I believe you’ve found a bug.
The Base group allows an admin to set default visibility levels.
I was going to suggest you set each field to “logged-in users” and allow users to change their visibility.
But those settings are not honored on the register form.
You can submit a bug here.
https://buddypress.trac.wordpress.org/
Log in with the same user / pw you use for these forums.
Also – do you also see “This field can be seen by: etc. ” under each Base field on the register page?
And a ‘change’ link?
There is a check in register.php, but it apparently fails by returning true for logged out users.
`if ( bp_current_user_can( ‘bp_xprofile_change_field_visibility’ ) ) `
Like this image taken while logged out on a vanilla install of WP 3.5.1, BP 1.7, 2012 theme
This rings a bell, think it may have been discussed ( I certainly have a recollection of looking at this aspect of profile visibility and registration processes) before in some respect or another and there may already be a ticket raised.
Just got clarification from Boone. Visibility doesn’t relate to the actual form input field, it relates to the field’s value. So this issue isn’t a bug.
@henrywright-1
Do you see “This field can be seen by: etc. ” under each Base field on the register page?
And a ‘change’ link?
Per the image above ?
Yep, i see it. According to Boone, it refers to the field value. Slightly misleading text i must admit.
Regardless of what it refers to, why would
“This field can be seen by: etc. ” under each Base field on the register page
and a ‘change’ link be visible on a register page to a non-logged-in visitor?
That’s what I meant by it failing the bp_current_user_can() check.
This has definitely come up, the text label jogs my memory.
It may make sense that one had change link on pre-registration if the value selected was being passed along with the registration and setup of the user_meta and if the admin setting allowed users to change the field value but as I doubt that’s in fact possible and fact Boone has said it’s simply meant to impart the status of that given profile field visibility then the change select needs to be removed.
@henrywright-1 ah you were labouring under a huge mis-understanding of what this meant, as Boone says it’s pseudo privacy for display of users details on their profile – if admin allows users to configure that given field – it’s NOT anything to do with whether the field is hidden on registration view.
However there are still issue with how this works with reg form or it needs a good review.
@hnla
How this is interpreted depends very much on what you want to achieve. If you are a developer in the process of designing the public member profile page (displaying their profile field values) then you would think of visibility to mean the field values. However if you are in the process of designing the edit profile page (displaying the input form fields) then you would think of visibility to mean the input fields.
As you can probably see, my ‘huge mis-understanding’ was quite easily done :}
@henrywright-1 As you can probably see, my ‘huge mis-understanding’ was quite easily done :} yep and I meant no offence in the phrase ‘huge mis-understanding’ 🙂
But I think we are missing the elephant in the room (except for @shanebp). Why would non-logged in visitors want to see the “This field can be seen by” text on the registration page?
I think this whole area needs some further thought.
@henrywright-1
Bingo re elephant.
While it’s easy to change by editing the register template, the why-is-it-there question seems worthy of a trac ticket.
