BuddyPress.org

I’ve just posted this to the WPMU forums, but it’s just as relevant here: Regarding dsader’s more privacy options plugin…

“I’m testing this plugin on a WPMU 2.7 and BuddyPress (both from SVN) installation. It can turn BuddyPress into a private social network quite simply by making the main/first blog private. However, there’s one issue I can see:

the ../activity/feed RSS feed is private when the ‘main’ blog is private.

But, member’s activity feeds i.e. ../members/josswinn/activity/feed remains public.

Any way to fix this? I appreciate that the plugin wasn’t written to support BuddyPress, but it’s so close to working well on BuddyPress that it would be good to look at this and provide a way to create truely close BuddyPress networks.

Thanks!”

I’ve since found that this is happening to me on a site installed in a sub-dir but not on an install using wildcard DNS/sub-domain. Can anyone verify this?

Great to hear bluocean!

Good for you!

That’s very reassuring that you’re using dsaders privacy plugin, too. Nice to see such a simple solution already exists to provide private BuddyPress communities while not affecting the privacy of individual’s blogs. In education, I can see this being very attractive. Hopefully Andy is aware of this for future core feature development.

I’ve not tested it extensively yet, but this plugin:

http://wpmudev.org/project/More-Privacy-Options

seems to allow the blocking of all users, except the registered community, from viewing anything related to buddypress.

If I set “I would like my blog to be visible only to registered users from blog community” for the main/first blog where all the buddypress features sit, then you have to login before being able to see anything except for blogs, which have their own privacy options.

Is it really this simple to create a private social networking community but allow the blog privacy to remain under the control of the blog owner? I hope so. Perhaps someone can test and verify this?

Thanks.

Good idea for new plugins..

Use a hidden group. Site admins can invite but not add without acceptance. You could write a plugin to do that though.

Lets get the general public forum working, before we get greedy. I do like the idea, but for the general good I think you could just form your own cult group, make it private and be good.

Please post any progress you make on the privatization of group forums, I would like to do something so I don’t have to maintain 2 installs of bbpress.

Thanks,

Brad

http://gorgeousgamers.com/beta/

I thought about doing the same thing. I setup 2 instances of bbpress. One for groups and one for ‘the community’. The groups forums were hidden. I didn’t like it too much. I wanted the public groups to be public forums but read only until users joined a group. I also wanted the private and hidden groups to have hidden forums.

See this thread: https://buddypress.org/forums/topic.php?id=696

Hopefully this will make sense

I have 4 directories, which I download the svn update to, and then copy them over to the live site:

/bbpresssvn

/buddypresssvn

/wordpresssvn

/privatedevsvn

By logging into the command line, I can do this

svn up

inside each of those 4 folders and it will update them to the newest trunk release. Then I run this command (or similar for buddypress)

cp -R * ../beta

and copy the files to the dev server. So far this has worked really well.

The private dev svn is where I upload my own plugins and themes I’m doing development on. This method is extremely fast as I never have to ftp any files between the internet, my laptop and back up to the web server. It does require command line access and knowledge of svn.

Hope this helps,

Brad

http://gorgerousgamers.com/beta

I have exactly the same issue here. Don’t know why, but at my test setup (http://www.dutch-dig.com) the blog entries at http://robert.dutch-dig.com are not shown in robert’s user profile. At first the blog was set to private. I’ve changed that to public and still roberts blog is not shown.

I plan on hacking up something that doesn’t cache private blogs as well since right now wp-super-cache will cache private blogs and then show them from cache to the public. I just have an array in my wp-config.php right now for private blogs, but that isn’t a long-term solution. It would be nice to cache members and groups though.

Well, as the developer for http://gorgeousgamers.com/beta/ I figured I should answer this question.

I have 2 instances running of bbpress, 1 is .com/beta/forum/ and the other is in a different location. Currently it is not safe to combine them, as private groups would be visible to all members, which is still an issue but would be harder to find these hidden forums.

The menu bar, which lists the general forum is actually as simple as uncommenting the code in the header.php file in home theme.

I’m still not sure if I should theme bbpress to match the site, or modify a copy of the groups forum tools to allow general discussion. This wouldn’t be a quick development, but would be easier down the road as the theme develops.

Thanks,

Brad

http://gorgeousgamers.com/beta/

@burtadsit

Another alternative instead of separating WPMU & bbpress capabilities: you can assign specific user meta for each users. Say, the meta value is an array containing all forum ID that specific user belongs to. Of course you need to write some hack to the bbPress side as well. That way you can share both public & private forums in a single bbpress install.

Just an idea. I haven’t look into the code too

Do you have phpMyAdmin running? Can you go to it or whatever Database admin program that your host gives you and then run the following command on your database?

CREATE TABLE wp_user_3_activity (

id int(11) NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT PRIMARY KEY,

item_id int(11) NOT NULL,

secondary_item_id int(11),

user_id int(11) NOT NULL,

component_name varchar(75) NOT NULL,

component_action varchar(75) NOT NULL,

date_recorded datetime NOT NULL,

is_private tinyint(1) NOT NULL,

KEY item_id (item_id),

KEY user_id (user_id),

KEY is_private (is_private),

KEY component_name (component_name)

)

See if it will actually create the tables manually?

Alrighteethen, I’ve given up on a reg form on a custom login page.

Even simpler, from a code standpoint is a message on the login page that says “This is a private site. To join, please email the site administrator.” with a spam-proof mailto link. I can then manually sign them up. Pretty clunky, but it sounds like BP will be better at this kind of thing someday soon.

Is this creating the problem: “DEFAULT CHARACTER SET utf8” ??

From the Apache error log, this is the same syntax error I saw earlier when BP was trying to create tables (see earlier posts):

[suexec 11180] Chdir to /kunden/homepages/14/d123456789/htdocs/exploreouroceans

[suexec 11180] Executing PHP4 /usr/lib/cgi-bin/php4 /kunden/homepages/14/d123456789/htdocs/exploreouroceans/index.php

WordPress database error You have an error in your SQL syntax. Check the manual that corresponds to your MySQL server version for the right syntax to use near ‘DEFAULT CHARACTER SET utf8’ at line 14 for query CREATE TABLE wp_user_3_activity (

id int(11) NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT PRIMARY KEY,

item_id int(11) NOT NULL,

secondary_item_id int(11),

user_id int(11) NOT NULL,

component_name varchar(75) NOT NULL,

component_action varchar(75) NOT NULL,

date_recorded datetime NOT NULL,

is_private tinyint(1) NOT NULL,

KEY item_id (item_id),

KEY user_id (user_id),

KEY is_private (is_private),

KEY component_name (component_name)

) DEFAULT CHARACTER SET utf8; made by dbdelta

Here is the plugin to moderate new blogs: http://wpmudev.org/project/Moderate-New-Blogs

But I don’t believe there is one to moderate new users. There is a hack for WPMU that does not work for BP because BP overrides WPMUs registration/activation process. I am working on trying to do the hack to BP… but it is not working so far.

I would like to have a private network also. I don’t want the main site to be private, but I want all the members, groups (if I use them), forums, wire activity, etc. to be private.

Regarding the blog privacy, if you set the user blogs to anything but option #1 (google-able), then the blogs don’t show up in BP “blogs” list. I think there needs to be something in the middle here — ie. no search engines can find the blogs, yet members can view the blog lists and browse the blogs.

This is exactly what I’m trying to do – create a private, members-only site that could be either invite-only or have the registrants moderated by the admin. I would think this scenario would be pretty common with many groups – companies, orgs etc.

I’ve spent the past day and a half combing this forum and others looking for the solution. FYI, I’m not a PHP programmer, but I can copy and paste code when necessary. The closest I’ve gotten is with 2 methods:

– the plugin that Trent posted that PW-protects the member pages. It does allow new registrations but it doesn’t protect the home page or the groups.

– the More-Privacy-Options plugin mentioned above, with the “Site can be viewed by registered users only..” option turned on. The problem I’m having with this one is there’s nowhere for new people to apply/register. So if you’re a non-member and you go to any page (including the registration page) you get the login screen, which doesn’t have a Register link. I’m guessing there must be a workaround for this, but haven’t been able to find it yet.

Which brings me to another problem that I’m having, which is how to invite non-members into the site. I’ve got the “Invite Friends” plugin installed and it seems to work ok, but it’s only for the administrator, which is ok for now, but eventually it would be good to be able to allow site members to invite new people in. I see this as an option in the settings, and a link in the Friends sidebar.

Using a common example, Facebook is pretty much doing all of this now. So non-members arrive at the base URL to a landing page with an intro message, where they can register for membership. Plus existing members can invite (via a link in the friends area) non-members to join up.

The WP bridge does not work with MU? It thought it did. I plan on developing that privately if it does not exist, at the very worst, a synchronization of login information.

make sure the blogs are set as public, not private.

i think Trent solution is good but maybe i think in this case doing a plugin is simplier than it :S.. for every update (if you use svn for example), you’ve to reedit the code..

adding a function in your plugin that define if current visitor is logged in ( look at is_admin() for wp and some other bp conditional tags) and define if the visitor can visit pages or not..

i think it’s possible and easy..