BuddyPress.org

I’ve always been of the opinion that drop down menus are evil. To each his own? Drop down menus hide options from users. They also stop people in their tracks and encourage them to start poking around looking all of the second level options… essentially studying your site map instead of browsing your site. The thought process goes from “oh… this must be the link to click” to “oh… there’s more options in here. Hmmm… I wonder what all of my other options are”. Worst of all are the fly-out style menus (like in the Buddy Bar) that are difficult to use and require pixel-perfect mousing. If you mouse even a single pixel out of bounds… they close. DOH!! Also, most web-based fly outs will close if you try to make a diagonal beeline from a menu option to one of it’s sub-menu options. The Buddy Bar suffers from this problem since it’s pure CSS I assume. A little javascript can be very helpful in this case to add a delay on mouseout and allow for diagonal mousing. But if you must use drop downs, I prefer a single level that is stacked vertically. No second level. No fly outs to the side. I really hate the Buddy Bar menus actually.

As for your issues with the theme. Personally… I think it’s pretty well done. I think the two side-by side menus in the profile sections are actually pretty revolutionary and work really well. It takes a second to “get it” because it’s not a scheme I’ve ever seen before… but I think it’s great. But it’s just the default theme. It’s not hard to make new themes that would have drop downs, fly outs, vertical bars, horizontal bars… whatever you wish. That’s not to say the default theme couldn’t be improved. I’m sure it could be.

Here is my first Buddypress-run site: ecofuture.

Runs on MU 2.8.2, BuddyPress 1.0.2, bbPress 1.0.

I was afraid of upgrading to 1.0.3 after reading through the forums and after finally getting the three-way integration to work.

Buddypress pages are worked up fromt he skeleton theme. Homepage blog is based on the Thematic Theme. I got the two to closely resemble each other.

The idea with the included bphome/bpmember themes is to be a skeleton framework to build off of. It shows how to use all of the included functions and loops in a way that makes the output of each element clear and concise.

It might not be the cleanest theme available, but it’s a great start if you’re learning BP or you need to understand what files do what for what reasons.

In my opinion, an experienced BP developer should be able to create a unique template starting from the bphome/bpmember themes and working outwards, within a few days. There’s no doubt that BP themes are extremely involved, but that’s likely to change as the platform matures and WordPress better supports theme locations and child themes.

Long story short, you’re probably right, but don’t expect the included theme to get much fancier. (Look at WordPress and bbPress for example. Both included original themes are very primitive in their designs.)

Does the link work with the regular bphome theme? This facebook 1.0 theme may need updating for the latest version of BuddyPress.

Something else you could try would be to copy functions.php from bphome and overwrite the file in facebook 1.0 theme.

@Boone,

Thanks for the tips, I had been messing with it some and noticed that my error in the activity stream was completely PEBKAC… I miss-typed like four things…

[cough]

Anyway…

I’ll leave the theme up and post updates on the GSN and Twitter once the site is properly launched. As for now, I’m glad you guys may get some use out of it

This is the code for the right bar:

<div id="right-column">

<?php if ( !function_exists('dynamic_sidebar')

|| !dynamic_sidebar('right-column') ) : ?>



<div class="widget-error">

<?php _e( 'Please log in and add widgets to this column.', 'buddypress' ) ?> <a href="<?php echo get_option('siteurl') ?>/wp-admin/widgets.php?s=&show=&sidebar=sidebar-3"><?php _e( 'Add Widgets', 'buddypress' ) ?></a>

</div>



<?php endif; ?>

</div>

This is the code for the left bar:

<div id="left-column">

<?php if ( !function_exists('dynamic_sidebar')

|| !dynamic_sidebar('left-column') ) : ?>



<div class="widget-error">

<?php _e( 'Please log in and add widgets to this column.', 'buddypress' ) ?> <a href="<?php echo get_option('siteurl') ?>/wp-admin/widgets.php?s=&show=&sidebar=sidebar-1"><?php _e( 'Add Widgets', 'buddypress' ) ?></a>

</div>



<?php endif; ?>

</div>

This code is taking from the bphome theme…I believe it should work in your member theme, but haven’t tested it.

Also check out the bp-dev widget plugin which adds new widget areas for your member theme:

http://bp-dev.org/download/

You only need the bp-dev core and bp-dev widget from that list though. I hope that helps get you in the right direction.

I too are looking to do this, i’ll be watching this post for an answer!

Thanks everyone. My problem is that I copied it to to the default theme and not the theme I am using *doh* all is well now.

@mattlay

After the installation of the plugin, you have to copy the “album” directory to your bp-themes directory to avoid the error.

Extract from readme.txt :

Move the “/wp-content/plugins/bp-album/album/” directory to “/wp-content/bp-themes/bpmember/”

“album” directory should be at the same level as “/wp-content/bpmember/groups” and “/wp-content/bpmember/profile” etc…

PERMISSION DENIED

Not Found / No Access

@mattlay

this does happen occasionaly, but it has nothing regarding the permissions.

if i remember correctly how i did it,

try copying ‘plugin-template.php’ to your home theme.

Hey Jfcarter,

Sorry for not being clear there.

If you’re using the default BP member theme, I replaced instances of bp_send_message_button with the newly, created bp_send_message_to_friend_button in these files:

* /bp-themes/bpmember/activity/just-me.php

* /bp-themes/bpmember/wire/latest.php

* /bp-themes/bpmember/profile/index.php

Keep in mind that if you’re using a different BP member theme, that those template links might be different.

Hope that was clear enough!

Is this a bot or a manual signup who manually sends messages to the users?

Anyway, the way I see it, there are two ways to combat this problem in the interim:

1) do a check to see if the logged-in user is a friend of that user, if so run the bp_send_message_button() function

2) code own function based on bp_send_message_button() and do the check within this function

Either option will require modifying the Buddypress member theme template in three places:

* /bp-themes/bpmember/activity/just-me.php

* /bp-themes/bpmember/wire/latest.php

* /bp-themes/bpmember/profile/index.php

(I’m using the default BP member theme as an example)

This is only for the “Send message” button though… how did the person spam your users?

The easiest way would be to just manually edit the navigation in your bp-themes template…

If you’re using the default BP member theme, that would be located here:

/wp-content/bp-themes/bpmember/header.php

In the first picture you linked to, it shows that you have “BuddyPress Default Member Theme (1.0.1)” installed. This is an older theme that is not compatible with version 1.0.2 or 1.0.3.

You must install the theme files that come with the version of BuddyPress that you are using.

Read the “Installation” section of the readme.txt file that comes with BuddyPress.

Log into WPMU as the Site Administrator.

Go to “BuddyPress > General Settings > Select theme to use for BuddyPress generated pages”. Select the default BP member theme.

Then hit the “Save Settings” button.

Changing the name of the theme you’d like to use as default to the name of the theme that is supposed to be the default might work too. (An awfully dirty hack, though.)

WPMU doesn’t provde that functionality out the box. What about http://wpmudev.org/project/New-Blog-Defaults ?