BuddyPress.org

For the use case I have in mind, I am very interested in how blog posts appear in the activity stream.

At around 15:45 GMT, I made a test post on one of my testbp.org blogs:

http://donnacha.testbp.org/2009/12/01/blog-post-activity-stream-test/

… but it did not appear in the activity stream on the testbp.org homepage, not even with the stream filtered to “Blog Activity Only”.

I noticed that the most recent blog post appearing in the stream was written 3 days, 19 hours ago – could it be that there is a substantial delay before blog posts appear in the stream?

I also noticed that the blog post has not appeared in my own profile page’s stream either.

It might be the case that, when I set up the blog, there might have been some option I took that renders all of that blog’s posts private, which might be preventing them from appearing in the streams, but I can’t remember doing so and, now, I cannot find any option to make all posts public.

@Andy… interesting view on posting on other people’s profiles. Maybe I just suggested that because I’m so used to it on Facebook. But you may be right. I know I find it weird when I view someone’s wall and it’s full of stuff like “Hey… call me tonight… 456-7890”. Seems more appropriate for that stuff to be private direct messages.

But I think you could argue the point either way.

On another issue… one thing I find slightly confusing about the new model is “comment” and “reply”. I wonder if threading in the activity feed is a bit of overkill? I think it could just be flat… just “comment” only. Not reply. But I’d be interested to hear your thinking on this too. After all… I’m sure your goal is not to simple recreate Facebook.

I think users should somehow be able to write messages on other users profile. (Not just through the private messaging system).

I somehow like how Facebook works where you can write messages on users profile – via the activity stream or ‘a wire’ – I don’t really care!

The point is, I think it’s a nice feature if you want to write “specific messages for specific users” and you don’t want the messages to be 100% private (like through the messaging system).

Others should be able to see the personal message as well if they go visit that profile. (It does not necessary needs to be part of the Site Wide activity stream. Maybe if you could even choose if it should or not).

The Wire was like a guestbook and I kinda liked that. And I thought the activity stream commenting would somehow melt together with The Wire. Or maybe there’s a better solution for this.

I’m sure Andy will find the best solution for this.

Whatever you call it… I think we still need a way to create a new comment on someone’s “wall”, “wire”, “stream”… whatever. I LOVE the new model. It makes so much more sense to be able to comment directly on content in the stream. But there still needs to be a way to go to someone’s profile and say something new like “Hey… are we still on for tonight” or whatever. Otherwise the only way to address someone directly regarding something new is to use private messaging.

That’s the one, if you turn that to private then it will stop showing in the stream.

You could make the blog private?

I wish I could but unfortunately it will take some times for me and my guys to get other customized plugin to work with the new release as we all have been playing with the current version which we had going in to for quite some time.

Yeah, I know the latest version has the solution but I really hope for a technical solution (hacking the core files i guess?) which will solve the problem logically.

Anyway, the variable $topic which I debugged through in the bp-groups.php file was not holding any value which I might suspected to be the source of the problem:

function groups_new_group_forum_topic( $topic_title, $topic_text, $topic_tags, $forum_id ) {

global $group_obj, $bp;



if ( $topic = bp_forums_new_topic( $topic_title, $topic_text, $topic_tags, $forum_id ) ) {

bp_core_add_message( __( 'Topic posted successfully!', 'buddypress') );



/* Record in activity streams */

groups_record_activity( array( 'item_id' => $group_obj->id, 'component_name' => $bp->groups->slug, 'component_action' => 'new_forum_topic', 'is_private' => 0, 'secondary_item_id' => $topic['topic_id'] ) );



do_action( 'groups_new_forum_topic', $group_obj->id, $topic );



return $topic;

}

bp_core_add_message( __( 'There was an error posting that topic.', 'buddypress'), 'error' );

return false;

}

Anyone have ideas what the $topic variable does?

Just tried out Mingle and I’m very impressed with it, especially at the fact that it’s such a young plugin.

Mingle’s activity stream and commenting is the way BuddyPress should have done it.

I’ve never understood why status updates and the wire are considered separate.

Mingle also has basic out-of-the-box privacy features so you can choose if your profile is visible to your friends only or to the public.

The author of the plugin is Blair Williams, who has also made the excellent Pretty Link plugin.

No sitewide activity stream, pretty permalink support for user profiles, private messages support, or groups, but that’s understandable.

So far I like Mingle because it’s simple and I hope it stays that way.

It’s not enough to jump ship from BP, but it’s definitely a plugin to keep an eye on.

!!!!!

I was able to correct this problem with some mods to the welcome-pack.php file.

And I must preface this by saying that this fix is a hack. I am really not that familiar with the plugin and don’t know that my changes won’t result in some problem.

Basically, it appeared that none of the following functions were using the $meta value being passed in. So, I removed it. Here is the simple change. For each of these three, around lines 74, 102 and 132, respectively – change them from this:

function dp_welcomepack_welcomemessage( $user_id, $password, $meta )

function dp_welcomepack_defaultfriend( $user_id, $password, $meta )

function dp_welcomepack_defaultgroup( $user_id, $password, $meta )

to this:

function dp_welcomepack_welcomemessage( $user_id, $password )

function dp_welcomepack_defaultfriend( $user_id, $password )

function dp_welcomepack_defaultgroup( $user_id, $password )

NEW!!!: Change the following lines in “dp_welcomepack_onuserandblogregistration” from this:

—

dp_welcomepack_defaultfriend( $user_id, $password, $meta );

dp_welcomepack_defaultgroup( $user_id, $password, $meta );

dp_welcomepack_welcomemessage( $user_id, $password, $meta );

—

to this:

—

if(is_array($user_id)){

$user_id = implode($user_id);

}

dp_welcomepack_defaultfriend( $user_id, $password );

dp_welcomepack_defaultgroup( $user_id, $password );

dp_welcomepack_welcomemessage( $user_id, $password );

—

That will correct your undefined argument problems and should solve your array problem. Note!!! I am not entirely sure why the user_id value was being converted to an array in the first place, so, make these changes with that in mind. I don’t believe it will be a problem but it is possible that somehow you might get an actual array of more than one value and that would be an issue. One way to check this that I did not add would be to get an array count if it is an array and only set the value if it’s equal to 1.

If for some reason you are experiencing other problems, feel free to message me privately and I can investigate further.

I have thought about this as it pertains to the activity feed and the privacy component properly excludes a member’s activity stream for those activities they’ve indicated they wish to be made private.

It isn’t possible without some kind of plugin, but it is possible with one.

You would want to take a look at the buddypress/bp-forums/ directory to see how forums are created within BuddyPress to begin with, and modify that existing code in your own plugin to modify that behavior and turn it into what you’re trying to accomplish.

The code is in there to do what you want, you just need to make it do it.

i set my wordpress timezone to ‘Chicago’ to fix this. not ideal at all/ i’ve yet to see what effect this has on the rest of the site.

Some form of media manager/gallery is a future BuddyPress feature. Until that is made available, you will have to look to 3rd-party solutions.

Just be aware of the issue of licensing when using Kaltura. Although Kaltura.org is self-described as open source video, and in fact its component code is licensed under GPL3, when you use the hosted solution–that is you are not storing your users’ media on your own server but instead on a Kaltura Media Network server–then all of your users’ content is automatically made available under the Creative Commons 3.0 license. See this Kaltura forum thread:

• http://www.kaltura.org/how-do-you-protect-my-video-public-usage

What does this mean? Well, it means you better clearly state to all your members that anything they upload via your site will automatically get licensed under CC 3.0. This means it will be freely available to anyone else to see and to use as they see fit within the CC licensing specifications.

That may not seem like a big deal to you if you are a fan of CC, but you should not assume that all your members will think the same way or necessarily want their content to be made available for free use.

Thankfully, there is a solution. If your using the self-hosted version of Kaltura.org–Kaltura Community Edition (CE)–then you can set the licensing rights for all member-submitted content. This means you can effectively control the privacy of your members’ content if that is important to you, your site, and your members.

If you choose to use Kaltura CE for your site, then you will need to make sure that you have sufficient storage and bandwidth to meet the needs of your site. Also, I have no idea of what kind of tech support Kaltura offers users of the CE version.

Finally, Kaltura is a for-profit company who is freely offering an open source media hosting solution via their kaltura.org site. They do offer premium services as well. So, if you have the budget, you can purchase a premium account to make all your users’ content private. At least that is what was indicated in the thread response in the first link above. You can visit http://corp.kaltura.com/solutions/video_solution for more information.

Note: look at the footer on the above Kaltura link to see how they handle the CC issue. I would argue that you would also want to make the CC issue very clear in any TOS and actually right under any media “Upload” link.

I just came to your profile to request friending, and you’d sent one to me already! For some reason Private Messaging seems to be broken here at the moment.

One other thing I just noticed — I don’t see a Links filter button on my Sitewide Activity widget, but there’s one on your site… Is there a config page I missed somewhere or maybe a small bug?

hey my friends, I am not able to send a Private-Mail via this website buddypress.org , even not to my BP-friends….. could you please fix this ?

@JJJ

I am using the latest FireFox-browser, but I am quite sure this is not related to the browser being used. The PM-system has worked fine previously, something must have happened in the meantime……

Thanx

Private messages?

At the moment the easiest way to do this is to mark the blog as private. The adverse effect to this is that blog doesn’t show up in search engine results or anywhere else in your BuddyPress installation either.

Check the trac and see if there’s an enhancement ticket for this yet. If not, let us know this is something you’re interested in and maybe it will make it into a future version.