[BarryB64]

sIt sounds like you just need a forum, which would be bbPress. The reason bbPress and BuddyPress are separate plugins is that this allows people to pick and choose according to their needs.

What you need to figure out first is, what do you want and need?

This is precisely where my mind was, yesterday. 🙂 Thank for the directed question and the link mentioned by mercime. I’m getting a better picture of two things.

The document provided clarity on the difference between a sitewide forum and the group forum. I needed this; regardless of app. Here’s the plan:

I want to create two distinct group forums. The first is “Shore Classified”. I want this to be a private group forum and not open to the public. This is where I’ll have individual forums dealing with specific topics relating to that forum. Ex. Business forum handle businesses in the Shore area. Another forum is Help Wanted.

I was planning to open this to a specific group of people. I am initially thinking the people in my church and others in the Jersey Shore area. Right now, I’m questioning what should be in that type of forum; as I am concerned with safety. So, I am open to alternative to what type of forum. I’d also like a forum where blog writers can share new stories they’ve written.

The second group forum is PUBLIC. This group forum is where I want people to go. This will need further developing. My initial thoughts is to create forums for popular area of interest. I did see a plugin that will create topics from my sites blog posts.

[@mercime]

@barryb64 As @synaptic mentioned above, the labsecrets.com video is outdated. Check out https://codex.buddypress.org/getting-started/installing-group-and-sitewide-forums/

[Hugo Ashmore]

@posh-john shanebp’s link above will explain the basic approach, however we do provide documentation that covers this sort of area and many others too; please make sure you have given those a good read as they will answer many points you may have, issues beyond what is covered in the documentation are then suitable for asking on the help forum.

Usually i try to avoid modifying template files except where absolutely necessary It is never absolutely necessary unless you are taking over support for that code. One of the most important aspects of the WordPress Theme api is it’s template hierarchy, it’s this that allows ‘Child themes’ to be created, all correctly written themes will be able to work with child themes if the parent theme doesn’t allow child themeing it’s a good indication that you should drop it like a hot cake and find another.

[Asynaptic]

I need an interface that organizes all the forum related tasks. I’m finding the setup with BuddyPress & bbpress to be a little intimidating.

It sounds like you just need a forum, which would be bbPress. The reason bbPress and BuddyPress are separate plugins is that this allows people to pick and choose according to their needs. What you need to figure out first is, what do you want and need?

To learn more about how to use bbPress, check out the official guides here: https://codex.bbpress.org/

There are also plugins specifically to add functionality to bbPress, such as spam control and other neat things:

Plugins

Hope that helps.

[BarryB64]

Thanks for replying. 🙂

I like the idea of integrating Social media into the base forum. So, bbpress is the workhorse and takes care of the forum. This would include user groups, permissions, roles and all the other wonderful things associated with forums. While BuddyPress takes care of the social media aspects ala Facebook and Twitter. I’m sure there’s more to it.

It sounds like Simple:Press is a relative indicator of what those two apps are becoming. Here’s my problem. I need an interface that organizes all the forum related tasks. I’m finding the setup with BuddyPress & bbpress to be a little intimidating.

I hope the LabZip guys come out with a more current video. I was wanting him to go into better details on all the options for setting up roles, permissions and etc.

[Asynaptic]

One more thing, you’ll notice that the labsecrets video link is from early 2012 (about 2 years ago) and at that time BuddyPress did have the ability to create its own forums.

[Asynaptic]

Hi Barry, it sounds like you’re not clear on what bbPress and BuddyPress are exactly. So let me try to clarify it for you.

bbPress is a plugin for wordpress which provides you with forum functionality. And because it comes from the same folks who created wordpress, it works great with wordpress and other WP plugins.

BuddyPress is a plugin for wordpress which provides you with a social network functionality. What does that mean? Well, imagine facebook, myspace, or any other social media platform – they have profiles, people can create and fill in their userpages, people can message other people privately, they have an activity page which shows their activity on the site, etc.

bbPress and BuddyPress are two totally different plugins but they work together and can be integrated with one another. But if you want to use just one of them, you can. You do not need to run both.

I’ve tracked down the video I think you refer to:
http://labsecrets.com/buddypress-and-bbpress-forums-made-easy/

And I can clarify that for you as well. BuddyPress used to have its own way of creating forums, called “BuddyPress Group Forums”. But that functionality is deprecated because the developers decided to rely on bbPress rather than duplicate it within BuddyPress. So the latest version of BuddyPress doesn’t have group forums but instead relies on bbPress.

It all depends on what you are trying to do. What you are seeing in “the two forum apps merging to become one” is simply a deep integration between them so IF people want to use both, they can do so with ease and get the fullest functionality out of that combination use.

It sounds like you want a forum. If that is the case, forget about BuddyPress and just use bbPress.

Hope that helps!

[Henry]

Hi @finchkelsey

Have you tried posting your requirements in the BP Jobs Forum? If you’re looking for a BP developer available for hire then that is a good place to start

BP Jobs Board

[Yukon Cornelius]

Hi, I found this thread on my travels and it worked a treat, so i thought i’d share. Just stop discouraging search engines under settings>reading, then post a new reply or topic n the forum and it will now show. Don’t ask me why.

[Yukon Cornelius]

Hi, I found this thread on my travels and it worked a treat, so i thought i’d share. Just stop discouraging search engines under settings>reading, then post a new reply or topic n the forum and it will now show. Don’t ask me why.

[@mercime]

@speedyworm I see that you’re using the Thesis theme via source view and that the issue is still not resolved in your site. Strange place to see that issue.

Sometime ago, Thesis users needed a plugin for Thesis-BP compatibility, are you using it now or is that plugin no longer needed anymore? Have you checked in Thesis’ forums whether other BP users are having the same issue and if there is a solution posted there?

[Henry]

@1missrodnee rtMedia uses mediaelement.js (which comes with core WordPress since 3.6). I do believe you can set autoplay="true" on the mediaelement.js audio player. Have you tried asking the question in the rtMedia forum? their support is usually very good.

[Hugo Ashmore]

Not sure of the problem, but it sounds plugin related if only happens when posting to social networks, so may not necessarily be a BP issue, but with possible issues with BP betas please post to https://buddypress.trac.wordpress.org/ using your user account login with full steps to reproduce; posting in the support forum will just get lost.

[@mercime]

@jnappa Have you asked at your theme’s forums whether it’s compatible with BP or if anyone has found a solution to your issue? Also, it’s possible that you might need to update your theme to Geotheme 3.3.8 which could contain fixes to bugs etc.

[DrGiz]

Hi all I am using WP 3.7.1, BP 1.8.1 and BBPress 2.4.1.

I am in the process of customising the MesoColumn theme and having a bit of trouble with the login function.

What I would like to create is a login form in the header of my site, that once a user has logged in will load the Activity, Profile, Messages, Friends, Members and Settings options, but I am unable to find anything in the forums to help me do this, can anyone please point me in the direction of the code to do this or help in any way, as this is a key function of the theme I am developing.

[Andy Weir]

didn’t realise there was a whole other forum – will try there

thanks

[@mercime]

@andygoofyscouk Currently, there are importers for other forums at https://codex.bbpress.org/import-forums/
Best place to ask is at the bbPress forums https://bbpress.org/forums/

[@mercime]

@shubh14 It could be plugin conflict with the theme. The best place to ask for assistance is at the plugin’s forums. https://wordpress.org/support/plugin/buddypress-media

[evolver]

My apologies! I posted this in the wrong forum…

[Shmoo]

True, but I was thinking of using the FitText.js plugin to prevent usernames from going to a second line when they become longer at this index page.
While working with min-heights on each element I try to control each member ‘widget’ having the same overall height.

I would like to use BuddyPress as an upgrade (redesign) of an exciting bbPress site that has been broken from upgrading from bbPress 1.0 -> 2.0.
This site offers news articles, video + audio Post Formats and support trough bbPress but has grown into some very active ‘online-public-bar’ where people like to post a lot of Off Topic stuff mainly on the forum-side of the of the website while the homepage (news) is often overlooked.

Using the Groups section for all Off Topic forum discussions and use the bbPress forums module only for real On Topic support would make this website more social and getting more people involved though the Activity-stream.
Plus I could make a custom audio-postformat (Podcasts) query on the BP Groups page to list all latest Podcasts.

Redesign of the Groups section. Replacing the Avatar for an icon that will be the same through the entire site and people will recognize it as Off Topic stuff.
Maybe the font-size, spacing and coloring is still a bit off but I’ll look at this at the end, right now it using the Global styles.

[Anointed]

I haven’t been around enough in the past number of months to know exactly where BuddyPress stands now, however in the past there were a couple of areas that really effected my ability to use BP.

1. Privacy – There were way to many holes in the privacy settings for users. Meaning that users were not able to define EXACTLY what was shown and to whom it was shown. Any public facing field ever entered by a user should have the ability to define who sees what is being posted.

2. Speed – There were way to many ‘joins’ throughout the code and on a somewhat ‘large’ site it basically made using BP impossible for us. We had tied together using bbPress with BP via the group forums, and even with only a few million replies a fully dedicated server would consistently be brought to its knees. There have been tons of tickets with numerous ideas on patches and fixes for this, but overall I would say that anything which can be done to help optimize some of the more intensive queries would help a lot.

[Martyn_]

* Better customisation options of the activity stream: ie to be able to define a set of “or” filters for content type, and who. So (with plugin support) I can define a feed to include things from “me or friends or followers” showing “topics and topic replies and posts and new users” (and ideally be able to have a permalink to this with no other fluff on display). The current activity feed selectors are a mess and don’t provide what most people want to see.

* A way to select which filters and views are available in activity/, and persistently set the default activity feed view (from the admin panel)

* live activity updates

* A reply by PM hook into bbpress

* Better options for users to self delete

* Improved management/rethink of the tabs on profile pages (because this rapidly piles up as you add in plugins) : “Activity Profile Messages Friends Following Followers Location Groups Blog Forums Events Gallery Settings Links” Is not viable for a one line menu bar – this is maybe a display issue, but…!

* be able to pass a function to the members loop, thats called to determine the display order (e.g. so I can easily order by City or age or any xprofile field)

Maybe these are already there, but these are the things that are bugging me as a non-expert dev right now…

[Asynaptic]

That is astonishingly expensive. You can find excellent non-shared hosting solutions for less than half that price. I suggest you head over to webhostingtalk forums and see the offers and also requesting quotes.

Your best option is to start with a host that you can grow with. Paying for rackspace when you don’t have the usage to justify $150/month is not logical.

[lflier]

Sorry Modemlooper if I wasn’t clear on what I mean by “home page.” I’m new at this game. What I mean is the page with the URI that starts with root/members/username/… . This is the page that shows the user’s activity, profile, messages, friends, groups, forums, and settings. This is the page that appears to lack the transition effects of the other pages (root/activity) and (root/members).

Thank you Henry for your confirmation of my observations. Common sense tells me to wait for BP 2.0. But curiosity drives me to try to figure this out. I found the following script in buddypress.js (my own application uses the legacy theme):

	/**** Tabs and Filters ****************************************************/

	/* When a navigation tab is clicked - e.g. | All Groups | My Groups | */
	jq('div.item-list-tabs').on( 'click', function(event) {
		if ( jq(this).hasClass('no-ajax') )
			return;

		var targetElem = ( event.target.nodeName == 'SPAN' ) ? event.target.parentNode : event.target;
		var target     = jq( targetElem ).parent();
		if ( 'LI' == target[0].nodeName && !target.hasClass( 'last' ) ) {
			var css_id = target.attr('id').split( '-' );
			var object = css_id[0];

			if ( 'activity' == object )
				return false;

			var scope = css_id[1];
			var filter = jq("#" + object + "-order-select select").val();
			var search_terms = jq("#" + object + "_search").val();

			bp_filter_request( object, filter, scope, 'div.' + object, search_terms, 1, jq.cookie('bp-' + object + '-extras') );

			return false;
		}
	});

The conditional statement that checks whether the division has the “no-ajax” class is apparently meant to catch the nav for what I am calling the home page, which has this class attached to it. Merely commenting out those lines results in a non-functional nav (clicking does nothing), so the decision to treat that page differently in the code is surely not arbitrary. There must be some reason for it. What would it be? That there is no ajax on this page?

[dbghost.2005@yahoo.com]

As per your request, I switched out themes and voila: the problem was the theme. So, it’s unfortunate I had to resort to a complete site re-design – especially consdidered I paid for it – but the theme I got now is much better.