BuddyPress.org

So far i know, this stopped to work correctly recently (search the forum). Something is going wrong with JS and the what’s new textarea. In fact, it doesn’t become a real wp-editor when used inside BP…

The ultimate tutorial to add wp_editor to What’s New textarea (on Site, Members and Group Activities pages).

Warning
The What’s New feature was never intended to publish posts or formatted text. It was imagined for brief announcement or instant conversation. That’s why this textarea is texturized and doesn’t allow much HTML tags. It is also ajaxified and need the original BP ID to work.
You will use it at your own risk.

The following trick will let you remove the existing textarea from the template and replace it with a custom wp_editor. And it will be very customized ! For example, you will not have the visual tab, but only his HTML version, similar to the one you see on this forum for example.

Required:
BuddyPress activated
a working child theme
some understanding of HTML and php grammar

This trick was succesfully tested on a single install with WP 4.6, BP 2.6.2 and a Twenty Sixteen child theme.

Start !
Read from here how to remove the textarea in post-form.php

The code to remove is line 40 and looks like this:

<textarea class="bp-suggestions" name="whats-new" id="whats-new" cols="50" rows="10"
	<?php if ( bp_is_group() ) : ?>data-suggestions-group-id="<?php echo esc_attr( (int) bp_get_current_group_id() ); ?>" <?php endif; ?>
><?php if ( isset( $_GET['r'] ) ) : ?>@<?php echo esc_textarea( $_GET['r'] ); ?> <?php endif; ?></textarea>

You replace it by:

<?php
$content = '';
$editor_id = 'whats-new';
wp_editor( $content, $editor_id );
?>

As the visual edit tab doesn’t work, you must deactivate it. In your child-theme functions.php, add this:
add_filter( 'user_can_richedit' , '__return_false', 50 );

And that’s it !

If you want also rich edit for activity comments, which i didn’t recommand for sites who have many comments, you can use the same technique as above, with some more settings. Note that each comment has is own ID and that each comment editor should also have an unique ID.

First, you need to remove the textarea from (child-theme/buddypress/)activity/entry.php
You remove this:
<textarea id="ac-input-<?php bp_activity_id(); ?>" class="ac-input bp-suggestions" name="ac_input_<?php bp_activity_id(); ?>"></textarea>
and replace it by

<?php
$id             = bp_get_activity_id();
$content	= '';
$editor_id	= 'ac-input-'. $id;
$settings	= array( 
			'textarea_name'	=> 'ac_input_'. $id,
			'editor_class'	=> 'ac-input bp-suggestions'
		);
wp_editor( $content, $editor_id, $settings );
?>

With Twenty Sixteen, i first couldn’t see the Post Update button and the option selector. I got it with this little CSS adjustment (in child-theme/style.css).

div#whats-new-options { display: block!important;}

Function reference: wp_editor.

Hi, glad it works for you.

The visual editor use TinyMCE wich comes with his own ID and class. That works with WP, but not with BP who use his own id’s and JS on activity page.

Tweaking JS files is delicate and that’s why i said “deactivate the visual tab”. You should use the filter i indicated to remove it completely (so nobody would be tempted to click it).
But if you’re comfortable with JS, feel free to do it. But without any warranty (outside some headeache) about the final result as it will be very tricky to do.

The media uploader is usually reserved to site admin, editors and authors when they post on the blog from backend. In our case, adding some styling possibilities to the what’s new content from frontend, is slightly different.

Imagine all your xxx.xxxx members accessing to the media library without any control each time they write something! That’s a big security risk, because subscribers (wich is the default BP users level) could access to a part of your backend and also to your server.

If you need full publication rights, create authors and let them publish real blog posts. But don’t use the what’s new form to replace this (complex) bloging functionnality.

The text tab has already a bold button (b – the first one, on the left ).
And you can embed links to images using the img button or embed different medias like video simply by copy/pasting a youtube link or other allowed services.

Take also in mind that the default form comes without any style buttons. This trick add some.

Guess you have to work with this compromise. IMO better as nothing, no ? Avoid reinventing the wheel ! Stay simple and your site will remain operable.

You’re welcome.

Hi @bigkahunaburger,

thanks for the burger! 😉
Like you, I’m not a JS specialist so i can’t help you more with that. 🙁

But i can suggest you an alternative solution by using MediaPress. It appears that this plugin allows you to add mediabuttons by shortcode to the Status form (and not only there…).

Take a little moment to study this option, completely or to check the code how the author implemented it.

@jbboro3 @danbp

I went back to BP version 2.3.5 and the visual editor still didn’t work. I wonder if changes to WP are the cause.