BuddyPress.org

…is a bit irritating, finally that feature exists already in a standard BP wordpress version.

If you’re referring to the Visibility checkbox feature – Private means only viewable by admins and editors.
https://en.support.wordpress.com/post-visibility/

@fscbmwcca

thanks for the comment. If I understand correctly then the option:
allows an admin to select which Post types and BuddyPress Components are private
seems to indicate that things like the activity component or the member community component
could be set private.
Did you test the plugin?

The sentence:
provides a Private checkbox in the upper right corner of every page, post, and custom post type selected in Settings

is a bit irritating, finally that feature exists already in a standard BP wordpress version.
That is at least in my BP wordpress version you can already mark
pages as private (i.e. non accessible to non-logged-in members),
i.e. there is already a checkbox. And if there wouldn’t be the bug then
setting the member page and activity to private would have set “the component” to
private, if I understood correctly.
Is the plugin checkbox another checkbox?

There is a plugin which, by its description, seems to set everything private:
https://wordpress.org/plugins/buddypress-members-only/
and which lets you specify which subadresses should be open.
But in my case this is not so helpful because
I want the blog to be public and the blog is not behind a /blog/ adress
but behind the year /2015/… etc.
so I would need to set each year adress open, which seems OK but not really
straightforward.

Did you flush all caches?
Before and after making any changes via the BP Simple Private plugin?
If you want to discuss further, please contact me via the info in my profile on this site.

By ‘private’, you mean only visible to logged-in users?

If so, this may solve your issue:

http://www.philopress.com/products/bp-simple-private/

or

https://wordpress.org/plugins/bp-simple-private/

I installed BP Simple Private it seems to let you mark pages as private and if not logged in it redirects the page. I am only testing now and seems to be working. What I ultimately want to do is exclude “Subscribers” from BuddyPress and bbPress. Haven’t found how to do that yet.

Hello Brajesh Singh and Engine44

I am a newcomer to buddypress and I think I had similar problems as Engine44.
Frankly I could imagine that there are more people who have this
problem but eventually don’t even realize it as a problem.
In particular I can’t imagine that all that bp networks which
are used by schools want to have kids discuss in public. So it might
be a severe problem. But as said I am a newcomer so I might easily be
wrong.

The following concerns mostly the member and activity pages (I hope they are called
this way, this is a direct translation from german), which are either set
public -or if set private can’t be found anymore (which seems to kill more or less all major bp functions, like you can’t see profile etc.) I haven’t looked into groups yet.

I asked a person for help who is pretty proficient in solving general programming
problems but who is not a programmer and in particular not a PHP programmer. So eat with
utmost caution.

He came up with the following hack:
The activity and member pages need to be public in order to assign them
on the bp page. (I think this is the default upon installation)
Then set the pages to private.

go to buddypress/bp-core/bp-core-functions.php
and then in function bp_core_get_directory_pages() {…

change

$page_names = $wpdb->get_results( „SELECT ID, post_name, post_parent, post_title FROM {$posts_table_name} WHERE ID IN ({$page_ids_sql}) AND post_statues = ‘publish’ ” );

into

// temporary hack
if ( is_user_logged_in() ) {
$page_names = $wpdb->get_results( “SELECT ID, post_name, post_parent, post_title FROM {$posts_table_name} WHERE ID IN ({$page_ids_sql}) ” );
} else {
$page_names = $wpdb->get_results( “SELECT ID, post_name, post_parent, post_title FROM {$posts_table_name} WHERE ID IN ({$page_ids_sql}) AND post_statues = ‘publish’ ” );
}
// was:
// $page_names = $wpdb->get_results( “SELECT ID, post_name, post_parent, post_title FROM {$posts_table_name} WHERE ID IN ({$page_ids_sql}) AND post_statues = ‘publish’ ” );
// /temporary hack

If you are taking this topic to a private channel, then this topic will be closed. Please remember that public forums are intended for open topics where the help may benefit others, also the referenced issue is a third party plugin, not BuddyPress the correct avenue of help would be the plugins WP support forum normally.

BP Simple Private is not that granular – it makes all Profile pages either public or private.
And, more importantly, it only affects users who are not logged in.

BP Simple Private might be helpful?

For handling strictly non-logged-in users, this free plugin is now available here:
BP Simple Private

And it will be in the WP Plugin Repo in a day or two.

A premium version of the plugin is available here:
BP Simple Private Pro

@garprogram – This fatal error is due to some changes we made in BP v2.4.0 to give users proper feedback messages when a private message fails to send.

It looks like we might have to add some additional hooks so plugin devs can set the error message.

In the meantime, here are two things I would recommend:

1. Use the 'bp_messages_recipients' filter instead of using the 'messages_message_before_save' action:
https://buddypress.trac.wordpress.org/browser/tags/2.4.0/src/bp-messages/bp-messages-actions.php?marks=77-84#L77

2. As Henry mentioned, if you have to unset one recipient, you should unset all of the recipients to avoid the message from sending. The default error message will probably not suit your needs, so you might have to filter the error message with the 'gettext' filter temporarily until we introduce better error handling for plugin developers.

After a particular member has reached the 1 private group limit, you’d probably want to stop the member:

• requesting to join a new private group
• from being invited to join a private group
• from creating a new private group

You mention the member can belong to multiple public groups so your checks should be specific for private groups (also note there is a hidden group type).

With reference to what hook to use, you’d probably need to use 3 different hooks depending on the actions mentioned above. Take a look through bp-groups/bp-groups-functions.php to start with to see what’s available.

Hey @alessandrat

Welcome to the BuddyPress forum!

1. Have two separate front ends for different user types (with differently configured profiles), appearances, and accesses.

Yes. This can be done with either a plugin (try searching the Plugin Directory) or coded through the Member Types feature introduced in version 2.2.

2. Have a place where shortcode could be put in so that users can take a questionnaire containing likert questions on their profile and/or while creating their profile.

Either a post, page or perhaps even an activity update all spring to mind as possible places to add it.

3. One but not both kinds of users can create their own group (public, semiprivate or private) or forum and browse/ join existing ones

The ability for all members to create new groups comes as standard.

4. One kind of user but not the other needs to be able to set up ways for the other type of user to purchase products (I assume I can use another plugin but will need a place to put the shortcode)

This will need to be either custom coded, or you may find a plugin with the functionality you need.

Hope this info helps!

$ud is a WP_User object of the person who is receiving the message. So:

function filter_private_message_email_body( $email_content, $sender_name, $subject, $content, $message_link, $settings_link, $ud ) {

    $content = wp_trim_words( $content, 15 );

    $email_content = sprintf( __(
'Dear %1$s,
%2$s sent you a new message:
Subject: %3$s
"%4$s"
To view and read your messages please log in and visit: %5$s
---------------------
', 'buddypress' ), $sender_name, $subject, $content, $message_link, $ud->user_login );

    return $email_content;
}
add_filter( 'messages_notification_new_message_message', 'filter_private_message_email_body', 10, 7 );

@niranjanchouhan – given that sweetdate is a premium theme, you will need to contact those theme developers for support with issues like that.

In 99% of cases around here (at buddypress dot org) you will find no help with premium themes and plugins. There are many reasons for that. People posting questions about premium accounts and premium themes just waste space here and get people kind of.. not happy.

I have been looking at some options to restrict private messaging to certain groups of users, and there was a recent form post here about limited certain groups of users to a certain amount of private messaging. Which I think are great topics.. however the only options I have seen with details on doing that are premium / paid options.

If you find a free plugin or code that gets into these kinds of restrictions I’d love to see that conversation here at the BP forums.. however if you only have experience with that one theme, then I’ll pass. I’m looking for something like that that will work with multiple themes.

Hi
in short everything you have asked can be done.

But I’m a little bias as I honestly believe regarding technology there is nothing that can’t be achieved it just comes down to how much time and budget you have to invest… 🙂

Below is a bit of a ramble…. But might provide insight. after you organize your coffee and come back.

I have nearly completed a project that sounds similar in nature (few weeks from launch in final beta testing), however it was a highly customised solution (private membership site) .
With nearly 70 plugins, 100’s hours coding integration code (lots of trial and error) between the plugins and also compatibility tests with multiples of plugins to ensure no issues, because of slow load times the project requires deploying from CDN,fast servers and customised caching solutions.
most of work load appeasr to be bbpress – so an near out of the box solution, you prob don’t need to go that far.

But not to scare you. Here are some pointers that might answer your questions, based on my understanding of the OP.

In my case I spent many months researching solutions with many platforms (open source / paid / managed premium) – buddy press was selected simply because is built on WordPress that’s already has the core abilities you need, you just need to “hook in to’em” and take advantage of this concept – you can keep working on bettering and adding separate components / features as time goes by, great for client, works out a bit cheaper in the startup phase and great for developer – land ya self a permanent support / ongoing development contract……

Is it possible to update profile content/meta? : In general yes, buddy press allows this out of the box

Either the user or the admin can update, you can have admin only fields (the user doesn’t access them – but the admin can)
if you use a membership plugin eg, s2member – you can extend this idea much further eg, only require email on signup, then all other fields are accessible from profile and can set fields on a per membership level,

In your case, you might have different profile fields for students, teachers, Parents and only require a couple of basic fields to be completed on signup and all other fields can still be “required” when they reach their profile page.
For profile field management I recommend the s2membership pro plugin (free version available) http://s2member.com/

My project has a “todo list” for each and every member – however I’m still to this day unable to find a plugin that interacts with a completed wp/bbp/buddypress site. So I had to code one. The todo list was designed / engineered in a way that interacts with “wordpress” in general, by storing a completely unique data feed much like the activity feed with time stamps and can be programmed to be linked to any site link, media download, page view, forum post, reply any activity on the site can be logged and applied to the feed which the to-do-list interacts with and auto completing (crossing of the item) each item also has dependencies, so you rattle off a list of activities before the task is crossed off and each to-do-list also has dependencies so it is not seen by a user until certain tasks are completed, eg, purchase a course from the store, or complete a previous to-do-list.

In short: Yes it can be done, however I’m not aware of any 3rd party plugin that does this successfully.

In my case I have the to-do-list shown in the sidebar so as a member goes through the tasks the list is also available to them no matter what page they are on. But possible to publish it in the profile page if required.

Regarding email notices, I recommend looking into the woo commerce sensei http://www.woothemes.com/products/sensei/ plugin for your courses that way you have management of email notices, in fact prob most of the things you require will be available via sensei – note this is a premium paid plugin with yearly ongoing licence costs.
Without a free trial version to try before you buy.

But maybe gravity forms developer licence might be fine in your case as it has, gateway plugins, qiz and survey plugins – it would be possible to build certain simple courses on the gravity framework including delivery of custom emails – if building a form based system than certainly worth a look into – but would require a developers licence to get all the plugins you would prob require.

In fact what I do is use gravity forms email chimp plugin to send the members email address to an email list (automation campaign) in mail chimp (paid account) that auto sends a welcome emails that I have customize to suit the activity they have completed, this way I can send pretty html + marketing emails + scheduled follow up emails and take the work load off WordPress other than a quick API connect on demand.

Regarding: is it possible to have multiple logins or users access the same account/profile?
In simple: Yes, but it all comes to context of the profile, will each member be able to see other members profiles or will parents be able to edit a child profile etc.

Although my project does not require the need for 2 or more members to edit a single profile, I do have multiple levels of context (horizontal and vertical memberships) all with their own set of rules who profiles they can see and what buddypress features are available to them – some members don’t have activity feeds or messages, But I needed to ensure that members that do have access to these features can’t access the features of cross membership and so on.

This is 100% custom code (no plugin) but while coding this up I recall thinking I’m 100% confident it is possible to add another level of check “if current user can edit displayed user” and go from there, all you would need is a profile field / meta that links multiple accounts together –
Eg, a parent account has a profiled field “child user name” – they just enter the child username / user ID – and now we would add the profile check if a parent is viewing the child’s profile.

Regarding paying a deposit, and payment, this is my findings.

There was no single one membership / payment plugin that integrated perfectly into what I wished to achieve – I have tested many. please note I’m suggesting there are no plugins that do this stuff just none that achieved the outcomes I needed for my project.

– Tips: – start the project design based on the payment systems / gateway (the complete project and direction of development is 100% dependent on this) because the simple reason every feature you implement needs to check “is a paid member and what level (cap / role) ” – including free membership with paid features “is not a paid member” but has paid for… this includes recurring and non-recurring subscriptions with consideration of what you intend to do if a subscription expires.

Eg, a recurring subscription will either just auto subscribe and pay for the next time frame (or fail)
A non-reoccurring subscription will auto expire after a given time frame (or X cycles)

The difference between to the two –
Is generally on a recurring subscription when it expires it also linked to a member account to “do something” eg downgrade membership

A non-recurring subscription is generally used for a onetime payment you have access forever feature- eg, a course and resources, you pay once on a deposit, subscription over several weeks when the subscription expires the member still has access to the course as long as they remain at minimum a free member on the site. (anyhow that’s how I have implemented things)

These two concepts are completely different in the way they interact with the member as well at many levels although on the surface appear to be almost the same, add in a deposit feature you are also opening another level of context to play with, mostly limiting the available options regarding the payment gateway service you will need to use or more so which services have this feature on offer.

As mentioned – my suggestion is start with the gateway solutions first and reverse the design back to the front end. – this is the big lesson I took away with this project (4 rewrites in total) as it was always a block relating to the gateway limitations (and laws relating to online subscriptions in my country).

My project:
Woo commerce (free) for shopping cart system including purchase of courses, subscription to site and deposit/ subscription to courses, plus all other products, deliverable products, workshops, webinars, one on one sessions, resource downloads from pdf to videos. Anything you can think off can be sold through woo

Woo commerce quick cart – plugin (paid)– now I can add a buy now button on any page for any product including subscriptions – the membership info page has a standard 3 column price comparison chart with nothing more than a “sign up now” button – clicking the button auto adds the subscription to cart and opens the checkout popup with one click and without leaving the page (no need to send to store)

Sensei (paid)– for courses and fits well into woo commerce system (but requires a couple more plugins and custom integration code if implementing paid / subscription based courses )

Groups plugin (free) to easily manage roles and caps (as I have to teach client staff how to do this and manage the site) WordPress has this capability built in if your a coding ninja (I’m not)

Groups Woo commerce (paid plugin) to link groups to a purchase – apply a role / cap or groups of, to a user based on the purchase.

Then some custom code is required – to perform a check and if a user has a particular role or cap than apply the s2membership level – this check is done at the store level so if a member cancels or defaults on a payment – the membership level is auto adjusted depending on what role or cap is supplied to the user from the groups woo commerce automation. groups plugin manages non-recurring subscriptions so a expired subscription does not remove the users caps and roles (but a default on payment does)

S2member pro – for membership level management including profile fields management and most importantly complete site access management – I can apply access to each and every competent of the site this includes , forums, topics, replies, posts, pages, media, courses, and content within pages eg, home page displays different content based on the membership level / logged in or general public. s2member pro is also used to override default bbpress / buddy visibility settings eg, hidden forums only available to certain member levels – but requires custom code to apply or traverse access levels on submitting topics / replies to ensure widgets and other snippets don’t display private areas to members that don’t have access. (it allows you to write custom queries with zero concern or consideration to access levels)

For subscriptions (paid)– I use woo commerce Subscriptions plugin – this manages on its own site access based on paid recurring subscriptions (or in simple turns on or off user account based on payment) – pay x amount monthly to access certain site features, courses and resources, forums, pages, blog articles etc.

However – woo commerce subscriptions does not manage deposit / time based subscriptions (non-recurring subscriptions) eg, pay a deposit for a course and gain instant access then pay off on a subscription for x amount of weeks / months –
I was not able to find any plugin (free or paid) that does this, so I had to write a plugin currently under experimental concept stage.

Other tips: often it’s better to find compatible, well supported and pay for premium plugins that have overlapping features and disengage these features you don’t want to achieve your goals and do as little integration code as possible, but anything you do needs to be well planned and though out as to not to touch core code in any platform, framework or plugin.
At the end of the day you want the ability to upgrade all systems as time go by.

Eg, s2member plugin has its build in membership system that is “required to be active” for the plugin to work. – all I did was setup a single paid (never to be used membership) on a paypal sandbox store this includes setting up all the s2membership registration pages etc – then put a simple redirect in the .htaccess on any of these pages. Now to purchase membership you must go to the store (woo commerce) and purchase a subscription via woo – s2member has now has nothing to do with membership registration / payment systems.

And of course I have “force account creation” turned on at the store – you cannot make a purchase without signup at a minimum free site membership.
by disengaging the buddy, bbp, Wp, and all other means of registering (by redirect) but only leaving the woo commerce customer account registration available – The pop up registration form I use for free members is just a woocommerce customer account registration form (with no products attached) with a fallback to the s2membership cut down reg form (in case ajax / jquery etc not working on client side)

And now all purchases, subscriptions, shop account, courses etc are now available from the buddy press profile page also via a “woo to buddypress” plugin (or in my case built into the theme)

May sound complicated but as mentioned I would really suggest starting with payment solutions and nut out this part of the project first as this will most likely force development direction,

one of my project goals was a solution that can cater for anything…. so,

Regarding variable deposit / costs amounts based on user input – if using similar approach as I did – you would just setup woo commerce discount codes per variable outcome / result and would just reveal the correct coupon code to the user on the checkout page. they just cut and paste this code into the discount field and click apply.

or setup up multi products – one product per price base. – have the user input their details first and the result would be – apply a groups cap / role then only offer the courses products in the store with the associated price base based on user caps / role –

woo discount coupons can be setup on multiple bases – eg, deposit amount / on going subscription amount or total amount or per product or per cart total etc.

for me was plenty of research into this including concept builds of other community platforms and as above is only a bit of a sample of features used relating to the OP.
I was under very strict key point goals and achievements requiring very specific outcomes many of these affected development direction how / why I implemented the above.

There may be better simpler ways to suit your specific project, but thought it might be worth a mention for some direction. or at least insight into some of the plugins I use / ideas and concepts.

my usual disclaimer – if there is something in there for you, that’s great! if not that’s fine too!

enjoy!

ok I had a quick look at this – I’m unable to make change – eg, login as a “non-admin” user, update profile including trying to edit a field – no change,

login as admin – and edit change the individual profile file visibility settings, save and then revert back and save again – no change,

still able to change visibility settings from the front end (profile page)

Not sure if its just me, I can’t seem to find the “default visibility settings” either from the admin dashboard – not sure if its gone, moved, or I’m missing something.

for now – I’ll just override the profile loop template in the child theme and remove the change settings links and remove the visibility tab completely – in my case I really don’t need these to be changed by users as site is a private members site –

but mentioned it, as it did appeared as a bug + original mention of the same issue.

cheers,