BuddyPress.org

I don’t see Zenphoto rewriting their excellent, mature script to become a plugin for Buddypress

The ZenphotoPress plugin is actually very effective

Make up your mind.

I’ll explain it one more time so even you can understand; a stand-alone application that has a plugin to interface with WordPress is NOT the same thing as WordPress plugin.

… plugins are not hacks. Plugins are modular.

I never said plugins are hacks. Learn to read. I’m a big fan of plugins, but I prefer plugins that interface with existing, mature applications over plugins with entire applications written from scratch.

Case in point – I want to commit to a Gallery plugin. So let’s say I do and get users to upload thousands of pics. All is well. Dev stops. BP progresses and gallery breaks. I am faced with either correcting myself, finding another and hopefully resurrecting all the images, comments, galleries, etc (prob impossible) or <shudder> asking people to re-upload (not happening) I am ok taking risks but wondered how others deal with this issue (same applies for the seemingly stalled events plugin)

Solution: Use solid, mature stand-alone applications like Zenphoto. If they don’t have an interface plugin with WordPress, write one.

The key word here is ‘was’. If you know anything about WP, then you should know that by now it’s one of the most versatile CMS around.

Sure, functionality is ever-expanding, but the foundation is still blog centered.

BuddyPress does have a way to store 1st name and last name….custom fields …

My point is that they are not built-in, which is weird for a social network. And if you add them as custom fields you have to write your own custom function to get them into wp_usermeta.

But OK people, good luck writing that kick-ass gallery plugin for Buddypress! I won’t be wasting my time on it. I’ll be busy restructuring Buddypress’ crappy registration form.

First of all, plugins are not hacks. Plugins are modular. That’s what extensibility means. You should know that as an IT journalist. If you use BuddyPress, then, yes, it’s the standard. It’s what your whole site is based on. Use something different if that fits your needs better.

WordPress was for managing posts on a blog

The key word here is ‘was’. If you know anything about WP, then you should know that by now it’s one of the most versatile CMS around.

The Zenphoto solution, not cramming everything into one plugin, is more solid and versatile.

Is it just me, or does that not make much sense? You can build plugins that are applications in their own right (except that they need WP). There’s no cramming going on, mate. Only extending…

@Peter

“So Buddypress is The Standard and everybody else has to adapt?”

no, but WordPress is the Standard.

looks like we came to a good conclusion ?

@peter BuddyPress does have a way to store 1st name and last name….custom fields. Andy didn’t need to build it in. The only difference b/t BP and Facebook here is that FB lets you login with username as well. I’m sure you could write a plugin to replicate that functionality. Beyond that, they have 1st and last name fields…just like I do on my BP site…as well as a “display field” You can manage event registration by username if you choose but, since it’s your site, you could easily require 1st and last names.

You have a misguided view of what BP is and what extensibility really means here.

I don’t see Zenphoto rewriting their excellent, mature script to become a plugin for Buddypress

The ZenphotoPress plugin is actually very effective

Make up your mind.

dfa327 (?) posted this on a splog fighting group wire:

I’ve upgraded my entire site. So far no bad guys:)

I’m up to buddypress 1.1.3 and wpmu 2.8.6.

I got the following plugins to stop spam:

http://wordpress-plugins.feifei.us/hashcash/

http://www.poradnik-webmastera.com/projekty/invisible_defender/

http://www.svenkubiak.de/nospamnx-en

And a few other things to stop it, but I think those are working well above.

Prior to the above I was getting hit by the minute!!!! Now none:)

Haven’t tested them yet. Can’t vouch for them.

@Mike Pratt and Bowe, my general point is the same problem Microsoft Windows used to be criticized for; putting too many applications into an operating system while they should have strengthened/secured the core and focused on usability first.

Let 3rd party developers spend time on creating awesome functionalities for our BuddyPress sites which are fully integrated with BPs functions, so we should not have to revert to external scripts and “hacks”.

So Buddypress is The Standard and everybody else has to adapt? I don’t see Zenphoto rewriting their excellent, mature script to become a plugin for Buddypress. So then I would have to hope enthusiastic volunteers will reinvent the wheel within BP.

If Buddypress has a solid core and APIs that make it easy to integrate external scripts, you don’t have to resort to hacks. Modular vs monolithic!

You always claim NOT to be a programmer but have no problem taking shots at the evolution of the core.

I have been an IT journalist for over ten years. I’m not a php programmer, but can sort of follow what the code does and see how the database is structured. Buddypress is built on WPMU which is built on WP and it shows. WordPress was for managing posts on a blog. A social network is for managing people/profiles, but Buddypress doesn’t even a have built-in way to store first name and last name, which immediately becomes a problem when you try to do event registration.

If there’s something available that’s built on BP or WP, then I’d rather use that, even if there are less features. If there’s something that I really need, then I’d just add it myself. I’d actually been thinking of turning NextGEN into a BP plugin.

The ZenphotoPress plugin is actually very effective. After testing both I absolutely prefer the combination of Zenphoto->ZenphotoPress->Wordpress over NextGen->Wordpress. The Zenphoto solution, not cramming everything into one plugin, is more solid and versatile.

I totally disagree with you there Peter.. Let 3rd party developers spend time on creating awesome functionalities for our BuddyPress sites which are fully integrated with BPs functions, so we should not have to revert to external scripts and “hacks”.

@Bowe & @Designodyssey:

I would be interested in the same solution as well. I got the community blog plug in working, but making a post is still like going to the backend admin section of a blog. I played with P2 a little as well but still prefer the default buddypress theme.

see this TRAC-ticket:

https://trac.buddypress.org/ticket/1498

@Designodyssey: some creative thinking going on here! I’m interested if you can find a hack/solution to let users or groups easily create group blog post without the need to visit the WP admin panel and with the basic post functionality (wysiwyg editor etc) Keep up updated

The gravity forms is the same situation as TDO in that whenver a new group blog is created, before you can use the form, you would have to create the form for it to hook into. With the way you’re talking about, it works beautifully if you’re using this for your main blog, but if you want to use the group blogs, it won’t show up because the forms are blog specific. I played with embedding the form I created into my sub blogs template and kept breaking the site until i realized that the form i created on my main blog did not exist in my sub blog.

I’m following your ideas in here very closely because we’re both in the same situation.

I use this Event Registration plugin in the first version of my site. The layout is awful, but it does do a lot of straightforward database communication I would never be able to php-program myself. I’ve started cleaning up the html/css and adding jquery here and there for form validation and date picker etc.

Just FYI. Not sure if it would be suitable for your needs and if any of you would be able to add more Buddypress integrations to this plugin.

As I said in another thread I’m weary of integrating events functionality into Buddypress, because I don’t want to get stuck with one event script that misses certain features. I’d rather have a solid core and API to integrate outside event management scripts.

Is this the same problem I’m having here?

Not trying to hijack this thread, but I think it is…

@David Lewis, events is a mission critical component to my site as well. That’s why I’m trying to integrate an outside script and need a solid Buddypress core that makes that easier. A built-in event script (“… even if there are less features …”) would only limit my options.

How is this resolved?

I’m using 1.1.3 and 2.8.6 with a custom theme derived from the first version of Buddypress. I can’t upgrade to the 1.2 theme, because it’s not finished yet and has too many changes vs my custom theme to deal with in one upgrade.

Why is buddywebsite.com/register redirecting to the homepage? Even when I allow all registrations? How can I fix it in my custom theme?

EDIT: It must have something to do with address rewrite. The register page returns when I set the permalinks to default. Is there a hard hack I can add to .htaccess or elsewhere forces buddywebsite.com/register to the right template page, overriding other permalink settings?

I’ve tested several WP gallery plugins. NextGen is pretty good, but I now use Zenphoto which is much more powerful and versatile.

Zenphoto is a complete stand-alone script, not a WP plugin, althought there is a ZenPhotoPress plugin that makes it easy to integrate in WordPress. I haven’t tried it in Buddypress yet, but it should do 80 percent of what you’d need. If it doesn’t, you could probably write plugins to connect Buddypress to functionality in Zenphoto.

General point: Why would you want to try to cram this kind of functionality into Buddypress plugin? Or even integrate it into the core (shudder…)?

Same thing goes for event registration. If Buddypress had a more straightforward, standard member management structure, integrating any outside event management script would be a lot easier. Please concentrate on the core before adding more bells and whistles!

@daan77

The reason that option works there is because it’s for posting to the main blog but it doesnt work without manual intervention if a user creates a new group blog. embedding the form on the page doesn’t work because the form is not global, it’s specific to the blog. This means that you have to create a new form for it to work anytime a new blog is created, which defeats the purpose. I found posthaste which doesn’t add the features but at least it can be embedded in your templates that your blogs use so that as soon as it’s created, it can be used.

I’ve been driven almost crazy by hearing about “canonical plugins” by the WordPress core team (if you don’t know, see this).

I think a BuddyPress events plugin would be a good project for developers to collaboratively work on in this way. Whether built on Erwin’s code or started new. I can’t help but think that however wordpress.org is redesigned in future to encourage more team-driven plugin development is just going to be BuddyPress with a custom theme! But I digress.

I might be shouting into a funnel again but again if there is another developer or two out there, perhaps we could look into this?

This already seems to be happening with bp-events. It’s not keeping pace with BP 1.2 development. Which is fine. What do you want for free… right?! But with BP being such a niche right now… we don’t have any other options. We have to live with the broken solution or roll our own. I imagine that as BuddyPress grows in popularity… this won’t be as much of an issue.

I second the buddybook theme. Afterall, when you think social media you think facebook and buddypress has much in common with it. The Wire, Groups, Activities.