BuddyPress.org

You can either create a shortcode plugin that uses the BP activities loop, or create a PHP page template with the activities loop with the group parameters passed into it:
https://codex.buddypress.org/developer-docs/custom-buddypress-loops/the-activity-stream-loop/

I agree with @thelandman OOB Buddypress is the whole kitchen sink but you can cut a ton out via custom themes.

BP groups are basically a facebbook fan page. It has the exact same features. So if people are on FB then they clearly can understand the UI of BP. Maybe changing forums to discussions? It’s the site wide activity feed that in my opinion creates the most confusion.

Ah erm so it does; did say it wasn’t hugely tested. Ok then those that are running on bp-default theme will need to add your function to main functions file, please ignore my well intentioned but erroneous post above. (Last para stands thinking about though, the flood gates will open soon)

Thinking further it makes sense to add fix to main functions or bp-custom[bp-custom.php isn’t a standard included file] so that it does get erased from existence on upgrade – one less thing to remember to adjust for people

@hnla – While your method is well-intentioned, it breaks actual 404 pages. Try typing in example.com/hfklsadjfkasdhf and you’ll see the activity page, instead of the 404 page!

You could just copy my code directly into the bp-default theme’s functions.php so it will be overwritten when the next version of BP comes out.

FYI, the code can also go in wp-content/plugins/bp-custom.php as well and not necessarily in a child theme’s functions.php file.

When you integrated this with Thesis what version of BuddyPress were you using? Were you using WordPress MU or regular WordPress?

I’ve been playing around with this today. I am running regular WordPress 2.9.2 with Thesis 1.6 (need to try 1.7 but he really changed things there).

I installed the BuddyPress Template Pack plugin and went to work.

I don’t think you do the thing with the bp-custom.php file anymore, right?

I followed the instructions and copied all of the templates to my /wp-content/themes/thesis_16/ folder.

Then I started digging into how Thesis outputs its content and started updating all of those templates with different HTML markup and calls to Thesis functions to get headers, footers, and sidebars, etc.

So I got the pages like Members, Groups, Activity, etc. looking OK, but not pretty. There is going to be a TON of CSS development needed to make this look as pretty as it all does here.

The thing I’m not yet clear on is how to get it all to flow under one tab like it does here with the Community tab?

And I have LOTS of other questions….and work to do to make it fully functional and tightly integrated into the navigation and flow of the site.

Is it even worth it I’m wondering?

Just thought I’d share. I’d love to find out someone has already done ALL of this and can provide instructions, or files…would be worth something I think!

my problem is that when you’re logged in you can’t see your own activity feed (it just hangs up and gets stuck whilst loading the page)
this seems to happen occasionally and so far my only fix is to ditch the whole database and start again (not something I want to do again)

you can still see other peoples activity and if you’re logged in as another user, see your own, just not when you’re logged in.

Using the default theme (customised, but not too much) with WPMU.

any thoughts?

@r-a-y
Ok, thank you
But it’s still doesn’t work… Yes, I see “Mark as Favorite” text, but it makes nothing. And yes, bp-custom is in its place.
Each post link to favourite it has the same wpnonce. And after pressing it the url in address bar in browser doesn’t have post_id (I mean this: …/archives/165#activity- )

You may hook into the_content and then on admin page create a field to insert a css code to position the block.

So this all worked perfectly (thanks @r-a-y) for me, except for one thing. When a person visits a group they would like to join, they are redirected to the home page. My guess is the home/activity page for each buddypress group contains a piece of code to check if the user is logged in or belongs to the group. If they aren’t they are presented with an error message saying they must join the group. With bp-custom in place, the new forum page, I’m assuming, doesn’t have that check and balance and just redirects them back to the root. Any thoughts on this?

@themeanwhile – you can enable or disable the various components so if you want Activities only, enable that and disable other components. After you activate BuddyPress, go to the new BuddyPress menu item on the left column of dashboard, and go to

a) General Settings – these are your choices
Base profile group name:
Full Name field name:
Disable BuddyPress to WordPress profile syncing?: Yes No
Hide admin bar for logged out users?: Yes No
Disable avatar uploads? (Gravatars will still work): Yes No
Disable user account deletion?: Yes No
Disable global forum directory?: Yes No
Disable activity stream commenting on blog and forum posts?: Yes No
Default User Avatar – For users without a custom avatar of their own, you can either display a generic logo or a generated one based on their email address

b) Component Setup
Activity Streams – Allow users to post activity updates and track all activity across the entire site.
Enabled Disabled
Blog Tracking – Tracks blogs, blog posts and blogs comments for a user across a WPMU installation.
Enabled Disabled
bbPress Forums – Activates bbPress forum support within BuddyPress groups or any other custom component.
Enabled Disabled
Friends – Allows the creation of friend connections between users.
Enabled Disabled
Groups – Let users create, join and participate in groups.
Enabled Disabled
Private Messaging – Let users send private messages to one another. Site admins can also send site-wide notices.
Enabled Disabled
Extended Profiles – Activates customizable profiles and avatars for site users.
Enabled Disabled

I would suggest you set up a test install so you can check the features for yourself.

“Of course, activity filters, profile page, friends page, settings page, etc, would also need to be migrated to display in the backend.”
Why? If you want to make the BP Activity section private, you can add conditional tags for is_user_logged_in …

You could also modify the header template to display a separate nav for logged in users where the home page points to the activity stream (or profile), even though the home page is still accessible the home link in the navigation will direct users to the activity stream (pros: easy implementation, cons: no real home page redirect)

A couple ways to do this I think. One is to just redirect people that aren’t logged in to your login page. That way if they hit the home page, they’ll just get sent to the login page if they’re not logged in. There’s a few recent threads with ways to do it and some plugins I think also. Then, you’ll want to exclude the login page from the Nav too in your theme.

It seems like you could also do this with a child theme where you just check is_user_logged_in() and based on that display the activity or login. I haven’t looked into this much, but it seems reasonable. There’s probably an activity template you could include using locate_template()

@boonebgorges and his work may help with both

1. Under BuddyPress, Profile Field Setup, you can add a new field or field group, including text box type fields. As stated on that admin page, “Any fields in the first group will appear on the signup page.” An URL entered will be picked up as a link in the profile’s public view.

While setting up profile fields, have a look at Custom Profile Filters for BuddyPress https://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/custom-profile-filters-for-buddypress/ with which, among other features “Administrators can specify certain profile fields that link to social networking profiles.”

2. See BuddyPress External Group Blogs https://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/external-group-blogs/ with which individual users might include RSS in group and site activity streams even without blogs being enabled. See BP External Activity https://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/bp-external-activity/ for more admin options, or even FeedWordPress https://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/feedwordpress/ for user blogs.

It wasn’t working for me with WP 3.0. I was getting a 404 when I had my front page set to “Activity Stream”.

I just got it working by copying a good portion of activity/index.php into a custom page template. Then I set a page to use the template and set my front page to THAT page (if that makes any sense!) I also have the page content displaying above the stream in a not logged in conditional statement so that I can show easily editable content to non-member visitors. I’m happy to pastebin my page template if anyone needs it.

(WP 3.0-beta2 + BP 1.2.4.1)

@mercime Shouldn’t this functionality work in the default theme without any customization?

No there is no plugin per se for the activity stream, but I sometimes wonder why plugins are so often referred to. As such the activity stream is a loop much like the famed WP loop, in the simplest sense all one has to do is copy the code that calls that loop as is found in the activity/index.php and place it where you need it in your new page, conversely it ought o be straightforward to place that call in a widget I guess so that you could move it around without having to open files.

There are many routes to achieving what you want I suppose, create a new page include the default sidebar call re-structure the main content and sidebar elements to the size you want and position, sidebar on left should simply be achieved by reversing the default styles, which is the point of CSS well formed and semantically correct markup is supposed to be visually renderable through CSS without needing – necessarily – to effect changes to markup.

If you wanted to have controllable regions on that page then you can create widget aware areas and place them in the positions on the page you would like to output content, these then when suitably named will be available on the dashboard widgets page and you can drag widgets into them for display. You can also get clever with the main sidebar and create within that file new widget areas that you could wrap in conditional queries so that a particular widget area only appeared on a stated page such as ‘groups’ or ‘blogs’

As well I guess you could simply tell WP that your reading page is not the blog but the activity stream and then customize that page closer to what you require, which may be easier?

@Nathan

To change the base profile field group name, go to your WP Dashboard. Under BuddyPress > General settings, you’ll see the first entry allows you to change this.

To set the Activity Stream as your home page, go to your WP Dashboard again. Scroll down to the bottom and, under Settings > Reading, you’ll see the first entry allows you to choose what to display on the front page. Click “A Static Page”, then from the dropdown, select “Activity Stream”. Note that you’ll have to create a page for your Posts Page.

To “lock people out” of certain content areas, you could customize your child-theme templates to display what you want to logged-in/non-logged-in users like here: http://pastebin.com/KFeEAh1Z. Or you could try the s2member plugin: http://www.primothemes.com/post/s2member-membership-plugin-with-paypal/

Hope this helps!

@Modemlooper

I ‘kind of’ agree with you when you say post_types are for individual pieces of content, but also disagree. Post types allows me to create a new object where I can assign multiple attributes to that object type ‘metadata, taxonomies’. You are also able to easily group individual object types of the post type together much easier than with pages. The real power comes into play when you create multiple post types and link them together. Then I have a ‘pods’ type of system with multi-relational datasets to a given object. There is just 100x more that I can do with a post type than with a page.

For instance, I am building a complete custom forum system using a post type. You could never do that with pages. Well I suppose you could but it would be much more work and not nearly as elegant. basically my goal is to completely dump the bbpress as it’s so far behind that it has no business in my sites. By using post types, I have all the inherent wp tools right at my fingertips for forum posts. Want to add images/video/tags/ to a post.. done… no work needed.

The advantage is then I could easily add that new post type to the activity stream, complete with all its attributes, ‘metadata’ for the individual object. Something else you can’t really do with pages.

Here is a really generic example of 3.0 multi relational post types in action. (It’s only a start, so please don’t complain about layout, have not even started that part yet, this is more concept than anything else)
http://deardaddy.org/sermons/daneil-ponce-sermon-1/

What you see here is much more than meets the eye
1. This is a custom post type sermons which is related to post types podcasts, preachers, locations.
2. The sermon title, description, and video are part of the sermon post type
3. When on the ‘add sermon’ admin page, you are also able to link it to a pre-existing post type to grab the preacher, podcast, and location. If they do not exist then you can add those attributes within the sermons post type without having to leave. Meaning you don’t have to go to post type podcast to add the audio file to a sermon. Same goes for preachers, locations.
4. sermons and podcast post types also have related taxonomies, ‘series, topics’. which you can directly link within the sermons page.

The easiest way to see how it’s linked is to notice the ‘locations’ link on the sidebar. It goes to:
http://deardaddy.org/locations/his-sanctuary-of-prayer/ which is the post type ‘locations’.

Keep in mind I did not have to manually type in the location when I added the sermon, although I could have, because it already existed. I simply chose it from a drop down of existing locations and they were linked together.

The power of this is simple.
1. I create a location one time
2. I can now add the individual location attribute to any new post type I create so long as I link the post types together, create a relationship in my themes functions file. This means that a user never has to input data more than 1x, it can be used over and over again in any post type.

To wrap up:
You said ‘a way in the front end of bp for users to add a movie’. I am already doing everything but the adding via the front end for the sermon example above. Adding the ability to the bp front end, will take me a bit of work, but it’s possible. I just have not yet had the time to read the bp code close enough. Hence my argument for post types in bp instead of pages. why add a movie page, when I can add a post type movie with all the attributes into the stream. Much much more power that way.

@r-a-y
will be interesting to see the direction they take. If they don’t worry about backwards compat well then the doors are wide open.