BuddyPress.org

I’ve tried 3 different installs of WPMU 2.8.4a and BP 1.1.2 (sub-domain set up in site root install) on three different hosting services on three different continents (UK, US, & Singapore) all with MySQL 5.x, PHP 5.x, and 128 – 256 MB RAM available.

For each install, fresh downloads of WPMU & BP were made, therefore reducing the possibility of corrupted code being transferred from server to server, unless the code in the WPMU/BP servers that deliver to SE Asia is already corrupted?

The only plugins active at any time were (in WPMU) Akismet and Default Blog Settings … and BuddyPress of course. No BuddyPress plugins were activated at any time.

On all three servers, I got exactly the same problem with the Groups avatar upload / cropping tool that I reported as a bug in trac (which someone appears to have deleted) and which I’ve tried to resolve for over a week now here in the BP forums, and in the WPMU forums. THe only useful pointer I’ve discovered came in fact from the osCommerce forums and related to the javascript used to resize images in the avatar cropper – even though it was referring to an entirely different sitescript and tool, although the usage was similar.

So here we go again, and for the lord knows how manyth time, let me describe the behaviour –

1 – first time access to the Creat Groups sub-routine (i.e. first ever group created on a site with new install) on the Group avatar page, the Back, Upload, Skip buttons appear.

2 – attempting to upload an avatar (all attempts – first time, second time, exit and return and try again, go to admin and edit group avatar etc) the cropper tool fails to grab the image and displays only a black 88px x 16px background “bar” in the avatar viewer.

3 – At step 2 above, after the very first upload attempt for the site, the Back & Skip buttons on the avatar upload page disappear (this means the avatar cannot be skipped and jump to send invites, nor go back to try and reload the page fresh for another attempt within the create group loop.)

After each attempt that reaches step 2, there is a report from BP that the image failed to upload, but the image is in the correct directory/folder on the server, with the correct filename etc and can be viewed using the cpanel image viewer from file manager.

There is NO server log error spawned from the avatar uploader/cropper – ergo – it is the javascript that is incomplete, or pointing to the incorrect file location, or cannot follow the complete path to the file (exactly who decided to place a period in the folder name blogs.dir – and why – I’m sure that’s at least a piece of the problem). It is possible to cause the uploader/cropper to spawn a server error log by not “browsing” to acquire an image, then clicking save – the “no image selected, unable to save” type message does record to the server error log, proving that bit of the code to server interface is working.

Let me clarify step 3 – the Back and Skip buttons only ever appear ONE time, which is the very first time the Group Avatar page is accessed on any one site install. After that, they never appear again – poof! gone! disappeared into the ether! – their code does not even appear in page source (using mouse – right click – view source) nor does it reveal in code or css when viewing with firebug.

It is as if the Back and Skip buttons have been programmed as a one-time only “display then destroy” piece of code – a bit like toilet tissue?

So, the “grasping at straws” question –

The only thing I have not yet tried is to put WPMU & BP into their own databases – does BP require that it is installed into a different database to WPMU? All the documentation (and default install) puts it in the WPMU database with unique “bp_” prefixes.

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Everything above tested and displayed in Firefox 3.5.3 and IE 6.5 on WinXP & Win2000 workstations, and on Win2000 Server box (in both server and workstation mode) with hosting on Linux/CentOS shared hosting services at THREE different hosting companies on three different continents …. although I haven’t tried a southern hemisphere hosting company yet – maybe the upside down “down under” positioning will give a different result? LOL

The issue / bugs above are still not resolved

– I did report them in the bug tracker, but someone deleted the report.

– I have reported them several times in BP forums and DJPaul keeps telling me to start my own thread, OK – here it is

– Looking through the BP forums, this issue (avatar cropper) is going the same way as the basic “WP flash uploader failing to complete crunching and upload” bug over on WP.org – and that has hundreds if not 1000’s of threads open for it (since WP 2.5.x).

Help appreciated

Gaz