BuddyPress.org

Wow!! I wish this post had a different title because it hits on some really core issues that I hope everyone chimes in on. I was searching on how to let users “post” without giving them a full-blown blog/website and all the hassles that comes with. Mr. Maz crystallized it for me:

Hammer meet nail!!! I’m one of those people.

However, with the merge coming, BP will be exposed to greater millions who have NO interest in creating a community of bloggers, but just a community for a new or pre-existing site. The pre-existing site is primary and the community is secondary. As software officially “adopted” by Automattic and arguably best of breed, Automattic will have to deal with this.

I chose WP/BP for a niche site where I want to build significant user interaction functionality because:

• I believe WP is growing and development in core and plugins will surpass others for some time
• Its ease of use for the developer with some php/mysql background (me)
• I found BP later, but it is still has a brighter future than the competitors I’ve seen and the merge will only multiply that (but, there are alternatives https://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/mingle/ , https://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/alkivia/)
• There are so many people trying to solve the same problems, I trust they’ll get it fixed – eventually

All that said, I think I’ll start another post on how to make BP work for sites that just want to use BP as a foundation for social interaction and not as a blogging network.

Same problem here. No notifications are being sent, no new users are being listed in the backend. In the database table “wp_signups” I can see the registrations, in wp_users I can not.

The only plugin installed is bp-events at the moment.

(BP 1.1.3, WordPress mu 2.8.6)

It doesn’t look like Buddypress would be the most suitable script to develop a site like that. Zillow is an interface on a bunch of databases for homes, agents, lenders, etc. You’d have to adapt the users and post tables in WordPress, which aren’t very flexible…, or develop something around it.

Are there any open source PHP scripts more suitable for this kind of site? Can’t think of any.

So every time i add a sidebar to my custom theme the id of the bp-default sidebar is count up by 1? That would mean i have to dive back into child-themes function.php and higher the unregister_sideabar(‘sidebar-x’) by one?

Edit: I checked it in my child-theme and the procedure above is unfortunately true. WordPress Codex also says it only goeas by ID: https://codex.wordpress.org/Function_Reference/unregister_sidebar

I have a network of web entrepreneurs. It’s hard enough to get them to create blogs and actually use them. OK, that’s not only BP’s fault of course, but “full invested writer/bloggers” will set up their own blogs – I’m also a journalist, I would never write/blog in someone else’s network.

I think more advances are necessary to take it beyond this where users can contribute more content without having to be a full invested writer/blogger.

That’s why I need to come up with an external blog feed-in solution. Currently stuck in upgrading my theme… I also like the microblogging suggestions.

And Groups has limitless and unique opportunities; dynamic groups with lots of content within a private social network/community.

My worry:

Will Buddypress eventually target schools, companies, trade associations, sports clubs, etc.? Or even become enterprise ready? Or will it stay a more limited play thing for insider groups of dedicated blogging geeks with a lot of free time on their hands?

I HOPE that BuddyPress does not become a member aggregation site where, the more people, the more successful a site is “perceived” to be. That to me is the game that Ning is playing. Why in the world woulu Buddypress want to be another Ning?

I agree. That model is dead. I believe the concept of “private social networks” is different. Jeff’s privacy component is essential – haven’t had the chance to test it yet.

But there should be opportunities for low threshold content creation and communication and I would develop them around (micro)blogging. Again, I have mixed feelings about the addition of old-fashioned forums.

Without being able to look and see multiple files both within the wordpress part and the server, the most we can do is guess.

Some things I have seen crank the CPU:

– a bad plugin with an off query

– bad code in the theme (make the theme more efficient, revert to default theme to see if that’s the issue)

– inappropriate server settings. Did you really put in a wildcard subdomain (if you use them) or do you have, say 20, listed. (Seen it. Wasn’t pretty.)

– default server settings on high traffic sites. Preforks, child processes – all these can be streamlined.

– an obscure bug with cPanel on CentOS boxes that create a memory leak

– in rare cases a hardware failure

and finally – being hit with spammers constantly. I have a couple older domains, and no matter where I host them, the simple fact they are “out there” mean they get hit with an INSANE amount of spam. Email, comments, splogs – all of it.

Basically, you have to eliminate what it isn’t.

how much traffic do you get? How big is the database?

You may try zlib compression. I gave a tutorial about it here: http://wpmu.org/dramatically-speed-up-wordpress-and-wpmu-load-times-with-this-simple-tip/

It improved my transfer speed by 3.5 times on my BuddyPress test installation.

http://www.rackspace.nl/content/images_za/ppc_landing_pages/virtualisation.gif

VPS is not the same as dedicated even though it’s close.

Not sure how many visitors you get per day, but on my home install (this pc) I got 100 visitors at a certain moment on my buddypress driven site and it didn’t even went over 10% (that while running a lot of other crap, like firefox and photoshop).

Setup: 3.07 GHz (i7 950) and 6 GB Ram.

Why not try running a simple script (maybe GD or something) outside of wordpress and see if you get 100% CPU, if it doesn’t, then accuse wordpress.

In ur themes function.php (create one if it doesn’t exist in ur theme folder) add

<br />

/* Register an additional fourth widget column */<br />

register_sidebars( 1,<br />

array(<br />

'name' => 'fourth-section',<br />

'before_widget' => '<div id="%1$s" class="widget %2$s">',<br />

'after_widget' => '</div>',<br />

'before_title' => '<h2 class="widgettitle">',<br />

'after_title' => '</h2>'<br />

)<br />

);<br />

and alter the code in ur post above to

<div id="fourth-section" class="widget-section"><br />

<?php if ( !function_exists('dynamic_sidebar')<br />

|| !dynamic_sidebar('fourth-section') ) : ?></p>

<p>    <div class="widget-error"><br />

<?php _e( 'Please log in and add widgets to this section.', 'buddypress' ) ?> /wp-admin/widgets.php?s=&show=&sidebar=first-section"><?php _e( 'Add Widgets', 'buddypress' ) ?><br />

</div></p>

<p>    <?php endif; ?></p>

<p>    </div>

This should bring u a functional fourth-section sidebar in the wordpress backend. Valid for BP 1.1.3 Theme.

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/