BuddyPress.org

My 2 cents: In my custom theme I try to consolidate everything around blogs and groups. I’m still on 1.1.3.

Blogs are of course WordPress strength. I’m trying to get to a social network with a greater emphasis on content, where possible via RSS and with front-end posting on blogs and groups to lower the threshold.

For the social networking aspect I need profile pages for members and some ways for members to interact with eachother, via internal mail, friending/following, joining eachothers groups and blogs.

Groups are Buddypress’ killer app imho. Buddypress has the potential to become a real collaboration platform around content, with endless real world applications in businesses, organizations and associations.

Buddypress has all the basic elements to achieve this, but the following are still huge annoyances and don’t look like they will be fixed any time soon:

– Member management is all over the place, in different pages under wp-admin, different database tables and different places on the front-end. Adding custom member data fields and integrating them with outside applications is complicated and inflexible. By design (!) there is no built-in way to reliably store separate firstname and lastname, which makes out-of-the-box BP useless for most businesses and organizations. There is little validation on sign-up form fields.

– No built-in privacy/security.

– Built-in forums are increasingly clashing with commenting on blogs and wires and the social networking structure. There is no reason to have old-fashioned forums in a next generation social network. You might as well integrate a WELL-style bulletin board system. Having a single sign-in option for people who want to use a forum on the side is great, but please stop weaving forums into Buddypress.

What Buddypress needs imho:

1. Consolidated member management; all member data stored in one place in the database, one page in wp-admin, one member profile page with “edit account settings” on the front end.

2. Content-focused member profile pages. Members should be able to use their profiles to introduce themselves and showcase their blogs and groups.

3. Conversation around blog posts and (threaded) blog comments, ideally with front-end posting like P2. There is no reason to have blog posts AND forum topics AND wire or whatever it’s called. Group blog should be a built-in feature.

4. End-user-friendly control over their groups and blogs, including privacy/security and front-end admin.

Summary:

– Members
– Blog posts
– Threaded comments

Presented in:

– Profile pages
– Blogs
– Groups

It’s just pulling the data from https://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/

Just had this problem myself.

https://trac.buddypress.org/ticket/2361

Normally BP fails silently if this table is missing. However if a WordPress plugin calls $wpdb->show_errors() it reports the error above.

Workaround – find the plugin with $wpdb->show_errors() and comment it out.

Ian

@ferhat – for your reference check out https://wordpress.org/extend/themes/commercial/
at the bottom, you’ll find how you can be listed there.

@jeffsayre that was a well-written post, thank you.

I’m having the same problem. “Edit Page” and “Create Group” are returning 404 pages.
I’ve already tested @cce solution and it didn’t work, instead gave me a php error and my site wouldn’t even load.

My config is:

URL:http://www.viladigital.com.br
WP 2.9.2
BP 1.2.3
Server: Locaweb (a brazilian host company) working with Windows 2003 – Enterprise
PHP5
Root instalation, no subdomain
Wordpress + BuddyPress (with BBpress installed via BP)
Custom BP Theme based on Default Theme
I’ve changed my slugs inside of wp-config.php, but even when I delete this lines, the 404 pages keep occuring.

Thanks a lot, guys!
//

Edit: nevermind, already saw what I did wrong. @cce solution is perfect!

will that bring my topics over when i go to import it through buddypress?

No it won’t.

The integration guide above has nothing to do with BuddyPress. It allows you to integrate WordPress with an external install of bbPress (users, single sign-on).

If you want to integrate your external bbPress install with BuddyPress. Login to the WP backend, under “BuddyPress > Forum Setup”, choose existing install.
Then, you’d have to create a group and enable a forum for that group. Next, you’d have to manually bring in those topics via PHPMyAdmin.

Read the beginning and end of this post for more details:
http://dev.commons.gc.cuny.edu/2009/12/06/upgrading-from-buddypress-1-0-to-1-1/

—

i kinda want it working like this site does, i want to integrate my external bbpress into my wp blog, and make them work together

This site doesn’t use an external bbPress install anymore.

—

If i have to convert to wpmu, i will, if that’s the only way to get this working, and have all my categories/sub-forums, integrated into wp, through bp…..

Like I said above, it doesn’t make a difference what version of WordPress you are using.

All of BuddyPress and WordPress is under the GPL license. You can sell your themes without issue, as long as you comply with the terms of the GPL license. There are plenty of resources around the web which will help you understand.

Currently there is no facility to sell themes from this website, so you will need to find somewhere to do that, perhaps on your website.

@Paul Gibbs, the problem is beyond UI. Buddypress/Automattic needs to make some real architectural choices, stop piling on functionality on existing functionality that partly overlaps, looks all very similar to the end user, but isn’t synchronized/streamlined. Your explanation of the differences between groups, forums, comments etc. in #post-51655 is irrelevant to the end user.

Mixing old-fashioned forums + WordPress classic blogs/comments + newer forms of social networking/activity wires is a recipe for disaster imho. Unless perhaps if you rethink and restructure the whole thing from the bottom up, but if Automattic is not doing that it is not going to happen and will only get worse.

Mr Maz (?) API discussion was a definite step in the right direction!

Exactly. As an example, say you wanted the SVN for “Welcome Pack” —

The WordPress plugin page is https://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/welcome-pack/
and the SVN path is http://svn.wp-plugins.org/welcome-pack/

Do non-BuddyPress specific emails get sent OK from your WordPress install? i.e. disable BuddyPress and get WordPress to send you a password reset email, or something.

Use this guide to integrate an external install of bbPress with WordPress:
http://www.wpmods.com/integrate-wordpress-bbpress

Many BuddyPress developers use the WordPress Plugin Repository to host their BP-based plugins. Just make sure that you include the tag “buddypress” as one of the tags in your plugins header section.

wordpress will load page.php for every page you create so you cant really customize it..

Not necessarily.

Echoing modemlooper, you don’t need any of that code above. If you want Pages you create in WP to have different layouts, create a template file (https://codex.wordpress.org/Pages#Creating_Your_Own_Page_Templates), upload it to the root of your theme, and when you add the new page in WP, just select the template you wish to use. Arbitrary PHP, HTML, stylesheets, whatever.

You don’t need any of that code above. You can easily create a page using WP page templates.

https://codex.wordpress.org/Pages

@holgria – Try reading each plugin’s documentation or their corresponding support forum to find out more.
eg. Posthaste FAQ – https://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/posthaste/faq/

You might have to change the user role to “Author” in order for those plugins to work.

“Bumping a post” means replying to your own post in an attempt to get a response.

add this to your bp-custom.php or functions.php file:

/*Define slugs*/
define(‘BP_EXAMPLE_SLUG’, ‘example’); /* this will show up as http://yourdomain.com/example */

/*Add slug as a root component*/
function page_setup_root_component()
{
bp_core_add_root_component( BP_EXAMPLE_SLUG );
}
add_action( ‘plugins_loaded’, ‘page_setup_root_component’, 2 );

/*Show defined slug*/
function bp_show_page() {
global $bp, $current_blog;

if ( $bp->current_component == BP_EXAMPLE_SLUG && $bp->current_action == ” ) {
bp_core_load_template( ‘example’, true ); /*replace example with the name that of the template you upload*/
}
}
add_action( ‘wp’, ‘bp_show_page’, 2 );

/*For extra functionality you can add a title for that page*/
function page_titles( $title, $b ) {
global $bp;

if ( $bp->current_component == BP_Example_SLUG && $bp->current_action == ” ) {
$title = __( ‘Example’, ‘buddypress’ ); /*change Example with what you want the title of your page to be*/
}
return $title;
}
add_filter( ‘bp_page_title’, ‘page_titles’, 10, 2 );

now create an example.php file and add this to it:

get the header with the get_header() bp function

Hello im an example page

testing to see if this works

get the footer with the get_footer() bp function

then upload it to the root of the bp-default theme, it should be at the same level as where the header.php, footer.php files etc.. are
now go to http://yourdomain.com/example and see if it shows..

remember to replace ‘example’ throughout the code with what you want your slug/page to be, the template (example.php or whatever you will call it) that you upload to the theme should be the same as what you call on this line above>> bp_core_load_template( ‘example’, true );

if its working, go ahead and customize as ud like
hope this helps, it works for me, dont know a way to do it through wordpress though as wordpress will load page.php for every page you create so you cant really customize it..

That means you’re using standard WordPress. So you won’t see a link to blogs.

If you set up your new users with the role of “contributor” or higher, they can post.
Login to the WP backend and navigate to “Settings > General” and select “Contributor”.

Then download a plugin like:

Posthaste:
https://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/posthaste/

or Quick Post Widget:
https://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/quick-post-widget/

Also please refrain from bumping your own post every hour. Bumping your thread every 24 hours is enough.

@r-a-y I need a little bit of help with this. My site is officialmancard.com and I’ve got wordpress running in a folder (officialmancard.com/omc/). Same issue as everyone else, all of my BP related links (My Profile, activity stream, etc) all have the /omc/ folder.

I’ve put your code into a bp-custom.php as well as my child themes function.php but I’ve had no luck. Can you offer any suggestions?

BP Quickpress is a possibility:
https://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/buddypress-quickpress/

If you’re using WPMU, you could also try BP Groupblog:
https://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/bp-groupblog/

Though you need to create a group before you can enable a blog.

This thread is quite interesting to me, and I do appreciate everyone’s thoughtful posts.

I may sound silly asking some of these questions so I would like to beg your forgiveness in advance,

1) Is WPMU still a base requirement for BuddyPress?
2) When a membership site is using BuddyPress, WordPress or WPMU (if required), 1ShoppingCart, and Wishlist Member, is the login seamless?

I guess further questions are relatd to the answers to these. Thanks in advance for your responses!