BuddyPress.org

yes, correct assessment, but there is a potential solution, if i am right. first about BP: the default theme used to be “widget” ready or friendly, meaning that you can decide what goes in there from the Widget Admin area. This latest version brings essentially major changes in the codes that organize user behavior, but not so easy on the theme side. In fact, there aren’t any themes, may be 2 or 3, that are BP1.2.2.1 compliant and easy to just deploy. However, the Buddypress creators and developers say that you have to create what they call a child theme and then make whatever changes you want from there, probably including making the first “Activity” page as your landing page. Now, one very smart developer released this base theme, http://freebpthemes.com/onsite/sense-sensibility/ If you have bandwidth, time and some technical capabilities, I would recommend having a look.

Now WordPress(MU) may allow u to pick your activity page as the landing page. In your WP Admin section, scroll down to the Settings area (left column). You see “Reading”. In it, it will let you choose “Front Page Display.” You may try to select “Static Page” and open the drop down menu for Front Page and select the Activity Stream page. Then save. By doing, I suspect, since I did not try it, the Activity Stream page (Facebook-like section) will be what your visitors will see when they hit your website.

One think you may want to consider. The Activity Page puts any acvity across your site on that page. If you have a lot of people, that could be overwhelming. There is, however, one plugin u should find on this site called: BuddyPress Friends Only Activity Stream. It essentially should show only activity from the memeber’s friends. Again, I did not try it, but I plan so.

Good luck

Arezki

I don’t know of any existing efforts to customize group images or backgrounds, but it does sounds like a good idea for a plugin. Using the group exension API (https://codex.buddypress.org/developer-docs/group-extension-api/) it’s fairly easy to add another page to the group admin menu. You could call this menu “Display options” and let group mods change settings. You’re plugin could then check the settings, and display stylesheets/banners as appropriate. It would take some development time, but I think it could work smoothly.

This would of course be heavily theme-dependent, not only for the implementation (div position and such) but also for the design (changing the backgrounds while keeping the feel of the theme).

Unfortunately, there’s no hook in the “My Account” menu to add custom items so you’ll basically need to duplicate the bp_adminbar_account_menu() and add your changes, then remove the bp_adminbar_account_menu() function and add your custom function.

The following guide tells you how to do this:

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

Actually thanks for the post. This is a something I have been doing (trying to do) since wpmu 1.0. I use WPMU / Buddypress with young (elementary school students 6-12 years old) so simplicity is a must. The New Blog Options plugin (if it works as it says it will) would make make perfect customization possible. Here are a list of WPMU plugins that I use or have used that might help. I am in the process of retrying everything to achieve exactly what you are trying to do. Let everyone on the forums know how your testing goes. Hope this isn’t too long. I added links to save time since there are sometimes plugins with similar names).

New Blog Options – this one is fairly new (still beta), and I haven’t tried it extensively yet, but it will allow you to clone on blog setup with it’s plugin options etc. to all new blogs.

https://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/default-blog-options/

Limit Blogs per User – if you don’t want them making more than one blog (set to 2, one is the main buddypress blog and 2 is their own blog)

https://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/limit-blogs-per-user/

WPMU New Blog Defaults – this will allow you to restrict menus, change default links, etc under the Options in the Site Admin menu

https://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wpmu-new-blog-defaults/

Members – this one takes over where the old Role-manager plugin left off. Haven’t had time to check it out yet, but if you could use this with New Blog Options it would allow you to very finally tune what your users could do and see.

https://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/members/

Adminimize – again I haven’t played with this for a while, but if you could use it with New Blog Options, then you could simplify the look of the menus for your users too.

https://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/adminimize/

Default User Role – will set the user role when a new blog is created

https://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wpmu-default-user-role/

Plugin Manager – does what it says, allows you to manage which plugins users can set, which ones are automatically turned on, and which regular users cannot see

http://wpmudev.org/project/wpmu-plugin-manager

download link is: http://wpmudev.org/download/946613807_mp-plugin-manager.php

Of course with young people you might want to consider a privacy plugin like:

More Privacy Options – this doesn’t work with the feed on Buddypress, but if you search the forums it can be made to work or you can use the following plugin for feed privacy (Buddypress privacy should be coming soon)

http://wpmudev.org/project/More-Privacy-Options/

download link is: http://wpmudev.org/download/999830698_ds_private_blog.php

BP MPO Activity Filter – This plugin, BP MPO Activity Filter, does just what the name suggests: it filters BuddyPress activity feeds. Used with More Privacy Options.

https://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/bp-mpo-activity-filter/

@David I just created a page called ‘blog’ (which defaults to ‘blog’ for that page’s slug

The following menu item in header.php:

<li<?php if ( bp_is_page( BP_HOME_BLOG_SLUG ) || bp_is_blog_page() &&

!is_front_page() && !is_page() )

: ?> class="selected"<?php endif; ?>>

<a>/<?php echo BP_HOME_BLOG_SLUG ?>/" title="<?php _e( 'Blog', 'buddypress' ) ?>">

<?php _e( 'Blog', 'buddypress' ) ?></a>

renders a menu item domain.com/blog, just like it used to.

You need to make sure you choose that page in Settings>Reading ‘Posts page’

On further reading of your post, maybe I don’t understand. I just know, what I described produces the exact same results as prior to the change (and removal of home.php)

Open the pot file in a text editor and search for the expression you want to change.

Near it you can see the file name and the line where it is located

@MariusOoms – no need to apologize. It’s the price we pay to use open source. If it’s a mission critical feature, upgrades can be done on a test server or backups allow for rolling back until all is good to go live. It’s appreciated that you got this plugin established. Anything you can do in the future will also be appreciated.

When upgrading for bp 1.2, take a look at JJJ’s comments regarding hooking dependent plugins in to bp_int. It sounds like it’s the preferred way (over what I posted earlier) to load bp first:

https://buddypress.org/forums/topic/important-plugin-devs-read-this

Best of luck with your move!

@nonegiven – I’m now having no problems with groupblogs. Old Group Blog pages are recognized and all the Blog Menu Options within the Group are associated with the correct group blog. I’d also love to see the groupblog function as part of the core bp.

@Andy – Still confused by your comment but it may not matter given the change JJJ has made to the trunk.

Here’s a writeup I made awhile back:

https://buddypress.org/forums/topic/bp-admin-bar-on-bbpress-front-page-1#post-18626

For the require_once line, if that line doesn’t work change it to the absolute file path.

If you’re using single WP, delete these lines:

bp_adminbar_blogs_menu();

bp_adminbar_authors_menu();