Sort of but not easily. If you create a private group, non-group members can’t see who is in the group (by default).
If you code a suitable workaround then it shouldn’t be too difficult to put together some code to fetch the members list of a specific group and display their avatars, etc.
This is an interesting use though and I’d like to see any solution you manage to come up with.
@ella:
As I mentioned on another thread, it might be worth looking at Jeff Sayre’s “Featured Members” plugin. Since it appears that the list of people you want to feature in a sidebar is relatively static – only the Board of Directors members – this plugin would let you specify those specific people by ID, and output links to their profiles. Because this plugin is not tied to a group, the privacy restrictions of the group should not be an issue. You are simply identifying particular users to feature, regardless of the group(s) they belong to.
That said, the download page for Jeff’s plugin says it is compatible to BP 1.02, so I’m not sure if it will still work with 1.2.x. Jeff seems to be a very active participant here, and might be able to weigh in.
You mentioned in another thread that you don’t have the skills to code a plugin, so it might be worth finding a coder who could build what you need, or could modify Jeff’s plugin to meet your needs – perhaps the ability to add an option that specifies a particular group on the widget admin panel, and have the widget output a list of members.
