@Gpo1, what happened?
Could you give your feedback in the plugin’s forum:
https://buddypress.org/community/groups/buddypress-private-community/forum/
The general response has been good so far, it seems to be working fine for everyone else, so I’d be interested to know what’s going wrong for you.
Did you get an error message?
It killed my site this plugin
Hi, I’m the person who started this thread about 5 months ago!
I’ve been messing around with my own solution for a while now, and I’ve created my first couple of WP/BP plugins recently.
In fact, I’ve just released my BuddyPress Private Community Plugin:
https://buddypress.org/community/groups/buddypress-private-community/
Somebody has already given it 5 stars!
It’s basically a single static class that has a few customizable settings, you can block RSS feeds, stop widgets from displaying when the user is logged out, and set an array of pages that are public. Of course you can set the redirect page when I logged out user tries to access a private page too. It defaults to the home page, but I suggest you change that in the config.
There is an example of how to create your own config file for the plugin, one that is saved in a place that won’t be overwritten when you update the plugin and that doesn’t require database access – so it should be a lightweight and quick plugin.
It’s been working great for me, let me know what you think and if you find any bugs!
+1
I’ve got a client who needs private blogs (to hide from the scary google robots) but a public directory.
~Kyle~
@Driftless1 “Are we trying to artificially create a difference where there is none? Or is the difference there – Buddypress is just not making it clear enough?”
I think they are all the same, they are all just conversations, with different ways of going about having it. Buddypress seems confusing or lost in between because it is rightfully tyring to integrate these barely different means of having conversations into one more complete and convenient system.
The site I am working on has had a main news/blog section for about 3 years now. So I am looking at 3 main types of conversations
1. Comments on news articles and the comments on their comments which can become a lot like a forum topic.
2. An actual forum topic started by the user them self about something they feel is important enough for the world to hear.
3. Short and pointless twitter/facebook type comments that they don’t necessarily care to share with the world, whether it is because it is private or they know it just isn’t important enough, just something for friends who might be interested in know “omg! i finally finished all my cleaning my gutters!”
I think it just comes down to the user. It is about a user and their conversations, where ever they are taking place, then being fed back to one convenient location for all their buddies to find. I think it would be really neat to create some kind of universal user profile similar to gravatar so what ever website you are on, you can comment there and it will feed back to your personal profile with a link to that website and that comment so your friends can see what you are talking about out there and maybe jump in the conversation also. This would obviously open a pandora’s box of options on how or where you want your conversations to appear, but I’m certain that is the direction for “web 2.0.” The same way we boycot proprietary code, browsers, file types, or software, I think we will boycot myspaces and facebooks for universal profiles.
I just had another check, from another profile and
user with ‘normal’ rights
and the same problem happens,
message is sent to 2 people, One random, and one who I have deleted as admin for spamming via wordpress admin panel 
sorry, it is WPMU 2.9.1 and Buddypress 1.2.3 (I think)
there are many plugins installed and some small modifications, but not related to PM
what I think may have triggered it, is i had to delete some spammers, and deleting via buddypress did not seem to work, so I went to wp-admin and deleted one or two spammers there,
but it asked me to transfer their posts to my (admin) profile,
there were no posts, but that dialog box came up, so I accepted it.
and it had completed the delete process successfully,
WP/BP versions? Did you change theme, plugins or upgrade something before this PM behavior happened?
Hi Roger (and everyone else!), i think i’m going somewhere now, but will need some extra input. hopefully the thread will be an additional useful example!
ok, this is where i am at: default theme with the ajax controllers at the top of the activity stream. in the activity folder of the child theme i have an index.php and activity-loop.php and and entry.php.
basically i’ve got a ‘private’ area with content accessible only to staff. for normal post/pages i have is an extra check based on a custom field for posts and the category for pages like the following and then based on the group membership i either show a message or the actual content:
http://pastebin.com/E4cnkwZS (top)
now, because the group is private, the BP stuff is not showing in the activity stream already, which is good, but the posts/pages bypass my checks and come up in the list of activities showing the actual content which should be private instead.
so, here is what i came up with so far. using the index.php i check the group membership and then load two different activity-loops:
http://pastebin.com/E4cnkwZS (bottom)
how would you exclude stuff? in the bp_has_activity function there is an ‘include’ option which allows to filter content, but not an ‘exclude’ one. it might be trivial to go around it, but not sure how. furthermore if you use the dropdown filter i have the impression that the arguments are passed dynamically resetting whatever is passed in the original query (like in your example and some i’ve tried using the same model).
i would very much appreciate any further suggestion! thanks
Wanted to say thank you and put in my endorsement for @Travel-Junkie ‘s great, simple privacy solution.
Re-posting that code below for simplicity’s sake, found at this comment link:
https://buddypress.org/community/groups/how-to-and-troubleshooting/forum/topic/how-to-make-a-private-community/?topic_page=2&num=15#post-44616
Running WP 3.0.1 single-site with BuddyPress 1.2.5.2.
Add to functions.php (may be titled Theme Functions in your Dashboard Theme Editor):
function sh_walled_garden()
{
global $bp;
if( bp_is_register_page() || bp_is_activation_page() )
return;
if( ! bp_is_blog_page() && ! is_user_logged_in() )
bp_core_redirect( $bp->root_domain .’/’. BP_REGISTER_SLUG );
}
add_action( ‘get_header’, ‘sh_walled_garden’ );
huh I make that 5 mins .
Can’t wait for the privacy plugin as that’s the way forward, I anticipate a massive rush to download it when released, just hope that rush is matched by a rush to donate even if token gestures 
If and when I recommend someone use a plugin in future I think I’ll be adding a reminder to donate a small token of gratitude to the author.
Well, @hnla beat me to the answer by 4 minutes!
A quick search with the proper terms will bring up a number of options. This post in this thread should help. Once my BuddyPress Privacy Component is out in the wild, you will be able to easily do this with a simple radio button selection in the Site Admin menu of the component.
Did you try searching the community?
This thread might be worth you reading , it will allow you to make the site completely private to all but registered logged in users, or a variation on ‘All’ if you wanted to show certain pages.
https://buddypress.org/community/groups/how-to-and-troubleshooting/forum/topic/how-to-make-a-private-community/?topic_page=2&num=15#post-44616
@psycolor: public group activities (e.g. joining a group, creating a group, posting updates) should appear in the standard activity stream. Which activities are not showing for you?
To hide private group activity from the activity stream – follow the instructions I gave for excluding blogs in this thread: https://buddypress.org/community/groups/how-to-and-troubleshooting/forum/topic/need-exclude-parameter-for-bp_has_activities/
Check whether the activity item action is group related, then use the primary id of the item to get the group_id, and then check whether it is one of your private groups.
As per my comment on blogs, you can do this for all activity loops by using the filter, or on a loop by loop basis.
@Ryan Try this plugin BuddyPress Profile Privacy see if that is what you looking for as I am using it and has settings you are looking for.
Yeah, we know. @jeffsayre‘s been working on a plugin to address this critical hole in BP. During the developer chat today Jeff guestimated that after 1.2.6 makes it out the door the BP Privacy will make it’s appearance about a week later.
So in short, there’s no fast fix. Personally I’d recommend either warning people to use the site at their own risk or to take it offline. I know what it’s like, my community has been stalled for the last few months waiting for a Privacy plugin before we go on a recruiting push.
Came here looking for a solution and found this thread 
Ah well.
I may go with this plugin. Anyone try this ?
https://buddypress.org/community/groups/buddypress-group-email-subscription/
@rogercoathup Happy to talk privately about why I opted to block the person in question from buddypress.org. Don’t want to air the dirty laundry but rest assured it takes quite a bit to get to that point.
@paulhastings0 Very little ‘risk’ but you’re on the right track. IMO one of the harder things about running such a large project is deciding what belongs in the core and why. It’s something that Andy was really strict about and did a great job of training me on because I was anxious to learn and asked for feedback with every patch I submitted for more than a complete calendar year before asking if he could use more ‘official’ help. You can look back through my commit history and see a few blunders here and there, as they’re fairly easy to make when you’re bouncing between installations. Every one of the guys you mentioned (including @cnorris23 and a few others) are the top of the list of being considered for core commit access. You could say it’s the next step on the ladder for each of these guys and they all deserve the promotion fairly equally.
If/when it comes time, it will be a hard decision to make. 
@metakappa The activity component needs to be matched up with the Activity Streams standard asap, and we’ll hopefully be able to do that in 1.3.
@intimez If you block search engines, your site is set to private, and blog posts and comments won’t appear in the stream. Make sure the option to make your blog public is the one selected.
It’s possible, but would probably require hacking the core.
I don’t have time to look into this, but I would also suggest taking a closer look at /bp-groups/bp-groups-templatetags.php as well.
Look for private and group statuses in that file.
thanks for the help with the admin issue @r-a-y…would you or anyone else have a possible solution for this?
@r-a-y
I am trying to make a group for “American Restaurants” and I want everyone to be able to see the content of the group, but only accounts which are actually restaurants to be able to request an invitation and join
