BuddyPress.org

@firetag

About your comment in the original post: “… still thinking of how I want to go about this.”

How about preserving the present group structure as sub-category-groups, but, during group creation, have users select a category from amid a selection preset by the superadmin? This way, the user-created groups could be added to a category directory of related groups in the same sub-category, with links to other categories in the site-wide group.

Then, rather than showing “All Groups” and “My Groups” in the group directory item-list-tabs, they could read “Sub-Category A”, “Sub-Category B”, “Sub-Category C”, and so on, ending with the ever-popular “My Groups”.

@firetag

Check out this plugin. It already provides the capability of organizing by tags. Might help.

https://buddypress.org/community/groups/third-party-components-plugins/forum/topic/buddypress-group-tags-is-now-available/

@firetag I like the idea of Group Tags (plugin already available) AND Group Types (needed). I also like @pcwriter’s suggestion of having a drop-down with group types when members create groups. The groups types should be general, high-level categories. For example, if you look at BuddyPress.org’s Groups, you’ll see that some are labeled “Support Group,” “Plugin Group,” “User Created Group” — I like that (though I’d consider having some Group Type labels for the Admin to see and use only).

Nice, very interesting, hope to see it released soon.

This is something I have been struggling with for a couple of years now. I am just getting on the W/BP platform having ditched our old solution…

Your concept is perfect for what we are trying to do.

We are a philanthropic social network and we have four basic “types” of groups.
1.) Groups centered around Causes – Global Issues such as Clean Drinking Water, Child Trafficking, Climate Change, etc.
2.) Groups centered around Occupations – Firefighters, Medical Personnel, Airline Personnel, etc. They all come together to help a project or region by volunteering their services.
3.) Groups centered around a Project – Rebuilding a School in Nepal, Providing Shoes for Kids in Nicaragua, Creating a Sewing School in Indonesia, etc.
4.) Groups centered around a Geographic Location – San Francisco, Nepal, Buenos Aires, etc.

Each “group type”, although similar in nature has different nuances on how they work and what needs they have. For example, the Project group type usually has some project management needs along with specific deadlines. We usually have trips that go to these projects and those trips typically cater to one of our Occupation Groups and falls under a global Cause that we support. Different Geographic Location groups might be interested in the trip too if it is coming to their area or if we have special airline discounts from a specific city like New York.

What I like about your approach is that you are thinking of letting users create their own groups under specific categories or “group types”.

We could benefit from drop-down lists that require the user to choose a “group type” when they create a group and then follow up with further selections (that we create, or fill-in-the-blank) based on their selection.

For example, if they choose:
Cause – What is the focus? Clean Water (from list), What country? Indonesia (from list)
Occupation – What is the Occupation? Firefighters* (from list), What country? United States (from list), What City/Town? Dallas(fill-in-blank if international) *this group could be a sub-group of our global Firefighter group
Project – What is the project? Drill Clean Water Well, What country? Indonesia (from list), What City/Town? Kalimantan (fill-in-blank), How many people does it impact? 250, What occupations can participate? Construction, Medical, General Volunteers

Maybe you’re not going in this direction, but I wanted to share a real-world example of what we are doing. Maybe it will give you some ideas.

Thanks for your work!!!

I’ve been following this thread closely because this is what I need to go live. My site would involve a lot of sub-groups for each continent/country and then sub-groups for the countries. I wish I could help you folks but I’m not a programmer. I’ve seen requests all over the net for what seems to be a premium plugin now. Good luck!

Congratulations on your first contribution!

While I love the idea of grouping groups into groups I wonder if you could answer a design question for me?

Why did you not simply add a “parent” column and then provide a dropdown with all the groups in a “parent” selection option when creating any group?

I would want to add someone to the bottom-most group and implicitly they would belong to all parent groups. This option would keep all the group functionality regardless and you would not have had to add extra code decyphering the group “type”. You could email everyone in a “country” group or just a “city” group if that was how they were “linked”.

@firetag I couldn’t be happier! Thank you for the “freemium” plugin. Installed on my localhost and testing right now. So far, no issues. I need to create all the categories I need to be able to report issues, if any.

Not sure if you want us to report any problems here or elsewhere, firetag.
If I attempt to delete a master group, I get this:
Fatal error: Call to undefined method BP_Category_Group::delete() in /Applications/MAMP/htdocs/mysite/wp-content/plugins/bp-group-categoriestypes/includes/bp-grouptypes-admin-edit-groups.php on line 31
And the group doesn’t get deleted. I had 2 groups and tried to delete just one.