BuddyPress.org

I have it on my setup right now. I’m not sure that it’s doing anything for BP, to be honest, but I also don’t know how to check I looked at the plugin page on my wp-admin side and it’s all `./wp-comments-post.php` down the board.

Cookies for Comments works, though.

Thanks MikeyD. Don’t quite understand why he spammed the topic with my site however.

I am currently writing my own theme that looks nothing like BP-default, but I’ve been on trac almost daily with the UI tickets. I don’t know if we need a dedicated “UI/UX” team, but as long as folks are submitting on those tickets it will ease some of the other dev’s needing to mess with it. I DO think it is an important component with BP and we need to keep talking about 1.3’s problems.

I’m glad to see all the discussion going on, especially in light of all the “BP IS DEAD” nonsense. I think the biggest issue is how the forums make it hard to actually talk, but the testBP forums are great and I’m excited to see them go live here. I’m also anxious to see the new BP.org which seems to be slated to June.

My biggest issue with the BP sites I run is spam. Even my non indexed test servers get spammed. My AIGA site was deleting 250 spam users/blogs a day before shutting off new user registration. The first part of that comes from spam users being registered. There are two types of spam services, bots, and (slave) labor. These folks get through the Captcha’s and set up real fake accounts. But in my experience with my comment forms adding a Captcha killed a vast majority of spamers. Then with comments, contact forms, etc this would kill most spam. From there heuristic spam fighting from splogs, comments, etc. Also a system that users can mark a item as spam would help a ton.

Second, its that to learn how to do ANYTHING in BP I have to take something that works with the current version and hack it a part to figure out basic commands and actions. Once the new site is up I think there should be a real push on getting the Codex up to snuff(look at jQuery and WP) that have examples, resources, etc. Then have tutorials on things, hell syndicate them from other bloggers.

So as my thing(s) I want to keep being a part of fixing UI issues, and will as long as I can.
I want to write for the Codex, and am here and willing to write Blog articles for BP. Tutorials, Updates, whatever. I’m game. I will be writing tutorials for AIGA members anyway, so why not sync the content here.
I am working on the Group Documents plugin with its original developer because my sites need it.

And lastly I will be writing a BP-Spam component. I will do it as a plugin first and will want/need tons of feedback. But to get the University to sign off on my project I will need to stop all the Viagra and other inappropriate content from making it through. I will do this regardless of it being a part of BP but want to give back however I can.

I’m so psyched to see all the energy is still in this project!

What do you mean by deleted manually?

If you mark the account as a spammer, they can’t log in with that ID/email again. What’s the goal in deleting them?

2. for example ,if you set your profile as : just friends, then you have control of your activity stream and anything posted on your wall.
if your friends spam you, you just remove them from friends.
simple as that.
also users must have a option that allow them to mark as spam or delete spam. it works on FB.

1.better looking default theme( I’m willing to contribute a minimalist theme with an awesome option panel )
2.privacy settings( may help prevent spam )
3.activity stream on profile pages should have better order like (if I’m looking at my profile first thing I should see is my friends activity) also re-share on activity and post to wall as fb would be cool
4.forums not attached to groups

I also had this problem and went through a deep analysis.

The issue stems from the fact that Bluehost requires that the email be sent from an account that exists on the system. They do this as an anti-spam technique and they require this even if the mail is originating from within the system.

Enter WordPress. PHP uses a mail function mail(). WordPress maps this to wp_mail() and pretty much everyone uses the wp_mail for the plugins within WordPress. This makes sense as it allows customization of WordPress mail at a relatively low cost of performance.

Enter Buddypress. Buddypress places a filter upon wp_mail() such that all email originate from the user ‘noreply’ on the domain such that end users don’t reply to the notifications. Sounds cool.

But remember that Bluehost does not allow email to be sent from non-accounts and that’s the catch.

Using a foreign SMTP does not work for Bluehost blocks those ports. Using local SMTP will work but you need to provide the right setup and credentials. Finally, using mail-from plugin works since it filter’s the Buddyhost filter changing the email from address back to a valid Bluehost email account.

Hopefully, this explains what is happening and you can choose which strategy you want to use to fix the problem.

@psivait

re spam: I would do a little research as there have been some lengthy posts on this question /issue here so dig those up and give them a good read, there are plenty of steps you can implement to reduce spam, however be aware that there isn’t much you can do about human spammers and they account for a good deal of time wasting these days especially if you allow for blogs to be created at signup (something I don’t personally think a good idea).

As for approving multisite blogs as a single super_admin I’m not sure you can or should, multisite blogs are meant to be fully fledged blogs in their own right and the user that creates the blog is the admin. There are however steps you can take as the multisite admin to restrict what can be done on user blogs but that is more a question for WP than BP. If your meaning that you will have members on your primary blog that is running the multisite install and you want to elevate them above ‘Subscriber’ level to say ‘Contributor’ so they can post then that can be done and can and submissions will be ‘awaiting admin approval’ which you will see if you run through the options in the dashboard with perhaps a test user with a ‘Capability’ higher than ‘Subscriber’

Don’t add that , user Stacy – Stacey etc. is a fu..ing spammer giving the same advices everywhere , he only wants to harm your computer , it is a pity that on buddypress.org doesn’t exists banning or something like a forum moderation .

Username “Stacy” is a known spammer who gives “advice” that is potentially harmful to your computer. It is not advisable to use the code above.

This plugin should get you what you want:
https://buddypress.org/community/groups/buddypress-share-it/

I’ve noticed; I’m going to ping the admins to let them know.

Username is `Stacy.` (period is in the username)

It sounds like your patch only covers activity. When I unmarked the spammed users there was no x_profile data, friends, groups, blogs or messages either.

I was running BP 1.2.8 and WP 3.1.1.

I marked a large number of users as spammers to temporarily block them from the site. When I reinstated them all of their BP data had gone (custom fields, activity, etc)! I don’t know if this is ‘normal’ behaviour for BP so I suggest anyone considering doing this tests it first.

I’ve done a complete restore from back up and am now looking for an alternative. If anyone has any ideas please let me know. Thanks.

I haven’t really explored it much, apart from getting the css to match various site designs…. I’ve tried to avoid using it but the spam (particularly the spam registrations) gets to be annoying. Adding this and the problem goes – apart from what appears to be the odd human spammer…

You could change where it says CAPTCHA Code to your own message – It’s an option at the bottom of the admin screen.

It would be nice to be able to place a text line above the graphic and above the captcha code line….

https://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/si-contact-form/ and https://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/si-captcha-for-wordpress/ work well for me with buddypress….

bump. are there not any captcha programs?

It’s hard to remove a post and let you see the response, so I’m closing this one. Please refrain from posting any further about this, it’s beginning to look like spam (this is the third post that I’m aware of, in the last few days). Heck, the title of this thread is the sort of thing Google’s going to pick up on, which I know is your intention.

In terms of people selling or advertising premium BuddyPress services on this site, there’s a balance between promoting your plugin in situations such as responding to a relevant topic, i.e. “how can I do x?” and you reply, “my premium plugin z can do that for you!” (which is okay), and outright advertising or spamming (which isn’t). Announcing a new premium plugin or theme is fine, but posting an announcement or advert each week isn’t — that’s spam.

Blatant advertising or spamming is not allowed; BuddyPress.org community support is about community support, it is not a free-for-all marketplace. This isn’t the place for that type of thing.

Specifically regarding your site, there are extra considerations. You appear to be re-selling GPL’d plugins and themes[1] (I have only taken a quick look at your site). As long as you had purchased these GPL’d themes or plugins originally, then you can turn around and give that theme or plugin to anybody you want. The GPL is about redistribution. My understanding is that this viewpoint is entirely correct.

However, I think you’re missing the big picture. It may not be illegal, but I don’t think it’s ethical. The authors of those works which you are profiting from worked hard to create something. By re-selling their works, I believe you are disrespecting those authors and the larger community. To me, it’s as simple as this: if this sort of behaviour discourages even one individual from creating a new BuddyPress plugin or a BuddyPress theme, because they’d like to try to make some money from it, then the community has been harmed by having one less choice.

I feel this threads falls between an announcement of a service and an advertisement for that service, considering your repeated posts, with debatable ethics. I apologise on behalf of our moderator team; we should have got in contact with you after your first post, and we’re sorry that it seemed we were picking on your posts. However, you could have posted another topic and asked what happened to your previous posts; we would have seen it.

I am paul@byotos.com if you would like to discuss further in private, or you’re welcome to start a new topic and start a discussion about the ethics of re-selling GPL plugins/themes, but maybe that sort of discussion would go best on the wordpress.org forums, rather than here, as it would be seen by a larger audience of WordPress plugin and theme authors (relevant, of course, because your site appears to have WP and BP-specific themes listed).

[1] This assumes that everything in those plugins/themes is covered by the GPL, such as images or any other files, as opposed to just the PHP source.