Topic: Adding Posts to a BuddyPress Group

Adding Posts to a BuddyPress Group

@simon_said

Member

13 years, 5 months ago

** preface: i’m new to buddypress

Over the last few months I have had several clients requesting POST integration into the buddpress group structure. If anyone has BP experience customizing these aspects, your feedback would be GREATLY appreciated. I’m sure theres a brand new shiny BP in the works… however in the meantime I’m hoping to find a way to bridge the gap between BP conversation and WP posts.

Just to makesure I understand….Currently in Buddypress the primary means of conversation is the Bppress “forumns” tab. This content type is fragemented from the standard WP table setup into a seperate table, and also has it’s own library of functions and ajax calls to create a new forum post, edit an existing or delete content… on the front-end the display options and interface possibilities for display of these forumns posts is limited. This strays far from all of the native functionality of WordPress and makes integrating conversation across different components of a WordPress website difficult.

==========”Posts” are different then “forumn topics” in the following way: (this is obvious… but just to be clear)

> They can be setup as custom post types

> They can be associated with custom taxonomy

> They can contain rich media content

> They can be easily associated with META content

> They can be integrated with the comprehensive library of WP functions

> They can be stored in the standard wp_posts table

===========Biggest Challenges of integrating posts with groups….

> Integrating existing plug-ins with this new groups “posts”… plug-ins such as “rate forumn posts” and “group email subscription” rely on the BP group forumns… by implementing “posts” as the primary conversation object none of these existing plug-ins would be compatible.

> Creating and editing posts on the front-end for members of a group, especially attempting to integrate the pop-up media manager can be very challenging.

> Moderation of new posts created…. (perhaps flagged as “content pending review”)

> BP User profile displaying “my posts”

==========Potential Solutions:

> Creating a custom taxonomy which mirrors the group structure, then manually customizing the BP child theme forumns page to display posts related to the matching taxonomy.

> Creating both a forumn post and a regular post when a new topic is created and linking them together with a hidden ID field

> Associating posts to the group using post meta -> group ID

Any feedback you might have on overcoming these challenges would be greatly appreciated:

Regards,

Simon.

Viewing 13 replies - 1 through 13 (of 13 total)

@4ella

Participant

13 years, 5 months ago

Take a look at http://www.buddydev.com , these days should be released Groups frontend post editor .
http://buddydev.com/forums/topic/plugin-for-frontend-posting#post-9118

@4ella

Participant

13 years, 5 months ago

SPAM ? What should be a profit to sending you on buddydev.com pages ?
when You are in the title speaking about > Adding Posts to a BuddyPress Group
AND in content:
“Over the last few months I have had several clients requesting POST integration into the buddpress group structure. If anyone has BP experience customizing these aspects, your feedback would be GREATLY appreciated.”
AND in other place you say:
“Creating and editing posts on the front-end for members of a group, especially attempting to integrate the pop-up media manager can be very challenging.”

AND I am responding you :
Take a look here because Brajesh is working now on http://buddydev.com/forums/topic/plugin-for-frontend-posting#post-9118 plugin because of adding this to his another very interesting plugin ..http://buddydev.com/plugins/blog-categories-for-groups/ plugin , which when finished will enable front-end creating posts for members of a group.

Sorry that I didn’t read and respond your other questions which I am not expert at all . Maybe I really don’t understand what do you exactly want.

@simon_said

Member

13 years, 5 months ago

Firstly 4ella thanks for responding to my post, not always sure what is spam and what is not…… the link provided http://buddydev.com/forums/topic/plugin-for-frontend-posting#post-9118 points to a table of contents with no mention of a plug-in….. you can see why I was confused…. please pardon the misunderstanding.

This link looks very interesting: http://buddydev.com/plugins/blog-categories-for-groups/

Any chance you could check that first link?

Thanks again for the feedback.

S.

@simon_said

Member

13 years, 5 months ago

To be a more concise with the requirement.

Allow members of a group to create posts within that group.
________________

> Add new Post to Group (including media pop-up, RTE, taxonomy relation)
> Edit existing Post in Group (including media pop-up, RTE, taxonomy relation)
> Browse my Group Posts
> Integrating the creating of new posts and commenting of posts within a group into buddypress components such as activity feed, plug-ins such as subscribe to group by email, ect…ect…
________________

The above work is what I’m scared of ,,,,,, using custom taxonomy you associate posts to a group with a few lines of code…..

add to….. groups / single / forum.php

//
global $bp;
$group_id = $bp->groups->current_group->id;
$group = groups_get_group( array( ‘group_id’ => $group_id ) );
$group_slug = $group -> slug;

$args=array(
‘group_terms’ => $group_slug,
‘post_type’ => ‘nuggets’,
‘post_status’ => ‘publish’,
‘posts_per_page’ => -1,
‘caller_get_posts’=> 1
);
query_posts( $args );

//

@simon_said

Member

13 years, 5 months ago

Out of curiousity 4ella are you reffering too

https://buddypress.org/community/groups/one-quick-post/

?

@pcwriter

Participant

13 years, 5 months ago

@simon_sais

The link 4ella gave for the front-end post form at BuddyDev is in a premium forum, you need to be a subscriber to the site to gain access. I am a member (so is 4ella) and can attest that the plugins, themes, code snippets and help that the site owner provides is nothing less than extraordinary. The front-end post form that he is working on should allow posting to the main blog, the user’s own blog(s), as well as groups the user is a member of. It should also support custom post types/taxonomies. A beta of the plugin should be released within the next few days.

You could also check out Quick Post Widget which supports custom taxonomies. The latest version is shortcode enabled so you can add the post form in any post/page.
https://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/quick-post-widget/

@simon_said

Member

13 years, 5 months ago

That plug-in is allows you to create posts on the front-end…. which is awesome…. wonder if there is plan for integrating the “media” aspects of WP in the future?

I’ll just go the custom taxonomy-> buddypress groups route for now….to match these custom post types to the buddypress groups themselves.

using the taxonomy slug -> buddypress group slug to match these two objects is pretty dirty… but seems to work well for clients managing conversations in their sites.

Any suggestions for improvement would be greatly appreciated.

S.

@4ella

Participant

13 years, 5 months ago

@simon_sais I understand now our misunderstanding , I forgot that if you are not a subscriber you can’t see it:
http://buddydev.com/forums/topic/plugin-for-frontend-posting#post-9118

@pcwriter thank you very much for your exact explanation , it is exactly how you ve’said ,
this link you can see because it is a free plugin:
http://buddydev.com/plugins/blog-categories-for-groups/
Brajesh’s frontend editor should be a part of it ,
here you can see a progress on working on http://buddydev.com/plugins/blog-categories-for-groups/ plugin:
https://github.com/sbrajesh/blog-categories-for-groups/issues?sort=created&direction=desc&state=open
there you can subscribe too and add your plugin suggestions , wishes .

@anointed

Participant

13 years, 5 months ago

any reason not to simply use the group blog plugin?
https://buddypress.org/community/groups/bp-groupblog/home/

I may be missing something, but from the requirements it seems like a perfect fit…

@4ella

Participant

13 years, 5 months ago

Maybe because we don’t have WP multisite installation , and this plugin requires that , but you are right , I forgot that this plugin should do the work .

@simon_said

Member

13 years, 5 months ago

right on…. @anointed and @4ella… this does provide some more possibilities… and definately some useful code snippets looking into these plug-ins.

Regarding the group blog plugin……..Implementing MU, P2 theme, and setting up “networks” might be a little overkill for this purpose…. as it looks like creation and editing of posts by group members is still limited in terms of being able to include meta fields and custom taxonomies, and would have to built from scratch regardless. As well the media manager and other WP publishing tools are not part of this plug-in / theme setup.

my feeling that IF this extended functionality needs to be built ON TOP of MU / buddypress plug-in such as “groupblog” (which is an awesome plug-in by the way) things can get complicated quickly….. (and unnecessarily)…..

So the cleanest solution so far seems to be matching posts to groups using taxonomy…. which Im sure we could agree could be improved upon greatly…..

Thanks again for the feedback!

@simon_said

Member

13 years, 5 months ago

Heres an example of what I’m trying to achieve:

URL: http://emergineers.com.s26200.gridserver.com/groups/builders/forum/

Conversation takes 2 forms….a quick discussion or a more in depth post called a “nugget” (just a placeholder name ) with meta, taxonomy, commenting, and media associated.

Thoughts?

@simon_said

Member

13 years, 5 months ago

hey there @anointed… I guess the key reason why “group blog plugin” won’t work is that “group blog’s” are created and manage by site owners and groups admins and the control and creation of this content takes place in the wp-admin/ backend.