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Isn't it ALL a BuddyPress issue?

  • @3sixty

    Participant

    14 years, 8 months ago

    Lately, I’ve been seeing responses like this to BuddyPress help requests:

    • Spam registration is a WPMU problem, not a BuddyPress question…

    • Deleting users is a WordPress function, not a BuddyPress question…

    • Hiding the admin panel is a WordPress question…

    As a developer I agree, but as a site admin, I feel this is a bit like saying “I’m not worried about my lung cancer… It has nothing to do with my brain.” :)

    WordPress is the “host”, but when BP is activated, BP/WP two are inseparable in some unique, exciting, and very complicated ways. It creates a whole lot of very unique issues that are NOT adequately resolved outside of BuddyPress specific resources, such as this forum. If you are a site admin, every one of these issues must be rethought and solved in the context of BuddyPress.

    A good example is the BuddyBar. Plainly, it offers admin functions such as Delete User and Mark as Spam, yet I still hear people say that marking spammers and deleting spam blogs is a WPMU issue. We can’t have it both ways, in my opinion!

    When I have my developer hat on, it’s clear as day what is a WP vs. BP issue, but when I put on my admin hat, there is no such distinction. It’s like pouring black and white paint in the same can, and then telling somebody to paint the living room using the black paint only.

Viewing 7 replies - 1 through 7 (of 7 total)

  • @boonebgorges

    Keymaster

    14 years, 8 months ago

    @3sixty – To some extent I think you’re right. There’s a certain quickness to say “That’s a WP question!” in these forums. (Although I will say, anecdotally, that it used to happen more than it does now.)

    Often there’s a good reason for redirecting questions to the WP forums. For one, the user base there is much bigger, so questions are likely to have a lot more readers, and are thus a lot more likely to get a good answer. Moreover, many common questions have already been answered there many times over, and it doesn’t really pay to rehash those issues in this space.

    Still, some reproduction of content is probably a good thing, especially in cases where there is as much overlap as with BP/WP. So I don’t mind providing a certain amount of WP (or even general PHP/HTML/CSS) help in these forums when the mood strikes me. Constantly passing the buck – “that’s a (fill-in-the-blank) issue” – is not a great way to welcome new users to the BP community.

    @xevo

    Participant

    14 years, 8 months ago

    BuddyPress is a plugin and like every other plugin, you don’t complain at the plugin because the core isn’t working properly. I get that you have a problem with this concept since I myself am unsure where to go with my question sometime, but if we start complaining about wordpress to plugin writers I’m guessing they’ll stop supporting their plugins.

    @3sixty

    Participant

    14 years, 8 months ago

    Great discussion – thank you!

    BuddyPress is a plugin and like every other plugin, you don’t complain at the plugin because the core isn’t working properly.

    OK, point taken… but I guess I would challenge this notion of BP being a “plugin” anymore. I’m counting at least 130 official plugins for BuddyPress in the repo – How many “plugins” do you know of that have a whole ecosystem of sub-plugins developing around them and more every week?

    @jeffsayre

    Participant

    14 years, 8 months ago

    The debate of where a particular question should get answered when it comes to WP vs BP is interesting. I used to resort to the “don’t ask here, ask there instead” response. However, with BP becoming very popular, the line is blurred between what is the proper place to ask a question. We have to assume that some BP users might not be familiar with WP, in fact BP might be their first experience with the WP ecosystem. So it is important to be as helpful and friendly as possible.

    If a question is foundational in nature, meaning that it has more to do with the workings of WP and not BP, I’ll often give some help but then suggest that they might get a better, faster response in the WP forums. The bigger issue for me is when someone posts a question that has been answered numerous times but they have not taken the time to do a proper search.

    I also agree that BP is more than just a plugin. I usually refer to BuddyPress as a plugin suite but that never sat quite right with me. BuddyPress is a feature-rich platform as far as I’m concerned. It transcends the idea of a simple WordPress plugin. I have said this before but it’s worth mentioning again. I view many of the BP “plugins” as modules. In other words, they tie into BP extending its functionality.

    @3sixty-

    You seem to keep changing your avatar. I just realized this as I have come to expect the “larval newt” face but then saw the barreleye this morning.

    @djpaul

    Keymaster

    14 years, 8 months ago

    You need to distinguish between whether it is a user interface issue, and if it isn’t, where the code/functionality is provided.

    For example, BuddyBar is obviously a BuddyPress user interface feature. The code which is called when a user is marked as a spammer is in WordPress. The code that deletes a spammer’s activity from the Activity Stream is BuddyPress.

    @takeo

    Participant

    14 years, 8 months ago

    Well… with regards to SPAM… I’m not certain… but I suspect that’s actually BuddyPress-related. I’ve never had that issue on any of my other WordPress sites. But my BuddyPress sites are rife with SPAM signups. No matter what I do it seems. The only solution I found (after trying literally everything I could find here and at wpmu) was to block all proxy methods.

    @3sixty

    Participant

    14 years, 8 months ago

    Well… with regards to SPAM… I’m not certain… but I suspect that’s actually BuddyPress-related.

    This is a fact. I “bugged” my registration pages and spent the weekend watching spammers in their natural habitat. My findings confirm that, if you do nothing special to protect your site, BuddyPress is absolutely, definitely associated with an additional spam burden over and above what you get with WP and WPMU.

    It’s another great example of a problem that is not WP, it’s not BP – it’s a “synthesis” problem. Though the solution is definitely a BP one (not ready to report it yet, for fear of jinxing my progress).

Viewing 7 replies - 1 through 7 (of 7 total)
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