So, you mean something similar to the new Facebook “like” and “comment” features, borrowed from FriendFeed?
I agree that this would encourage more activity within the site.
As a first step towards this sort of interaction, however, I would like to see a way to become a “fan” (not friend) of a particular blogger within the site i.e. indicate your liking for a person’s entire output, rather than just individual items.
The Fans concept is discussed here: https://buddypress.org/forums/topic.php?id=1573
I’m a big fan of both of these ideas. #justsayin
This “favorite” thing, is not just good for relationships within the site… but for the users itself to keep track of things he likes in the site. (to remember posts and organize them to find it later)
I posted a suggestion about writing such a plugin a just last week, got no takers… Might revisit if there is interest.
@egerrits
The problem is that it is very hard to keep track of topics in bbPress – if you make a good suggestion at the wrong time, it can get pushed off the “front page” before anyone has a chance to write a response and get a discussion going.
Also, because there is no email notification of replies, people tend to return less often than other types of forum, meaning that some people who might love your idea simply don’t visit the forum on the day you post it.
I think the trick is to keep an eye on topics as they emerge and, if someone posts an idea that chimes with one you have already posted, reply as I have above, linking to your original thread. I have successfully used this technique in the past to resuscitate threads that were initially ignored but ended up being lively discussions.
@egerrits I’m hugely interested. I’m absolutely looking for all the “simple touches” I can find to increase site activity once my socnet launches.
@egerrits
Post a link to your original thread, so that we can read your take on this idea.
Yeah, I know what you mean… and it seems just so pushy to *bump* your own post!
Anyhoo, the other thread was here:
https://buddypress.org/forums/topic.php?id=1499
you can mark internal blogs as favourite http://bp-dev.org/projects/#subscribe
@nicolagreco
Your Subscribe plugin sounds very useful if you want to track a particular blog’s activity, but it does not match betoverli’s request for a way to mark something as “liked” or to have that item then appear in the Favorites section of that user’s profile.
Betoverli does not want to receive alerts about new material, he wants a way to alert other people to items (posts, comments, photos etc) within the site that he has already seen and marked as a favorite.
Egerrit’s thread explains the idea more clearly and, again, your Subscribe plugin does not match the stated need. It would, though, be great to see a plugin that did.
You got it donnacha!! This is it! 
My website will be a “large” Church Ministry Network. It will have a “main” site with “sermons, audio, video, etc…” and sub-blogs for pastors and “local churches”… the large site will aggregate the smaller blogs as a “portal”. So, for the users… to be able to “mark” sermons, posts, blogs, etc… would be amazing ! !! !!!
Regards!!!!
I know it doesn’t match but i thought could be useful
Anyway if you’re good in php you should make it based on bpdev subscribe that was made extensible to develope on it
@nicolagreco
I know it doesn’t match but i thought could be useful
Yeah, everyone knows how useful you are, how much you contribute to this community.
And, yes, your plugins can be adapted to create new functionality if a user has sufficient PHP skills.
The problem is that the vast majority of us don’t have your skills and, so, when a plugin is presented as the answer to a specific problem or need, users will presume it will do what the original poster asked for without needing to be rewritten.
Also, other developers who might otherwise decide to create a plugin to solve the problem, will see your post, presume that the problem has been solved and move on.
@betoverli
Sounds like a fantastic network, I can see how useful that feature would be in that context.
Hello,
I realise this thread is over 6 months old but I cant find anything else more up to date. I was wondering if anyone had written or found a plugin that would allow users to create favourites of blog posts rather than blogs?
Thanks,
Steph
There’s a plugin in the WP repository to favorite posts (https://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wp-favorite-posts/). The favorites are stored in the database so they can be retrieved with the user id for the profile. I agree this concept should be expanded to other components (groups, blogs) in BP. I plan to create a custom post type and use this plugin (possibly modified) to show favorites of that post-type on the profile (e.g. favorite bars). For example, Tastykitchen.com could use to track favorite recipes as recipes are just posts with custom fields.
This functionality is needed and if it doesn’t exist when I get to that stage of my project, I’ll add it and shsre. The more people think of WP/BP as a CMS, the more the need for these types of functionalities becomes apparent.
I have not tested this out but I’ve been looking for something similar and also found the “My Favorite Post” plugin which links the database to the user profile rather than the wp-favorite-posts plugin which uses cookies. This may better integrate with user profiles in buddypress (if it works). If anyone tries it out let me know and if I get any updates I’ll post them:
http://www.kriesi.at/archives/wordpress-plugin-my-favorite-posts
If anyone is looking for this, I have written a simple solution to the problem where I mimic the Activity stream “Favorite” feature from the single.php theme file of my blog theme to allow marking blog posts as favorite…
http://www.dnxpert.com/2010/06/11/mark-blog-post-as-favorite-in-buddypress/
This way, I don’t create any new tables and I don’t break anything – as I hope that marking a blog post as favorite will become a key feature of BP in the future.
I have a favorites plugin in place now that allows you to favorite any post with a “like” button on any post of any blog and have the favorited post’s thumb/title/excerpt appear in your profile under a tab called my favorite posts. it also has a widget that can be placed on the single blog posts page or page sidebar to display all members who have favorited. it takes alot of steps to get it up and running but it works. would be great if any one would like to test it, help package it more neatly to a few steps as a bp component plugin. you can see it in action on my site.
Here’s a tweaked version of @dnxpert ‘s code that works on WPMU (don’t use this on single WP):
http://pastebin.com/Qfichf0t (paste in wp-content/plugins/bp-custom.php) (updated 06/12/2010 – 12:27am GMT)
The positives with my code is you can use the favorite / unfavorite code from bp-default/activity/entry.php verbatim without duplicating the favorite functions.
For the devs: If anyone knows a way around using the switch_to_blog() function, let me know; I used switch_to_blog() because of the generated nonce code.
@r-a-y
I can’t make your plugin working for my installation (WPMU 2.9.2 + BP 1.2.4.1).
@slaffik – The code doesn’t do anything by itself. Sorry for not being clear!
You also need to add the favorite / unfavorite code from bp-default/activity/entry.php to each blog theme’s single.php.
I could have hooked the favorite button to “the_content”, but decided to give theme designers some flexibility this way.
@r-a-y
Ok, thank you
But it’s still doesn’t work… Yes, I see “Mark as Favorite” text, but it makes nothing. And yes, bp-custom is in its place.
Each post link to favourite it has the same wpnonce. And after pressing it the url in address bar in browser doesn’t have post_id (I mean this: …/archives/165#activity- )
You may hook into the_content and then on admin page create a field to insert a css code to position the block.
@slaffik – Can you try creating a new blog post and then check the favorite button on that blog post?
When you mouseover the favorite button, you should see:
hxxp://domain.com/activity/favorite/ACTIVITY_ID/?_wpnonce=xxx.
If the activity ID is blank, that means the code couldn’t find an activity id for the blog post.
I’ve noticed that some old blog posts do not work because the activity item_id and secondary_item_id in the database are wrong.
@r-a-y
No, new posts still do not create ACTIVITY_ID fot the link: hxxp://demo.example.com/activity/favorite//?_wpnonce=6bd3dcf18e
I posted some text on the main blog.
