Topic: How to make my site like Facebook

How to make my site like Facebook

Julia_B
Participant

@julia_b

10 years, 2 months ago

I hope it’s OK to post something like this…

I’m brand new to Buddypress and not a professional developer. I’m moving a community from a Facebook group to my new Buddpress site. A lot of my members are not very net-savvy and are unfamiliar with how other community sites/forums work. So, I’m trying to offer familiar functions that they’ve seen on Facebook. The forum is going to be the main hub of the site, so I need to get it look good and easy to use.

Set up has gone well do far, but the forum is just looking a bit dull.

Is there a better way I can display the forum to show the activity?

Are there any other plugins or shortcodes people would recommend to make the forums as similar as possible to what my members have been used to in the Facebook group? (I’m only just getting to grips with shortcodes, so I’m afraid I’d need pretty basic instructions)

I have a Latest Activity feed on the site homepage which shows all activity:
This looks a bit more compelling than the forum page, but it would be nice if it could have things like reply buttons or ‘Go to forum’ to make it more obvious how people can get in the conversations.

I’m also having trouble getting the Private Message function set up. I do have it selected in Buddypress settings, but it’s not working (error page comes up). Any ideas?

Just one more thing, people are getting confused about how to @mention each other due to @names being different from the usernames which appear under member’s profile photos. Because my members are used to a Facebook group they expect to be able to @ message using user names. At the moment, as a temporary work around, I’ve installed some shortcode which displays the @name below the user name, but it’s not ideal (and also seems to display the ip address which I don’t like):

Suggestions on all of the above would be great and anything else I can do to make my site’s community elements more similar to Facebook really. Thanks. 🙂

Viewing 19 replies - 26 through 44 (of 44 total)

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Julia_B
Participant

@julia_b

10 years, 2 months ago

.

Julia_B
Participant

@julia_b

10 years, 2 months ago

Thanks @peter-hamilton I already have the activity feed on my homepage, but what I would like is to enable users to post directly to the activity without leaving the homepage – the same way you can post on your feed page on Facebook. Is that possible?

Julia_B
Participant

@julia_b

10 years, 2 months ago

Oh yes and one thing I really like on your site @peter-hamilton is the links to activity, profile, friends, etc on the top left. Is that a widget? Or how can I set up something similar?

peter-hamilton
Participant

@peter-hamilton

10 years, 2 months ago

Ah, that was a few days of copy and pasting, not an easy thing to achieve at first.
I will try to make a small tutorial on this in the next few days for you.

peter-hamilton
Participant

@peter-hamilton

10 years, 2 months ago

I can not see any activity on you homepage?

Did you use the customize option to change to a static page?

Julia_B
Participant

@julia_b

10 years, 2 months ago

@peter-hamilton That’s because I have s2Member installed which is a membership wall plugin. My site is for paying members so if you’re not logged in you can’t see much of it. 🙂

peter-hamilton
Participant

@peter-hamilton

10 years, 2 months ago

Ah, any chance you could make me a temporary account so I can have a look?

The membership wall I have no experience with, I will have a look to see if this can have the same functions as the buddypress wall.

Julia_B
Participant

@julia_b

10 years, 2 months ago

That would be great if you could have a look and let me know what you think @peter-hamilton.

Here’s an id you can login with:

UN: testuser
PW: test

peter-hamilton
Participant

@peter-hamilton

10 years, 2 months ago

Had a quick look but not enough to help you.

Did you try to change your homepage through the customize page?

Anyway, I will look a bit more to see what you can do.

Julia_B
Participant

@julia_b

10 years, 2 months ago

Thanks @peter-hamilton. No, I haven’t tried customize page yet, could that enable posting to the activity feed directly from the homepage?

It would be great to know how to make the the links you have on the top left, I will look forward to the tutorial. 🙂

peter-hamilton
Participant

@peter-hamilton

10 years, 2 months ago

Hi again julia

Those buttons on the left are actually the buttons that normally appear directly under te activity post/update box.

To gt them there I adjusted the index.php inside the activity folder of buddypress.

that page is here:

plugins -> buddypress -> bp-templates -> bp-legacy -> buddypress -> activity -> index.php

On around line 15 starts <div class=”item-list-tabs no-ajax” id=”subnav” role=”navigation”>

I copied that whole div and moved it above the div called buddypress around line 3.

Then I gave it a new ID (left-nav) and did some css adjustments to that div.

#left-nav {
position:fixed;
left:20px;
top:70px;
clear:both;
width:18%;
}

And then a bit of styling to the list output of buddypress.
there is a bit more to it but that should get you in the right direction.

But I will make a more understandable tut tonight.

This is quite intense templating and hope you get it sorted the way you like it.

And you do need the BBP activity to be the static homepage for this to work.

I do like that theme you use a lot and you made it a very crisp forum/website, I hope the buddypress templates keep your layout like it is.

P.H.

Julia_B
Participant

@julia_b

10 years, 2 months ago

Ah, that’s clever @peter-hamilton, I’ll give it a try tomorrow.

Thanks for the compliment on my site, great to hear that. I hope nothing messes it up too!

I’m having some problems getting it to display properly on iphones right now, but it seems to work well on other devices. And the members seem to be getting used to it, which is great, so maybe I don’t need to make many more Facebook-style modifications after all.

Really appreciate all the help.

🙂

peter-hamilton
Participant

@peter-hamilton

10 years, 2 months ago

Good luck

Julia_B
Participant

@julia_b

10 years, 1 month ago

I’ve ironed out most of the kinks on my website now and most of the members have made the transition from the old Facebook group without too many problems – although, I won’t lie, there have been complaints from a fair few!

The main thing a lot of them miss is ease of access/use on mobile phones. The biggest factor seems to be that they could access the Facebook group via the app rather than needing to use a browser and the instant notifications of mentions to their phones helped keep them feeling involved. I’m not a developer, so there’s only so much I can do, but is it possible to have buddypress site (with busy bbpress forums) running as a mobile app at the same time?

Or is there some other solution I can offer? I’ve explained about email notifications, but members don’t feel like that’s the same.

The other issue is that members are saying it’s difficult to follow threads because on Facebook the original post will appear at the top with replies below and it gets bumped up the page each time anyone replies. I know Buddypress activity posts work a bit like that, but most of the activity appearing on my homepage activity feed is from the forums. Any suggestions?

Thanks guys. 🙂

ecrip
Participant

@ecrip

10 years, 1 month ago

I agree with @julia_b. The ability to add new activity posts to our Homepages is something that is needed. New BP_Users are going to be completely lost as to how to post activity updates and move on to someplace else.

Based on my searches the ability to allow activity posting directly to the Homepage isn’t the easiest to accomplish. But nothing is impossible either. The code/script already exists. It’s just a matter of figuring out how to implement it into the Homepage.

demgiarehn
Participant

@demgiarehn

10 years, 1 month ago

see //Mod Edit: link removed, if posting a link please provide a brief idea of why and what one will find there.

Julia_B
Participant

@julia_b

10 years, 1 month ago

Anyone able to offer any advice re. my previous post on having the site also work as a mobile app and getting the activity feed to appear more like Facebook group feeds?

Good to know posting from the hp is at least possible @ecrip. Sorry @demgiarehn I can’t understand that page.

Thanks 🙂

ecrip
Participant

@ecrip

10 years, 1 month ago

That’s my concern too. I know the folks who make BuddyPress available (write the program) have spent a lot of time doing so. And all of their efforts are greatly appreciated.

The fact remains, however, that the ability to add activity posts to the Frontpage is badly needed in today’s mobile society.

As of today, 60% of my site visitors use a smartphone to visit my site. I have tried myself to add activity posts from my phone. It isn’t easy to do; even for me.

In the short term what I have added a Help file to my BuddyPress site to try and help users over some of the hurdles that exist with posting to the platform as it is today.

Hopefully the folks that make BuddyPress available will find a solution for this issue soon.

Julia_B
Participant

@julia_b

10 years, 1 month ago

Oh yeah buddypress is awesome @ecrip! I’m not complaining just looking for ways to make the most of it.

It’s not just posting to the homepage for me, my members would get on better with it if the feed showed post threads more like Facebook does (as explained above). I know that’s always going to be tricky with it working in tandem with the bbpress plugin for the forum element, but hope there’s some way of getting closer to it. It would also be great if I could get the site working in app form so it displays a bit better on phones and sends out notifications to mobiles rather than just emails.

I massively appreciate all the work of the developers, don’t want to sound like I’m moaning here, just trying to optimise it to keep my members as happy as I can. 🙂