BuddyPress.org

@Peter a lot of social networks could benefit from a forum for a more centralized discussion, especially larger sites.. Forums should not be the main focus but certainly not forgotten or “dropped”. Especially since it works pretty well and intuitive after you’ve grasped the concept of the group/forum connection.

… forums and groups seem commingled in a way that is pretty darned counterintuitive

My solution is to just ignore/remove forums and focus on communication between members via (micro)blogging and threaded comments.

It’s cool to have the option of BBpress integration if you want it, but I don’t understand why it is becoming a default core component of BP. I hope BP steps back from that brink…

@Mike – selected zip code with the hope that the geo plugin will know how to find member using zip code proximity. But since I am not able to run the indexing process I can’t really tell if that works or not. Once I can run the indexing process and get some search results I will know how it actually works. Till then this is pretty much useless for me.

@stwc

I agree with you on the Group-Forums being a bit confusing, for techies and even more so for non-techies.

Any suggestions / ideas of how to improve this ?

Do the user accounts come from the regular user registration process (i.e. not Facebook Connect) and can you please remind me where in the wp-admin you can set user moderation on new accounts?

@gerikg, did u get the fb avatar to show up in bbpress?

I used the deep integration + extremely crude FB connect integration from newbie’s tutorial that suits me at http://wiki.developers.facebook.com/index.php/Facebook_Connect_Tutorial1

I then added a filter for bp_core_get_avatar to call the fbconnect_replace_avatar function which was already in the buddypress-fbconnect plugin; of course i put this code as a plugin under my-plugin. Since all my bb profile edit / login re rerouted to bp, i dont really worry abt the extra fbconnect login stuffs. So far, the fb avatar works ok in bbpress in addition to normal user avatar set in bp. If someone could put this as a plugin for bb, would be great.

That’s how BP works. There is almost no security, privacy and member management built into BP. The focus is on expanding features.

There are various efforts underway to bolt better management on via plugins etc. This plugin for example offers new member moderation.

Jeff Sayre is working on a privacy component, but apparently has decided he needs to be compensated – and rightly so!

@Mrmaz well spoken

@mike

I agree with both you and stwc. I think you are both correct. It all comes down to the audience and who you are developing the site for. In my limited experience of exposing BP to uninitiated and/or Average Joe type users, the 1.1 branch’s default theme is not very “dummy proof,” and at times downright confusing. It will be interesting to see how the 1.2 default theme does in the real world.

Modeling real world social interactions which are very organic and three dimensional in a software application which is by nature “flat” is not easy, and probably impossible to get perfect. This is why I am always advocating a flexible API type of approach, over a rigid feature set type of approach. Developers need the freedom to tune the app to their audience, because no two sites will have the same requirements. I am not talking just about the interface, I am also talking about how the app behaves and responds to differing requirements.

There is also CometChat.. paid but supposed to be very good. might tell them you’re interested in this topic, so they start working on BP Integration.. it should not be very hard to make according to them:

http://www.cometchat.com/support/topic/269-buddypress-integration/

Hi Magganpice,

I tested all of the chat plugins.

I feel, non of them are ready to use, or have ads.

Toksta is a service where you give away all your user data. Also it has ads.

Buddypress Ajax Chat is actually the open source chat from: https://blueimp.net/ajax/ and I think it’s overloaded. If I want something like this I use irc.

What I saw at M Website http://simplercomputing.net/bp/ is really impressing, and exactly what I’m looking fore.

Hope to get M back to the project.

@stwc I think you make an eloquent, objective point. While I think there’s some merit in it, I respectfully disagree. Yes, people are used to (in many respects) to the old b-board way of doing forums, so from that perspective, BP will be a tad foreign. Looking at it another way though – that old method shoe-horned users into combing though a giant list of things looking for what they were interested. As a tech dude myself, I can tell you I never “browse” forums because they are just not browsable. You have to search for what you want and then pour over unrelated threads. It’s too much work.

BP Groups is a new way of looking at things, for sure. BUt it allows you to “group” content, of which forums are merely a part, in a way that makes sense for people that want to associate with that content.

The model breaks down in some use cases but I have something like a 90 “love this new way” hit rate on the concept. Only a few have stated they want the old way (and BP’s forum listing solves that problem for them.

my .02

I am also of the opinion that if you design something with a supremely intuitive interface that just “works” in a very logical manner, it doesn’t matter how much you change the model (assuming it’s a step forward)

For whoever is looking desperately for a chat for BuddyPress – here is one more I just found and it seems to be finished and working. It is not a small Facebook-like-chat though (and the free version has ads in it), so there is still some waiting to be done for this plugin here to be finished…

– http://dynamicendeavorsllc.com/premium/

– see screenshot here: http://dynamicendeavorsllc.com/premium/bp_chat_no_adsense/

Maybe this can help someone.

@shaisimchi So given the field issue I described in my last post, which ones do you choose and how does it possibly work? City? Zip Code? Do you input the ENTIRE address as a field? Curious to how you make this work.

In the codex:

https://codex.buddypress.org/how-to-guides/modifying-the-buddypress-admin-bar/

It says:

Any custom code that we create can be placed in a file called bp-custom.php. It gets loaded with all the rest of bp automatically by bp during each page load. If you don’t have one already then create one in /wp-content/plugins/. So we’ll pretend that we have done just that and that our three new functions are going to be loaded with the rest of bp.

but i needed to put the modified buddypress-admin-bar in the functions.php to work.

Is there any reason?

Is the BuddyPress theme required for BuddyPress to work on an existing WordPress install… or can we pick and choose pieces from the official BP theme and incorporate as needed? I’m assuming the latter, but wanted to be sure before I start to hack away.

This looks interesting but seems to have time resource problems. If this is ging to be a free plugin, why not release the code in order to let other build upon this and drive the plugin ahead? Maybe there is a possibility of releasing a version with some not yet finished features missig?

If this is going to cost something, why not discuss the price with those of us who will soon need to employ developers to create such a plugin?

Nobody seems to have a working released chat plugin for BuddyPress yet. These are the ones I have come across so far:

– this one of course: http://simplercomputing.net/bp/

– one is promised over at http://buddydev.com/

– there seems to be something here: http://soderlind.no/archives/2009/02/27/toksta-chat-plugin-for-buddypress/

Anyone know more?

Maybe we could get together and employ someone (or even “M”) to bring such a plugin into existance? I guess there are a few projects out there (like mine) that absolutely NEED a chat feature to go online (in my case, BuddyPress will have to replace an existing system thaat already includes a chat).

I do not have a problem selecting the fields – that works fine once this thing is installed correctly. the problem is that it will not find anything if the users are not indexed.

there is an option of clicking “here” from the admin page of this plugin but when i click on it nothing happens. that is my issues.

would love to hear if anyone got it to work.

I’ll have a plugin for BuddyPress post favorites soon. It’s mostly finished but needs some cleaning up for other peoples eyes.

bp-custom.php loads up before any BuddyPress components do, and functions.php loads after all plugins and WordPress core code does.

So it isn’t a matter of “if,” it’s a matter of “why.”

Basically…

Use bp-custom.php to override core BuddyPress settings like slugs or constant values, or to load specific code BEFORE BuddyPress loads for whatever reason you might need to.

Use functions.php if you need to add actions or filters to BuddyPress things. It’s good practice to make sure that actions and filters exist before attaching code to them. If you add a filter to a function that doesn’t exist yet, or you add it before/after the code is loaded/executed, then you’re ahead/behind the action/filter curve, so to speak.

Different files for different purposes.

@anointed, not in the way I think you want it to work, no… With different users on different sites/blogs having their own BP userbase.

You still could bend the groups functionality around this though, it would just take some creative theme work.

I hate to be harsh, but this plugin is un-intuitive and without instructions or explanation.

For instance, you are supposed to select the “which field represents the users location” Well, given there is a field for address, city, state and zip possible….what do you choose? Most Geo plugins use a mash-up of the complete address to search for an accurate location of the user.

The plugin has signs of promise but questions remain. …like what’s up with the “Sponsored by Automattic” ??