BuddyPress.org

2) … Also there, there is no way to change things here ? Add the thumbnail on the posts list for example, or separate the “comments” and “posts” tabs,…

“Things” can be changed programmatically. Additionally, BuddyPress does not come standard with “Posts” or “Comment” tabs. The only separation for these items is via the dropdown filter selection for “Posts” or “Comments” located in the Sitewide or User Activity streams which is standard for BuddyPress.

3) OK, really confusing.
And if the displyed name and real name arent the same, how can a user know the real @ he has to use to tag someone ?
BTW, i’ve made some tests and even if i use @displayname or @username, it doesnt send a notification to the user,…

Users typically figure out who is who and for @mentions, only the username is used for notifications. For example, a scenario where there are 2 users with the same displayname which happens to be Apple, however, each has a different username because usernames must be unique. Maybe a visual will help you digest this information:

If you are having issues with notifications, that is a different issue and might be related to some external factor such as a plugin or theme that is interfering with the notification process.

As for Main settings, yes, those available via a UI are limited, however, programmatically, there are plenty via constants, filter hooks and action hooks.

Hi,

Some of the answers may have to come from the Theme developer, i.e. Re-Hub theme, for example:

1) How can I configure the user profile page? There are elements I find unnecessary for my website, and I’d like to remove them: the sharing buttons, the “write a note” option, etc.

The “sharing buttons” and “write a note” options are not standard for BuddyPress and are either introduced by your theme in use or possibly from a plugin you have actuated.

Additionally, without getting into a lot of detail, depending on the template pack in use, e.g., Legacy or Nouveau, there are an assortment of template pages that can be overloaded/overridden (requres advanced knownledge).

2) Users registered on my site can publish articles using a frontend plugin, comment, etc.
However, nothing appears in the “Activity” section: even if someone has published an article, nothing shows up. Similarly, nothing appears if they leave comments, someone replies to their comment, or tags them.
Also, what does the “Favorites” button correspond to? With the theme I’m using, users can save articles as favorites, which are then displayed on a dedicated page. Is that what it’s supposed to refer to?

As to “articles“, I’ll assume these are synonymous with “blog posts“, typically these are synced to “Activities” via BuddyPress settings (wp-admin > Settings > BuddyPress) by enabling the “Site Tracking” component within the “Components” tab and enabling the “Post Comments” option under “Activity Streams” within the “Options” tab. See Post comments

As to “Favorites”, think of these as “bookmarks”, IOW, Activity items may be marked as “favorites” or unmarked as “Favorites” which will be listed within the “Favorites” tab, if marked accordingly and, yes, Favorites behave as you have indicated.

3) On the profile page, users can change their username and select a username that’s already in use (which isn’t allowed during registration). How can I fix this?

Usernames are unique and cannot be changed. In a “users” profile, the username is preceded/prefixed with the @ symbol. What may be confusing is the “Name” field which is more akin to the display name, to be more precise, it appears to be the “Display name publicly as”, which can be the same as the username or can be different from the username. What’s confusing is that there specific BuddyPress profile fields that correspond WordPress profile fields that may or may not have the same nomenclature. See Your Profile Screen – names section.

It seems like you are trying to fix something like, there can only be one user with a display name of "Alice". Rightly or wrongly, I suppose confusion abounds when a “display name” is conflated as being a “username”.

Perhaps, someone else will have a better or more precise explanation than I have provided.

Hello Tacien,

Implementing a form-based posting system for your educational social network can be achieved by following these steps:

1. Design the Form
Create a form that users will fill out when making a post. The form should include fields for the specific information you want to collect. For example:

Title: A short, descriptive title for the post.
Category: A dropdown menu to select the category of the post.
Content: A text area for the main content of the post.
File Attachment: An option to attach files such as PDFs, images, or documents.
Tags: A field to add relevant tags to help with searchability.
2. Store the Data
When users submit the form, the data should be stored in a structured format. You can use a database to store the information. Each post can be represented as a record with fields corresponding to the form inputs.

3. Display the Data
Create a dedicated page to display the posts. This page should retrieve the posts from the database and present them in a structured table. The table could include columns such as:

Title
Category
Tags
Date of Post
File Attachments (with links to download or view the files)
4. Search and Filter
To make the posts searchable and filterable:

Implement a search bar that allows users to search through the posts by title, content, or tags.
Add filter options to sort posts by category or date.
5. User Interface (UI) and User Experience (UX)
Ensure that the form is user-friendly and intuitive. Provide clear instructions for each field and ensure that the file attachment process is straightforward. Additionally, design the post display page to be clean and easy to navigate.

6. Backend Management
Form Validation: Implement form validation to ensure that users fill out all required fields and that any attached files are of an acceptable type and size.
Data Security: Ensure that any file uploads are securely handled to prevent malicious files from being uploaded.
User Permissions: Depending on your network, you may want to set permissions so that only certain users can create or view posts.
7. Testing and Feedback
Before launching the form-based posting system, test it thoroughly to identify and fix any issues. Collect feedback from users to make necessary improvements.

Example Workflow
User Access: User navigates to the posting page.
Form Submission: User fills out the form and attaches files.
Data Storage: Form data and files are stored in the database.
Post Display: Posts are retrieved and displayed on a dedicated page in a structured, searchable table.
Interaction: Users can search, filter, and view posts and attachments.
By following these steps, you can create a structured, form-based posting system that organizes user posts into a searchable and manageable format. Besides, if anyone needs a tutor, tuition center in nowshera cantonment is recommended in Pakistan.

I had the option Allow activity stream commenting on posts and comments disabled I also have some code in custom.php file. I am not sure if it could have any effect

/* Disable comment for all activity but still enable @mention autosuggestion. */
function disable_activity_comments($can_comment, $activity) {
    // Disable comments
    $can_comment = false;
    return $can_comment;
}
add_filter('bp_activity_can_comment', 'disable_activity_comments', 10, 2);

/* Hide comment from activity page */ 
add_action( 'bp_after_has_activities_parse_args', function ( $r ) {
    if ( bp_is_activity_directory() || bp_is_single_activity() ) {
        $r['display_comments'] = false;
    }
    return $r;
} );

// Exclude activity updates from subscribers who are not logged in on the activity directory page.
function hide_new_member_activities_from_unlogged_users( $args ) {
    if ( ! is_user_logged_in() ) {
        $args['action'] = array(
            'activity_comment',
            'activity_update',
            'last_activity',
            'new_avatar',
            'new_blog_comment',
            'new_blog_post',
			'new_classified',
            'updated_profile'
        );
    }
    return $args;
}
add_filter( 'bp_after_has_activities_parse_args', 'hide_new_member_activities_from_unlogged_users' );

Just my opinion and just an AI translation:

Where are the sticking points?

BP core:
After 9 months with BP and several free BP plugins, there are still a lot of questions. Group handling and invitation are too complex and partly illogical. (Example: Group Owner is allowed to remove himself and then the administrator has to ‘intervene’). Furthermore, internal e-mail, where you have to select users based on their usernames (@…). Also not visually appealing and sometimes rather confusing in use. Other BP features (sorting/displaying members within groups!) that don’t work even on a WP default theme (Twenty Twenty-Two). Just annoying!

In principle, the core plugin provides too little (in terms of functionality). Best example: Blogging and media. Something that defines WP at its core. In addition to two larger commercial “BP providers” and some ancient plugins in the WP repo, the selection and comparability is difficult if you want to use them for specific rights and groups. I understand that you want to offer an open and expandable system, but something “more” would be desirable or necessary.

BP mailing list:
Hardly any actions, but many (trivial) questions and no answers. On the other hand, technically interesting answers are often 10 years or more in the past (and unfortunately still up-to-date in principle), but where there is no attempt to test them in a current BP version.

ToDo (Plugins into Core):
Directory: Very important! Of course you can use “BP Custom Fields” but there’s no option to do a filter search, based on different fields to exclude displaying other profiles – or I just can’t find the options. Tried “BP Profile Search”

Why not just embed a few components “more tightly” into the core, why not simply take over the source code of others who simply “copy” BP themselves without returning anything to the community? There was an interesting discussion about this recently on another platform site.

Wishes:
– Rights management for pages/posts or for individual BP components (either private/public or at user level) – e.g. “User Access Manager”
– E-mail communication between each other without having to use the real e-mail address and being able to leave the borders of BP – e.g. “BP Reply By Email”

It’s a pity, but currently STILL not enough for uncomplicated use and sometimes stopped in development. In addition, commercial providers who copy BP as well as other WP Social Media Group solutions that are more complete and appear more self-contained.

To name a few plugins that could be partially included:

Theme: BuddyX (free)
BP 11 (dev) &
BP Attachments (dev) (what does it do? Substitution of BuddyDrive?)
– bbPress (smarter integration)
– BP Profile Search (no filter options found)
– BP Reply By Email (should be core as option)
– BuddyDrive (should be Core)
– Buddpress Docs
– BuddyPress Xprofile Custom Field Types (should be core)
– BuddyPress Xprofile Conditional Fields (should be core)
– Rendez Vous (should be core as option)
– “BuddyPress XY Blog” (should be core)
– “BuddyPress XY Search”

Hello! I also have problems creating a new post. In general, I was already tortured with a buddy press, and specifically the constant load on the server! And this is when visiting me only one! I installed the cache plugins, it’s all confusing! Now it seems that I’ve set up a super cache plugin, the load is gone, though when I disable the function “not cache for known users” in super cache, but when this function is disabled, when creating a new post it shows that there is no post, and it appears only after updating the cache. I already know that the post will later appear, but users, they can create the same post a hundred times. Posts will appear after updating the cache. If you enable the function “do not cache for known users”, then the load is constantly off the scale. This is observed even when I just move from one page to another in my network. Maybe there is some solution to reduce the load and so that the content published is displayed in a timely manner? Thanks!

I think based on your requirement that for your ultimate requirement you will need some custom coding. This is due to you wanting to add weighting to the likes.

One option would be to enable new blog posts to appear in the BuddyPress activity stream. That would automatically allow BuddyPress users to favorite the activity and for it to appear in their list of favorites in their profile. However you won’t easily be able to add your weighting since the BP favorites system dones not have this functionality. But that’s the same for any existing plugin. The potential downside is that the BP Activity stream is not just posts (which would have to be enabled with a bit of code).

There are also a number of WordPress post specific likes plugins, however these don’t give you a profile page with a list of your likes and the same issue remains that they would not support you weighting.

If it was me, I’d probably look to use a plugin such as BuddyPress Like as a basis for my solution. I’ve not looked in detail at this plugin but I’m assuming it adds the ability to like posts and display a list of likes in the users profile. That would serve as a good basis for what I was looking to do. It would then need some modification in order to support your specific weighting mechanism. The complexity of that task would depend on exactly how you want your weighting mechanism to work and the technique you use to account for it when displaying the likes list.

Hey Frank, I guess the best question to ask you after all this is how comfortable are you with digging into or working with html, css and basic php?

If a pre made theme is what your looking for, how comfortable are you with taking hours and days looking thru theme demos to find your golden pony or at least making child themes or customizing code?

And then to answer you more specifically to your “How long would it take to develop a theme like the one I described?” , I guess that just depends really. Over the years I have accumulated many libraries of code and theme snippets and I know where everything is in WP/BP core and template files. So for me, A fully custom and dressed out theme might take anywhere from 3 days to 3 weeks if I know exactly what I am working towards at the beginning and have a clear, though out, planned out idea. If I hen peck it or free hand it” like I do from time to time” It may take a day or it might take 8 months, lol.

As a bit of comfort to your quandary, everything you asked for in your opening inquiry is all ready done for you in BuddyPress “for the most part”. A theme like the one you describe sounds like a 3 day to 1 week job to me. Keep in mind however that with me saying that, things always have a way changing and evolving into monsters, lol.

So lets break down your theme and see how it look on paper…. He He, my favorite part…

1. I want users to come to my site, register, and log in…… (Its all ready there) just have to set it up to your liking. It can all be customized quite a bit as well.

2. I would love to be able to customize the way these pages look!(background image, logo, and content inside them)……… (The logo, background and most of the design items are easy breezy as long as your ok with basic html and css and not looking for flying dragons and wizards shooting lightning bolts across the screen. Alas, even those can be done with css, flash and JS, lol. )

3. I’m not looking for a full-blown social media site (yet)…….No need to have what you dont want to use. BP has a full host of controls to limit what can be done onsite by users or what is implemented frontend in its settings. WP Dash/settings/buddypress. Select what you want to use. You also have the ability to write functions, and use hooks and actions and filters to limit or build on anything you like.

4. I want to build a site that where users can log in, create a “blog” excerpt with media …… There are several ways to do this in buddypress, just have to plan it out and test the methods and see what works for you. Mu, Activity and Groups/Forums.

5. They should also be able to put a location tag on it. ….. it sounds like this is what x-profile fields are good for. Just create your custom location field and add it with a template tag in the loop you want to use it in. They fill out the filed on their profile page and it will display in that loop.

6. When they post it, the only people I want to see that are the people they added as friends or if they have their profile set to public……BuddyPress frontend “user profile area” has a settings tab, under it are quite a few privacy features, not fully comprehensive in my opinion but there are a few plugins that add on to this and you can code it in as well. either way. Easy task.

7. And when it shows up on their friend’s news feed it should just show a featured image, title, and the beginning of their text with a like counter….. Easy enough, just write the loop that way, lol. Easy to do.

8. When their friends click on that post it brings them to the full blog post, not just the featured image. Their friends can favorite the content or comment on it. …..The natural behavior of WP and BP posts so we are good there.

9. On a users profile, I would like to show their recent posts, and posts they’ve favorited…. Thats what the friends tab shows but you can add custom queries, and stuff and otherwise tear it apart and pick it of the pieces you want and use them in other places to make custom loops and queries and all kinds of goodness, lol. As long as you make sure things are firing in the right places and make sure certain things are in the loops where they belong, No worries.

10. Site homepage is basically just a file called front-page.php. Copy the page.php from the theme root and then customize the heck out it. Work it up however you like.

As far as the themes go, I never use premade themes. I do however make full use of the libraries of code I have accumulated, (_s) and bootstrap for a lot of my work. Cheesy I know but hey, it saves me time and money and gives me freedom. I rarely find the need to actually make a complete custom theme or write much in the way of custom code from scratch anymore. And I certainly never purchase any themes. So I am not the best person to ask about themes really. I know that there are tons of themes that do all kinds of stuff available around the web. Just have to give them the litmus test and see if they fit your project.

Let me know if you have any other questions or what have you. I will be around.

Sorry, I haven’t tested the plugin i mentionned. You’re right it doesn’t show a button but simply display favorites differently.

OK, here is a snippet you can add to bp-custom.php which will add a Favorite button to blog posts.

Note
the function works with currrent BP version (2.6.2).
The grey side of this solution is that you have to use a child-theme and to tweak a little the way the button will show. This is very theme dependant and would not be used the same way if you use ie. Twenty Sixteen or ie. Graphene.

While using 2016, you can simply echo the button on the template.
If you use a more complex theme, you could probably use an existing action hook of the theme. This means that you need a function who hooks into such a predefined placeholder.

In any case, the file to modify is your theme’s single.php. Copy it into the child theme to get:
/wp-content/themes/child-theme/single.php

If you don’t see any do_action( ‘something’ ), you add the following in an appropriate place:

echo get_fav_or_unfav_button_for_post( $post );
Certainly inside the post loop, and probably below the post and before the comments.

If you see some action hooks in single.php, you add this function to bp-custom:

function fav_buttons() {
  echo get_fav_or_unfav_button_for_post( $post );
}
add_action( 'graphene_before_comment_template', 'fav_buttons' );

You need to change graphene_before_comment_template to the action name used by your theme.

add_action( 'graphene_before_comment_template'

Hope to be clear.

And here the function for the button:

function get_fav_or_unfav_button_for_post( $post ) {
global $bp, $activities_template, $post;

	// only show the button to logged-in users
	if ( ! is_user_logged_in() ) {
	return '';
	}
	
	$activity_id = bp_activity_get_activity_id( array(
		'user_id' => $post->post_author,
		'type' => 'new_blog_post',
		'component' => 'blogs',
		'item_id' => 1,  // blog_ID
		'secondary_item_id' => $post->ID // post_ID
		) );
	
	if ( ! $activity_id ) {
	return '';
	}

	bp_has_activities(); // update $activities_template with user's favs
	$old_value = false;
		
	if ( isset( $activities_template->activity->id ) ) {
		$old_value = $activities_template->activity->id;
		$activities_template->activity->id = $activity_id;
	} else {
		$activities_template->activity = (object) array( 'id' => $activity_id );
	}
	
	// build the template
	$code = '';
	$code .= '<div class="activity-meta">'."\n";

		if ( ! bp_get_activity_is_favorite() ) {
		// if not favorited, add a "Favorite" button
		$code .= ' <a href="'.bp_get_activity_favorite_link( ).'" class="button fav bp-secondary-action" title="Add to my favorites">Favorite</a>'."\n";
		
		} else {
		
		// else, add "Unfavorite" button
		$code .= ' <a href="'.bp_get_activity_unfavorite_link( ).'" class="button unfav bp-secondary-action" title="Remove from my favorites">Unfavorite</a>'."\n";
		
		// Bonus button: "View all my favorites"
		$code .= ' <a href="'.bp_loggedin_user_domain() . 'activity/favorites/" class="button unfav bp-secondary-action">View all my favs</a>'."\n";
		}
		
	// closing .activity-meta
	$code .= '</div>'."\n"; 

	if ( false !== $old_value ) {
		$activities_template->activity->id = $old_value;
	} else {
		//$activities_template->activity = null;
$activities_template->activity = (object) array( 'id' => $activity_id );
	}
	return $code;

}

And voila !

Hi,

your specs:

1. be able to click on the title
2. see the excerpt instead of the full article
3. the full-sized featured images above the titles
4. a way to see how many articles were written by our users

The number of posts is showed beside the item, like the other BP counts on the buddybar.

The new code to use:

function bpfr_get_post() {

	$myposts = get_posts(  array(
	'posts_per_page'	=> 3, // set the number of post to show
	'author'			=> bp_displayed_user_id(), // show only this member post
	'post_type'			=> 'post',
	'orderby'			=> 'post_date',
	'order'				=> 'DESC',
	'post_status'		=> 'publish'
	));
	
	if( ! empty( $myposts ) ) { 
		
		foreach($myposts as $post) {
			setup_postdata( $post );
			$page_object = get_post( $post );					

		if ( has_post_thumbnail( $post->ID ) ) {
			echo get_the_post_thumbnail( $post->ID, 'full-size', array( 'class' => 'alignleft' ) );
		} 
			echo '<h3 class="profile_post"><a href="'. esc_url( get_permalink(  $post->ID ) ) .'">'. $page_object->post_title .'</a></h3>';

			if ( empty( $post->post_excerpt ) ) {
				echo wp_kses_post( wp_trim_words( $post->post_content, 20 ) );

			} else {
				echo wp_kses_post( $post->post_excerpt );
			}
		}	
		
		wp_reset_postdata();	

		} else { 
		
			echo '<div class="info" id="message">No post actually</div>';
	}
}
add_action ( 'my_profile_post', 'bpfr_get_post' );

function bpfr_post_profile_setup_nav() {
global $bp;

	$parent_slug = 'articles';
	$child_slug = 'posts_sub';	
	$post_count = count_user_posts(  bp_displayed_user_id(), array('post', 'post' ) );

		//Add nav item with posts count
		bp_core_new_nav_item( array(
			'name' => __( 'Articles' ) .'<span>'.$post_count.'</span>',
			'slug' => $parent_slug,
			'screen_function' => 'bpfr_profile_post_screen',
			'position' => 40,
			'default_subnav_slug' => $child_slug 
		) );
		
		//Add subnav item 	 
		bp_core_new_subnav_item( array( 
			'name' => __( 'My 3 latest posts' ),
			'slug' => $child_slug, 
			'parent_url' => $bp->loggedin_user->domain . $parent_slug.'/', 
			'parent_slug' => $parent_slug, 
			'screen_function' => 'bpfr_profile_post_screen'
		) );

	}

	function bpfr_profile_post_screen() {	
		add_action( 'bp_template_content', 'bpfr_profile_post_screen_content' );
		bp_core_load_template( apply_filters( 'bp_core_template_plugin', 'members/single/plugins' ) );
	}

	function bpfr_profile_post_screen_content() {
		do_action( 'my_profile_post' );
	}

add_action( 'bp_setup_nav', 'bpfr_post_profile_setup_nav' );

Did this solution really work for you?
I’m surprised because in my case it did not.
As in this thread other users say, on one hand the browser remember the last selected tab, and on the other, the loop displayed in the stream is still the activity-all.

I found another solution based on cookies.

There is a cookie named ‘bp-activity-scope’ that is used to query the activity stream posts and that must be set to ‘groups’ in order to display only the posts that belongs to groups.

This is the script that worked for me, in which ‘My Groups’ is the default tab:

var jq = jQuery;
jq(document).ready( function() {

	filter = jq('#activity-filter-select select').val();
		jq.removeCookie('bp-activity-scope', {
		path: '/'
		});
//change 'groups' with the cookie for the tab you want to be the default one
// favorites , friends, etc
	jq.cookie( 'bp-activity-scope', 'groups');
	scope = jq.cookie('bp-activity-scope');
	bp_activity_request(scope, filter);

} );

I wrote a post in which I explain step by step how to implement it, and also how to avoid that the activity-all tab is switched to selected when the user focus on the wwhat’s new textarea:

http://inauditas.com/change-default-activity-stream-tab-buddypress/

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!