BuddyPress.org

I’ve added the WP abstraction code that will allow BuddyPress to run on all WordPress versions to the trunk. This code will more than likely be needed even after the merge, so I want to get it in there and up and running for 1.2.

I’ve had it going for a while locally, so it seems silly to sit on this until 1.3. After the merge I will tweak where needed, but I don’t anticipate much change since the multiblog features of 3.0 will simply be an on/off setting.

@David – downloads plugin at https://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/buddypress-group-documents/. I haven’t tried it yet, but it looks good.

@David – fair point. fyi, group notifications: https://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/group-forum-subscription-for-buddypress/

About how member/profile data is stored in the database, Andy Peatling wrote:

I’ll be reworking the schema in 1.2, interested to hear your ideas.

I sent you a lengthy mail through the system, again describing the problem as I see it, but probably not enough solutions. I came across this in another thread:

I’m now using another 3rd party plugin for membership to the site (WP eMember). While it has its own table, it also creates a matching WP user for each of the members it creates.

I haven’t tested the various commercial membership plugins yet (Memberwing, Wishlist, …), but they must all have their own solutions for the problem. I’m curious what their database tables look like…

hi,

i have a similar problem. when i access the registration page at http://<somehostname>/register i get a HTTP 302 response code and a redirect to the start page.

i’m usingthe following setup:

– buddypress 1.1.2

– wordpress mu 2.8.6

i’m sure, that i followed the installation instructions correctly step by step. i double checked it. the only thing i changed is the theme. however, also with the default theme activated (which i haven’t touched) the issue remains.

does anybody have an idea, why this is?

Hi Jean,

h-mag.com was initially setup as a wordpress template. After setting up and installing BuddyPress, I imported each of the components one by one and began modifying the parent theme’s CSS and restructuring the HTML to match the functionality of the original wordpress theme. There are not shortcuts, just a lot of tedious work and trial and error.

Please this is my first experience with WordPress and buddypress. I have installed wordpress Mu/buddypress successfully, I want to have a site where the main page will be used as an introduction to my social networking site, as well as the platform for login, and the second page to be the main social networking page… i have installed some customed made theme for the purpose of the Social.n/w.. but the whole thing is confusing me. PLEASE… i will be grateful if any one can give me step by step hint on how to go about this…….

….placing one theme as main page in subdomain and the other in main domain is…? Please Help…

@ Mike:

As an example, a place to tweet from my site won’t turn many on. Not because they aren’t on Twitter, but they don’t come to the site to do it, don’t usually want to tweet about what they are doing on the site and the added convenience of tweeting from within the site isn’t worth the real estate. Still – it’s a great idea for other sites.”

This is exactly what makes these kind of decisions so hard to make for the development team. Basically there are so many different needs for different usergroups, that decisions about core functionality are always very hard to make. I apreciate the amount of interaction between us (end users) and the developers (core + plugin developer) on the forum and the trac, and I do think we’ll get there in the end. Since I am not a programmer I can’t say what is technically the best way to do something, but I do know a thing or two about social networking and online communities in general.

The thing which makes BuddyPress really stand out is, is that it actually crosses a bridge between blogging/publishing of content and micro-blogging/meaningles social networking. There has always been a clash between those two types of users and some usersgroups are way more focused on quality (and somewhat lenghy!) content then others. Your example about real estates agents looking for totally different ways to interact then a typical social networks user is spot on. You do not need twitter integration on your site, and you do not want to have those functions overcomplicating your site. My users on the other hand are EXTREMELY mixed on so many levels. The only thing they have in common is the fact that they all have the same disease. This makes creating my network a really big challenge and it means that there are many factors I need to think about. Many of my users are used to blogging and discussions forums, and a younger generation is used to facebook and twitter. Currently the more traditional users have more then enough to do on my site with the amazing Blog + Group functionality. These components can be tweaked to my liking by WordPress (user blogs) and the Group API.

Since the introduction of the Group API you have seen that there are plugins coming out which let us (the site owners) decide what we want to add to our social network. Plugin developers can easily hook into the Group API and add functionality to it, which might be specifically written for a specific usergroup. We’ve seen Groupblogs, External Blogs but also Twitter integration plugins, and it made the Group component by far the most powerful and promising BP component as of yet.

The mock-up I’ve made is basically saying that this kind of functionality should also be extended to regular profiles, so we get much more flexibility to create the social network we see fit. This does not only mean adding new functions but also disabling unneeded ones.

If the Friends functionality was extensible trough the Profile API it would mean that it could be customized into something that would fit different needs for different sites. Maybe some sites would like to allow individual users to add Twitter Widgets to their profile page, and allow groups of Friends to discuss on a seperate forum. I could imagine that a “family oriented” community could greatly benefit from such a feature, but your real estate community would not! With a Profile API it would mean that it could be added as a plugin on top of the basic friend functionality which everyone could use as a base to work from.

So basically I’m saying that it might be smart to work on making all the components as flexible and easy to extend as the Groups component, then it won’t take long before before there are so many options available to do thing they way you want, we will all be happy! There are more and more people discovering BuddyPress as a “general” Social Network solution instead of a “social network for bloggers” and there are even a lot of users who want to get rid of the blogging functionality and make it a normal social network. If WPMU and WP merge there will be even more need for individual/profile related functionality and a good API is the first step to achieve this!

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.