BuddyPress.org

@kookidooki
LOL –

There’s no other party involved when using Skype.

I suppose you might also think when you store your documents in one-drive or dropbox that you are the only person who accesses those also. Everything that is typed or said using skype is monitored and recorded for later use by many people, and automatically scanned for certain information of interest to various parties. If your business is selling stationary I guess that may never matter.

If your discussions could be used as leverage in any way by people with different interests, then I would consider a basic encrypted chat service you control. Even using the free firefox “hello” videochat would be better privacy than skype.

I also think you should point out to others in your sites privacy policy that you are sharing their conversations with multiple organizations and agencies when using these third party services out of your control.

Anyone using their site for legal issues, healthcare info, or other private matters should definitive read the policies of any third party messaging services before using them. – Just my humble opinion – I’m not a lawyer or anything.

You could of said skype was private way back in the day before microsoft bought it and changed everything.

as far as using skype for your site, I think that is a short sighted choice – no privacy, no control, dependent upon third parties… I went down that road once, and not getting into that dependency again.

I’m running a business website where face-2-face conversation is important. Skype works fine for me and about the privacy: you decide (and no one else) who you want to join your private or group conversation. There’s no other party involved when using Skype.

BuddyPress use bbPress when you allow group forums.
If the group is private, the attached forum is also hidden ton non members of that group. Same for public or private groups.

You don’t have to change the group forum setting in the forum list.
The right steps
Create a group A
A is set to private
Allow a forum for A
—— The wrong step ——–
Going to dashboard forum admin, and set forum A to private. If you do this nobody will see it except site admin.

Groups

https://buddypress.org/support/topic/hide-buddypress-and-bbpress-items-from-guests/
https://buddypress.org/support/topic/buddypress-private-group-is-not-visible-in-bbpress/

I’m not sure but perhaps it’s related to the private messaging component? I know those URLs look like /members/username/messages/etc..

@danbp I needed your answer 1 year 6 months ago 🙂

Hi @recagenda,

you can’t enable this, because it doesn’t exist. I could be wrong, but so far i know, private conversation are not paginable.

Reference file is bp-templates\bp-legacy\buddypress\members\single\messages\single.php

https://buddypress.org/support/topic/pagination-private-message-thread/ – @henrywright

To create a shortcode, you use the same function as in the mentionned topic and instead echoing, you return what you need. Like this:

function bpfr_message_shortcode() {	
$author = get_the_author();
$message = 'Login to send a message to this author !';

if( is_user_logged_in() ) {
	return '<a href=" '.wp_nonce_url( bp_loggedin_user_domain() . bp_get_messages_slug() . '/compose/?r=' . $author ) .' title="Private Message to Author" ">Contact the author</a>';
 } else {
    return $message;
 }
} 
add_shortcode( 'ksam', 'bpfr_message_shortcode' );

Add this to bp-custom.php or your child-theme functions.php.

Use the shortcode [ksam] at the place you want and you’ll see a Contact the author link.

Note that I tested it only within a post, meaning you need to be in a post loop to fetch an author.

@jordanboon0 – certainly there is more than one way to accomplish what you are proposing here.

My first thought upon reading this is is that you can create a “multi-user blog” with wordpress. Each new artist becomes a “contributor” or even “editor” upon sign up, and they can post a new gallery easily, then your admin(s) can choose what new galleries get published.

You go do all that with a single blog / wordpress install – and do it without buddypress, just make a cool custom author page for whichever theme you want to use.

There are many plugins and settings for things like front end uploads, post author profiles, wordpress gallery fancy stuff and all that.

You could also put buddypress into this mix and give your artists some extra social network stuff like private messages, groups and all that – however if you go with buddypress and and that layer to handle everything (without getting your users to submit posts / pages via standard wordpress) – then you have to get into a media plugin like rtmedia, mediapress, or – another one posted about a month ago.. anyhow – those media plugins are kind of their own “silos” – customizing how they work is not a few wp repo plugins away – and support for what you may want to do with them may be disappointing.

Of course you could take WP, add in BP if you really want the social layer, and still use the main site blog as kind of a “multi-user (or “group” blog) and do it that way.. you could get more complex and turn it into a multi-site install where each user get’s their own unique blog with gallery plugins – but moderation of posts and such with that setup may become more of a challenge – along with the extra headaches with running a multi blog network.

Anyhow – given the details you provided with your stated goals, I would forget about buddypress and multi-site – just install wordpress and do some searches in the wp-repo and themes section for “author pages”, “group blog” “post moderation” “front end uploads” and the various “Gallery” plugins – I think you can accomplish what you are going for pretty easily with lots of customization options.. without all the drawbacks and limitations of BP.

note sure if these work or not – never used them:
https://wordpress.org/plugins/wp-invites/

https://wordpress.org/plugins/buddypress-private-community/

Let me know if you try them and they fail or work!

@mattfl850 – this info will help with that journey:
bottom of the page: https://codex.buddypress.org/getting-started/installation-in-wordpress-multisite/

I am sure this is possible, it’s not the way I would do it… might also want to consider some of the info here: http://halfelf.org/2011/dont-use-wordpress-multisite/ (updated may 2015 😉

Others may agree or disagree, and you may be keeping your server tuned like a well oiled machine – hidden from the SE spiders and brute force attackers and all that.

Of course I am not an expert, or a bp dev or anything – just another user who has tried a few different setups and spent many hours trying to do what it “possible” and should be “simple” – and pulled my hair out trying to make things like that work well :))

Not sure if anything is changed in recent updates, but I will mention that when I did this kind of conversion; I had to install the role scoper plugin (now called press permit) – in order to hide people’s private pics they uploaded – as they were visible in the media gallery for other bp users on my sites who had signed up for a “blog” (not called “site” in multi-site) – that was a painful thing to find out the hard way – maybe things have changed with that and other issues – not sure.

Have fun with that and let me know how it works out for ya!

Hi, sorry if I ask a question here but it is also with regards to adding a Send Private Message button/link.

I would like to add it on the user profile. For example when a user views my profile, he/she can send me a private message through my profile page.

Any help is greatly appreciated. Thank you!