BuddyPress.org

What are we talking about here guys? Only the blog creators will ever see the dashboard on a regular basis. All the users that are subscribers will rarely if ever see it.

True. But there are a few cases where regular users are sent into the backend. In the first version of my site I had to hack core files to bring them into the regular layout and use plugins to close parts of the backend for users with blogs. I’m now in the middle of upgrading to 1.1.3, a painful process…

The question is how Buddypress will develop into the future, as more features are added. I’m also running into the issue how to structure user interface for new functionality here – haven’t had time to work on that yet. Boone Gorges gives a good suggestion how to bring adding an RSS feed into the front end.

I’m sticking with Buddypress because I believe it has the most potential for the reasons I pointed out earlier and because I assume(d) that it will become more mature over time. But if the developer community sees Buddypress as just “an add-on to a blogging/CMS platform” aimed at communities of experienced bloggers, that would be a problem for me.

I do see the potential. As I said earlier in this thread:

That’s why I believe Buddypress has a lot of potential. It’s a social network, but with a strong content publishing angle.

I’m absolutely not advocating copying Facebook etc. I’m a big believer in the idea of “private social networks”. And I actually think that adding old-fashioned forums dilutes the blog logic that should be Buddypress’ main strength.

Groups has enormous potential and seems to be pretty unique.

But imagine Buddypress being used by schools, companies, trade associations, sports clubs, etc. That is a very different audience from the experienced WordPress bloggers in the Buddypress development community.

“Remember, wordpress.tv has a TON of tutorial videos for beginners as well.”

…. not sure my german-language-speaking users at the age of 50 and over, are going to watch a video in order to understand how my website works

Once you need a video to EXPLAIN how a website works, something is wrong.

I just think that the “WPMU-Dashboard-backend” is not a place I want my users to go into, so I had to dis-able the feature for users to be able to create their own blog. So my website is more like a Discussion-Forum with Groups

I guess giving the “WPMU-DashBoard-backend” the same DESIGN as we do have at testbp.org (default-theme) would solve the issue.

Anybody out there who is able to do this ? Maybe a plug-in ?

Please do not take this as an offense, I really do love BuddyPress very much and highly appreciate the work of Andy & team & the community

Remember, wordpress.tv has a TON of tutorial videos for beginners as well.

Those are useless to regular people signing up to a social network. Most bloggers know how WordPress works. That is not the problem. The problem for Buddypress is that the interface is not end-user focused, like Facebook, Ning, LinkedIn, etc.

I think some people want BuddyPress to be more than it is.

If Buddypress is strictly for communities of bloggers, a limited audience of experienced WordPress users, don’t promote it as a social network. Is Buddypress’ ambition really that limited? If it is, I need to look for another solution.

Remember, wordpress.tv has a TON of tutorial videos for beginners as well.

The early versions of the P2 theme had messy JS backend making it tricky to move (IMO).

Erich above wrote “An average user probably only wants to write some text and post an image or a video” – this is a different task than what the WP

posting backend was built to do. That’s why P2 was so popular because it encouraged microblogging using the WordPress platform.

BuddyPress is still very much a WP(MU) plugin. What it does best is create an instant social network around a community of bloggers … I don’t think this is a negative, but a positive.

I agree. That’s why I believe Buddypress has a lot of potential. It’s a social network, but with a strong content publishing angle.

I just wish that shift in focus from blog posts to “member management” would get more attention. Personally I don’t need any more new features. Adding forums for example only adds to the structural confusion. I’m still struggling with the basics, creating a user-friendly registration and profile settings interface.

The Dashboard of WordPress has gotten two complete overhauls within about the last year. The current version is awesome.

The WordPress admin interface is pretty good for what it has to do, but it is not what people expect when they sign up with a social network and it clashes with the front end interface.

Edit in response to Andrea_r:

P2 looks interesting. It’s an example of responding to user expectations and evolving interface “standards” on the web.

The Dashboard of WordPress has gotten two complete overhauls within about the last year. The current version is awesome. Extremely user-friendly and easy to use. It’s just jarring to go from BuddyPress to WordPress’ Dashboard. But there are no usability issues with it as far as I’m concerned. Would be nice if you could turn off most of the screen options by default though.

yeah, the Admin-Dashboard of WP / WPMU looks very complicated to people who have never used WordPress or really are not some sort of Publishers.

So an average person “writing his blog” will surely need a few days to understand the Dashboard and most likely would not need all the features it is offering.

An average user probably only wants to write some text and post an image or a video.

I am thinking of the Community I am trying to target which are people at the age of 50 and above. So I decided to de-activate “User-Blogs” from my installation, because I am sure my users will be confused with the backend-Dashboard.

I do hope that the Dashboard of WP will get a design-overhaul to make it easier to understand.

Gonna see how the “quick blog post form via the theme” from the “BP-Roadmap” will work out ? If this will be easy to use (without going into the Dashboard), then I might integrate the Blog-functionality back-in into my installation.

@PH (webguy),

Look into this one built on simplelife…

Features

All the features provided with version 1.1 of Simplelife (the point of the fork) and I will also attempt to merge any new future changes as well

Support for as many and as obscure services as possible. I have already included stuff that no one else does like PMOG, Atheist Nexus, Cocomments, Getboo etc.

Longer history via utilizing google reader.

Comment tracking from everywhere. That is, each time you leave a comment in the blogosphere or in a forum, it will show in your lifestream (AFAIK, no other lifestreaming service does this)

Pie Charts.

FYI: https://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/complexlife

I agree. Buddypress is of course built on blog software WordPress, which has a totally different focus; managing blog posts instead of people/members. So BP is still a bit schizophrenic at the moment.

People do sign up on my network (aimed at web entrepreneurs…), because I’ve integrated event registration. They also sign up for groups and sometime leave messages. Nobody creates blogs or groups unless I ask them with detailed instructions.

Imho the WordPress backend should be entirely closed to regular end users. Any admin settings that they need should be integrated in the front end user interface, under Settings on the profile page etc.

My pet peeve is related to this; Buddypress has no build-in way to store full, real name, location and other regular personal profile data you’d expect from a social network. It’s still too close to the blog software base, with the focus on username/password and managing blog posts.

As for locate_template() – you’re best suited to go read about the function yourself than ask it here. It’s a WP function. I founded via Google, the search engine @ https://codex.wordpress.org/Function_Reference/locate_template

It’s a better function to use than an include because the array of template files gives the function something to fall back on if it can’t find the sought after function.

You could try our Buddypress Ads Plugin available at https://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/buddypress-ads/

This plugin will allow you to publish ads through your buddypress site(with wordpress mu) Supports multiple ad networks including adsense , adbrite and many more. Just replace the ad code in the file bp-custom.php with your own ad code.

More details at http://www.pingsense.com/2009/11/buddypress-ads-plugin/

You can tryout Buddypress Analytics Plugin at https://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/buddypress-analytics/

This plugin will allow you to use your analytics script with your buddypress site (with wordpress mu) Supports any analytics script including but not limited to Google Analytics.

More info at http://www.pingsense.com/2009/11/buddypress-analytics-plugin/

1: Yes that’s right.. you can easily show recent blogs from your entire network by placing a widget on your homepage:

https://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/bp-paginated-posts/

If you want to have one blog which collects and displays all blogs in a single blog form you can use this plugin:

https://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wordpress-mu-sitewide-tags/

2: This is also possible.. just make a blog and make it only viewable for subscribers (members) of your site!

Good luck

You could try our Buddypress Ads Plugin available at https://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/buddypress-ads/

This plugin will allow you to publish ads through your buddypress site(with wordpress mu) Supports multiple ad networks including adsense , adbrite and many more. Just replace the ad code in the file bp-custom.php with your own ad code.

http://www.pingsense.com/2009/11/buddypress-ads-plugin/

Thanks for your support r-a-y, Andrea_r and netstay

I have updated the plugin code at

https://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/buddypress-analytics/

http://www.pingsense.com/2009/11/buddypress-analytics-plugin/

Thts the same issue I get, no pages, it just takes me to the front page. My post is here https://wordpress.org/support/topic/342962?replies=2#post-1320596

We have installed wordpress and buddypress in our site.

After the last buddypress update we discovered that USERS can´t upload avatars.

Once they select the file and click UPLOAD they receive “(Error when uploading! The error was The file type does not meet security policies. Try another)”

BUT admin user can upload avatar without problems!!

We are using WordPress MU 2.8.6 and BuddyPress 1.1.3

Thanks!

Francisco

Parent / Child is pretty simple. A child theme can be as simple as a single style.css file with a link to another theme (it’s parent) in the comment section at the top of the file. i.e.:

Template: bp-sn-parent

Done. Now you can make your own styles to override the parent styles. And additionally… as you probably know… you can override any parent template file by placing a template file of the same name (and location) in the child theme. That’s about it.

And I would assume that any wordpress functions / constants / etc. that refer to template locations (other than the blog_info(‘stylesheet_directory’) will refer to the parent.

I think a directory page might make more sense than a sidebar list. What happens once you have 100 documents? Also, it would really make sense with the rest of the BuddyPress world. You could have tabs for “all documents” and “my documents”. You could have sorting by “active”, “recent”, “popular”. etc. And you could have “search” of course. Maybe not to start… but you know… Phase 2.

And how could anyone hate the WordPress backend?! It’s awesome!!! Show them Joomla… then their heads would truly explode. But I understand how being taken into a completely different interface would be jarring. And I think it’s a huge bonus that this will all work on the front end. Nice.

I answered this above. No. There is no parameter for the template tag bloginfo() called “child_theme_directory” or anything similar. To write in the child theme directory, use “stylesheet_directory”. That works. For a full list of parameters that this tag will accept, please read the manual. They’re all listed under the header “Parameters”:

https://codex.wordpress.org/Template_Tags/bloginfo

p.s. Looking at the codex page above, I see there is a parameter call template_url. No idea of that will write in the parent or child dir. But it’s one you haven’t tried I think.

I’m basically one-week new to BuddyPress and but I agree, right now, it’s a bit difficult to be theme agnostic since you have to provide the page templates yourself. We’re going to have to work with Andy and the other devs to find a way to start moving more toward the way WordPress does it:

https://codex.wordpress.org/Template_Hierarchy

This way your plug-in’s action, i.e. create new link, just uses the template framework’s create.php page and you don’t have to provide your own. Same with directories. There should be one directory.php file in a theme and every directory uses it.

Granted this is a huge task But maybe we can spur it via Links since Links is kind of the poster child for BP component plug-ins. I’m available to help hammer that out if any devs catch this thread.