Hi,

I am having a problem with BP groups and forums. When I am creating a group, in step 3, I should be able to select a checkbox (Yes, I want this group to have a forum.) to enable forum feature for my group, but for some reason the checkbox is not showing up and I cannot proceed by clicking “Next Step” button. I am using the latest version of BP, BB and WP. The same setting works just fine on my local XAMPP but it doesn’t work on production server.

Here are some screenshots, this is how step 3 looks now: http://i.imgur.com/sT8jRv9.jpg

And this is how it should be (local is fine): http://i.imgur.com/6mKn4uE.jpg

After this error, when I click on my groups, I can see the group is created with no avatar (because I never got to step 4) and when I click on the group and go to Admin > Forum > Now I see the check box but when I enable it and then select one of my forums from the dropdown and click save, I get this error “Are you sure you want to do this? Please try again.”

Does anyone have the same issue?

Thanks

[@faramarz Participant 11 years, 5 months ago]

@mercime, nobody replied to this thread. I was wondering if you could shed a light on this or show me some direction. I would appreciate it.

[@mercime Participant 11 years, 5 months ago]

@faramarz let’s start at the beginning, WP/BP versions? Is this a new installation or did you upgrade from previous BP/WP versions? Where are you hosted?

– Did you follow the steps at https://codex.buddypress.org/user/setting-up-a-new-installation/installing-group-and-sitewide-forums/ ?

– Try basic troubleshooting procedures like changing to Twenty Twelve theme and deactivating plugins except BuddyPress and bbPress and let me know what happens.

The same setting works just fine on my local XAMPP but it doesn’t work on production server.

How did you install WordPress in production server – via webhost’s one-click install or did you install it manually e.g. FTP? If via webhost’s one-click install then you could encounter some hiccups in your production site see https://codex.buddypress.org/user/before-installing/#system-and-server-requirements

[@faramarz Participant 11 years, 5 months ago]

@mercime thanks for looking into this. I am using WP 3.5.2 and BP 1.8 I upgraded from the previous version and I am hosted on Bluehost.

Something really strange is going on, I tried to login today and my http://domain.com/wp-admin/ was redirecting me back to http://www.domain.com. I looked at my database and I saw my Siteurl and home tables were changed to http://www.domain.com/community (which is my community site) .. I manually changed my Siteurl and home back to http://www.domain.com and now I can login to wp-admin but when I try to browse the community site (http://www.domain.com/community) it says page not found. If I change my Siteurl and home in database to http://www.domain.com/community then both sites work but I can access my wp-admin only via http://www.domain.com/wp-admin and not http://domain.com/wp-admin. Is this normal that the database tables Siteurl and home change to my community site address?

I am going to follow your instructions and read the links you provided to see if I can figure out what’s going on with the Forum/Groups issue.

Thanks

[@mercime Participant 11 years, 5 months ago]

@faramarz check out https://codex.wordpress.org/Login_Trouble as well

[@faramarz Participant 11 years, 5 months ago]

@mercime.. will do. Question, do I have to configure a wildcard for my websites? Here is my scenario: I have one main site WITHOUT buddypress installed and a sub-site WITH buddypress and I only want to have these features on my sub-site: Forums, Groups, Extended user profiles, Private messaging and Friends connection.

Also, I want my sites addresses to look like these

My Community site: http://www.domain.com/community .. also http://domain.com/community (without www) should be accessible

And my main site: http://www.domain.com/.. and http://domain.com/ (without www) should be accessible.

What kind of settings should I use to accomplish this?

[@mercime Participant 11 years, 5 months ago]

do I have to configure a wildcard for my websites

You only need to configure wildcard if you created a network (multisite) with subdomain structure/mode e.g. http://community.example.com . Looking at your example above with subsite example.com/community in subdirectory mode, so no.

You don’t want both http://www.example.com and http://example.com to both be accessible. Why? Because Google will penalize you for duplicate content ironically from your own site. You need to decide whether you want www or no-wwww. Check what’s in the Site Address of your Settings > General, it should be the same as your WordPress Address, either both have www or both have no www.

Deactivate BuddyPress. You have to resolve the URL issue before you activate BuddyPress again. If you need assistance with this matter, please go to https://wordpress.org/support/forum/multisite

[@faramarz Participant 11 years, 5 months ago]

@mercime first I want to thank you for your help and support.

I started over fresh, restored my database, disabled WordPress Multisite, changed my website URL structure in my single site to http://example.com (no more wwww).. then I reactivated Multisite and recreated my community site and this time WordPress allowed my to create it as a subdomain.. so now I have http://community.example.com but when I tried to View the site in browser, I got this error: “Oops! Google Chrome could not find community.example.com”.. then I remembered I did not create a Wildcard.. I created a Wildcard as this articles describes but that didn’t really help.. I thought maybe it’s the cache issue. Today, I do not get the same error as last night (“Oops!…”) but instead, I get to a Bluehost page (my hosting company).. Looks like I am getting close but I guess I am missing a step or something. I posted this question on WordPress Multisite forum but unfortunately no responses yet.

Do you have any idea what I am missing? Thanks

[@faramarz Participant 11 years, 5 months ago]

The more I read, the more I understand how much I do not know about Multisites. I read something about WordPress MU Domain Mapping plugin. Is that something that I need to install to enable my sub-domain website? So far, I have only created a Wildcard in my host.

Please note: I do not want my users to create their own websites (and sub-domains). I only want to have one main site http://example.com (I decided to get rid of www) and one Community site for BuddyPress which is: http://community.example.com

Thanks

[@faramarz Participant 11 years, 5 months ago]

Update: I figured out what the problem was. When I created a Wildcard, my hosting cPanel adds the word ‘Wildcard’ to the end of my document root, so my document root was /public_html/Wildcard. I changed it to /public_html and that fixed the subdomain issue. Now http://community.example.com/ is accessible via admin and browser :). I guess I don’t need to install the Domain Mapping plugin anymore, and I am still not sure what exactly that plugin does.

Now back to fixing the Forum/Group issue.

[@faramarz Participant 11 years, 5 months ago]

@mercime.. I am still getting the same error even after changing my URL and my subdomain. When I check my error_log file, I get this error:

[28-Jul-2013 22:51:11] PHP Fatal error: Using $this when not in object context in /public_html/wp-content/plugins/bbpress/includes/extend/buddypress/group.php on line 461

I’ll post this question in BBpress forum as well. I thought maybe you’ve experienced the same issue before.

This is on bbpress 2.3.2 and buddypress 1.8 and I followed every step of instructions on this page to create a sitewide forum and forum for buddypress groups:
https://codex.buddypress.org/user/setting-up-a-new-installation/installing-group-and-sitewide-forums/

Thanks

[@mercime Participant 11 years, 5 months ago]

@faramarz thanks for posting the error, see https://bbpress.org/forums/topic/fatal-error-unable-to-create-forum-from-buddypress-group/#post-135487

EDIT – Trac Ticket at https://bbpress.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/2374

[@faramarz Participant 11 years, 5 months ago]

Hi, Thanks again @mercime, you are a life saver.. Looking at the thread, looks like this is a Buddypress issue and not bbpress. I see a lot of people are fixing the issue by replacing the ‘groups’ folder with the one in version 1.7.3. Is that something that you or Buddypress peeps recommend? Is that going to cause other problems down the road?

For one thing, I know the group folder will be overwritten again when a new update is available.

[@faramarz Participant 11 years, 4 months ago]

@mercime sorry for keep bugging you, but is this solution something you recommend?

[@hnla Participant 11 years, 4 months ago]

@mercime

@faramarz thanks for posting the error, see https://bbpress.org/forums/topic/fatal-error-unable-to-create-forum-from-buddypress-group/#post-135487

EDIT – Trac Ticket at https://bbpress.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/2374

However as this post suggests and others this issue is perhaps not bbPress specific but BP and needs a trac entry on bp rather than bbPress.

https://buddypress.org/support/topic/error-when-using-it-for-groups/

[@faramarz Participant 11 years, 4 months ago]

@hnla I think you are right, when I check my error log I get this error:

[28-Jul-2013 22:51:11] PHP Fatal error: Using $this when not in object context in /public_html/wp-content/plugins/bbpress/includes/extend/buddypress/group.php on line 461

How to submit a ticket to BP and report this bug for tracking?

[@hnla Participant 11 years, 4 months ago]

@faramarz @mercime

This issue is resolved in this ticket on BP’s trac and will be included in the 1.8.1 point release.
https://buddypress.trac.wordpress.org/changeset/7332/