BuddyPress.org

I’m back to exploring Buddypress, and I am experimenting with an install. I’d like to have a linkable public profile for the members without all this sort of information:

@johnmc
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But only select fields (description, publications etc). I see a lot of technical info about customizing files etc when I search for this, some of it rather old. Is there perhaps a plugin that allow me to remove all this (to me) irrelevant information for non-logged-in users? It may well be there for the users when they are logged in. Perhaps it might be easier to simply create ordinary text-files for each user presentation that they can edit themselves.

I’ve been reading a lot about this issue and it looks like BP is missing some very basic functionality. This is the first time using it and right out of the gate I see that there are some things that have me baffled.

1) No way to create conditional fields. I’ve tried using the Gravity Forms User Registration Add-On plugin but there is no way to map fields properly. For example, in Gravity Forms I have Country, State and City fields. If someone selects United States as a Country for example, the next field that the user sees is the State field, but then I run into a problem when someone selects a City. In order to use conditional fields with Gravity Forms, I need to create many City fields (alabama-cities, alaska-cities etc). One City field for each State. These City fields are conditional fields that displayed to the user Cities based on what the user selects in the State field.

The problem is that Gravity Forms wants me to first create User Profile Fields in BuddyPress. Then map each Gravity Forms field to the appropriate User Profile Field. Since I have many Gravity Forms cities field, there is no way I can tell Gravity Forms to use the City that the user selects and map it to a City User Profile field in BuddyPress.

I’ve read a lot of posts on this forum dating back 5 years and no one has offered a working solution.

2) Also, Why is there no option for an admin to be able to deny users from changing their Screenname? How about an option that prevents user from modifying a specific field such as Gender? All I see is havoc and chaos if you allow users to change certain fields.

3) Why doesn’t BuddyPress offer a way to have different registration fields based on the user? Teacher / Student Registration, Doctor / Patient etc? It doesn’t make sense. Look at the core of BuddyPress. It’s a social network plugin. In almost every circumstance you have a need for one user have certain fields and another to have other fields. Trying to figure out how to show certain profile fields for one user and not another should be at the core of this plugin. Not to mention making it easy for the site owner to layout those fields so that they look nice. For example something as easy as defining the length of the fields. You can’t make those modifications without Firebug and CSS and PHP experience, or worse yet another plugin. If you use a plugin, then you have to pray to God the author of that plugin not to fall off a cliff or pray that he / she keeps that plugin conducive with the latest version of BP.

I don’t mean to gripe but BuddyPress it seems to me that at it’s core, very little thought was given to how people would actually use it. Almost like it’s piecemealed together.

Another big complaint is that it’s not compatible with the best WordPress themes on the planet – StudioPress. Shouldn’t the contributors of BP make sure that BP and StudioPress be compatible?

I’m sorry if this sounds like a rant, it’s not. It’s just frustration. BP looks awesome but underneath the hood, there are a lot of obvious problems. My suggestion is to do what WooCommerce, StudioPress and others do. Sit down and figure out how to handle the big issues first. If need be, charge for BuddyPress. If the problem is that you have a bunch of contributors who work on things “they” deem important and at their own leisure, then the plugin suffers. Charge for it. Sit down and listen to the complaints and address them based on customer priority. Pay someone to reply to this forum so we’re not waiting days for a response. You’ll have much happier users and a much better plugin. Just my 2 cents worth. Honestly, since BP is virtually the only Plugin of it’s kind, not taking my advice will lead to someone creating a better wheel and that point, it’s only a matter of time before BP becomes obsolete.

It’s been close to 24 hours and no response to my original question. If ANYONE has an answer as to how I can get a user to simply select a Country, then State, then City based on previous fields, I’d greatly appreciate it. Also if someone could please tell me how to prevent users from modifying certain fields that would be appreciated as well.

Thanks

admin editable fields for groups. Basically the exact same thing as xprofile fields but for groups. This is the kind of thing that makes more sense in core than a plugin.

I second that.

So to summarize, we need:

1. To hook into xprofile_profile_field_data_updated
2. We need the hooked function to check for empty profile fields in the main tab
3. If there are no empty fields, it needs to notify the admin – via updating a custom meta key and sending the admin an email, preferably. But we can settle for just the meta key updated.

Ya all the fields in the main tab (or at least all the required fields).

For some reason wp_mail is having conflicts with our site so we may need to just update a custom user meta field instead. That’s what the code above is attempting to do, but it doesn’t seem to add the meta key. If that can work, we can keep track of who is updated by who has that meta key.

xprofile_profile_field_data_updated is helpful – thank you!

Seems like xprofile_updated_profile wasn’t firing at all, whether on successful or unsuccessful attempts. Or at least it wasn’t updating the meta key in the first code snippet above.

Yes, I know you can edit all the field from the back end. However, I am trying to get it to allow you to show and edit the fields from the front end. Here were the steps I am thinking about using:

1) Use BuddyPress Custom Profile Menu plugin to create new tabs on the profile page like, “about”
2) make a function in function.php of my theme that would display the content for a user and allow them to edit it if it was their profile.
3) create a shortcode function that linked to the function in step 2.
4) Add the shortcode in the new page created with BuddyPress Custom Profile Menu plugin in step 1.

I know how to do step 1, 3, and 4. I have an idea of how to do step 2, but I am a little fuzzy on it. Here is what I was thinking(I don’t really know php):

function ProfileAboutPageContent(){
    if(bp_loggedin_user_id() == $GLOBALS['bp']->displayed_user->userdata->user_login)
    {
    echo "<p>'"bp_profile_field_data( 'field=User Bio' )"'</p>";
    //Allow user to edit the content(not sure how)
    } elseif {
    echo "<p>'"bp_profile_field_data( 'field=User Bio' )"'</p>";
    {
}
add_shortcode('AboutContent', 'ProfileAboutPageContent');

Are there any errors in this code? I am not sure how to allow users to edit the content if they are the right user. Any ideas on how I could change this code? I am planning on putting this code in the function.php of my current theme.

The idea is that after I get this function and short code right I can add the shortcode to the new page I can create with the BuddyPress Custom Profile Menu plugin.

If anyone would be willing to help me figure this out I would greatly appreciate it. Thanks!

At first I was hoping for fields displayed in WP Profile to be displayed in BP Profiles. Then I hoped that if I created a custom field on BP Profiles with the same name as the WP Profile they would be synced, but none of the above are true so I’m really wondering what this feature is doing.

Hi @r-a-y. Here are the plugins I am currently using on the site.

Network Activated:

Advanced Responsive Video Embedder
Anti-Splog
Are You a Human
bbPress
bbPress – Report Content
bbPress Enable TinyMCE Visual Tab
bbpress Simple View Counts
BP Profile Search
BuddyPress Activity Plus – (I did deactivate this after the 1.9.1 update but nothing changed)
BuddyPress Avatar Bubble
BuddyPress Follow
BuddyPress Group Calendar
BuddyPress Groups Extras
Buddypress Social
BuddyPress Toolbar
BuddyPress Twitter
Buddypress Xprofile Custom Fields Type
GD bbPress Toolbox
Group Forum Crumbs
rtMedia for WordPress, BuddyPress and bbPress
User Activity
WP User Avatar

—-

Single Site Actived

Amazon Product In a Post Plugin
BuddyMenu
BuddyPress Notifications Widget
Really simple Facebook Twitter share buttons

That’s about all the plugins that I have active that play a heavy part in Buddypress or are loosely connected to it.

@hugo was not attention to discredit anyone. Just an effort from someone attempting to contribute to the buddypress project because I know only few that contribute (via 🙂 stalking or following); which is only a handful: @boonebgorges , @jamesjjacoby, tammie leister, ray, @modernlooper, @sarah . That’s just the dew I know off the top of my head.

I am not developer & barely knew hmtl/CSS a few months ago, I am just learning functions, fields, &php which is completely out of my realm. I only attempting to contribute by noticing this miss lap/division of the WordPress community as a whole, that could be learned nor have to recreate the wheel by learning to utilize the bb’s potential.

What made me think of posting this in the first place was a review of make.wordpress.org and watching the discussions on the metaphoris project enhancing the metafields/metadata in wordpress.

That’s when I thought my buddypress already has included the ability for profile fields with text, select, radio, Multi select elements….why not look at what buddypress has done!

I purely believe that presence on the make.wordpress.org can increase awareness in the general wordpress user exposure but more importantly the wordpress developer involvement as a whole.

At this point, is the only way i feel I can contribute with out technical experience is via feedback & observation of what seems disconnect in community awareness of buddypress.

Sorry to go on a rampage but noticed also that bbpress has some documentiion on how to style.

My only purpose is to insure inclusiveness and encouragement of wordpress community as one.

Thanks. I am happy to help in anyway to contribute; if it testing a local version or so what…you just will have to tell how…LOL. I will certainly try.

Sorry to go on rampage