BuddyPress.org

Peter: PS, most of what you’re doing will be irrelevant when I release a version that works with BP out-of-the-box, so u dont really need to spend the time hacking it Also, most of the questions ur asking (i.e. what if u want to require an email?) are all clearly documented on the plugin homepage.

Utterly respect what you are saying Erwin, sad though that you feel you have to state this so emphatically.

From my personal and selfish perspective coming to BP from Ning one of the things I was asked to replicate was an events page similar to that which our small community had enjoyed and used, naturally after hunting around came across your plugin and was happy to find it then a little sad to find that the mapping functionality was not working due to a BP upgrade and your lack of time to fix this aspect; no matter i thought it will be sorted eventually and the rest of the plugin behaved perfectly and we needed it so I proceeded with implementing and styling to our requirements, at this point it’s worth noting the, and this has been raised elsewhere, notion of the Canonical plugin, we have been surprised at the lack of what many would consider core Social Networking features in BP by this I mean aspects such as Links. Events, and general Media capabilities, all things evident in the other big players in this arena. Events was a plugin that I felt and still feel ought to be part of the core and NOT a plugin along with BP-Album and the Links plugin.

Events was further broken ireprably by of all things our upgrade to WPMU 2.9.1 at which point I had to remove it altogether, this didn’t look good and I was asked questions for which I had to try and reassure people that Events would reappear when we did the next phased upgrade of the community to BP 1.2.

The above is in no way intended to attempt to make you feel guilty whatsoever I honestly sympathize with your situation, What it is intended to try and illustrate is how vital certain plugins and the functionality they add are, we can come to rely on them yet find that there is no real support for them or that the author simply doesn’t have time to continually work on keeping them up to date; of course the response can often be that we are free to take on the plugin ourselves after all this is all open source stuff!! But like yourself I have precious little time, I cannot sit all day playing with plugin code, code that at this stage I am not up to speed with, all the free development time I have is devoted to trying to get a working theme ready so we can upgrade to BP 1.2 most of my time in reality is spent keeping the core of our small web development company running.

So what to do? Plugins are both at once a strength and a weakness to projects such as this, strange as this may sound.

Your plugin was great and I only hope that perhaps someone with more time on their hands can take up the running with this and more importantly that maybe the core developers can maybe look at what constitutes the real core offering of a Social Network App in terms of features and make plans to bring in the work you have done to date and make it a solid part of the core rather than a plugin.

Whatever happens be assured that I think most of us with any development experience and / or too little time to get anything done appreciate your feelings and frustrations at the pressure brought to bear

Hey @etiviti,

I’ve been putting the Buddypress Group Forum Extras on http://www.x-3dfx.com

after messing and modding a little bit I have some questions.

The bbcode for [color] doesn’t work, so I modded the bbcode plugin to support this, This now works.

(Shown here : http://www.x-3dfx.com/groups/off-topic/forum/topic/sexy-new-look/#post-63 )

Next “BuddyPress Forums Extras – BBCode (noshortcode)” enabled

After posting something with bbshort codes and then going to edit this becomes HTML due to this plugin, Is this correct? As this conversion is not needed due to the bbcode pluging running as well.

Now if this is intended could there be an option to turn the conversion off, (I’ve modded the php file manually to stop doing it as I like the bbcode _ck_ buttons it adds but didn’t like the back to HMTL it was doing…)

also the HTML it was doing is breaking the color codes anyway for some reason. – they didn’t work when displayed but showed correct as <font color=””> when editing…

Read this post I made on the bbPress forums:

https://bbpress.org/forums/topic/bbpress-vs-buddypress-or-in-addition-to-it-a-newbie-has-questions#post-65097

Yes, bbPress is necessary if you want group forums.

You might want to read this post by Boone Gorges as to what he did to transfer an existing bbPress install into BP:

http://dev.commons.gc.cuny.edu/2009/12/06/upgrading-from-buddypress-1-0-to-1-1/

Another bbPress to BP guide is available here:

https://buddypress.org/forums/topic/completely-integrating-a-previous-bbpress-install

I think I might add this to the FAQ

Idotter –

Couple questions – Is your avatar upload process working? Group Documents shares some code with avatars, particularly with the directories is uses.

Also, you mentioned this occurs after you upgraded to 0.3.1 – Did you have version 0.3.0 working? Or did you go straight from 0.2.5 to 0.3.1? The reason I ask, is that 0.3.1 didn’t change anything in that section of the code from 0.3.0.

Sorry, that was a lot of numbers to keep straight

I have some questions, in the other thread you say that you don’t recommend to ude ur plugin for wid-site.

I also say that the blogs of the user must be accesible.

-I have one question, plugin for inviting people to the community with all this privacy stuff on?

Sorry for my bbas english, im spaniard, ^^

greetings from spain

Rich,

2 more dumb questions…

First, where is the “@ mentions” part in the BBCode that @3sixty is referring to?

Second, should we be activating both BBCode and Shortcode sub-plugins?

My bbpress install is inside buddypress (so not external).

Thanks!

@_dorsvenabili – I’m glad you like our plugin.

There are actually two developers working on this plugin now, @francescolaffi, and myself @foxly; @francescolaffi is busy writing his exams right now, so I’m handling all the user support for the next few days.

BP Album is community-developed software! If you find it useful, please consider contributing code, translations, and ideas to the project. Helping answer new user’s questions on the forums is also helpful, because it means we have more time to work on writing code.

@hnla – Deciding how to dimension thumbnails, based on images with widely varying aspect ratios, and then present them in a grid, has been a problem that has dogged graphic designers since the earliest days of the Internet.

The two most popular way to do this are “Facebook Style”

http://foxly.ca/facebook-style.jpg

and “Flickr Style”

http://foxly.ca/flickr-style.jpg

I’m actually writing code for *both* options *right now*, and after some back and forth with @francescolaffi we’ll probably get it set up as an option in the administrator backend.

We could probably add the ability for users to manually crop the thumbnail for each picture in their gallery using the avatar cropping tool, and I will look at the feasibility of doing this. Experience has shown that most users do *not* want to do this for every picture they upload …and that’s why neither Facebook nor Flickr include this functionality.

^F^

@hnla – two questions:

First, did version 1.3 work?

Second, are you running MySQL in “Strict” mode?

Now tested a further install on 2.92 / 1.2.2.1 and for interests sake running backwards compatibility plugin.

Same issue as previously described

<snip>

WordPress database error Table ‘powl_theowlmu.wp_bp_album’ doesn’t exist for query SELECT

Checked my.conf and definitely not running in Strict mode.

However a significant amount of other errors such as global-adminbar.php not found and internal redirect exceeded suggests that perhaps the test against backwards compatibility plugin is not a valid one.

I assume I’m meant to be seeing some tables created on install? or only when an image is successfully uploaded?

@hnla – two questions:

First, did version 1.3 work?

Second, are you running MySQL in “Strict” mode?

1/ No never tried 1.3, first install was with 1.4 and bad timing on my part as it was literally two minutes before you uploaded 1.5 deactivated 1.4 unzipped new files reactivated, devision issues cleared but errors appeared as above.

2/ Hmm Strict Mode – almost certainly not however not 100% sure but this was on my local dev running pretty loose in all server respects and think Strict Mode would have been an issue arising before as I have perhaps half a dozen test installs in various states and not having issues, it’s true also that I have a further company dev server and two live servers so get confused sometimes what is running what.

I’m on the company network so am going to try installing to my local dev copy here and see what gives if it works here then it’s an issue with my set up which I’ll track down and report for the record.

@Tosh, @Baur, @Modemlooper, @Jedbarish

Thanks for your very fast replies. The problem you are experiencing was caused by a problem with a failed SVN commit, and WordPress.org’s plugin repository rolling-back to version 1.3 on about half of our files without telling us.

Obviously, that broke the plugin.

Upgrade to the 1.5 and the problem will vanish. If you’re still having trouble, just delete the entire bp-album folder and copy the bp-album 1.5 folder in its place. It will start working again instantly.

@Xevo – I think the version number incrementing thing is very funny. What’s with all this version 0.0.16 software out on the Internet. I want to be at version 87.5 by 2012 …lol!

@hnla – two questions:

First, did version 1.3 work?

Second, are you running MySQL in “Strict” mode?

@Travel-Junkie

We’ve temporarily switched to single options to make debugging faster for the admin panel upgrade.

We wanted to get the admin panel version out absolutely as fast as possible AND have a table we can easily ask users to view using PHPmyAdmin if something goes wrong.

You are clever for noticing this! Don’t worry, we will remove it once we are sure everything works properly.

^F^

hi Ray

hope you wont mind my earlier post .

@foxly

Please take a look at my response to Travel-Junkie’s query here

https://buddypress.org/forums/topic/gallery#post-32530

If I release the plugin as it is now, for free, I am not sure I will be able to support the plugin as there will be a helluva lot of questions each and everyday until the plugin is mature enough. We are dealing with media and I know what sort of issues can come as of my experience from now. That’s why I always said It will be available as free as soon as the people think it’s mature enough.

Again, I support you guys developing album+, It was a need here and hopefully, when gallery stable is released I am going to point the people to album+ for a lighter/fee alternative as it seems now.

@mercime – I’m not insulting anybody. I’m asking some tough questions about what this community is doing to get a high quality, free BuddyPress photo album plugin out, and that seems to be making some people in here a bit uncomfortable.

Hopefully, uncomfortable enough that people start building things.

Namely, a plugin.

What all of the people posting “BP Gallery is Free, etc, etc, it will be released free when we have a stable version” are missing, is that if Brajesh would just upload his code to the SVN *right now*, we could all jump on it and help him finish building and testing the plugin.

Look, I have nothing to gain financially by building a BuddyPress photo plugin. I just want this problem solved so I have a stable, reliable plugin to use on my websites, that doesn’t depend on just one person to keep it going.

@thekmen – good point.

^F^

hi all

Just got pointed to this thread, so I thought, I need to chime in .

I am happy to see the BP Album+ coming as a successor of Manoj’s Bp-Picture album, I am not very happy with the criticism here for the gallery, and I thought, I will express it here.

@foxly

First of all, I don’t want to go into the details of opensource philosophy, but what about RedHat Enterprise in case of Linux. People prefer them because Redhad has more reliability over it’s free alternative(e.g centOs and others). Let the choice is in the hands of End users, and GPL does not restrict to charge for code/distribution.

For your questions:-

1.Being free/opensource does not guarantee quality, what are the measures of quality, let me know, I will be glad to allow someone who want to do quality analysis have access to the code and post his/her review here.

I have no objections, if you say, gallery is paid and you will avoid using it, but Gallery has much better code quality than most of the plugin available free. And I am ready to go through any quality analysis process to make sure, what I say is correct. I will urge, do not predict anything, if you have not seen the code.

2.Delays:-

If you know, buddypress 1.2 had scheduled release date of 2nd week of Dec, but it was released after 15th Feb, so the core project got delayed for 2 months from it’s original schedule date. and You know, any project which depended on it, got delayed too, and to add that, from Rc1 to RC2 transition for buddypress broke many things. How about that ? The Rc2 is coming tonight for your info.

3. No of contributor: How many contributors buddypress had before the joining of JJJ, only one, and He was Andy, so how do you felt at that time ?

4. GPL::- Have you seen the license for Gallery:- IT is GPL and will remain that, so If I leave development(which is not going to happen in near future), anyone can go ahead and do that. I choose GPL to allow others to use it in case something happened wrong with me, otherwise I might have opted for more restrictive license. I will advise to read terms at my site, it specifically says, until and unless mentioned, everything available there is GPL. Each and every component available/coming are/will be released under GPL only.

6.Code Quality: You are most welcome to check the code, and see where the gallery code compares to any of the plugin available for Buddypress.

7.As far other programmer are concerned, a few most respected programmers of the buddypress community have access to the plugin(I am not going to mention their name), may be they can chime in if they want.

8.Extendability:- Currently, gallery supports user galleries,group galleries, and has well written filters,action to hook gallery with any component, be it events/blogs or what ever new component which has a presense of its own. I agree I have not provided a user documentation, where is the documentation for other well written plugins for Buddypress ? Can you point me to a few? and I assure, I will provide the documentation before the final release. Documentation will come after the stable is out.

9. Supporting Plugin: Is there any one paid plugin/free plugin/themes on Buddydev which is not supported, point me, I will change my statement here.

10. Why do you think BP Gallery to be released as opensource is nill, It is currently released as opensource but paid. You should rather correct and ask what are the probability of getting it released as free(It is already opensource, and there are so many differences between free/opensource).

I have mentioned it again and again, It will be released as FREE on/before bp 1.3, and I have mentioned it to all the members/ here in the community too. So, you should still be happy to know, I will release it as free before bp 1.3.

I am not pulling $30,000, at all, and neither I am pulling $3000 per month, it is much lower. and there are very few paid members, there are thousands of free members there. If I had to charge, I would have rather charged much higher not the mere $30.

Please do not make it as an issue, I wish the development of BP Album+ all the best and If you need any assistance, do Let me know, I will be glad to help you as I have done these things for gallery.

It will be better if we concentrated on the purpose of this thread.

Thanks

Brajesh

@gregfielding I never said I was “against” BP Gallery, I said it was inappropriate to use a *commercial* plugin with only *one* contributor as a BP core plugin, which is our ultimate goal for the BP Album+ plugin.

No matter what claims are made about this and that being “free”, until Brajesh releases his plugin, properly documented, into the WordPress repository under a GPL license so others can reuse its code, it is a *commercial* plugin.

In terms of features, BP Gallery *currently* has much more functionality than BP Album+.

But over the next couple of months, we’re planning on adding a huge amount of functionality to the BP Album+ plugin, and as we get more people onboard, BP Album+ will probably quickly eclipse BP Gallery.

I’m not going to try and tell you what gallery you should use for your site, but I want to point out some key reasons why I’ve chosen to team up with another developer and write a free open source BuddyPress Photo album plugin (and give it away to the community!) versus just handing over $30 and using BP Gallery for all of my social networking sites:

1) The release date of BP Gallery has slipped six times over three months, and its status hasn’t been updated since Feb 06 2010. Brajesh announced he was releasing RC2 on March 11/12. Didn’t happen. And BP Gallery Stable on March 14/15. Didn’t happen.

2) Simultaneously with all of this, the guy’s released two themes, two other plugins, and has posted that he will be releasing a chat plugin and another BP theme by the end of March. He’s also handing out free subscription extensions to all of his members for not getting his plugins working on time.

That’s impressive. Much respect to Brajesh for sheer volume of work!

But it raises some scary questions:

a) If he’s sprinting to get fifteen different projects done simultaneously under penalty of losing all his members, how efficient, extendable, and secure is the code inside BP Gallery? Has it been checked by other programmers?

b) Brajesh makes his money by releasing several new plugins every month. What incentive does he have to keep *improving* his existing plugins versus writing new ones?

c) If a BuddyPress core update breaks his plugins (as *just happened* with Manoj Kumar’s original BP Album, prompting the development of our plugin) …how long is it going to take Brajesh to repair his dozens of plugins, and where will BP Gallery fit in that lineup?

d) What happens if Brajesh gets hired by Google and quits developing plugins? Who will keep them working with future BuddyPress updates and how will they learn such a huge codebase in time to avoid disaster?

And to the people that keep saying “Well he’s going to release BP Gallery as Open Source in a week or two”, consider this:

e) If you were a website owner that’s paid $30 a month for a site membership to get the BP Gallery plugin, and then patiently waited for 3 or 4 months for the developer to finish it (and don’t kid yourself, that’s what 90% of the site members are there for) …would YOU be happy if the developer finished the plugin, then released it for FREE to EVERYONE as open source?

I’ve been wrong before, but I’d say the odds of BP Gallery being released as free open source any time soon are slim to nil.

It’s a sad situation, because if Brajesh released BP Gallery to the plugin repository, we could continue development on it for him, integrate it with our app, and release a fantastic plugin that gives the community what they want; and he would have more time to work on his other plugins. But again, very unlikely to happen.

….

There is a solution to all of the above problems: build ONE application that is FREE OPEN SOURCE, maintained by MULTIPLE developers, and can be EASILY EXTENDED. It’s how Linux is developed. It’s how WordPress is developed. It’s How BuddyPress is developed.

And it’s how the BP Album+ plugin needs to be developed.

….

As for “Community Support” …. we’ve had 600 downloads in 48 hours and will probably hit 1,000 downloads before most people even see this.

Unless Brajesh is pulling $30,000 a month from his site (=1000 members) I’d say we’ve already beat BP Gallery in terms of installed user base.

=====================================

@Modemlooper I’m going to turn this around on you and say “What if WordPress had no text editor, no file upload capability, no admin menu, and no comment functionality”. All of these are required elements to make a blog platform run, and that’s why they ship with WordPress. Twitter functionality, on the hand, is not a required element, and that’s why it’s implemented as a plugin. Likewise with BuddyPress, Forums, Profiles, User Activity, and… photo albums … are required elements of almost every social networking community. That’s why I want to stop screwing around with third-party plugins and help build something that’s good enough to ship with the core.

So there’s my thoughts!

^F^

@foxly

I’m not sure why you were stripping down and rewriting bp-gallery from Brajesh to 1.2 because that’s all it’s been developed on. he’s about to release rc2 and then go stable but the release of bp 1.2.2 broke a few functions that he’s having to fix. You must be thinking about bb-picturealbum from Manoj Kumar that he quit development on. Those are two different developers. Please make sure that you have them correct.

@m@rk,

Those posts that you have that are referencing bbpicture are Manoj Kumar’s plugin from 1.03, NOT bp-gallery. bp-gallery was written for 1.2 and does work with 1.2’s default theme.

@gregfielding,

bp-gallery is something that I’ve been testing since the alpha and the differences from what I see are that gallery supports all media, including images, video, and audio. There is also group support already included and privacy settings for them all as well. He is also going to release the shortcodes to include the images and albums in posts.

For those who are still confused, and this is NOT an advertisement, just answering the questions about the differences and clarifying any misconceptions, the site for bp-gallery is at http://buddydev.com