BuddyPress.org

There are ways of saying things and there are ways of saying things Glen

TBH I’m not sure these sorts of discussions should be directed to and made on the site in question though, is there not a forum/group where one can ask questions of the author/s in advance of possible use?

same question here! just started with BuddyPress and this was one of my first questions.

John was going to put it out yesterday (Sunday) afternoon at WC NYC. John, Boone and I decided to grab a room which wasn’t planned for anything else and just wrote “BuddyPress” on the schedule. We thought we’d have a couple of questions and then time to get the release out and do some planning.

However, we had a fantastic response and had a lot of people coming in and asking all sorts of questions about BuddyPress. I want to let John release 1.2.6, as it’s his baby. I know John’s flying back home today — and I’m flying home tomorrow — so hopefully sometime this week? I really have nothing else to say other than sorry

The theme looks very nicely organized. I have just two questions: will it support custom menus and when will it be available to purchase?

@whitbyglennk

There are very few premium themes built specifically for BuddyPress – although you can enhance existing WordPress themes. I’ve seen some great looking bespoke BuddyPress sites, but I haven’t seen a generic BuddyPress theme with a design and layout that blows you away.

The difference between BuddyPress and WordPress is the number of options available to you. BuddyPress allows you to build much more complex sites.

Out of the box, BuddyPress attempts to be a generic social network that is all things to all men. Of course, this is not what real world sites tend to need – you’ll find that most of the best commercial developments only use the portions of BuddyPress they need, and bend the core product considerably to meet real world needs.

Whilst it’s useful to have an all encompassing platform, it doesn’t make it particularly suited to premium theme designers – sure, you can make it look nice, but with so many options, and so much tailoring to deliver real world needs, themers face an uphill challenge to produce something that breaks away from the out of box generic set of functions.

A further problem is the make up of the code – BP embeds an awful lot of presentation decisions in the core of the product (activity stream contents, default menu structures) instead of in the templates (where you’d expect them to be). So, again, producing any significantly different can be a real chore.

Each blog can have it’s own theme. Site admin can determine which themes are installed and available to the bloggers.

Sites like h-mag, hello eco living and alike are bespoke developments.. They are not ‘off the shelf’ themes

Edit// too slow
Yes WPMU is now defunct; you have WP 3.0 so already have the capability of running it as a MS install, you just have to do a little manual configuration to enable it which is explained over on the WP Codex.

I think a sub domain is the easiest approach, hardest aspect is working existing theme into BP.

Don’t dismiss writing HTML / CSS completely especially from a hand coding point of view, I would say there are a few of us around that would probably express the sentiment that they hoped WP and other cms’s didn’t become the defacto standard for web sites, as much as I like WP

@whitbyglennk

Yes, the mu features are now ‘built in’ to WordPress – have a look on the WordPress Codex for WordPress Multisite (and ‘setting up a network’).

We have no problems running BuddyPress installed on a secondary blog on one of our current development projects

@whitbyglennk Hi Glen,
As soon as I saw the name Whitby I thought “That rings a bell” and had to search back through the archives at CSSCreator, nice to see the domain flourishing although it was the ‘Sea Anglers’ site you were working on back then.

To clarify for the thread real-whitby is presently a WP site and quite an evolved and customised one.

As has been said you have all options available to you really as to which is the best one to take I’m not to sure, I think it’s fair to say the most work would be to activate BP on the primary root blog, creating a secondary blog would be an easier option but I’m tending to think that a physical subdomain i.e community.real-whitby the easier route along with user blogs as folders, community.real-whitby/glensblog.

I’m not entirely sure of the best approach, you’ll probably need to experiment on a localhost test install to get a feel for the amount of work required and how the various options work in practice.

@whitbyglennk installing BP at the root is the ideal scenario. However, it can be installed in a secondary blog of installation as well. Rephrasing @LPH2005‘s question earlier, what do you have at the root of your public folder that you cannot install WP 3.0.1/BP at root?

Personally not downloaded a zip as I use SVN to grab the branch, but if you don’t have a folder after unzipping called ‘buddypress’ then yes you’ll have to rename it, it’s one of those suck it and see questions reallly.

Yes, you can install WP 3.0.1 in physical subdomain and go multisite in subdirectory mode. See BuddyPress configurations available here:
https://codex.buddypress.org/getting-started/before-installing/#bp-config

WP 3.0.1 would be the best install with BuddyPress 1.2.6 (released this coming weekend).

But before walking through too much detail, is there a reason you want BuddyPress on a subdomain? Is WordPress installed on the main domain?

Now, it is possible to install BP and have members create blogs using subdomains .. but maybe you have a different purpose for putting the whole community on the subdomain .. which is also possible.

There are a growing number of great themes for BuddyPress:

http://premium.wpmudev.org/project/buddypress-magazine-theme

http://bp-tricks.com/

Also, you can take any WP theme and modify it to match the community by using the template pack.

@pcwriter –

Is this in a child theme from bp-default?

Have you checked the file path is correct to your custom.css file? Do an inspect element in your browser and check the path bloginfo is generating – is it the one you expect?

Also, not sure what you mean by it “it defaults to bp-default/_inc/css/default” … is this a child theme, or have you just tried modifying style.css in the bp-default theme itself?

If you have made a child theme, and followed the standard bp css structure – then style.css will include the default.css in your child theme’s _inc/css folder – not to the default.css in the bp-default theme.

If you clarify these questions, it might help explain which css files are actually being used.

two things first please,
One: topic titles need to be descriptive of the issue, not a genaralised plea for help, we know you want help otherwise you likely wouldn’t have posted

Two: Please refrain from writing in caps, writing in capitals in lists and forums means that you are shouting, we would rather you didn’t shout at us.

Some useful reading on how to do things the right way on forums:
http://www.catb.org/esr/faqs/smart-questions.html

As for turning that code into a widget have you considered approaching the plugin author? perhaps a small donation might help things along? After plugins are not really free, that’s a popular misconception they are very costly in development and testing terms.

I’m having this issue as well. I am using WPMU and I have selected “user accounts may be registered” in the Super Admin > Options > Allow users to register section. Still no go. I’ve tried all of the options that allow users to register but stil nothing. The register link just goes back to the main blog.

Any suggestions?

My answers to the questions:
1. Which version of WP/MU are you running? WP 3.01
2. Did you install WP/MU as a directory or subdomain install? subdomain (http://yourwebsite.com/blog)
3. If a directory install, is it in root or in a subdirectory? root
4. Did you upgraded from a previous version of WP/MU? No, it’s a new install. Was previously a single WP and I used the “Enable Multi-Site” plugin.
5. Was WP/MU functioning properly before installing/upgrading BuddyPress (BP)? e.g. permalinks, creating a new post, commenting. Yes
6. Which version of BP are you running? 1.2.5.2
7. Did you upgraded from a previous version of BP? If so, from which version? No, it’s also a brand new install.
8. Do you have any plugins other than BuddyPress installed and activated? If so, which ones? Yes, Akismet; BuddyPress template pack; Embedded Video; Enable Multi-Site; Exec-PHP; FeedBurner FeedSmith; FeedSnap; Full Text Feed; If You Liked That; In Series; MaxBlogPress Ping Optimizer; Sociable; Wp.com Stats; WP-Page Navi; and WP-Project;
9. Are you using the standard BuddyPress themes or customized themes? I am using the Twenty Ten Theme through the BuddyPress Template Pack plugin that allows you to use any theme with BP.
10. Have you modified the core files in any way? No
11. Do you have any custom functions in bp-custom.php? No
12. If running bbPress, which version? Or did your BuddyPress install come with a copy of bbPress built-in? Not running
13. Please provide a list of any errors in your server’s log files. Nobody can register. The registration link just goes back to the main blog.
14. Which company provides your hosting? Bluehost
15. Is your server running Windows, or if Linux; Apache, nginx or something else? Linux and Apache