BuddyPress.org

This is more or less a plea to the BuddyPress development team. I really believe you should make it a priority to make the next version of BuddyPress address the lack of profile privacy options above any other changes you may have planned in the future. Cosmetic changes are not that important because most people with any real BuddPress experience will more than likely be using a child theme to customize the cosmetics of the site to their liking. This change should be integrated into the BuddyPress default core because it is the only real way to make BuddyPress a viable choice for membership only social netwoking. BuddyPress is really a well developed plugin for WordPress and I know it is about being social, but the end user should have the ultimate choice in whether or not their profiles or site activity are view-able to the logged in members(public) or just their friends(private). This should be standard feature in buddypress without being dependent on plugins. When I say public or private, I mean that all members should have to be logged first before even given the option to view another members profile, maybe a landing page integration built into BuddyPress core that redirects any visitor the the landing page when attempting to view any post or page on the site. In my opinion just because a new user activated account there should still be options in the core to keep their profile accessible to only members they are friends with etc. I am not saying to jump the gun and make every single Profile field either view-able or not depending on friendship. Just a simple choice to display or not to display your profile to people you are not friends with. In other words the options in @modemlooper‘s BuddyPress Profile Privacy plugin functionality should be integrated into the BuddyPress default settings without dependency on a plugin. Privacy of the end user seems to be a determining factor in whether or not visitors decide to join/register on your site. Privacy options along with ACL built into BuddyPress right out of the box will put Buddypress in a whole new league for social network CMS choices. I also think the .htaccess file should contain the Options -Indexes code at default. Directory browsing should never be open by default. To me it is a security risk not include the Options -Indexes code in .htaccess at default. I would also like the buddybar and its links to somehow be integrated into a custom menu somehow. I would also like to see an option in the buddypress dashboard that will allow you to choose how many activity items are loaded.