[@mercime]

There may be hope yet. Not to put any pressure on Andy – his response in testbp.org forum re white screens rendered by plugins using deprecated code, “I’ll be supplying a backwards compatibility plugin” Reference

[Mike Pratt]

I am personally not a fan of taking it this direction (with a few caveats depending on where it goes)

@Peter – Yes, Facebook burned “friending” into the lexicon and made a mess of things as far as that definition goes. But it’s here and it’s what we have to work with. Not sure it would be wise to try and break the momentum 300mm users already understand. Now, expanding on the idea is another thing altogether.

We should start with what a “friend” means/should mean in the BP environment. There is overlap of the concept with Groups, but a major distinction, too that keeps me from supporting this shift you describe. If we expand the friend concept in its current manifestation, I think we’ll be better off.

Yes, @jjj friends are just groups of users. But that doesn’t make them Groups. Groups are organizations around a topic/idea. I think if you try to include an aggregation of users into that model, you will blur the lines as to confuse everyone. Since I don’t want being a friend of me being the same as being a member of the “Mike Pratt” group, you will force developers to have to change everything to make it look like the old process, or do it yourself. Is there really that much gained by you in the process? I mean, so much of the group functionality may not be necessary in a personal group.

Re the “it’s like Twitter following” it’s not either/or there. “friending” requires acceptance on the befriended’s part. Following does not. Admittedly, it would be great for BP to allow for a following kind of capability so I can keep tabs on those whose activity I care about but aren’t really “friends” with.

What is the filtering issue you speak of? On 1.2 I can look at activity of My friends or My groups and it works great. What BP needs, I think, is expanded friend functionality. Ie friend grouping a la facebook style so I can filter my ever growing list of friends into like groupings e.g. Family, etc. I’d even do it on buddypress.org and list @jjj @andy @jeffsayre etc into a group to follow what the sage’s all have to say. In this new concept, I will have to create a group for them? but they will already be in my “friends” group?

One thing to consider – the new Update functionality, in effect, already gives each user his own forum. A threaded conversation can already happen there and it’s centered on that user. If you are truing to make it a private one, then revamp the message system to allow me to send a private internal BP message to a group of friends (need that part too) and have it be a private threaded conversation/message. It’s dangerous to allow me to make it like you suggested

“Not only is it a group of people that I know, the people I’ve added to that group now can talk back and forth to one another because I’ve added them as a “friend.”

It gives the ability for someone to interact more personally with someone to whom they never initiated contact. Perhaps just adding a friend “type” ie “follow” would be very useful. It is the type that doesn’t require acceptance on the followee and the followee’s activities are visible according to their own set terms.

In summary, I think we keep Groups as topically focused “clubs” or “associations” that have members, content and activities and then each person has relationships with other users on the site. Some are “friends”, some they just “follow” with added functionality like grouping (pardon the use of the word), mass messaging (based on permissioning), etc

[Bowe]

After some thought I kinda like the idea of giving friends a central place to talk just like a regular group. Here are my thoughts:

I think it could work very well and some group-like functions should be added to the My Friends/My Network idea proposed here.

but I also think the “My Friends” should be more limited then a regular group and would serve a different purpose then a regular group. A regular groups allows for more in-depth user interaction which is also viewable for the general audience of your community, while the My Friends section should be a quick way to interact with all your friends and to filter new stuff based on your friend types (familiy, work, regular friends). It does not need to have a discussion forum, I think it’s main focus should be a “friends” activity stream + extension possibilities trough a Friend API (based on a group API)

The way I see it the “My Friends” page should be an overview of all your friends activity and let you filter content just like the activity stream. I am working on a screenshot to visualize my vision . Hope to have it finished today!

I really like the idea to filter your friends by category, and for instance show only the activity of my family members. I also like the idea extending “My Friends” by showing Tweets from my friends etcetera.

think that this is important because Groups are meant to

[peterverkooijen]

@Bowe, I’d posted my solutions here and in a whole series of threads. I can’t solve the issue though. It depends on core architectural decisions.

[Brajesh Singh]

Ok,here is the solution.

This will sllow user to search for the blog posts on the main site only.

I have used two hooks to accomplish the purpose.

put this code in either bp-custom.php or in functions.php of your current theme. No core modification is required.

//filter the allowed search type

add_filter("bp_search_form_type_select","bpdev_allowed_search_type");

function bpdev_allowed_search_type($selecttion_box_old){

//ignore the selection box

$selection_box = '<select name="search-which" id="search-which" style="width: auto">';



if ( function_exists( 'xprofile_install' ) ) {

$selection_box .= '<option value="members">' . __( 'Members', 'buddypress' ) . '</option>';

}



if ( function_exists( 'groups_install' ) ) {

$selection_box .= '<option value="groups">' . __( 'Groups', 'buddypress' ) . '</option>';

}



if ( function_exists( 'bp_forums_setup' ) && !(int) get_site_option( 'bp-disable-forum-directory' ) ) {

$selection_box .= '<option value="forums">' . __( 'Forums', 'buddypress' ) . '</option>';

}

//here we modify the thing to a new type posts

$selection_box .= '<option value="posts">' . __( 'Blog', 'buddypress' ) . '</option>';



$selection_box .= '</select>';

return $selection_box;

}

//let us filter the search action urls

add_filter("bp_core_search_site","bpdev_filter_search_url");

function bpdev_filter_search_url($search_url){

//if user is searching for main site content, modify url else return url

$search_terms = $_POST['search-terms'];

$search_which = $_POST['search-which'];

if($search_which="posts")

$search_url=site_url( "?s=". urlencode($search_terms) );

return $search_url;

}

[peterverkooijen]

I have a network of web entrepreneurs. It’s hard enough to get them to create blogs and actually use them. OK, that’s not only BP’s fault of course, but “full invested writer/bloggers” will set up their own blogs – I’m also a journalist, I would never write/blog in someone else’s network.

I think more advances are necessary to take it beyond this where users can contribute more content without having to be a full invested writer/blogger.

That’s why I need to come up with an external blog feed-in solution. Currently stuck in upgrading my theme… I also like the microblogging suggestions.

And Groups has limitless and unique opportunities; dynamic groups with lots of content within a private social network/community.

My worry:

Will Buddypress eventually target schools, companies, trade associations, sports clubs, etc.? Or even become enterprise ready? Or will it stay a more limited play thing for insider groups of dedicated blogging geeks with a lot of free time on their hands?

I HOPE that BuddyPress does not become a member aggregation site where, the more people, the more successful a site is “perceived” to be. That to me is the game that Ning is playing. Why in the world woulu Buddypress want to be another Ning?

I agree. That model is dead. I believe the concept of “private social networks” is different. Jeff’s privacy component is essential – haven’t had the chance to test it yet.

But there should be opportunities for low threshold content creation and communication and I would develop them around (micro)blogging. Again, I have mixed feelings about the addition of old-fashioned forums.

[Derek]

@Erich73 In my opinion a BudyPress site works best if there are blog creators/writers and subscribers. Hopefully if things go well the majority should be Subscribers. Those folks will rarely if ever see the backend. I for one WANT my bloggers to have almost full access to the backend and all of it’s features. You have to give them that level of control to ensure their buy in. To me the best example of a really great BuddyPress site is a group of a half dozen or so rocking awesome blogs and a community that develops around them, NOT a community where 100 users have 100 play blogs where “test” becomes the prevailing blog title. You add some additional discussion related features like groups, forums, and events and i think you have a great formula for a thriving community.

I HOPE that BuddyPress does not become a member aggregation site where, the more people, the more successful a site is “perceived” to be. That to me is the game that Ning is playing. Why in the world woulu Buddypress want to be another Ning?

[abcde666]

when this is helpful to you in order to solve some issue as you described in the related TRAC, then this is fine. Also it will give additional options for the user, as he will have better Admin-rights to manage his Friends and have his own Forum (you really want to have each user having his own forum – probably a great idea….).

However, it should be a clear differentiation between “generic Groups” and “Friends”.

Lets say I am running a Dating-network on which I do have generic Groups like “Dining”, “Travelling”, “Hobbies”, etc. , then it would not be nice if Friends-Groups would get mixed-up with generic-Groups.

[Anton]

Thanks James for the reply. I’m also using WPMU 2.8.6 and BP 1.1.3.

I’ve tried doing a reinstall on a second server of mine but the problem persists.

[kennibc]

WPMU 2.8.6

BP 1.1.3

I just ran the installer right from Buddypress to install bbpress. Anyway to fix this or point me to where 1.2 could be downloaded from?

[John James Jacoby]

Which version of BP? This will be fixed in 1.2 as I think it’s just a missing or incorrectly named action.

[peterverkooijen]

What are we talking about here guys? Only the blog creators will ever see the dashboard on a regular basis. All the users that are subscribers will rarely if ever see it.

True. But there are a few cases where regular users are sent into the backend. In the first version of my site I had to hack core files to bring them into the regular layout and use plugins to close parts of the backend for users with blogs. I’m now in the middle of upgrading to 1.1.3, a painful process…

The question is how Buddypress will develop into the future, as more features are added. I’m also running into the issue how to structure user interface for new functionality here – haven’t had time to work on that yet. Boone Gorges gives a good suggestion how to bring adding an RSS feed into the front end.

I’m sticking with Buddypress because I believe it has the most potential for the reasons I pointed out earlier and because I assume(d) that it will become more mature over time. But if the developer community sees Buddypress as just “an add-on to a blogging/CMS platform” aimed at communities of experienced bloggers, that would be a problem for me.

[kennibc]

I too am having this issue. Deleting a forum topic doesn’t trigger the Activity feed deletion.

Any solutions?

[peterverkooijen]

I do see the potential. As I said earlier in this thread:

That’s why I believe Buddypress has a lot of potential. It’s a social network, but with a strong content publishing angle.

I’m absolutely not advocating copying Facebook etc. I’m a big believer in the idea of “private social networks”. And I actually think that adding old-fashioned forums dilutes the blog logic that should be Buddypress’ main strength.

Groups has enormous potential and seems to be pretty unique.

But imagine Buddypress being used by schools, companies, trade associations, sports clubs, etc. That is a very different audience from the experienced WordPress bloggers in the Buddypress development community.

[midwestbonsai]

Interesting, so is there a way to have the forums set up like they are here? I do not see any group forums here.

[bloggus]

Erich73;

well honestly, I have then no idea why you use BP if you are using is only as Discussion-Forum with Groups.

I see BP as a plugin for WPMU and nothing else. If I want only a social platform, without the extensive WP blogs, then I would never go for BP. There are many other great softwares out there. (not that BP is bad ) For me blogs are the central point and the backbone of the system. Therefore I don’t understand the meaning of two backends.

[abcde666]

“Remember, wordpress.tv has a TON of tutorial videos for beginners as well.”

---

…. not sure my german-language-speaking users at the age of 50 and over, are going to watch a video in order to understand how my website works

Once you need a video to EXPLAIN how a website works, something is wrong.

I just think that the “WPMU-Dashboard-backend” is not a place I want my users to go into, so I had to dis-able the feature for users to be able to create their own blog. So my website is more like a Discussion-Forum with Groups

I guess giving the “WPMU-DashBoard-backend” the same DESIGN as we do have at testbp.org (default-theme) would solve the issue.

Anybody out there who is able to do this ? Maybe a plug-in ?

Please do not take this as an offense, I really do love BuddyPress very much and highly appreciate the work of Andy & team & the community

[midwestbonsai]

Cookies seem to be working fine, when I am logged in to one or the other I am logged in to the other.

The only thing that seems not to work the the forum posts going to the “Site Wide Activity Stream” or “My Latest Activity”

Someone managed to get it to work here so I would think that t can be done.

[peterverkooijen]

BuddyPress is still very much a WP(MU) plugin. What it does best is create an instant social network around a community of bloggers … I don’t think this is a negative, but a positive.

I agree. That’s why I believe Buddypress has a lot of potential. It’s a social network, but with a strong content publishing angle.

I just wish that shift in focus from blog posts to “member management” would get more attention. Personally I don’t need any more new features. Adding forums for example only adds to the structural confusion. I’m still struggling with the basics, creating a user-friendly registration and profile settings interface.

The Dashboard of WordPress has gotten two complete overhauls within about the last year. The current version is awesome.

The WordPress admin interface is pretty good for what it has to do, but it is not what people expect when they sign up with a social network and it clashes with the front end interface.

Edit in response to Andrea_r:

P2 looks interesting. It’s an example of responding to user expectations and evolving interface “standards” on the web.

[MrMaz]

I think in its current form, BuddyPress is still very much a WP(MU) plugin. What it does best is create an instant social network around a community of bloggers. Since there are so few good looking options out there for out-of-the-box social network software, I think some people want BuddyPress to be more than it is. I don’t think this is a negative, but a positive. This means that BP is lighting a fuse in people’s brains about the possibilities.

If you look at it from the other angle like I first did, where I wanted social network software, that supported blogs, its hard to embrace the fact that blogs are the heart of the app. I found peace with it by remembering that publishing content is what drives the Internet, so basically you are building onto one of the most popular free publishing platforms available.

I know Andy is working really hard to move a lot of the back-end admin into the public interface, for instance the awesome work with forums, but it is a huge job. I don’t think there is any way to make the admin dashboard simple to use for every Joe Shmoe out there just by skinning it differently. Over time bits and pieces will need to be exposed in the public interface in a way that is intuitive for noobs and gurus alike.

[gpo1]

@PH (webguy),

Look into this one built on simplelife…

Features

All the features provided with version 1.1 of Simplelife (the point of the fork) and I will also attempt to merge any new future changes as well

Support for as many and as obscure services as possible. I have already included stuff that no one else does like PMOG, Atheist Nexus, Cocomments, Getboo etc.

Longer history via utilizing google reader.

Comment tracking from everywhere. That is, each time you leave a comment in the blogosphere or in a forum, it will show in your lifestream (AFAIK, no other lifestreaming service does this)

Pie Charts.

FYI: https://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/complexlife

[Paul Wong-Gibbs]

It’s not as simple as that. One thing you will need to tackle is getting bbPress and BuddyPress sharing the same cookies for user authentication. You need to select the ‘use existing install’ option on the BuddyPress admin to configure BuddyPress; if you have previously selected the new install option, I don’t know what the impact will be if you then tell it to use an existing install.

What you need to do is find a tutorial or guide for how to install BuddyPress forums (previous to version 1.1, you had to do it manually and it was very complicated). You could start by reading backwards on https://buddypress.org/forums/topic/forum-install-some-helping-hints-2

[midwestbonsai]

I am still wondering how to have the bbpress installed in /forums/ (not part of buddypress), and have the new posts in bbpress show up in the “Site Wide Activity”. (Just like here)

Reason being I want all the forums accessible to everyone and not have to deal with group forums and all of that.

Thoughts?

[af3]

the latest bp1.1.3 should resolve this. the only issue now is that forum post from bp forum now shows up as “Posted -1 year ago” in bbpress. any hint to resolve this?

[Digital Raindrops]

This came back from my ISP’s forum:

The redirecting pages are being served with a 404 Page not found header, which IE must be reading and then ignoring the subsequent refresh header.

As an example here is the sort of header the app is serving, you may wish to post it back in the BuddyPress forum:

Code:

HTTP/1.1 404 Not Found

Cache-Control: no-cache, must-revalidate, max-age=0

Pragma: no-cache

Content-Length: 0

Content-Type: text/html; charset=UTF-8

Expires: Wed, 11 Jan 1984 05:00:00 GMT

Last-Modified: Mon, 21 Dec 2009 15:19:00 GMT

Server: Microsoft-IIS/6.0

X-Server: BERYLLIUM

X-Powered-By: ASP.NET

X-Powered-By: PHP/5.2.11

Set-Cookie: PHPSESSID=123f18412c96f45681b036e6fea8c123; path=/

X-Pingback: http://taggeriffic.com/xmlrpc.php

Refresh: 0;url=http://taggeriffic.com/members/exampleuser/

Date: Mon, 21 Dec 2009 15:19:00 GMT

Connection: close

This is way above my skills any experts want to chip in with a comment?

David