BuddyPress.org

FYI, I did start something over on the bpdevel site about this back in May:
http://bpdevel.wordpress.com/2010/05/05/summary-of-may-5th-dev-chat/#comment-254

Feel free to add to the writeboard.

From LPH’s list, I view #2, #3, and possibly #6 as vital.

Use a WordPress plugin like “Mail From”:
https://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/mail-from/

I do not want to speak for Jeff, but I recognized from his posts on this Forum that he knows a lot about Privacy-stuff.

I guess Jeffs Privacy-Features could have been build into the Core-Code already and would have added value to BP.
Let him allow to build his basic-features into the Core-Code and give him the chance to make some money on top of that by providing a plugin which gives “Advanced Privacy Features”.

The same goes for the Events-Plugin which probably only would have needed a bit of support from the Core-guys to get it properly running ?

No Plugin and Core-Code will be 100% perfect from the beginning, but with building this stuff into the Core-Code (with having the ability to activate / deactivate those features in the backend) and therefore having the benefit that many BP-webmasters will have the chance to test those features and providing lots of feedback and for coders providing patches on each of those features in order to improve it.

I guess that is what this article says (read it again !):
http://toni.org/2010/05/19/in-praise-of-continuous-deployment-the-wordpress-com-story/

Just apply “continuous deployment” to BuddyPress.

Currently there are many coders working on their own Plugins and are the “Gatekeepers” of their own little walled garden, but think about “Crowd-Sourcing”:
Why not providing a TRAC-tool, which gives all the talented coders on this Forum the chance to commonly work TOGETHER on a specific BP-feature (e.g. Privacy, Front-End-Blog-Posting, Events, etc.) ?

Step out of your own tunnel-vision and take the bigger-world-view and EVERYBODY will benefit.

I’ve thought long and hard about how to address this thread after seeing the conversation so far. I’ll do the best I can.

Ever since I was given the opportunity to work on BuddyPress full time I’ve put every ounce of energy I have into the project. It has gone from nothing – literally fifteen lines of code to something that powers a number of large sites and a whole array of smaller ones. The community has sprung up since then and has grown fast, but it would not exist first without something that people enjoy using and want to discuss.

That has always been my number one priority, build something that people want to use. Without that we have nothing and all the work around the project is in vain. I am not a trained project manager, but up until now I’ve done my best to help the community flourish and feel part of the process.

Now, yes, I haven’t been working as much on BuddyPress for the past three months – anyone using Trac will notice that. I’m no longer spending all my time developing the next version of BuddyPress. I’m working on some features for WordPress.com, helping out with other tasks around WordPress along with continuing to develop the project. The hope is that some of the features I work on for WordPress.com can merge there way back into BuddyPress in future versions or as separate plugins.

The issue we have, and the whole reason behind this thread is that I’m still far too large of a percentage of BuddyPress as a whole. When I slow down or have other priorities the whole project suffers. It should not be like this, the community should not look to me as the final word or the only bringer of direction or progression. If I’m not around for a while BuddyPress should continue to flourish and move forward. JJJ is doing his best to help balance this, but he is only one guy, and a busy one.

To quote a past line from a certain Mr Mullenweg “the best way to dig a hole is to grab a shovel and start digging”. Discussion is great, but to see any change we need action. If you want a new feature or something changed, write a patch. Submit it to Trac, keep consistently writing patches, answering tickets and fixing bugs. I guarantee you will end up with commit access. Right now we have only 10% of tickets with patches, that’s not even close to enough.

If you hate the new site (I agree it’s a mess) then design some mockups, write some HTML wireframes, tell me how much it sucks and your plans to change it. Start a community discussion, but with the goal of a plan of action. I am more than willing to provide access to people who want to get stuck in, but endless forgotten lists of what needs to be improved will not change things.

If you want to write posts for the BuddyPress blog then start writing them, they will be published. If you want to have your say on the direction of the project as a whole then show up and ask your questions at the BuddyPress meetings bi-weekly (there has been a serious lack of questions lately, why?).

Action, action, action. There are many people in the community doing a great job, but if we’re going to reduce the dependency on the core devs then we need more people to step up and start digging.

It doesn’t matter if you install WP or BP first.

The only thing you have to take into consideration before upgrading BP is to deactivate any other BP plugins you’re currently using:
https://codex.buddypress.org/getting-started/upgrading-from-10x/

If you’re upgrading from WPMU 2.9.2 to WP 3.0, read this guide by Pete Mall:
http://developersmind.com/2010/06/17/upgrading-wordpress-mu-2-9-2-to-wordpress-3-0/

It’s also a good idea to backup every step of the way. Before upgrading to WP 3.0, backup. Before upgrading to BP 1.2.4.1, backup.

BP 1.2.5 should be out soon which should hopefully fix these avatar problems.

“There is almost no benefit whatsoever of Friends within BuddyPress …”

Buddypress was supposed to be social networking added to blogging. Friends could form groups and work together in blogs. Friending itself is probably most relevant for internal email. The one thing you need to make that work is beefed up member management beyond default WordPress:

– full real names instead of anonymous meaningless usernames
– extendable, flexible member data fields
– ways to manage member lists
– ways to manage member roles
– ways to manage relations between members
– privacy and security controls on member data
– front-end functionality for members to manage their own profile data
– front-end functionality for members to manage their relationships
– etc.

None of these points get the attention they deserve. Again, if you have the three solid elements (1) members (“users”), (2) posts, (3) comments, all the rest is just a matter of displaying the data in different views, including forum view.

The shift in focus from blogging to the old-fashioned bbpress forum structure further derailed the project. Adding social networking to blogging should have been the main focus.

“the best setup is having either Forums or Activity.”

I use neither. I’m trying to structure my custom 1.1.3-based theme around member profiles, blogs and groups with group blogs. My activity stream just reflects what’s happening on the profiles, blogs and groups; it’s not a discussion thread in itself – I think I originally broke the ajax and had to remove reply buttons etc…

That is part of WordPress core. I suggest you disable BuddyPress; if you have the same problem, then it’s something to do with your WordPress install rather than the BuddyPress plugin. Let us know how you get on.

Yes, there is.

https://codex.buddypress.org/how-to-guides/changing-internal-configuration-settings/
Put this in your wp-config.php

define( 'BP_ENABLE_USERNAME_COMPATIBILITY_MODE', true );


@kevin
As Greg’s said; the reason is that enabling multisite loads more code which needs more memory.

@kevin,

check out this link http://wpmu.org/daily-tip-fatal-error-exhausted-memory-size-when-upgrading-to-wordpress-3-0-heres-the-fix/

@ajamison5579; We’ve had some fun with themes too, and just getting used to what exactly is WP controlled, and what’s BP controlled! (Bit of a nightmare, to be honest, but it all seems to work ok in the end).

To use a standard theme you need the BP Template Pack (at https://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/bp-template-pack/). In the end I pulled the guts out of a BP template to give us a very simple Facebook-like look (http://lincme.co.uk) If you have a peek you’ll notice that a lot of BP stuff went under the knife, as it’s way to complicated and busy looking for many people. As some have said elsewhere, this site is too.

As to your final question above; the default BP theme has all the code templates you require (of course) and you can clone it, modify the CSS info so it doesn’t clash, and hack away. Any template files you use override the default ones, so you can pull files out and just modify the bits you want to. And the CSS, of course. Have fun!

Add; To clone the BP theme, create your own folder such as wp-content/themes/my-theme, then copy all the files from wp-content/plugins/buddypress/bp-themes/bp-default into your new my-theme folder. Be sure to modify the header content of the style.css file so WP/BP recognises it as a new theme.

@gasparking i think you’d be looking to work with post_type or post_title(i think), i’d start here https://codex.wordpress.org/WPMU_Functions/get_blog_post – sounds like something i’d like to try too.

Anything that says something close to:
define( 'NONCE_SALT', 'unique phrase goes here' );

There will be a few places it will appear all one after the other. Your best bet would be to visit the Salt Generator and use those, as they are totally randomized and guaranteed to be unique.

Are you using a language other than English, and have you adjusted all of the default WordPress security keys and salts in your wp-config.php file?

This is a known issue that is becoming more widespread but does not have an immediate solution yet.

@johnjamesjacoby see, that reply of yours right there, that could’ve been a blogpost I for one wouldn’t know where to start finding out all about your extra influx of clients, assignments, WordCamp involvement and WordPress work. Even if you are a transparent character on the world wide web, I only have time to check up on, and be active in, BuddyPress.org every so often. Thanks for all the answers, I’m pretty much content.

For those of you that want to directly influence the future of BuddyPress, http://trac.buddypress.org. Make it your friend. Learn it. Love it. Live it. Give it a hug everyday and patch a bug.

The Trac is where you can post code snippets, or giant mega patches of code that you think should be integrated into BuddyPress. You can see the timeline of when people have done what, and see the outstanding bugs that need squashing before we can safely release the next version. The more bugs you fix, the more code you contribute, the more you are directly involved not only in the community, but directly in the future of the platform as a whole.

As incentive to help out, if your goal is to be a developer and make a career out of BuddyPress, consider walking into a meeting with a possible client, and when they ask what your level of involvement is with WordPress or BuddyPress, and you can respond with “I make it,” your chances of securing that client are pretty good. In order to help make BuddyPress, you have to actually help us make it, and you do that via the Trac. I can say this, because that’s how I did it with both WordPress and BuddyPress, and I’m down to help you guys do it too.

There are plenty of people that are highly active in the Trac that aren’t so much so in the forums, and vice versa. Since we moved BuddyPress.org over to 1.2, both Andy and myself have been busy with our own assignments that yes, do involve BuddyPress, but also involve other neat things like the WordPress.com “Like” feature and planning some neat things for a WordCamp.org redesign.

Truth be told, if /anyone/ is concerned about where I am or what I’m doing in regards to BuddyPress or the future of the project, there are at least 10 methods to contact me directly and I am totally happy and not annoyed by anything that has to do with BuddyPress. Drop me a line, let’s chat http://en.gravatar.com/johnjamesjacoby

To answer a few of the questions/comments/statements in this topic: Private Messages are turned off because spam bots have started targeting BuddyPress installations and we were getting hit pretty hard after we upgraded the site. Raise your hand if you got a PM from someone claiming to love you enough to help you with male enhancement. Regarding my absence in the forums, I’ve really just taken on too many clients and haven’t had the time to look backwards at support AND forwards at development at the same time. It won’t always be that way, but it has been lately and I like it about as much as you all seem to too. I love being in the forums and helping people out, and I’m sad I haven’t been able too recently.

Andy is the figure head of BuddyPress and serves as the guiding light of the project similar to how Matt does for WordPress and bbPress, but there is no shortage of capable people in the BuddyPress community that could take this project by the horns and make it their own at any point. I know I’m not Andy, but if I can pretend to be to help anyone when he’s not around, ping me.

Along the lines of what @matt said, I love using @nacin as an example. He stormed into the WordPress Trac and started contributing code and patching bugs. Some were great, and some were rubbish, but he learned as he contributed and within 1 calendar year he has merited his way into being a core committer for WordPress, and contributed something insane; like 60% or more of the commits on the WP3.0 branch are his doing or somehow as a result of his hard work and commitment to the project. While there is only one @nacin, there is plenty of room for any one of you to be very @nacin like.

By the way, if there is an election and I’m voted out, I’m not leaving without a fight. You’ll have to chase me out of town with torches and pitchforks.

Someone can correct me if I’m wrong, but when you’re deleting the /activity/index.php file I wonder if BP then automatically grabs the /activity/index.php file included in the default theme that comes preinstalled with BP?

yourdomain.com/wp-content/plugins/buddypress/bp-themes/bp-default/activity/index.php