BuddyPress theme, because the javascript is so tightly bound to the ids and classes in the markup.

I don’t think its reasonable anymore to call BP a plugin, since it does not enhance a WP site in the purest sense. It completely takes it over and defines an entirely new set of rules for how to customize the look of your site. That sounds like a theme to me.

If you think about BP as a theme, then the only acceptable ways to solve the issue and stay true to WP is pages or custom post types. This only doesn’t make sense though because BP is made up of many components that should be making their OWN decisions about how they get displayed.

So back to my original point. BP is defining too many rules, and forcing components to adhere to the default theme itself, instead of a theme prototype (which is how WP works). If BP was doing it the “right” way, then this whole issue would be moot, because each component would be deciding how its URL was determined, and the end user could decide if they liked it or not.

I think this is in the scope of the topic because it gets into defining the problem that needs to be solved, which is important before working on a solution.

If you really want to take this where the root of the issue is, the underlying problem is that BuddyPress is actually a theme that has been jammed into the plugin directory and then tightly coupled to what should be multiple plugins (aka components) in one massive package.

I am starting to feel like the only way to restore any kind of reasonable extensiblity of the BP interface it to split it into a theme, and the components into plugins which all adhere to a very strict API defined by the THEME, not a “core” plugin.

Of course this would break every existing install. It would have to be an internal fork that was deemed to be the new way forward.

Well, don’t blast something for being exactly what it’s suppose to be. Since BP is a WordPress plugin and the dummies books are for absolute beginners then it makes sense to spend a great deal on the core. Is there room for more documentation? Yes!

Read the documentation on this site: http://codex.buddypress.org
Visit these:
http://etivite.com
http://bp-tricks.com
http://wpmu.org/category/buddypress

I’m sure there are more resources out there. Just search or ask.

Lol, yes, I am a troll.
I am old and smell funny and live in a cave.

Look, in today’s economic climate, the job market is pretty much empty, even in Australia. Even if you do get a job with a company, then you’re hard pressed to pay rent and bills, and you can never think of buying a house.

The only option left is web-development and small business. I’m sorry I got upset about it yesterday, but it’s really frustrating when you get to a golden package like Buddypress and you find that they documentation is really sparse. Then you find that there’s a book out there specifically about the package, and all that’s in it are the installation instructions and how to use the admin panel.

For the record, there’s a second book called ‘WordPress for Dummies’, so that’s why I thought it wasn’t right that her first half of the book is about WordPress.

@xevo
It doesn’t have to be GPL if theme’s not *distributed* like e.g. custom theme for a client site. But if theme’s going to be sold or distributed in the wilds for free, it has to GPL.
Remember that thingamagig with the Thesis theme?
http://ma.tt/2010/07/theme-are-gpl-too/

Syn-thesis 1 and Chris Pearson

=== have issue as buddy press link are coming at the bottoms. ===

Looks to me like a regular default BuddyPress installation. What bottoms are you referring to?

Interesting points. Working recently with trunk prompted the same thoughts vis-a-vis disabling BP and being left with a heap of odd pages, but then I simply removed or unpublished those pages.

It would be interesting to hear the comments of the core devs who are :

@jjj
@djpaul
@boonebgorges