[David Lewis]

Ahh… I was actually aware of the group forum post notification plugin. I still miss the ability to post to the wire however and have everyone notified. Much less ‘friction’ for users than having to create a new thread just to make an announcement of some kind. Oh well.

[jivany]

Oh, wait a sec. I just re-read your comment – why does the “blog privacy” option turn off BP activity stream for that blog? I can sort of understand from the general sense but based on the description of what “blog privacy” does (in the WP dashboard) it doesn’t make sense.

Having the activity stream updates tied to blog privacy prevents having a semi-private community with blogs. Or is Buddypress doing a ping of something like pingomatic every time a status changes or a forum post is created?

[Mike Pratt]

@David – fair point. fyi, group notifications: https://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/group-forum-subscription-for-buddypress/

[gsmith6673]

Suzanne, I have another WP blog and use: https://wordpress.org/extend/themes/atahualpa

I’ve been over chatting on their forum and it looks like no one has formed a workable solution yet for a versatile design that effectively integrates BP.

I’ll keep looking as I’m not a coder but think I represent a typical user that wants to incorporate a flexible format. The Atahualpa is a good example…very versatile.

The BP plug-in has a lot of offer when thinking of the community theme.

see me here as well: http://www.greenbuildinginspector.com

gs

[David Lewis]

@Mike: I know there is the group blog plugin but it’s not deeply integrated into groups. I haven’t tried the new links plugin altho’ it sounds great. I’m not aware of any plugins to accomplish group notifications. bp-events shows great promise but needs some work. And there really is no way to have group documents that I know of (downloads or collaborative wiki pages). But I’m sure all of this will come in time. My main point is that out of the box… BuddyPress Groups are pretty limited. They basically just group people and allow them to make comments and forum posts.

[Kate]

I’d like to use this on a current project I have, but being a BP/WPMU newbie, I’m a little lost about setting it up. I have it installed, I’m just not sure about what goes in the following fields:

“Which group contains the location information?”

“Which field represents each user’s location?”

“Which field represents a description for each user (i.e. ‘About Me’)?”

Any chance any one else has used this and could give me a quick breakdown of what they’re for, and how I’d go about setting them up. I would’ve posted on the BraveNewCode forums, but I guess those are down for a while. Also, I can’t find any documentation on the site for it.

I’m now using another 3rd party plugin for membership to the site (WP eMember). While it has its own table, it also creates a matching WP user for each of the members it creates. I was thinking of adding some code to add users to a group on creation of their profile, and then using this group as the group that “contains the location information”. Am I on the right track?

Thanks in advance for any help!

[@mercime]

WPMU 2.9 trunk-r2041 and BP 1.2 trunk-r2207

– BP on blog_ID_1 and WPMU used as CMS

Feedback: Child theme of 1.2 trunk bp-default theme

Getting white screen in front end (all sections) when creating a new Child theme based on new bp-default theme.

– If I add customized header.php and footer.php (with only additional divs), I get white screen,

– If I do not upload header.php and footer.php but add customized home.php, I get white screen.

– Note: the only way I got the child theme recognized was by copying code of activity/index.php over home.php in bp-default theme folder, but like mentioned above, other customizations except the sidebar.php, white screened on me. Too much eggnog last night?

Feedback: Child theme of 1.2 trunk bp-sn-parent theme

– custom Child themes of old bp-sn-parent theme transition well to new bp-sn-parents theme generally except Forums pages – only one group shown and nothing else

[online]

Thanks Jeff — good question!

1. Which version of WPMU are you running?

WordPress MU 2.8.6.

2. Did you install WPMU as a directory or subdomain install?

Directory

3. If a directory install, is it in root or in a subdirectory?

Subdirectory

4. Did you upgraded from a previous version of WPMU? If so, from which version?

Nope.

5. Was WPMU functioning properly before installing/upgrading BuddyPress?

Yea, mostly (except that I had to install plugin to dealt with “www” subdomain issue [see above / top] )

6. Which version of BuddyPress (BP) are you running?

Latest (1.1.3)

7. Did you upgraded from a previous version of BP? If so, from which version?

Nope.

8. Do you have any plugins other than BuddyPress installed and activated?

Yea, “GD Star-Rating” + “Visitor Maps and Who’s Online” (I guess I could do without this one if Buddypress would work )

9. Are you using the standard BuddyPress themes or customized themes?

Standard

10. Have you modified the core files in any way?

Nope.

11. Do you have any custom functions in bp-custom.php?

Nada.

12. If running bbPress, which version? Or did your BuddyPress install come with a copy of bbPress built-in?

I clicked to istall forums, but haven’t touched that since (absolute beginner with that)

13. Please provide a list of any errors in your server’s log files.

None (at least not that I can see)

14. Which company provides your hosting?

“Freenet.DE” (I think somehow affiliated with either GMX or Strato )

Bonus: trying to set it up here >> http://saarpfalz.org/x/

[David Lewis]

Yes, the current group functionality is fairly limited. All you can really do is post comments and participate in forums. There’s no ability to create group content (posts, pages, videos, etc.) and very limited notification options. There used to be an option to post a wire update and notify all members of the post by email. Even this has now been removed in 1.2-bleeding… perhaps a casualty of the merging of the wire and update features. Hopefully it will come back. And hopefully bp-events will progress as well. It’s been very quiet lately.

That said, there is a good foundation in place that I’m sure will be built upon over time by the core team and by plugin developers.

As for the group blog plugin… I tried it but it didn’t do much for me since it doesn’t really integrate very deeply with the group. It’s basically a standalone blog that doesn’t live within the group context.

[Jeff Sayre]

does the installation actually create “members”, “groups”, etc blogs

No, those are simply slugs that are appended to the URI.

To help us better troubleshoot your issue, please answer these questions.

[designodyssey]

Don’t want a full blown blog for a group. Did get to thinking and now wondering can you create a category or sticky post type in the forums of the group that only the admin of the group could post to?

If you could do that, you could probably CSS the display of that category or group of stickies so they wind up on the group homepage as well as in the forum. That might work.

[peterverkooijen]

…also trying to avoid duplicating similar features that could just be one flexible component.

That’s why I would also consider deprecating/downplaying forum integration in favor of group blogs, microblogging, threaded comments. Consolidate social organization in Buddypress around blogs and groups. That would really set Buddypress apart.

[abcde666]

@designody

you might be talking about something like the “Group-Blog-Plugin” is offering ?

https://buddypress.org/forums/topic/groupblog-v13-adding-members-instantly-thanks-boone

[sclough]

Sorry, here’s repost of the code. $limit come from the widget setting how many posts can show…

global $forum_template, $bp;



if ( bp_has_forum_topics('type=newest&per_page=' . $limit) ) {

echo '<ul class="latest_form_topics_widget">';

while ( bp_forum_topics() ) {

bp_the_forum_topic();

echo '<li class="forum_topic_widget"><a href="' . bp_get_the_topic_permalink() . '" title="' . bp_get_the_topic_title() . '">' . bp_get_the_topic_title() . ' </a></li>';

}

echo '</ul>';

}

[Bowe]

I’m not sure if this is the best way but what you could do is put your html/script in a seperate file called “flickrscript.php” and put it in your active theme folder.

then include it in your template by calling it directly:

<?php include( TEMPLATEPATH . ‘/flickrscript.php’ ); ?>

That should work I think! If you want to entirely new BuddyPress page you can follow this guide:

https://buddypress.org/forums/topic/make-your-own-custom-buddypress-page

Good luck!

[Brajesh Singh]

well

let me clarify

My Intention was You do not need to modify the core.

To change the dropdown box, I have used the filter “bp_search_form_type_select”

and since buddypress traps the search url and makes a redirect accordingly, so “bp_core_search_site” works with that and redirects correctly.

@henrybaum, what Is appearing in your drop down box(Is it members, groups, forums, Blog), select blog and try the search. Is buddypress on your root domain.

PS:Please Note if you have put the code correctly, The ‘Blogs’ will be replaced by ‘Blog’

[abcde666]

Re: #1:

if you do not want to have User-Blogs, just turn this feature off.

You will then have Groups, Group-Forums and a Social-Network without “User-Blogs”.

[abcde666]

@Bowe,

well said.

I guess what we do NOT need is “twittering” and “tweets” with 140 letters.

But what we do need is a feature to “FOLLOW” somebody we are interested in, like “follow” somebody because we like the way he is writing his Blog or we do like someones opinion on something. Following somebody does not relate to the “quality and somewhat lenghy” content of that specific person.

In fact we could “FOLLOW” a “Person” as well as a “Group” – and after a while get to the point to invite this person for a “Friendship” or decide to “Join” a specific Group.

Hm well……

reading what I have just wrote myself – not really sure whether we really do need a “FOLLOW”-feature after all. Because if you like somebody, you can directly request a “Friendship” without following him for a year

So at the end: do we really need all this TWITTER-FOLLOWING-stuff ?

Probably just having something like “subscribe to this Forum-Thread” or “subscribe to this Blog” and receive an e-mail when there are any updates would be what we REALLY need ?

KISS

Keep It Simple & Stupid

[jivany]

What about Brajesh’s solution doesn’t work for you? I just implemented virtually the same thing (without the filtering of the search action urls) and the drop down box only contains Members/Groups/Forums now.

Brajesh: what does the search action url filter do? I’m not following the intent.

Thanks!

[Bowe]

@ Mike:

As an example, a place to tweet from my site won’t turn many on. Not because they aren’t on Twitter, but they don’t come to the site to do it, don’t usually want to tweet about what they are doing on the site and the added convenience of tweeting from within the site isn’t worth the real estate. Still – it’s a great idea for other sites.”

This is exactly what makes these kind of decisions so hard to make for the development team. Basically there are so many different needs for different usergroups, that decisions about core functionality are always very hard to make. I apreciate the amount of interaction between us (end users) and the developers (core + plugin developer) on the forum and the trac, and I do think we’ll get there in the end. Since I am not a programmer I can’t say what is technically the best way to do something, but I do know a thing or two about social networking and online communities in general.

The thing which makes BuddyPress really stand out is, is that it actually crosses a bridge between blogging/publishing of content and micro-blogging/meaningles social networking. There has always been a clash between those two types of users and some usersgroups are way more focused on quality (and somewhat lenghy!) content then others. Your example about real estates agents looking for totally different ways to interact then a typical social networks user is spot on. You do not need twitter integration on your site, and you do not want to have those functions overcomplicating your site. My users on the other hand are EXTREMELY mixed on so many levels. The only thing they have in common is the fact that they all have the same disease. This makes creating my network a really big challenge and it means that there are many factors I need to think about. Many of my users are used to blogging and discussions forums, and a younger generation is used to facebook and twitter. Currently the more traditional users have more then enough to do on my site with the amazing Blog + Group functionality. These components can be tweaked to my liking by WordPress (user blogs) and the Group API.

Since the introduction of the Group API you have seen that there are plugins coming out which let us (the site owners) decide what we want to add to our social network. Plugin developers can easily hook into the Group API and add functionality to it, which might be specifically written for a specific usergroup. We’ve seen Groupblogs, External Blogs but also Twitter integration plugins, and it made the Group component by far the most powerful and promising BP component as of yet.

The mock-up I’ve made is basically saying that this kind of functionality should also be extended to regular profiles, so we get much more flexibility to create the social network we see fit. This does not only mean adding new functions but also disabling unneeded ones.

If the Friends functionality was extensible trough the Profile API it would mean that it could be customized into something that would fit different needs for different sites. Maybe some sites would like to allow individual users to add Twitter Widgets to their profile page, and allow groups of Friends to discuss on a seperate forum. I could imagine that a “family oriented” community could greatly benefit from such a feature, but your real estate community would not! With a Profile API it would mean that it could be added as a plugin on top of the basic friend functionality which everyone could use as a base to work from.

So basically I’m saying that it might be smart to work on making all the components as flexible and easy to extend as the Groups component, then it won’t take long before before there are so many options available to do thing they way you want, we will all be happy! There are more and more people discovering BuddyPress as a “general” Social Network solution instead of a “social network for bloggers” and there are even a lot of users who want to get rid of the blogging functionality and make it a normal social network. If WPMU and WP merge there will be even more need for individual/profile related functionality and a good API is the first step to achieve this!

[Leah]

To get back to start there is an excellet initiative from D Cartwright with Group Wiki Plugin

As for document management; any glue on google docs?

Not very management but Etherpad is nice. Also just open sourced.

[pcwriter]

Hi Paul,

Yup, I think Achievements is a fun and helpful addition for new users.

As for the problem, I first resolved the one described in this post: https://buddypress.org/forums/topic/wireclub-chat-plugin-screwed-up-my-site (also thanks to your help!).

Now I’ll try to fix this one… and the fun continues!

[pcwriter]

Hot diggety!!

Paul, you’re a genius… it worked! And I never would have thunk of that fix.

Thanks!

Oh, and thanks for checking out this post too: https://buddypress.org/forums/topic/blog-sidebar-widgets-showing-up-in-profile

[Paul Wong-Gibbs]

*IF* the error is the memory one, have a look at https://buddypress.org/forums/topic/500-errors-1and1-webhost#post-29415

[Matt Kern]

Thanks for the response Brajesh.

My biggest fear is I put up the trac version, I get 20 people on the site using forums etc.. and then when 1.2 comes out, I have to do a diff on the database and hand tweek all those tables to bring it up to date.

That is a possiblilty, right? I am just trying to get my worst case scenario together.

or, is it better just to use 1.1.2 (whatever it is right now) and when 1.2 comes out, just do the automatice update. It would take care of upgrading behind the scenes for me,right?

Sorry, for the silly questions but up to this point I have just been re installing every new version – haven’t used it for a live community yet, but its coming soon….