BuddyPress.org

Hi
in short everything you have asked can be done.

But I’m a little bias as I honestly believe regarding technology there is nothing that can’t be achieved it just comes down to how much time and budget you have to invest… 🙂

Below is a bit of a ramble…. But might provide insight. after you organize your coffee and come back.

I have nearly completed a project that sounds similar in nature (few weeks from launch in final beta testing), however it was a highly customised solution (private membership site) .
With nearly 70 plugins, 100’s hours coding integration code (lots of trial and error) between the plugins and also compatibility tests with multiples of plugins to ensure no issues, because of slow load times the project requires deploying from CDN,fast servers and customised caching solutions.
most of work load appeasr to be bbpress – so an near out of the box solution, you prob don’t need to go that far.

But not to scare you. Here are some pointers that might answer your questions, based on my understanding of the OP.

In my case I spent many months researching solutions with many platforms (open source / paid / managed premium) – buddy press was selected simply because is built on WordPress that’s already has the core abilities you need, you just need to “hook in to’em” and take advantage of this concept – you can keep working on bettering and adding separate components / features as time goes by, great for client, works out a bit cheaper in the startup phase and great for developer – land ya self a permanent support / ongoing development contract……

Is it possible to update profile content/meta? : In general yes, buddy press allows this out of the box

Either the user or the admin can update, you can have admin only fields (the user doesn’t access them – but the admin can)
if you use a membership plugin eg, s2member – you can extend this idea much further eg, only require email on signup, then all other fields are accessible from profile and can set fields on a per membership level,

In your case, you might have different profile fields for students, teachers, Parents and only require a couple of basic fields to be completed on signup and all other fields can still be “required” when they reach their profile page.
For profile field management I recommend the s2membership pro plugin (free version available) http://s2member.com/

My project has a “todo list” for each and every member – however I’m still to this day unable to find a plugin that interacts with a completed wp/bbp/buddypress site. So I had to code one. The todo list was designed / engineered in a way that interacts with “wordpress” in general, by storing a completely unique data feed much like the activity feed with time stamps and can be programmed to be linked to any site link, media download, page view, forum post, reply any activity on the site can be logged and applied to the feed which the to-do-list interacts with and auto completing (crossing of the item) each item also has dependencies, so you rattle off a list of activities before the task is crossed off and each to-do-list also has dependencies so it is not seen by a user until certain tasks are completed, eg, purchase a course from the store, or complete a previous to-do-list.

In short: Yes it can be done, however I’m not aware of any 3rd party plugin that does this successfully.

In my case I have the to-do-list shown in the sidebar so as a member goes through the tasks the list is also available to them no matter what page they are on. But possible to publish it in the profile page if required.

Regarding email notices, I recommend looking into the woo commerce sensei http://www.woothemes.com/products/sensei/ plugin for your courses that way you have management of email notices, in fact prob most of the things you require will be available via sensei – note this is a premium paid plugin with yearly ongoing licence costs.
Without a free trial version to try before you buy.

But maybe gravity forms developer licence might be fine in your case as it has, gateway plugins, qiz and survey plugins – it would be possible to build certain simple courses on the gravity framework including delivery of custom emails – if building a form based system than certainly worth a look into – but would require a developers licence to get all the plugins you would prob require.

In fact what I do is use gravity forms email chimp plugin to send the members email address to an email list (automation campaign) in mail chimp (paid account) that auto sends a welcome emails that I have customize to suit the activity they have completed, this way I can send pretty html + marketing emails + scheduled follow up emails and take the work load off WordPress other than a quick API connect on demand.

Regarding: is it possible to have multiple logins or users access the same account/profile?
In simple: Yes, but it all comes to context of the profile, will each member be able to see other members profiles or will parents be able to edit a child profile etc.

Although my project does not require the need for 2 or more members to edit a single profile, I do have multiple levels of context (horizontal and vertical memberships) all with their own set of rules who profiles they can see and what buddypress features are available to them – some members don’t have activity feeds or messages, But I needed to ensure that members that do have access to these features can’t access the features of cross membership and so on.

This is 100% custom code (no plugin) but while coding this up I recall thinking I’m 100% confident it is possible to add another level of check “if current user can edit displayed user” and go from there, all you would need is a profile field / meta that links multiple accounts together –
Eg, a parent account has a profiled field “child user name” – they just enter the child username / user ID – and now we would add the profile check if a parent is viewing the child’s profile.

Regarding paying a deposit, and payment, this is my findings.

There was no single one membership / payment plugin that integrated perfectly into what I wished to achieve – I have tested many. please note I’m suggesting there are no plugins that do this stuff just none that achieved the outcomes I needed for my project.

– Tips: – start the project design based on the payment systems / gateway (the complete project and direction of development is 100% dependent on this) because the simple reason every feature you implement needs to check “is a paid member and what level (cap / role) ” – including free membership with paid features “is not a paid member” but has paid for… this includes recurring and non-recurring subscriptions with consideration of what you intend to do if a subscription expires.

Eg, a recurring subscription will either just auto subscribe and pay for the next time frame (or fail)
A non-reoccurring subscription will auto expire after a given time frame (or X cycles)

The difference between to the two –
Is generally on a recurring subscription when it expires it also linked to a member account to “do something” eg downgrade membership

A non-recurring subscription is generally used for a onetime payment you have access forever feature- eg, a course and resources, you pay once on a deposit, subscription over several weeks when the subscription expires the member still has access to the course as long as they remain at minimum a free member on the site. (anyhow that’s how I have implemented things)

These two concepts are completely different in the way they interact with the member as well at many levels although on the surface appear to be almost the same, add in a deposit feature you are also opening another level of context to play with, mostly limiting the available options regarding the payment gateway service you will need to use or more so which services have this feature on offer.

As mentioned – my suggestion is start with the gateway solutions first and reverse the design back to the front end. – this is the big lesson I took away with this project (4 rewrites in total) as it was always a block relating to the gateway limitations (and laws relating to online subscriptions in my country).

My project:
Woo commerce (free) for shopping cart system including purchase of courses, subscription to site and deposit/ subscription to courses, plus all other products, deliverable products, workshops, webinars, one on one sessions, resource downloads from pdf to videos. Anything you can think off can be sold through woo

Woo commerce quick cart – plugin (paid)– now I can add a buy now button on any page for any product including subscriptions – the membership info page has a standard 3 column price comparison chart with nothing more than a “sign up now” button – clicking the button auto adds the subscription to cart and opens the checkout popup with one click and without leaving the page (no need to send to store)

Sensei (paid)– for courses and fits well into woo commerce system (but requires a couple more plugins and custom integration code if implementing paid / subscription based courses )

Groups plugin (free) to easily manage roles and caps (as I have to teach client staff how to do this and manage the site) WordPress has this capability built in if your a coding ninja (I’m not)

Groups Woo commerce (paid plugin) to link groups to a purchase – apply a role / cap or groups of, to a user based on the purchase.

Then some custom code is required – to perform a check and if a user has a particular role or cap than apply the s2membership level – this check is done at the store level so if a member cancels or defaults on a payment – the membership level is auto adjusted depending on what role or cap is supplied to the user from the groups woo commerce automation. groups plugin manages non-recurring subscriptions so a expired subscription does not remove the users caps and roles (but a default on payment does)

S2member pro – for membership level management including profile fields management and most importantly complete site access management – I can apply access to each and every competent of the site this includes , forums, topics, replies, posts, pages, media, courses, and content within pages eg, home page displays different content based on the membership level / logged in or general public. s2member pro is also used to override default bbpress / buddy visibility settings eg, hidden forums only available to certain member levels – but requires custom code to apply or traverse access levels on submitting topics / replies to ensure widgets and other snippets don’t display private areas to members that don’t have access. (it allows you to write custom queries with zero concern or consideration to access levels)

For subscriptions (paid)– I use woo commerce Subscriptions plugin – this manages on its own site access based on paid recurring subscriptions (or in simple turns on or off user account based on payment) – pay x amount monthly to access certain site features, courses and resources, forums, pages, blog articles etc.

However – woo commerce subscriptions does not manage deposit / time based subscriptions (non-recurring subscriptions) eg, pay a deposit for a course and gain instant access then pay off on a subscription for x amount of weeks / months –
I was not able to find any plugin (free or paid) that does this, so I had to write a plugin currently under experimental concept stage.

Other tips: often it’s better to find compatible, well supported and pay for premium plugins that have overlapping features and disengage these features you don’t want to achieve your goals and do as little integration code as possible, but anything you do needs to be well planned and though out as to not to touch core code in any platform, framework or plugin.
At the end of the day you want the ability to upgrade all systems as time go by.

Eg, s2member plugin has its build in membership system that is “required to be active” for the plugin to work. – all I did was setup a single paid (never to be used membership) on a paypal sandbox store this includes setting up all the s2membership registration pages etc – then put a simple redirect in the .htaccess on any of these pages. Now to purchase membership you must go to the store (woo commerce) and purchase a subscription via woo – s2member has now has nothing to do with membership registration / payment systems.

And of course I have “force account creation” turned on at the store – you cannot make a purchase without signup at a minimum free site membership.
by disengaging the buddy, bbp, Wp, and all other means of registering (by redirect) but only leaving the woo commerce customer account registration available – The pop up registration form I use for free members is just a woocommerce customer account registration form (with no products attached) with a fallback to the s2membership cut down reg form (in case ajax / jquery etc not working on client side)

And now all purchases, subscriptions, shop account, courses etc are now available from the buddy press profile page also via a “woo to buddypress” plugin (or in my case built into the theme)

May sound complicated but as mentioned I would really suggest starting with payment solutions and nut out this part of the project first as this will most likely force development direction,

one of my project goals was a solution that can cater for anything…. so,

Regarding variable deposit / costs amounts based on user input – if using similar approach as I did – you would just setup woo commerce discount codes per variable outcome / result and would just reveal the correct coupon code to the user on the checkout page. they just cut and paste this code into the discount field and click apply.

or setup up multi products – one product per price base. – have the user input their details first and the result would be – apply a groups cap / role then only offer the courses products in the store with the associated price base based on user caps / role –

woo discount coupons can be setup on multiple bases – eg, deposit amount / on going subscription amount or total amount or per product or per cart total etc.

for me was plenty of research into this including concept builds of other community platforms and as above is only a bit of a sample of features used relating to the OP.
I was under very strict key point goals and achievements requiring very specific outcomes many of these affected development direction how / why I implemented the above.

There may be better simpler ways to suit your specific project, but thought it might be worth a mention for some direction. or at least insight into some of the plugins I use / ideas and concepts.

my usual disclaimer – if there is something in there for you, that’s great! if not that’s fine too!

enjoy!

ok I had a quick look at this – I’m unable to make change – eg, login as a “non-admin” user, update profile including trying to edit a field – no change,

login as admin – and edit change the individual profile file visibility settings, save and then revert back and save again – no change,

still able to change visibility settings from the front end (profile page)

Not sure if its just me, I can’t seem to find the “default visibility settings” either from the admin dashboard – not sure if its gone, moved, or I’m missing something.

for now – I’ll just override the profile loop template in the child theme and remove the change settings links and remove the visibility tab completely – in my case I really don’t need these to be changed by users as site is a private members site –

but mentioned it, as it did appeared as a bug + original mention of the same issue.

cheers,

Hi @ma3ry,

unable to visit the indicated page due to redirection… BP’s xProfile text box contains are autolinked by default for the 5 first words.
This is handy when you use a field called city for example. The city name is autolinked and let each user click on it to find other who may entered the same name.

Of course, an about me box with a long description, which several autolinked words has less interrest. Fortunately, you can deactivate xprofile autolinking.
Two options for this: all or selected.

Here 3 snippets. The first can be used if you want to completely remove autolink from all field values.
The second is a new filter to let you choose the field(s) you want to deactivate. This need two snippet. The first to rewrite a filter and the second to remove / replace the existing BP filter.

Add the snippet to bp-custom.php.

// remove any autolink from profile
function remove_xprofile_links() {
remove_filter( 'bp_get_the_profile_field_value', 'xprofile_filter_link_profile_data', 9, 2 );
}
add_action( 'bp_init', 'remove_xprofile_links' ); 

// custom filter to selectively remove autolink
function my_xprofile_filter_link_profile_data( $field_value, $field_type = 'textbox' ) {

    // Access the field you are going to display value.
    global $field;

    // In this array you write the ids (separated by comma) of the fields you want to hide the link.
    $excluded_field_ids = array(2);

    // If the id of this $field is in the array, we return the value only and not the link.
    if (in_array($field->id, $excluded_field_ids))
	return $field_value;
	
	if ( 'datebox' == $field_type )
	return $field_value;
	
	if ( !strpos( $field_value, ',' ) && ( count( explode( ' ', $field_value ) ) > 5 ) )
	return $field_value;
	
	$values = explode( ',', $field_value );
	
	if ( !empty( $values ) ) {
		foreach ( (array) $values as $value ) {
			$value = trim( $value );
			
			// If the value is a URL, skip it and just make it clickable.
			if ( preg_match( '@(https?://([-\w\.]+)+(:\d+)?(/([\w/_\.]*(\?\S+)?)?)?)@', $value ) ) {
				$new_values[] = make_clickable( $value );
				
				// Is not clickable
			} else {
				
				// More than 5 spaces
				if ( count( explode( ' ', $value ) ) > 5 ) {
					$new_values[] = $value;
					
					// Less than 5 spaces
				} else {
					$search_url   = add_query_arg( array( 's' => urlencode( $value ) ), bp_get_members_directory_permalink() );
					$new_values[] = '<a href="' . $search_url . '" rel="nofollow">' . $value . '</a>';
				}
			}
		}
		
		$values = implode( ', ', $new_values );
	}
	
	return $values;
}

/**
 * We remove the buddypress filter and add our custom filter.
 */
function remove_xprofile_links() {
    // Remove the old filter.
    remove_filter( 'bp_get_the_profile_field_value', 'xprofile_filter_link_profile_data', 9, 2 );
    // Add your custom filter.
    add_filter( 'bp_get_the_profile_field_value', 'my_xprofile_filter_link_profile_data', 9, 2);
}
add_action('bp_setup_globals', 'remove_xprofile_links');

At the top of edit.php (yourtheme/buddypress/members/single/profile/edit.php), find this bit near the top:

if ( bp_has_profile( 'profile_group_id=' . bp_get_current_profile_group_id() ) ) :
	while ( bp_profile_groups() ) : bp_the_profile_group();

The important part in the snippet above is this function call: bp_get_current_profile_group_id(). That grabs the current group ID from the URL, and sets it for the rest of the page. We want to change that bit.

Just above the first code snippet I wrote, paste this query to collect all the profile groups into one variable:

$sqlStr = "SELECT *idFROMwp_bp_xprofile_groups`”;
$groups = $wpdb->get_results($sqlStr);`

Now you can replace bp_get_current_profile_group_id() with this: $groups[0]

That will leave you with this:

if ( bp_has_profile( 'profile_group_id=' . $groups[0] ) ) :
	while ( bp_profile_groups() ) : bp_the_profile_group(); ?>

Now if you visit any of your edit profile group links, you’ll see all the groups on a single page.

Next, you will probably want to remove the pagination from the page, as it will get included multiple times (since we’re in a while loop), and it is also unnecessary now that we’re showing all groups on one page.

Remove this bit:

<ul class="button-nav">
   <?php bp_profile_group_tabs(); ?>
 </ul> 

Hope that works for you.

Hey @mcpeanut,

AWS Pro will do exactly what you are after out of the box, it returns you to exactly where you were on the page, but you might find that you want to disable that as it can be a bit confusing for people. If they click on a link for a blog post for example, it will load the new page but not from the top if that makes sense, so you see the blog post but you may already be halfway down the page and need to scroll back up to read it from the start. This can be fixed with the inbuilt “scroll-to-top” feature though, which is what I use but I’ve removed the hard coded jQuery animation that comes with it.

The messaging issue is that at the moment with AWS Pro activated, the dropdown list of members isn’t firing when you start typing somebody’s name in a private message. I notified the dev about it and he is fixing it for the next update though.

Add a post/page using your already created CPT to profile needs to add a tab and to handle some conditionnals for allowed usres to see it.

Here some related topics where you can see how you could do it. Note that it doesn’t explain how to made a CPT and how to handle user access. But will easy to find on Codex or this forum.

https://buddypress.org/support/topic/best-way-for-members-to-add-blog-posts-to-profile/

https://buddypress.org/support/topic/adding-favourite-posts-as-a-tab-in-buddypress/

Hey,

I’m pretty new to BP myself, started my site about two weeks ago. I use the Absolute Privacy plugin. You can lockdown the complete site or include a members area. What’s great about this plugin is that you can put the page ID of pages that you still want to visible to logged out users. So, for example, while logged out my users can still access the registration page, our about page, a history page and our terms and service. Other than that all other pages clicked on send them to the login page or whichever page you designate.

Important note: You need a plugin that will show you the page ID numbers for your pages. There’s someway to find it on WP but no one on the forums explained it in a way I could understand. I use Reveal IDs. Really simple install and the IDs show up right on your pages panel. Overall the Absolute Privacy plugin was worth the double download.

I hope this helps. If not, I think I have the names of some the other plugins I used but didn’t work for me. Maybe they might for you. Anyways, good luck!

@tinabeansy,

first of, required pages for buddypress such as registration cannot use custom template as an usual WP page.

“Create an Account” can be modified by using the language file, even if the site is in english.
Read here

BP comes with a pot file where you find ALL strings used by the plugin AND the file/line where they are used. Very handy for searching “create an account”. 😉

For now:
bp-core/bp-core-filters.php:487 bp-members/bp-members-screens.php:517

Also found scratchhouse.co Is this your site ? BP seems to not be installed.
Have you setup the pretty permalinks ? Could explain why you have trouble with some pages.

And don’t forget: codex is your friend. 😉

🙂 did you check the BP codex before embarking on above?

The docs is first port of call, we attempt to document as much as possible there on an ongoing basis, some pages are undergoing re-freshing & updating but still provide useful reference like this page:

Template Tag Reference

Where you might try bp_is_directory()

Or scan through bp-core-template.php in the core files where you’ll find reference to: bp_is_members_directory()

which actually is a very simple check to see if !bp_is_user() && bp_is_members_component() the difference remaining can only be the members main directory.

Generally BP is well specified for template tags and ‘is’ function checks.

hi @vikingpoker,

I’m sorry to hear that BuddyPress has upset you.
Members are the heart of BuddyPress and the plugin comes with anything necessary to let you manage them.

We might be able to help, would you please let us know exactly which components you activated during the BP setup ?

BuddyPress use the WordPress page system for internal purpose only. Content is shown dynamically, depending the context. When you click on a username, BP calls the pre defined member page and use the appropriate template to show the profile.

BuddyPress has also his own menu, on which you’ll find activity, members, groups so far you have activate the respective component. To access this menu, go to dashboard > appearence > menu. If you don’t see it, go to the top right corner of the screen and open the sceen option, and check “buddypress”.

You’re using a framework theme, which is not the easiest to handle if you have not much experience with WP theing. I tested it a while ago and can understand your disapointment. You may probably find good advice about BuddyPress on the Hueman support forum.

I would recommend you to use 2015 or 14 theme during the time you familiarize yourself with BuddyPress.

I invite you to read also the Codex to start with your BuddyPress.

Oh, and if you don’t understand why this is not a #1 topic in this forum, it’s probably because a large majority of user haven’t this issue. And discover here all what you can do with BuddyPress. 😉

Hi @aglekis

I can imagine why setting the Members directory page as a Parent of the groups directory page is not working: the built url must Be in this case site.url/members/groups and then BuddyPress is looking for a member having the username “groups” and do not find it 🙂

Instead of using the Parent attribute, you can use wp_nav_menus 😉

Hi @gabe462,

the members directory shows by default all members.
The search field on this directory let you find a user, and if one is find, BP shows the username linked to this member profile.

The member loop is a core component and cannot be deactivated. But you can remove anything from the directory template.

Why want you go to the directory, which you don’t want to use, if the final result is to see the searched member ? Go directly to this member profile. 😉

You can try to modify the template to simplify it so far as possible and only use the member search on the (ex) directory page.

bp-templates/bp-legacy/buddypress/members/index.php contain the member search field
bp-templates/bp-legacy/buddypress/members/members-loop.php

Copy both directory (starting by /buddypress/ ) and files into your child-theme (to get /your-child-theme/buddypress/members/index.php) and try to remove what you don’t want to see.

Without waranty, i’ve never tested this.

I had a look on your registration page where you have a few countries for members to select, but when I choose one, the same dropdown menu appears.

Yes, a better solution I do not have for the moment.

the only way I can see to do it is to add, UK, then a list of counties. USA and then a list of states, and so on which would mean I would have a list a mile high of all the different countries and local areas.

Yes – if you do not trust in the old plugins, which @noizeburger recommands:

https://buddypress.org/support/topic/resolved-different-profile-types-and-different-user-roles/ –

or trust in them, but find (like me) no way, to make them working as they should.