Hi,
Some of the answers may have to come from the Theme developer, i.e. Re-Hub theme, for example:
1) How can I configure the user profile page? There are elements I find unnecessary for my website, and I’d like to remove them: the sharing buttons, the “write a note” option, etc.
The “sharing buttons” and “write a note” options are not standard for BuddyPress and are either introduced by your theme in use or possibly from a plugin you have actuated.
Additionally, without getting into a lot of detail, depending on the template pack in use, e.g., Legacy or Nouveau, there are an assortment of template pages that can be overloaded/overridden (requres advanced knownledge).
2) Users registered on my site can publish articles using a frontend plugin, comment, etc.
However, nothing appears in the “Activity” section: even if someone has published an article, nothing shows up. Similarly, nothing appears if they leave comments, someone replies to their comment, or tags them.
Also, what does the “Favorites” button correspond to? With the theme I’m using, users can save articles as favorites, which are then displayed on a dedicated page. Is that what it’s supposed to refer to?
As to “articles“, I’ll assume these are synonymous with “blog posts“, typically these are synced to “Activities” via BuddyPress settings (wp-admin > Settings > BuddyPress) by enabling the “Site Tracking” component within the “Components” tab and enabling the “Post Comments” option under “Activity Streams” within the “Options” tab. See Post comments
As to “Favorites”, think of these as “bookmarks”, IOW, Activity items may be marked as “favorites” or unmarked as “Favorites” which will be listed within the “Favorites” tab, if marked accordingly and, yes, Favorites behave as you have indicated.
3) On the profile page, users can change their username and select a username that’s already in use (which isn’t allowed during registration). How can I fix this?
Usernames are unique and cannot be changed. In a “users” profile, the username is preceded/prefixed with the @ symbol. What may be confusing is the “Name” field which is more akin to the display name, to be more precise, it appears to be the “Display name publicly as”, which can be the same as the username or can be different from the username. What’s confusing is that there specific BuddyPress profile fields that correspond WordPress profile fields that may or may not have the same nomenclature. See Your Profile Screen – names section.
It seems like you are trying to fix something like, there can only be one user with a display name of "Alice". Rightly or wrongly, I suppose confusion abounds when a “display name” is conflated as being a “username”.
Perhaps, someone else will have a better or more precise explanation than I have provided.
