yes, correct assessment, but there is a potential solution, if i am right. first about BP: the default theme used to be “widget” ready or friendly, meaning that you can decide what goes in there from the Widget Admin area. This latest version brings essentially major changes in the codes that organize user behavior, but not so easy on the theme side. In fact, there aren’t any themes, may be 2 or 3, that are BP1.2.2.1 compliant and easy to just deploy. However, the Buddypress creators and developers say that you have to create what they call a child theme and then make whatever changes you want from there, probably including making the first “Activity” page as your landing page. Now, one very smart developer released this base theme, http://freebpthemes.com/onsite/sense-sensibility/ If you have bandwidth, time and some technical capabilities, I would recommend having a look.
Now WordPress(MU) may allow u to pick your activity page as the landing page. In your WP Admin section, scroll down to the Settings area (left column). You see “Reading”. In it, it will let you choose “Front Page Display.” You may try to select “Static Page” and open the drop down menu for Front Page and select the Activity Stream page. Then save. By doing, I suspect, since I did not try it, the Activity Stream page (Facebook-like section) will be what your visitors will see when they hit your website.
One think you may want to consider. The Activity Page puts any acvity across your site on that page. If you have a lot of people, that could be overwhelming. There is, however, one plugin u should find on this site called: BuddyPress Friends Only Activity Stream. It essentially should show only activity from the memeber’s friends. Again, I did not try it, but I plan so.
Good luck
Arezki
@jcoonrod When you say “home page”, do you mean the activity stream or blog posts? If you’re using the bp-default theme then you can select either as your root page (the one you would see at http://example.com as opposed to http://example.com/activity or http://example.com/blog).
If it’s a problem with new users who are posting blog posts that are not showing up, you probably need to publish their posts. You mention that you set them as “authors”. I’m not sure the author role in WP allows publishing, I think only an editor or admin can publish.
In the default theme, there is a homepage, but at the moment it only seems to carry the post that I made.
My next problem is that users only seem to be able to add “updates” whatever those are. I have them set as “author” which should allow editing and posting posts, but the default installation doesn’t seem to have any means for users to do this – any recommendations about this?
A TUTORIAL for BP would certainly be welcome!
I think you might be confusing regular blog posts with user status updates. Like any WP site, your users don’t need to be authors unless you want them to publish blog posts.
BP just adds the “social” side of things. The stuff like activity updates, etc. When your users create “updates”, this is like the Facebook status updates.
If you go to the BP Test/Demo site at http://testbp.org, you will see the site activity stream. This is where all of the status updates show up for everyone on the site. Each user can go to their own page and see just the status updates for them and their friends, etc.
If you go to http://testbp.org/news, you will see the regular blog side of things. Andy has one blog post there – the default WP blog post.
If this doesn’t help, maybe you can point us to your site and explain to us what is wrong with how it’s working.
