BuddyPress.org

switch_to_blog — when abused to get numerous queries from other blog/s, or get all widgets of the main site’s sidebar, or get sets of posts, etc — is going to be a “slow function” to run. But when used for main navigation which has what, 5 to 8 links, switch_to_blog runs in a split second wherever it is placed – I just prefer to place my main nav in header.php.

If one is wary of switch_to_blog “overhead” for navigation, then easiest method is to look at source code of main site’s navigation and copy the navigation links there and paste to sub-blogs theme’s header.php or wherever they want to place it. Caveat to this method is, you’ll miss the automatic generation of new links when new plugins/components hook to bp_nav_items. This won’t happen when you use switch_to_blog and add restore_current_blog after the bp_nav_items block.

Switch to blog is considered to be a slow function to run and I wouldn’t recommend putting it in a theme header!

1. If I remember right, Jeff’s BP Privacy Options Plugin will allow the user to make profiles private. Just need to wait for the plugin upgrade for BP 1.2

2/3/5A. cosmic buddy theme – I would suggest asking Brajesh, the theme author about how to do that

5B. Yes you can create a Sitewide/global navigation bar in your blog’s themes, by using WPMU’s native switch_to_blog and restore_current_blog functions. Therefore, if you want the navbar of main site (blog_id_1) to be shown in you sub-blogs, you add the code below to your blog’s theme’s header.php

<ul id="nav"

<?php switch_to_blog('1') ?>

//copy the code from header.php of either bp-default/bp-sn-parent theme

//or the code used in main site plus any customized links you added in main site

<?php do_action( 'bp_nav_items' ); ?>

<?php restore_current_blog(); ?>

</ul>

You’ll get the correct URL’s which point to main site’s respective BP components.

1) Not aware of any existing code that does this. However, your users would only have to go into their profile and change the ‘name’ field (this is what BuddyPress uses).

2) I think the addon you want is called “Plugin Commander.”

3) All of the core BuddyPress features are detailed on https://codex.buddypress.org/developer-docs/custom-buddypress-loops/ which you can use to integrate bits of functionality wherever you want. As far as third-party plugins goes, it is dependant on how the plugin author wrote their plugin.

4) Have you looked at new BP theme on http://testbp.org/? That and BP 1.2 should be released mid/late January.

5) Haven’t got time to discuss how to fix but look at trac.buddypress.org/ticket/1501

does the installation actually create “members”, “groups”, etc blogs

No, those are simply slugs that are appended to the URI.

To help us better troubleshoot your issue, please answer these questions.

@Peter Why would you ask that question in this thread? I’m sure Bowe can tell you how many are in the Dutch BP community in a less non-sequitor thread, no?

@Bowe Nice 1st attempt. t has many elements Andy is trying to capture in 1.2 default theme. I appreciate everyone’ kinds words. My objective is to try and force myself to view this from the perspective of he user. I have a userbase that has a few quirky characteristics: ages 17-90, usually very bright but many find this whole area unintuitive. lastly, they all want to engage with each other. So…every element on the site has to promote that re-connection and engagement…intuitively. As an example, a place to tweet from my site won’t turn many on. Not because they aren’t on Twitter, but they don’t come to the site to do it, don’t usually want to tweet about what they are doing on the site and the added convenience of tweeting from within the site isn’t worth the real estate. Still – it’s a great idea for other sites.

Back to our issue: in a nod to @jjj’s original point, we have a set of groups (graduating class groups) in which users are auto joined upon sign up (having been required to input class year) Now, this is a group that everyone already is “friends” with. There is merit to some sort of auto-friending action which is being proxied by joining the group. Most users on the site seek out their year group and friend them. Maybe we should keep it that way (let’s you keep your distance from the jerks in your class) but we could also do more in making the process easier.

As we start from scratch and redesign the sight with the new parent/chile & 1.2 functionality we will focus on the following questions: What’s going on in the things I care about? e.g groups and friends and What is going on in the site that I might care about? Focus on too much of the former and users miss out on a lot. Too much of the latter and it doesn’t feel like a personal experience of connection and engagement.

The last thing we need o NOT lose sight of: As we connect, sync and add inter-operability to all of our components, how we present all this activity to the user will make or break the success of the site. Actions and activity need to be where the user expects them to be. Not cause we just threw it in there. It can’t appear out of place or cobbled together. Many a site has blown off this aspect and wondered why the user behaviors on their site are erratic. Example (minor but critical) On testbp.org a user made a post onto a topic in the BP testers group. That topic has 3 pages of replies. When you click View Thread you are taken to the topic’s 1st page. There are pros and cons to this. Pro: you get to start from the beginning and go thru all replies Con: you have to start from the beginning and goes thru all replies….or make your way to the end . Now you can reply from the bottom of the 1st page but you will actually never see the reply whose View Thread link you clicked on, so the user is often mis-oriented. I know I digress, but my users have written me to emphasize that it was often the person who made the reply that prompted them to click View Thread and then they never see that reply again.

The point is, it’s the user and his relationship to other users (friend or not) that often drives behavior and expectations. That’s why adding avatars to all activity completely changes a feel of a site and makes it seem personal.

1: Yes that’s right.. you can easily show recent blogs from your entire network by placing a widget on your homepage:

https://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/bp-paginated-posts/

If you want to have one blog which collects and displays all blogs in a single blog form you can use this plugin:

https://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wordpress-mu-sitewide-tags/

2: This is also possible.. just make a blog and make it only viewable for subscribers (members) of your site!

Good luck

I have a couple of lazy questions.

1. Will BP 1.2 still support the 1.1 default theme if people still want to use it?

Edit: Yes

1(b). Is the wire totally dead, or just not used in the new theme?

Edit: I am guessing it must still be there if the old theme is still supported.

2. Is there any kind of timeline as to when the new default theme will be considered safe to start working on plugin support? I want to avoid any extra iterations due to sudden changes in direction.

Edit: Late January?

Ok, that was three.

I did see the version of WPMU and BP that you’re currently running. But the other questions in the link that I provided are asked because they help determine other possible issues with your setup. So, please answer those questions so that I, or someone else, does not have to reask them one at a time in this post.

It seems that you are more than likely using an older theme, one that is not compatible with the version of BP that you’re running.

Please answer these questions so that we can better understand your setup:

https://buddypress.org/forums/topic/when-asking-for-support

Hmm, your the third one on the forum having trouble with this.

We might get some clarification if you answer these questions.

https://buddypress.org/forums/topic/when-asking-for-support

Signup questions and codes are a good supplement to the other methods but are also ultimately fallible. In the same way that Captcha is rendered ineffective by human relay attack, so to are questions; it will just take time for spammers to catch on.

It seems to me that the way forward is to incrementally roll out new defences, only presenting new defences when the old ones have been broken. As soon as lots of sites use a defence, that defence will probably soon be doomed to failure: spammers will only take the time to develop new exploits when a particular method of defence becomes popular. I believe this is the only reason why the hidden fields method currently works: its not sufficiently popular to bother coding an exploit for it (even though such a task would take about five minutes).

Yes, what is this “proprietary component”? Or is that information proprietary? LOL. I assume it centres around collaboration and / or document management perhaps?

Haha!

Yes, can I sound anymore stuck up than throwing around the term proprietary on an Open Source software forum.

To answer your third question first, yes.

As to your first two questions, I can only give you the most nebulous of details at this time. The component I’m working on is very specific to the site. It will be the primary collaboration and project management engine. So, it will not be something I will make available to the community. Besides, with the exception of using this component to become a direct competitor, it will not have any value to anyone else.

@Boone – that looks like a logical and necessary change

@Marisooms – I have some questions and thoughts regarding the Group Blog concept. PLease understand this critique is in the context of my particular use case, although I believe it to be a very common one.

The Group Bog plugin/tool looks to be quite powerful. In our case, our users are not looking for all that power. We just want to be able to write blog posts as “part of” a group. When you install and run Group Blogs (bp-gb for short), an entirely new blog is created with a url not subordinate to the group. Ex we have a group called USMA-1987 for the class of ’87 on my dev site (mjpratt.com if you care to see the issues). bp-gb created a blog at mjpratt.com/usma1987 instead of mjpratt.com/groups/usma-1987/blog or something like that. When you are viewing blog posts, you are looking at the standard individual blog and widget structure, NOT another section of the Group -> now this may be a bug/error as I once saw that but for the last 2 group blogs I created, there are no Group menus or sections for the group blog showing up. weird.

Bottom line is, the user should never leave the group menu/system environment when dealing with the group blog. In our case, group admins are more like moderators and should not have to do things like configure Akismet, widgets, etc. So I will have to go in and do that for every group. We’re just looking for a little extra group functionality as opposed to an entire group blog ecosystem.

I still think this is the best effort down this path and i am determined to figure a solution out so thanks for the work.

If anyone can hazard a guess why this group -> http://mjpratt.com/groups/usma-1987/ HAS a group blog, created by the plugin at -> http://mjpratt.com/usma1987/ but (as you can see) there are o references to it on the group home page, I would very much appreciate the insight. Thanks

Hi Marius,

2 questions, please:

– is the “Groups-Blogs plugin” compatible with the “to be released” version of BP 1.2 ?

– do you have a website at which I can have a look at how “Group-Blogs” is working ?

Many thanks,

Please would you answers these questions so we can see if we can spot something? Thanks.

https://buddypress.org/forums/topic/when-asking-for-support

Thanks for the help.

I have to admit that at first I was a little annoyed with the “people really shouldn’t be asking these questions, either you know how to make themes or you dont” comment until I looked into firebug.

I have heard about it but never checked it out until now. My loss and I now realize how much time I have lost over the years without it.

Thank you for pointing me in the direction of what looks like will be my new favorite firefox extension.

Check line 782, and people really shouldn’t be asking these questions, either you know how to make themes or you dont. We can’t help everyone that can’t find a css line..

Use firebug to find certain styles people..

I’ve tried to determine what Kaltura plugin can do for me and I can’t at this point.

I have some videos which are user-submitted and I don’t have the storage/bandwith to support this long term unless I have some expiration on videos. I have some videos that are on Youtube which will drive some traffic back to the site.

I’m trying to answer two questions:

1. Can Kaltura plugin handle self-storage, Kaltura storage and serving Youtube/Vimeo through the same player

2. What is the pricing beyond 10GB free account

Great questions, Porscheheritage. I would love to know how to do both those things — bigger avatars in sitewide activity, and resized feed images — too. Did you manage to figure either out?

I’m working on some sort of @username notation that will email notify that user. That should fix the concern.

I think having others post on your profile stream is a bad idea. I dislike the way Facebook does that. If I go to your profile I want to see your activity, not others asking you questions and junking it up. I don’t mind seeing comments in reply to threads you have started though.