BuddyPress.org

My apologies to all. I found out how to fix the problem of not being able to add additional tabs to the profile section for users on a main social site empowered by BuddyPress. You have to go to WordPress admin > Users > Profile fields and you can add any fields to the profile section of your social site website that is empowered by BuddyPress. This allows users to add their name, bio, location, work, education and anything else you want them to be able to add in their profile on your social site empowered by BuddyPress instead of in the backend of the wordpress page. Also, you can install a plugin that prevents your users from clicking on the dashboard link in top left toolbar and going to backend profile of WordPress, which is called Remove Dashboard access Version 1.1.3 | By Drew Jaynes and can be found at https://wordpress.org/plugins/remove-dashboard-access-for-non-admins/ That said, problem solved and may my solution fix this same users not being able to add more fields in their profile section on a main social website powered by BuddyPress that other admins encounter permanently.

@rsmithgs

You can try the following to limit character length in xprofile fields:

function buddydev_limit_xpfield_length( $validated, $values, $field ) {
	$allowed_len = 0;

	if ( $field instanceof BP_XProfile_Field_Type_Textarea ) {
		$allowed_len = 600;
	} elseif ( $field instanceof BP_XProfile_Field_Type_Textbox ) {
		$allowed_len = 60; 
	}

	if ( $allowed_len ) {
		$validated = strlen( $values ) < $allowed_len;
	}

	return $validated;
}

add_filter( 'bp_xprofile_field_type_is_valid', 'buddydev_limit_xpfield_length', 10, 3 );

It worked for me!

The link in your previously linked solution is broken, but archive.org shows this from March 2, 2017 (https://web.archive.org/web/20170302040249/http://snippetbarn.bp-fr.net/xprofile-field-length-control)

Google Translated to English:

Imagine that you have a profile field containing any biography or presentation and want to display it, at least as an excerpt, on the membership directory.
Let’s imagine you have an xprofile containing a biography that you want to display, even partially, on the members directory.

function bpfr_custom_textfield_length() {  
     
    //Check if user is logged in & if xprofile component is activated
    if ( is_user_logged_in() && bp_is_active( 'xprofile' ) ) : 
        $my_custom_textfield = bp_get_member_profile_data( 'field=Brief Biography&user_id='.bp_get_member_user_id() ); 
     
    /*
     * The length = number of characters, not words.
     * Set the number of caracters to show.
     * The 3 dots are the appended text ending the excerpt.
     * Don't remove the quotes if you change this
     * BuddyPress 2.1 will add new class and id for custom fields.
     * The span can be omited to style this part. See ticket #5741
     */
        if ( strlen($my_custom_textfield) > 20) :  //adjust to your need
            $my_custom_textfield = substr($my_custom_textfield, 20).'...'; //adjust to your need
        endif;
            // uncomment the following line to get a span around the displayed field content
        // echo '<span class="short-custom">'. $my_custom_textfield; .'</span>';
            // comment the following line if you use the span
        echo $my_custom_textfield;
             
 
    endif; // is_user_logged_in
}
add_action( 'bp_directory_members_item', 'bpfr_custom_textfield_length' );

I have not tested this code, just reporting what was originally said to resolve this issue. I am looking to find out if this works as well.

@snorlax775

Did you find a solution for this?

I’m also trying to find a way to limit characters for profile fields.

You could set a profile type as Business and then set profile fields for it that make sense for a business. That’s one option.

One issue people sometime run into is that they want users to have a profile that represents a person, and then also have some business content like listings etc which are associated with that person. So then you’re back to using BuddyPress for the profiles and needing another plugin for the business content.

So it really depends on what you’re trying to do. In most cases I think it’s cleaner to use a listing plugin and have it link to the buddypress profiles as the authors of the business listings.

You could also use Groups to represent businesses. But that makes more sense if they are representing a company with members (employees), like a Facebook page. If you just want “listings” it’s overkill and then you’ve also lost the ability to use groups later on for what they’re really meant for.

There is a plugin I really like for listings that is just simple to configure and use in my opinion. I have no affiliate with it, just have used it on some custom projects and found it easy to work with. This one, worth a look:

Advanced Classifieds & Directory Pro

You mean you want Twitter to turn into the embedded timeline, etc?

Here’s a minimum script that’ll enable autoembeds for BP xprofile fields. Note that “476” is for illustration purposes – you’ll want to whitelist this for your own relevant field IDs. https://gist.github.com/boonebgorges/d4be14885d1a8ab8b6e5d7900a5fd220

Hi @sibahmed, and thanks for the post!

Unfortunately, BuddyPress doesn’t have these kinds of fields built in. They’re called “nested” or “conditional” fields, and they’ve been requested in the past – see https://buddypress.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/579. It’s a large job to build it as a feature for BuddyPress, though it’d be easier to build a custom tool for yourself that does this.

If you’ve got the technical experience, you could a custom BP_XProfile_Field_Type, whose edit logic would contain the markup and JavaScript to enable these sorts of fields. I did some quick searching, and it looks like someone was writing this at some point – see https://rimonhabib.com/coming-up-next-buddypress-nested-conditional-fields/. Maybe worth following up there?

Hey Brajesh!

Sure, happy to provide some additional feedback.

I have tried your releases and I am still wondering what prevented you/your team from contributing to BuddyPress? Did you try to contribute or was there some other reason for fork?

There are a lot of reasons we decided to go our own way. The primary one is that at a very fundamental level, BuddyPress was not providing the experience our customers are looking for and was really holding us back in our ability to provide the features and usability they ask us for. We have many thousands of customers and do a large amount of custom development, and there are so many things they ask for and wish were different in BuddyPress. BuddyPress development moves very slowly, and the types of changes we have implemented and will continue to implement require major changes to BuddyPress, in a way that can only be done by forking the plugin. We do theme development and mobile app development, and it’s not good that the foundation we rely on for everything is not under our control, and actually has barely changed at all over the past 5 years. We need to control its direction completely to achieve what we are trying to do. We are making mobile apps and other things, and want complete vertical integration between everything to provide an amazing experience.

is there any future plan available for the platform?

We have a multi-year plan for features we want to add. We also build mobile apps that replicate BuddyPress functionality into a synchronized app, and we will continue to grow there over time. Now that we control our core platform we can move much faster.

The features we add are determined primarily by our customers. So the order in which things are added will depend to a large degree on what people ask for, and which requests have the highest volume of requests. We have a big support team responding to and noting requests.

One major area of focus right now is performance. With each release you will see the product get faster. BuddyPress falls apart when it has too many users. We plan to fix that.

Since the forking of BuddyPress, can you please provide what kind of new feature other than merging your own/others plugin into the bundle have your team added.

Sure, this is going to be a very long list. I am just listing the high level items, as we have done so many smaller changes throughout.

Layout

We have our new BuddyBoss Theme which is much more advanced than any BuddyPress theme. It is only possible because we forked BuddyPress and are able to change the templates as necessary to accomplish our designs. Because we control our platform now, we can be sure that every single feature added is always styled in a consistent way, and with a unified admin experience. It much more powerful, and simultaneously, simpler and lighter than anything we could provide before.

Profile Fields > Proper “Name” fields

BuddyPress has just one name field, which drives customers crazy. They want professional networks with First/Last Name, or private networks with just nickname. BuddyBoss Platform has dedicated name fields for First Name, Last Name, Nickname. The site admin can control how to display names sitewide using this. In BuddyPress it is actually impossible just to display First Name + Last Name in the profile and activity feed, something that 50% of customers want. In BuddyBoss it is very customizable. We also let users change their Nickname (handle) any time.

Profile Fields > Repeater Fields

This is a request we have gotten for years, and could never provide; the ability to have repeater fields (Jobs, Experience, etc) so you can make a profile like LinkedIn. That’s out of the box now.

Activity

We have completely overhauled activity feeds. Instead of separated tabs, which is super confusing, it’s one unified activity feed. And within the feed, we have added a bunch of features:

– Emoji
– Animated GIFs
– Likes
– Follow
– Link previews
– Media
– Ability to add any custom post type into the feed (via the Settings)
– Ability to enable/disable any default BP activity type (via the Settings)

Messages

We have completely overhauled Messages. In BuddyPress, messages is a really poor experience. It uses a Gmail convention with subject and content, which makes little sense on a social network. We changed it into a single threaded message, just like Facebook, LinkedIn, WhatsApp, and every other messenger works. This allows us to create a really amazing messaging experience (go play with our demo). Also we can extend this later into live chat, and messenger in our apps. Those features could not be built using BuddyPress messenger as it uses a Gmail style messenger. Imagine if Facebook messenger worked like Gmail, it would be awful.

Media

We added a native Media component for photos and albums, which provides a really amazing interface. It’s not just a fork of our old media plugin, it’s a total overhaul and is much nicer than anything out there for BuddyPress. And we will extend it over time for videos and other media.

Private Network

Out of the box, with one click you can make the whole site private from outsiders. This is a feature that more than 50% of BuddyPress users are doing but need to hunt for 3rd party plugins to figure out how to add. Our implementation is highly customizable also, in terms of what is public vs private.

Network Search

We added a new component for searching all content across the social network, with live results as you type. It’s not just a fork of our old BP Global Search plugin, it is a complete overhaul and is a much nicer experience.

User Invites

We added an invites system, to allow users to invite others into the network by email.

Profile Types

We added a built in interface for creating and managing Profile types, and many additional related options.

Group Types

We added a built in interface for creating and managing Group types, and many additional related options.

Group Hierarchies

We added a built in interface for creating and managing Group hierarchies, so you can have parent and child group relationships.

Email Layouts

Emails in BuddyPress look really bad. This is something we have had to hack up in the past on virtually every client site to give them something usable. Now, in BuddyBoss they look really beautiful out of the box, and are more customizable with logo options etc.

Default Data

This comes up constantly, people want to quickly add a bunch of default data into the site for testing. Now they can do it with the click of a button.

—

And… that’s just the high level stuff. We have fixed usability issues all over the place and added minor options throughout. And don’t forget that we have been live to the public for less than 2 months. There is much more to come and we are moving fast. Revisit this in a year from now, and the list will be endless.

Hey this is how you can do it:

?>
<h3><?php _e(“Appointments+ Settings”, ‘appointments’); ?></h3>
<form method=”post” action =” “id=”appointment-edit-form” class=”standard-form”>
<table class=”form-table”>
<tr>
<th><label><?php _e(“My email for A+”, ‘appointments’); ?></label></th>
<td>
<input type=”text” style=”width:25em” name=”app_email” value=”<?php echo get_user_meta( $profileuser->ID, ‘app_email’, true ) ?>” <?php echo $is_readonly ?> />
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th><label><?php _e(“My Phone”, ‘appointments’); ?></label></th>
<td>
<input type=”text” style=”width:25em” name=”app_phone” value=”<?php echo get_user_meta( $profileuser->ID, ‘app_phone’, true ) ?>”<?php echo $is_readonly ?> />
</td>
</tr>
<input name=”action” type=”hidden” value=”save_xprofile” />
// Add other fields like location etc .. here if needed

</table>
<div class=”submit”>
<input type=”submit” action = “” name=”appointment-edit-form-submit” id=”appointment-edit-form-submit” value=”Save” />
</div>
<?
https://www.jlsprockets.com/

Hi,
When you go to Dashboard-> Users-> Profile Fields you can edit the fields and change the visibility. If you are still seeing the data after saving these changes ensure you have cleared cache and you are not logged in as an account that has access to view this data.