BuddyPress.org

I couldn’t be more excited about the merge of mu into 3.0. Finally I can come out of the closet I’ve been hiding in for so long.

On most forums, as soon as I mention that I run mu, I get the proverbial, ‘not supported’, argument, whether it’s a theme or plugin purchase, or even a simple question. I suppose in the long run I should be grateful for the treatment I received most places as it really has taught me to be more self-sufficient. I actually spend more time now learning how to code then all other activities combined. As frustrating as it’s been, I have to say it’s been more than worth it. It’s almost a joke going back a year or two and reading the questions I had on other forums. And to think.. at the time I was running hundreds of client websites. Little did I know just how little I actually knew. It’s also important to mention that the absolute best wp coders that I have met all either run mu, or are intimately familiar with it. Many of those people are here on this site. Their level of expertise is head and shoulders above the normal wp user.

@johnjamesjacoby has it absolutely correct. The more time you spend on the theme of the site, and especially the back-end administration portion, the more the site really starts to shine. I’d say that I spend an equal part on modifying the looks and functionality of the backend as I do the theme. Basically every time one of my customers asks me how to do something that I believe they should be able to figure out on their own, I go back and try to find ways of making it more intuitive for them.

Most of my clients don’t even know they are running wp/bp. They simply wanted internal group communication systems, and it just turns out that bp fits the bill almost perfectly. What better system could there be than a system where I can give a client who has multiple locations a series of sites all connected together, cohesive, and simple to use. Gone are the days of having to stitch together or bridge multiple systems. I’m so glad that I will never have to write or pay for another bridge script again, only to have one of the products die a slow death on the vine. I really believe wordpress and possibly buddypress are here for the long haul.

It’s also important to mirror what JJJ said about site size vs. features. I have some very small client sites, where it would make no sense to turn on most features. Doing that would only confuse the users and make it look awfully lonely. Then again I have sites with thousands of users. Turning on most of the features for them would make perfect sense, as everyone finds their own little area of the site that they enjoy. Bp makes this very easy.

@shnooka30 I’m actually one of those people who couldn’t be more excited about the plugins to give sub-blogs their own bp installs. To me, that is the biggest current downfall of bp, other than privacy and spam which are being addressed.

The entire reason I went to wpmu in the first place was that it was horribly inefficient to run hundreds of separate installs. I spent way to much time having to update sites one at a time. Wpmu, literally saved me hundreds of hours a year in updating time alone. It’s only because of the plugin not being available yet that I don’t offer bp to many of my client sites. When the plugin is ready, then I hope to jump in with both feet. At least the wait has given me the time to get a real understanding of the bp code base before adding it to the mix.

Bottom line is those who run undermanned or lousy setups of bp on shared hosting, which is the majority of users, will die off very quickly. Everyone else who does it right will appear so different in both appearance and service, that the public won’t even put the two together.

Everythings possible as long as you can code it (or when your wallet is big enough).

This might help you out a bit, but to get all your specific functions, you’ll have to do some coding.
https://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/new-user-approve/

@shnooka30
If someone wants to make a monster buddypress install with small buddypress installs beneath it, let him.
He’ll soon realise that it won’t work that way.

Originality and feature rich buddypress installs will prevail.

Well, I’ve been frustrated by this now for weeks and no-one seems to want to try and help. Let me describe two scenarios that demonstrate the two problems above in the hope that someone will try to solve them:

1. I have just installed a completely fresh WP 2.92 and BP default 1.2.3 on my local server (localhost). I followed TO THE LETTER the instructions given on https://codex.buddypress.org/getting-started/setting-up-a-new-installation/. Permalink is set to the first non-default option. The install went well and the site looks good. However, Clicking on the menu items Members, Groups, Forms, Activites etc gives:

HTTP/404
The requested URL alias for /members/ is not defined.

Question: What do I do to get the pages display properly?

2. I Have a live site waterwaywatch.org which fares somewhat better. I can get as far as Member and Group pages but if I try to click on a member to display their profile, the site re-directs to About.

Please, please, there must be someone out there who can help me on what both seems to be fundamental path issues. In both cases .htaccess contains:

# BEGIN WordPress

RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule . /index.php [L]

# END WordPress

Thanks in advance

Will

Fact is that not every website needs to be a social network, same as not every site needs to be a blog network.

BuddyPress, much like WordPress, shines when you don’t even know you’re using it, and it’s up to good themes to make that happen; something BuddyPress lacks when compared to WordPress.

There are limitless setups that you could dream up with mutlisite WordPress and BuddyPress, but none of them matter if the theme can’t pull that functionality out to be front and center. Multiple blogs, sites, networks, domains, communities, groups, etc… I think it’s safest to mirror the development of your community similarly to how one prepares a server; react to the size and don’t over-prepare. If you have 10 users, you probably won’t need W3 Total Cache and a CDN. Once you have 10,000 active users, you may want to consider beefing things up. Same with BuddyPress; once you have a ton of users, turn on groups and forums, or add something new and exciting.

Community features should match community size. If you turn on too many features with not enough users, your website looks like a ghost town, and no one will join. If you don’t have enough features, people will get bored and leave. BuddyPress does its best to let you find that balance pretty quickly, and helps you shape your online community how you see fit.

It’s like SimCity, but without the natural disasters.

I’m not sure what this has to do with BuddyPress, but there’s probably no need to cross post this.

Hit it the nail on the head about deterrent-knowledge. I mean, I’m not the greatest coder out there… but at least I know a little CSS and how to read through forum posts before I post. Google is man’s best friend.

I’m still not even sure how I did my first WPMU install. I think I must have tried 20 different combinations of factors before I got it running. Even then I didn’t have the presence of mind to write it down.

Hopefully @r-a-y is right, that it’ll shed more light to developers.

Well creating a network (basically MU) in WP 3.0 still requires that same deterrent-knowledge you speak of. Not everyone will be turning this on!
However, bringing this functionality to the masses also sheds light to the project and more developers will be able to contribute to the codebase.

I do agree with you about mass-communities! Not every community is going to be vibrant, but even those BP communities that have 10 active members is enough to warrant BP’s existence.

You should also know that there are a ton of low-quality “sucky” blogs because of WordPress, so what’s the difference if there are “sucky” communities because of BP?

I’m in agreement with Rich because the activity stream is the main component in BP, so why not utilize it? (btw, sorry for not getting back to you, Rich!).

Custom post types are powerful; the next iteration of bbPress as a WordPress plugin will be powered in some way by custom post types, but that is still a long way out. You’d then have to factor in how this will all work with BP (more development time). I haven’t looked too much into custom post types yet, but aren’t custom posts still stored under wp_posts? If so, not great.

I’m going to be collaborating with Rich (Boone, you want to jump in?) to utilize the activity stream component into a dumbed-down version of a forum. It won’t be as feature-rich as bbPress et al., but it will be compatible with existing and future activity stream plugins, which to me, makes this worthwhile.

http://dev.benoitgreant.be/wordpress-mu/blog/2009/11/buddypress-real-names
thats the plugin homepage, maybe ul find his details there?

I like the idea of using WordPress and BuddyPress to create a decentralized social network and am even considering starting a plugin to implement it. I’d like to hear people’s thoughts how each necessary feature would be implemented and integrated with WordPress and BuddyPress, as well as share my own ideas on how it would be done.

Here are some short answers to your questions:

1. A custom plugin is needed for this. Or you could use an auto group join plugin.

2. Could try modifying the group template in your child theme to add a forum loop.

3. Read this – https://codex.buddypress.org/how-to-guides/changing-internal-configuration-settings/

4. Requires a custom plugin. Look at the Groups API – https://codex.buddypress.org/developer-docs/group-extension-api/

5. What do you mean by this? Adding member information? If so, use BuddyPress’ xProfile setup located in the WordPress admin area.

6. You’ll have to code one yourself. There was an old plugin by Manoj Kumar that you could use as a reference point. Will need updating.
http://manojkumar.org/user-import-for-buddypress/

Yes. In fact, those can be already done on WP/MU end.
– set role of members as contributor so that nothing will be posted until you approve it – https://codex.wordpress.org/Roles_and_Capabilities#Contributor
– install membership plugin – e,g, http://www.primothemes.com/post/s2member-membership-plugin-with-paypal/
– create customized custom fields – https://codex.wordpress.org/Custom_Fields

wp-content/plugins/buddypress/bp-themes/bp-default/_inc/css/default.css

I’m running buddypress 1.2.3 on WordPress 2.9.2, and I’m pretty sure the install shouldn’t matter much… Keep looking.