I have another problem which might be related to this: when I start a new form topic after I publish it I am taken to a different group. The new topic is created and in the correct place, but the behaviour of redirecting me to a different group obviously isn’t right.
I’m wondering if there is something wrong in how the forums are set up.
It’s a bit obvious to explain.
When group component is activated, you should have a page assigned to groups. Ensure this page exist, without any content , page template or parent page. Just a page with a title.
Don’t forget to allow group forums in bbpress forum settings and to assign a group forum page, which should not be the existing Group page of BP.
On front when you create a new group, you create first the group. In one of the creation steps, you can check “allow this group to have a forum”. Then you save this. Once saved, you will see that the group name appeared in the select box. You must save this again to definetly activate a forum to this group. Same can be done by accessing group settings > forum tab.
Resume of creating a group with forum
enter a group name and description, check allow forum. Save. Select box must now contain the new group name. Save again.
More details here.
Thanks for the replay @danbp. I’ve gone through everything you’ve suggested and can’t seem to find anything amiss:
When group component is activated, you should have a page assigned to groups. Ensure this page exist, without any content , page template or parent page. Just a page with a title.
I believe I’ve done this – if I go into Settings > BuddyPress > Pages then next to ‘User Groups’ there is a ‘Groups’ page defined and if I click on ‘View’ I see the link works. I’ve also checked the page and confirmed it’s blank and doesn’t have a parent or template.
Don’t forget to allow group forums in bbpress forum settings
I’ve got “Enable Group Forums – Allow BuddyPress Groups to have their own forums” ticked.
and to assign a group forum page, which should not be the existing Group page of BP.
Is this the ‘Group Forums Parent’ setting underneath ‘Enable Group Forums’? If so that is set up and it is not the existing group page.
On front when you create a new group, you create first the group. In one of the creation steps, you can check “allow this group to have a forum”. Then you save this. Once saved, you will see that the group name appeared in the select box. You must save this again to definitely activate a forum to this group. Same can be done by accessing group settings > forum tab.
Resume of creating a group with forum
enter a group name and description, check allow forum. Save. Select bow must contain the new group name. Save again.
These are the steps I have followed to set groups and forums up. I have also gone into all of them and checked they have “Yes I want this group to have a forum” ticked and the correct forum is selected; they all do.
And yet still I keep encountering the problems I described in my first two posts.
To investigate further, I thought it might be worth running the Repair Forums tools (/wp-admin/tools.php?page=bbp-repair). These completed successfully with three exceptions:
“Recalculate the position of each reply” – This spent a long time processing, then gave a 502 Bad Gateway error
“Remap existing users to default forum roles” – The page went blank
“Remove trashed topics from user favorites” – This gave a SQL error the first time and completed the second time.
I wondered if the “Repair BuddyPress Group Forum relationships” option would help. When I ran it I got the message: “Repairing BuddyPress group-forum relationships… Complete! 0 groups updated; 0 forums updated; 0 forum statuses synced.”
After doing all that I created a new topic as a test and again after publishing it I was taken to a different group.
What is your complaining users role on forums ?
Deactivate bbPress, resave your permalinks (should be other than default), reactivate and relaunch the repair tool.
Just in case, allow comments should stay unchecked on all BP pages. Use quick edit to see this.
On the forum admin view all list, you should have one forum name starting with a letter and all other (group)forums should start by – name
Sructure is like
page
– sub page
Thanks for your help so far. I’ve made a start on your suggestions:
What is your complaining users role on forums ?
Forum role: Participant
(WP role: Subscriber)
Deactivate bbPress, resave your permalinks (should be other than default),
I’ve done this (I just went into /wp-admin/options-permalink.php and hit ‘save changes’, I’m already using ‘Day and name’).
reactivate and relaunch the repair tool
I’ve done this.
As before, “Recalculate the position of each reply” took a long time to complete (several minutes) and eventually gave a 502 Bad Gateway error. I tried again and got a 504 Gateway Time-out. I was feeling stubborn so I ran it once or twice more until finally I got “Recalculating reply menu order … Complete!”
The remaining repair options all completed quickly until I got to the final one, “Remap existing users to default forum roles”. Each time I run this it pauses for a short while, then gives me a white screen. I tried this half-a-dozen times with the same result every time.
I’ll press on with the other steps when I have more time. In the meantime it would be useful if anyone can suggest why I keep getting a white screen when I run “Remap existing users to default forum roles” and whether that might be related to my problems?
@danbp OK the best indication I have from reports from my users is this has fixed the problem, so thanks very much for your help! I really am very grateful.
I have got another problem with groups which I am trying to solve which I have described here if you’re able to take a look:
https://buddypress.org/support/topic/cannot-upload-group-photo-avatar-gives-404-error/
if you’re sure you strictly followed these instructions, enable wp_debug and see which kind of error you get when on the group front-end settings page.
Can you upload user avatars correctly ?
Can you upload pictures to Media Library ?
And last but not least, give your theme name or the site url.
@danbp Unfortunately it seems I spoke too soon – the original problem isn’t entirely resolved yet. This misbehaviour has returned:
when I start a new form topic after I publish it I am taken to a different group. The new topic is created and in the correct place, but the behaviour of redirecting me to a different group obviously isn’t right.
I’m still trying to get to the bottom of why some of my users are being shown this message:
“You cannot reply to this topic”
As I mentioned above, whenever I run the “Remap existing users to default forum roles” option in /wp-admin/tools.php?page=bbp-repair I end up with a blank screen. It seems like this could be related to the problem – can anyone explain what this option does and how to fix it so it runs correctly?
@danbp Thanks for the offer of help. Can I pass on this information to you privately somehow?
OK I’ve been able to recreate the problem which has given me a much better understanding of what is going wrong. Worryingly, it seems the problem also affects anyone who’s signed up for the first time:
* New users (and some existing users) are shown the message “You cannot create new topics” in forums belonging to groups which they are not members of.
* They are also shown the message “You cannot reply to this topic” in topic threads of forums belonging to groups which they are not members of.
* If they join the group, these messages go away
I thought the way it was supposed to work was that users can post in any public forum, and when they do so for the first time they automatically become a member of that group. Is that correct? If so why isn’t that working here?
I have tried disabling all plugins (apart from BuddyPress and BBPress, of course) and using a default theme, all of which made no difference.
I am still unable to run the “Remap existing users to default forum roles” option in /wp-admin/tools.php?page=bbp-repair. If I disable all plugins (apart from BuddyPress and BBPress) then when I run it I get the following error:
Fatal error: Allowed memory size of 268435456 bytes exhausted (tried to allocate 262144 bytes) in /var/www/f1fanatic/htdocs/wp-includes/cache.php on line 631
I am looking into whether I can raise the memory limit on the server to get it to run. In the meantime if anyone can shed any light on this problem please do!
