I’ve looked at the bp-dev autocomplete plugin before and I think that it wouldn’t take too much work to bring it up to date. Much of the buddypress functionality has changed since that plugin worked, but the javascript would for the most part be completely reusable.
@nit3watch is right that Firebug is your friend 
The reason why the admin bar doesn’t obey your content width is because it’s not technically in your content. If you view the source of your page, you’ll see that the markup for the admin bar is actually in your footer. Your best bet is to do what @nit3watch suggested and apply styles directly to #wp-admin-bar.
@alcina22 I went through this myself not too long ago (moving from a bp-sn-default based theme to BP 1.2) and I ended up rebuilding the child theme to be dependent on bp-default. It was an annoying and somewhat difficult process, but in the end I think it’s better to be dependent on bp-default (which is guaranteed to get developer attention, and which is just generally much easier to work with than bp-sn-parent).
@beckb Thank you for the plugin link and for your very helpful suggestions! I think I can certainly make due with doing things manually for now as you suggested and if the site is successful, I will definitely look into hiring someone to do some custom coding. If anyone reading this would like to offer a quote on such a project, feel free to contact me: jmarino715 (at) gmail (dot) com
As for your comment regarding mod status being an “enticement”, there are a number of benefits to joining my site’s VIP program other than group moderator privileges. It’s difficult to explain it all though without providing specific details or a link to the site which is something I am not prepared to do while the site is still under its current stage of development. I considered taking more drastic measures at the end of the subscription period such as disabling the group’s forum (or the group itself). However, since this is a new site, and there are other more “enticing” benefits that would cease to exist at the end of the subscription period, I figured it would look better to allow all of the groups to remain fully functional regardless if a specific group’s creator is paying their subscription fee or not. Also, before taking such drastic measures, I would need to figure out a way to disable the group/forum without deleting its relevant database entries. This way, if the group creator decides to re-subscribe at a later date, or if someone else would like to take over the payments for the group, they won’t have to start all over again from scratch. Of course, this is an entirely separate issue and I figured I would save this conversation for a later date when I could fully explain it but there you have it since you brought it up.
in style.css
line 378
change:width:960px; to the desired width.
If you dont have firefox and firebug, GET IT! All you would have to do is right click the element and you can see what is applied to it.
@r-a-y did you test it on your side? Not working for me. Think Iv’e got the “show card in group header” wrong.
More specific I think its $description .= ( on line 76 )
Im ganna try play around a bit and see if I can get it to show.
@jmarino:
Well, there’s a plugin to restrict group creation. I’d start there: https://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/buddypress-restrict-group-creation/
In the settings, you can auto-demote group creators to mods, so that’s good for what you mention. You can also separately determine who can make a public, private or hidden group. It doesn’t have a setting to restrict somebody who meets the threshold from creating more than one group, though. You’d have to work around that. Also, it has settings like minimum number of days as a member (of your BP site in general) before qualifying to create a group, but nothing built in that’d handle maximum number of days as a mod and then demote automatically.
Honestly? You’re looking for very specific and limited functionality. Since you already plan to manually add any additional mods, I’d consider just getting the necessary info from the user when s/he signs up for VIP membership, manually creating the group in the first place (use the Restrict plugin to keep anybody but a site admin from being able to do so), inviting the VIP member to join, and then setting him/her (and any friends) as mod.
As for the 1 year demotion, I’d just use a good calendar and set up an electronic reminder.
Low tech and not very automated, but that really seems like the route you’ll end up needing to go, unless you (or someone else) wants to create a fair bit of custom code–something you probably won’t find people offering to do for free.
…
Not to be a total downer, but I’m having a bit of trouble imagining what enticement mod status would offer. Maybe I just haven’t toyed with it enough to see its utility in managing forums, but it doesn’t seem to provide much control over the group, at least…
@crashutah, do you know if that Welcome Pack force acceptance trick (define( 'WELCOME_PACK_AUTOACCEPT_INVITATIONS', true );) has to be done in wp-config, or would it work in a (child) theme’s functions.php?
Wish I could easily auto-force the group but not the friends. Hm. More to think on….
Sorry, I’m just posting here to remind myself to maybe set up that admin option eventually.
I did at least set up so Facebook Connect users aren’t required to share full names. Currently takes first name + last initial, although ideally I’d prompt them to create their own username. THAT, however, would take a smidge more time/effort.
Brill it works!
thankyou!
james
Tks @r-a-y i will give it a go
@r-a-y. I want to have a fixed size for group/user avatars in the sidebar. Is there a way to detect and fix the size of avatars in sidebar?
Thanks.
Curious. I was convinced I had a similar problem, as I noticed one user marked spammer and then created my own test user but never received the activation email. HOWEVER, I just tried again using a gmail address instead of hotmail, and I got the activation email just fine. Suppose I’ll keep messing with this and check back in…..
I’m trying to use/test the Welcome Pack in particular, so….we’ll see.
Hmmm, I have found the BuddyPress Stats Extension, but I’m not sure if it is able to do what I need.
Can anyone else lend a hand?
@nit3watch – You’re not declaring the functions properly:
http://pastebin.com/UhRC77TL
To remove FB avatars from the FB plugin, add the following to your theme’s functions.php:
remove_filter( 'bp_core_fetch_avatar', 'jfb_get_facebook_avatar', 10, 4 );
To have an option between either the BP avatar and the FB avatar, some custom code would be needed to display an admin option in the user’s settings page.
In BuddyPress, forums reside in groups, so you need to create a group first and enable the discussion forum that way
If you think of how Facebook structures forums in fan pages, then you’ll have a better understanding of how bbPress works in BP:
https://codex.buddypress.org/getting-started/faqs/#forum
As always, you can test out how this functions on the BP test site:
http://testbp.org
If you’re looking simply for a traditional forum script, I would recommend something else altogether as BuddyPress does not offer a global admin interface to manage topics and posts for one thing.
If you’re interested in a forum component in BuddyPress that has an admin interface and other regular bbPress functionality, Brajesh Singh has created such a plugin (though it is a premium, paid one). I should also say I haven’t tested this plugin myself.
If you relied a lot on the BP 1.0 or 1.1 theme structure, then you’d need to install the BP Backwards Compatibility plugin:
https://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/buddypress-backwards-compatibility/
I should note I have no experience using this plugin whatsoever.
hnla is right; if your theme isn’t too custom, I would recommend building a new child theme of the bp-default.
WP Admin – Settings > General > “Front Page displays”
There appears to be a bug with the bp_get_activity_avatar() function. On closer inspection, these are loafers… wait sorry… it looks like the function is trying to pass the group ID and the component as group, but it adds a redundant check for a user ID, which breaks this functionality.
Going to create a patch right now.
*Edit – patch created:
https://trac.buddypress.org/ticket/2578
Thanks @nuprn1 – I owe you lots of beer!
@cpkid2 try this, I’ve been trying to figure out the same thing for a while now.
http://pastebin.com/7QFJ5fUV
@nickmy I thought somewhere in this stream of comments mrmaz stated that stable was released 0.4.1?
Try it out on a test site install and see how it fares, but try and separate styling issues from plugin script ones.
