Join Blog widget is a very basic plugin. It allows you to enable your users join various blogs on a multisite install of WordPress. It simply adds the users to current blog if they click on Join Blog link.

What it does:-

• Allows users to join blogs on a multisite network
• Site Admin can choose the role they want the users to have
• Works with Multisite WordPress Install and is compatible with BuddyPress

I created this plugin to act as a companion for our other plugin, the BuddyPress Multi Network Plugin. You can encourage your users to join various networks on the Mutisite install using this plugin.

Here is a couple of screenshots.

Screenshots:-

Join Blog Widget Options:-

Join Blog Widget

On Successful Join

Download & Installation:-

Download: http://buddydev.com/plugins/join-blog-widget/
Github repo https://github.com/sbrajesh/join-blog-widget

This is a free plugin and I hope it helps some of you in building your network.  Please help us in improving this plugin by providing your valuable feedback in the comments section.

Related posts:

1. Introducing BuddyPress Multi Network Plugin: Create Multiple separate Social networks on a single BuddyPress Install
2. Recently Updated Blogs Widget for WordPress Mu
3. BuddyPress User Notifications Widget plugin

Have you ever wanted to create multiple social networks on a single install of BuddyPress. If yes, this plugin is for you.  You can turn your WordPress Multisite/BuddyPress Install to multiple separate social networks using this plugin just like Ning. BuddyPress Multi Network plugin enables you to create separate social networks on a single BuddyPress Installation.

Features:-

• It allows you to create Separate social networks on a single BuddyPress Install
• It separates the User base of one network from another(Each network can have different user base)
• A user can be part of  more than one network
• All networks can have their own user base, activities, groups, Profile data(xprofile fields) which can be different from other

Requirements:-

• WordPress Multisite 3.3+(should work with 3.1+ but I haven’t tested with that)
• BuddyPress 1.5+
• BuddyPress Multiblog Enabled( BP_ENABLE_MULTIBLOG defined true)
• BuddyPress Multi Network Plugin Network activated.

I am calling it BuddyPress Multi Network(Though I thought about calling it bp multisite but that seemed a lot confusing, suggestions for new names are more than welcome ).

BuddyPress Multi Network will enable you to create Multiple BuddyPress based social networks on a single Install of BuddyPress. It filters on various BuddyPress actions/filters and guides buddypress to treat each of the blog as separate network(Kudos to the BuddyPress core team for allowing filterabale meta keys/table prefixes ).

Basically, when you create a new network, All the BuddyPress tables are created for that network.  It helps to separate the data of one network from the other network.

This plugin in addition creates a table which tracks the users associated with various networks. Since we track the user for each networks, It allows us to filter the member directory/activity directory etc to show only the members associated with current site.

In the current version of the plugin, It does not filter users on your main site. Though, if you want you can enable that by commenting a few line in the plugin.  A user is considered to be associated with a network if he/she is added to the blog by any means or registers on that particular blog. I am going to put another plugin(widget) tomorrow to allow you to help your users join the sub  networks.

If you have an existing BuddyPress/WordPress multisite install and want to use this feature, please read the instructions here.

Download & Installation:-

Link: http://buddydev.com/plugins/buddypress-multi-network/

Github: https://github.com/sbrajesh/buddypress-multi-network

This is a free plugin. Please feel free to use it for your personal/commercial projects. If you like our plugins, please consider one of our membership to support us. Your support will help us keep building themes/plugins.This is a free plugin. Please feel free to use it on your personal/commercial projects. If you like our plugin, please consider one of our membership to support us. Your support will help us to keep building themes/plugins.

If you have an existing BuddyPress Based Social network and want to Run multiple Social network on this site. Please read here before updating.

Future:-

Though this plugin allows separation of users from one network to other network, there remains a few questions unanswered?

• What if a User deletes account on one of the network ? should he be removed from all the networks? what happens to his data on other networks ?
• What if a user is marked spam on a network, what should we do with his/her data?

Ok, In both these cases, we can delete all the data but I have not done that yet. I am looking forward to your suggestions before going into that direction.

Related posts:

1. Introducing Facebook Like User Activity Stream(Home activity feed) for BuddyPress Based Social Network
2. Introducing Cosmic Buddy Pro Theme for BuddyPress Based Social Networks
3. Introducing BuddyPress Facebook Connect+: Advance Facebook login/registration Plugin for your BuddyPress based Social Network

The WordPress Restrict Email domains plugin allows you to limit/restrict user registration on your WordPress/ BuddyPress site by email domains. You can limit the registration by specific emails or domains or just the domain extensions(like .edu/.com)

This plugin is best suited for intranets, educational institutes or the cases when you do not want to allow registration from everyone but a subset of users based on their email address. If you want to limit registrations on your WordPress, BuddyPress website to the emails belonging to only specified domains, this plugin is for you. It goes one step further and allows you to allow users by emails, or domains or even the domain extensions. So, if you are building an educational website and only want to allow the users from .edu domain, just put .edu in the settings. Same goes with the domain. If you are building a corporate network and only want to allow users from your own network, put your domain name in the settings.

It’s easy and efficient. The use of regular expression gives it  a lot of flexibility.

Features:-

• Works with
  • WordPress
  • WordPress Multisite
  • BuddyPress
• Allows you to limit new user registrations by
  • Domain names(e.g example.com)
  • Extensions (e.g. .edu, will only allow emails having .edu domain)
  • Email addresses (e.g admin@you-website.com, friends@some-other-website.com)
• You can configure the rules to allow users in the plugin admin panel(domain/email/extensions)
• It is very efficient

Screenshots

with BuddyPress

With WordPress Multisite

With WordPress

Admin Options:-

Allows you to update the list of allowed domains and the erro message as shown below

After activating the plugin, you can access it from Dashboard->Settings->Restrict Email Domains.

Download & Installation http://buddydev.com/plugins/wordpress-restrict-email-domains/

Hope it helps a few of you. Looking forward to hear your suggestions for further improvement.

Related posts:

1. Introducing WordPress Ban Registration Domain Plugin
2. Limit Blogs per User plugin for wpmu Updated
3. Introducing BuddyPress Message Privacy Plugin

If we run a multisite or a community site based on WordPress, the most common problem we all have is the spam registrations. Is your network getting too much spam? are you fade up with marking each and every spam user individually. Do the spam registrations look familiar?

Well, I am presenting you the WordPress Ban Registration Domain plugin which will help you curb the spam registrations. This plugin allows you to blacklist  emails or domains or even the domain extensions. It is very flexible and may cut a lot of spam registration.

So, if you want to block all registrations from .info domain, all you need is to include .info in the settings. Let us say you want to block registration from a particular email spam@spammer.com, just include it in the settings and relax. Another option will be blacklisting by domain names. Yes, you can blacklist individual/multiple domains too.

WordPress Ban Registration plugin is a simple, fast and very efficient  with the flexibility to allow you ban users by email or domain or even domain extension.

Features:-

• Works with WordPress/WordPress Multisite and/or BuddyPress
• Allows you to ban new user registrations by
  • Domain name(e.g example.com)
  • Extensions (e.g .info, .ru etc)
  • Email address (e.g spammer@spammer.com, evil@spammer.com)
• You can configure who is banned and what message to be shown in the plugin admin panel
• It is very efficient

Screenshots:-

A Banned User on BuddyPress registration page

Here is what a banned user sees on WordPress Multisite Registration page

and here is an example for WordPress(standard)

As you see, the plugin works with WordPress/WordPress multisite and BuddyPress. I have tested it with wordPress 3.3.1 and BuddyPress 1.5.3.1.

Admin Page screenshot:-

The plugin admin page allows you to save the ban information and message. here is from my test site.

You can access the admin page from Dashboard->settings->Ban Registration Domain shown below.

Download & Installation:-

http://buddydev.com/plugins/wordpress-ban-registration-domain/

This is a premium plugin for now, so you will need an active membership to download it.

This plugin may not curb the spam registration completely but I am  sure it is a step in the right direction and will cut a lot of spam registration. Hope you all will like it.

Looking forward to hear your suggestions

Related posts:

1. Introducing WordPress Restrict Email Domains Plugin
2. Enhancing The new User registration Message On WordPress Multisite and BuddyPress to make it more informative for Site Admins
3. Introducing BuddyPress Message Privacy Plugin

Hi All,

I hope you all are busy building the next awesome social network.

It has been a long time since I wrote my last post. I was busy setting up an office here in Mohali,Punjab. Everything is setup now, and I am almost back to regular work.

Today, we will see how to exclude some members from  the members directory of BuddyPress. I have seen this question numerous times  and finally I thought to put a small tutorial. It is quick and easy tutorial, so Let us begin.

We will need to hook to 'bp_ajax_querystring' filter.


The following code will allow to exclude the users from the members directory. They will be still listed in the friends list of other users with whom they are friends with.

add_action('bp_ajax_querystring','bpdev_exclude_users',20,2);
function bpdev_exclude_users($qs=false,$object=false){
 //list of users to exclude

 $excluded_user='1,2,3';//comma separated ids of users whom you want to exclude

 if($object!='members')//hide for members only
 return $qs;

 $args=wp_parse_args($qs);

 //check if we are listing friends?, do not exclude in this case
 if(!empty($args['user_id']))
 return $qs;

 if(!empty($args['exclude']))
 $args['exclude']=$args['exclude'].','.$excluded_user;
 else
 $args['exclude']=$excluded_user;

 $qs=build_query($args);

 return $qs;

}

You can put the above code in functions.php of your theme or in bp-custom.php.

Everything is fine and the users will be gone from the list. Now, comes a decision point. do you want them to be searchable ? The above code will hide them from the search too.

So, let us improve on our code .

add_action('bp_ajax_querystring','bpdev_exclude_users',20,2);
function bpdev_exclude_users($qs=false,$object=false){
 //list of users to exclude

 $excluded_user='1,2,3';//comma separated ids of users whom you want to exclude

 if($object!='members')//hide for members only
 return $qs;

 $args=wp_parse_args($qs);

 //check if we are searching  or we are listing friends?, do not exclude in this case
 if(!empty($args['user_id'])||!empty($args['search_terms']))
 return $qs;

 if(!empty($args['exclude']))
 $args['exclude']=$args['exclude'].','.$excluded_user;
 else
 $args['exclude']=$excluded_user;

 $qs=build_query($args);

 return $qs;

}

That’s it. All we are doing is checking if the query string is for listing members and we modify it to exclude the users.

I hope the code will help a couple of you.

Looking forward to hear your feedbacks

Related posts:

1. BuddyPress Friends suggestions Widget:- Help your Users to Build Their Network faster
2. Introducing Facebook Like User Activity Stream(Home activity feed) for BuddyPress Based Social Network
3. Allow Users to select a blog theme while signing up/creating a blog on your buddypress powered social network

It’s a delayed post and I will like to express my sincere apologies to everyone whom I could not reply individually about the Unified Search. Here I am going to put everything you ever asked about unified search in this post.
For those of you who haven’t seen my last post please check the original post here. This post is all about making unifiead search work with BuddyPress 1.5+. It is a long post, so please  have a cup of coffee and let us get started.

List of things we will cover below:-

• Installing Global Unified search Plugin
• Basic setup for the theme
• Showing search results for:-
  • Members search
  • Groups search
  • Activity search
  • Blog Posts search
  • Blog search
  • Group Forum search(BBPress 1.0 which you use for group forums)
  • BBPress 2.0 based forums topic search

Lets get started now.

Step1:- Installing the BP Global Unified search plugin

Install BP Global Unified search plugin.

Download:-BP Global Unified search

Once you Install and activate this plugin, BuddyPress will give you a notice that you need to create a page and associate it with Search Page.
Here is a screenshot showing the notice

Please create a WordPress page and associate the page with search page component in BuddyPress->Pages screen.
If you are done with this, let us proceed to the coding part now.

Please note that all the code below should go to your active theme/functions.php until and unless mentioned.

Step2:- Basic setup for theme

Remove the BuddyPress dropwn filters for members/groups/posts etc

//Remove Buddypress search drowpdown for selecting members etc
add_filter('bp_search_form_type_select', 'bpmag_remove_search_dropdown'  );
function bpmag_remove_search_dropdown($select_html){
    return '';
}

Step 3: Fixing the redirect/page not found for search page

Stop BuddyPress from redirecting to members/other component(by default on search, you are redirected to members directory). Let us stop that behavior.

//force buddypress to not process the search/redirect
remove_action( 'bp_init', 'bp_core_action_search_site', 7 );

Step4: Now, let us handle the search page ourself

//let us handle the unified page ourself
add_action( 'init', 'bp_buddydev_search', 10 );// custom handler for the search
function bp_buddydev_search(){
global $bp;
	if ( bp_is_current_component(BP_SEARCH_SLUG) )//if thids is search page
		bp_core_load_template( apply_filters( 'bp_core_template_search_template', 'search-single' ) );//load the single searh template
}

Step5: Tweaking the Query string for search

We will append the search term to BuddyPress query string.

add_action('advance-search','bpmag_show_search_results',1);//highest priority
/* we just need to filter the query and change search_term=The search text*/
function bpmag_show_search_results(){
    //filter the ajaxquerystring
     add_filter('bp_ajax_querystring','bpmag_global_search_qs',100,2);
}

 //modify the query string with the search term
function bpmag_global_search_qs(){
	return 'search_terms='.$_REQUEST['search-terms'];
}

//a utility function
function bpmag_is_advance_search(){
global $bp;
if(bp_is_current_component( BP_SEARCH_SLUG))
	return true;
return false;
}

Now we are done with the basic setup. It is time to show the search reults.

Step 6: Create a search-single.php in your theme

In the content area(if you are using default theme, then inside the div “padder”) put the following line

<?php do_action("advance-search");?>

Step7: showing the results

It is time to show the results. Please note, you can change which component’s search is shown first by changing the priority in the add_action below. Basically, we will check for the active component and just add their search result using the add_action, let us start with members.

Members search

//show the search results for member*/
function bpmag_show_member_search(){
    ?>
   <div class="members-search-result search-result">
   <h2 class="content-title"><?php _e('Members Results',"bpmag");?></h2>
  <?php locate_template( array( 'members/members-loop.php' ), true ) ;  ?>
  <?php global $members_template;
	if($members_template->total_member_count>1):?>
   <a href="<?php echo bp_get_root_domain().'/'.  bp_get_members_slug().'/?s='.$_REQUEST['search-terms']?>" ><?php _e(sprintf('View all %d matched Members',$members_template->total_member_count),"bpmag");?></a>
	<?php 	endif; ?>
    </div>
<?php
 }
//Hook Member results to search page
add_action('advance-search','bpmag_show_member_search',10); //the priority defines where in page this result will show up(the order of member search in other searchs)

Similarly, we will add the support for other components.

Adding Group Search

//Group search
function bpmag_show_groups_search(){
    ?>
<div class="groups-search-result search-result">
 	<h2 class="content-title"><?php _e('Group Search','bpmag');?></h2>
	<?php locate_template( array('groups/groups-loop.php' ), true ) ;  ?>

        <a href="<?php echo bp_get_root_domain().'/'.  bp_get_groups_slug().'/?s='.$_REQUEST['search-terms']?>" ><?php _e("View All matched Groups","bpmag");?></a>
</div>
	<?php
 //endif;
  }

//Hook Groups results to search page
 if(bp_is_active( 'groups' ))
    add_action('advance-search','bpmag_show_groups_search',15);

Searching Activity Updates

 /**activity update search*/
 //Activity search
function bpmag_show_activity_search(){
    ?>
<div class="activity-search-result search-result">
 	<h2 class="content-title"><?php _e('Activity Updates','bpmag');?></h2>
	<?php locate_template( array('activity/activity-loop.php' ), true ) ;  ?>

        <a href="<?php echo bp_get_root_domain().'/'.  bp_get_activity_slug().'/?s='.$_REQUEST['search-terms']?>" ><?php _e("View all matched updates","bpmag");?></a>
</div>
	<?php
 //endif;
  }

//Hook Activity results to search page
 if(bp_is_active( 'activity' ))
    add_action('advance-search','bpmag_show_activity_search',20);

Showing Blog post search

/**
 *
 * Show blog posts in search
 */
function bpmag_show_site_blog_search(){
    ?>
 <div class="blog-search-result search-result">

  <h2 class="content-title"><?php _e('Blog Search','bpmag');?></h2>

   <?php locate_template( array( 'search-loop.php' ), true ) ;  ?>
   <a href="<?php echo bp_get_root_domain().'/?s='.$_REQUEST['search-terms']?>" ><?php _e("View All matched Posts","bpmag");?></a>
</div>
   <?php
  }

//Hook Blog Post results to search page
 add_action('advance-search',"bpmag_show_site_blog_search",25);

Showing Blogs search(for Multisite)

//show blogs search result

function bpmag_show_blogs_search(){

    ?>
  <div class="blogs-search-result search-result">
  <h2 class="content-title"><?php _e('Blogs Search',"bpmag");?></h2>
  <?php locate_template( array( 'blogs/blogs-loop.php' ), true ) ;  ?>
  <a href="<?php echo bp_get_root_domain().'/'. bp_get_blogs_slug().'/?s='.$_REQUEST['search-terms']?>" ><?php _e("View All matched Blogs","bpmag");?></a>
 </div>
  <?php
  }

//Hook Blogs results to search page if blogs comonent is active
 if(bp_is_active( 'blogs' ))
    add_action('advance-search','bpmag_show_blogs_search',30);

Showing Forum(the Groups forum) topics in the search

//show forums search
function bpmag_show_forums_search(){
    ?>
 <div class="forums-search-result search-result">
   <h2 class="content-title"><?php _e("Forums Search","bpmag");?></h2>
  <?php locate_template( array( 'forums/forums-loop.php' ), true ) ;  ?>
   <a href="<?php echo bp_get_root_domain().'/'.  bp_get_forums_slug().'/?s='.$_REQUEST['search-terms']?>" ><?php _e("View All matched forum posts","bpmag");?></a>
</div>
  <?php
  }

//Hook Forums results to search page
if ( bp_is_active( 'forums' ) && bp_forums_is_installed_correctly() && bp_forums_has_directory() )
 add_action('advance-search',"bpmag_show_forums_search",35);

Extra bonus for following this tutorial till now:-
Showing Results for BBPress 2.0 plugin

function bpmag_show_bbpress_topic_search(){
     $_REQUEST['ts']=$_REQUEST['search-terms'];//put it for bbpress topic search
    ?>
  <div class="bbp-topic-search-result search-result">
  <h2 class="content-title"><?php _e('Global Topic Search',"bpmag");?></h2>
  <?php bbp_get_template_part('bbpress/content','archive-topic') ;  ?>
  <?php
  global $bbp;
    $page = bbp_get_page_by_path( $bbp->root_slug );

  ?>
  <a href="<?php echo get_permalink($page).'?ts='.$_REQUEST['search-terms']?>" ><?php _e("View All matched topics","bpmag");?></a>
 </div>
  <?php
  }

//Hook Blogs results to search page if blogs comonent is active
 if(function_exists( 'bbp_has_topics' ))
    add_action('advance-search','bpmag_show_bbpress_topic_search',40);

btw, if you find this tutorial a long one, you can simply copy the template/functions.php from bp-global-unified-search and paste it in your theme’s functions.php. Also, I have put a sample search-loop.php in the bp-global-unified-search/template directory. So, you can use it directly or adapt to your theme.

I hope you will like it. Looking forward to hear your suggestions and feedback for further improvement.

Related posts:

1. Creating The sitewide global/unified search Page for your Buddypress Theme
2. Introducing Global sitewide forums plugin for Buddypress
3. Supporting Cubepoints for Global forums

BuddyPress Simple Front End post plugin allows developer to create unlimited post forms for the front end posting. The current release includes support for custom posts type and categories but not the custom taxonomies. I will include custom taxonomy support in future.

I created this plugin to use with Blog categories with groups plugin as I could not find a nice solution for the purpose. Currently this plugin is aimed as developers. It has a simple api to create forms and to use them in theme. All the nasty works are handled by the plugin, so a developer does not need to dive into the code. Instead just use two lines of code to create a custom post form for any purpose they like.

Here is a screenshot of it being used with Blog Categories for groups plugin

Features:-

• Allows to create  any number of customized post forms
• supports custom post type
• supports including a list of categories
• has a very simple to use API for developers(I will show an example below)
• It is very very Light weight

How to Use It:-

The basic philosophy is to allow developers to create an Instance of  ’BPSimpleBlogPostEditForm’ class for each of their form. This class handles the view and behavior both. Once you create an instance, you will need to register it to the ‘BPSimpleBlogPostEditor’ class(which is implemented as singleton pattern). Ok, so that seems nasty, right? No worries, you don’t need to delve into that. There are two api functions which will do it for you. You just need to pass the form name(which should be a unique name, it can contain spaces etc) and the basic sdettings of the form(like post type, allowed categories, who can write, who will be attributed as the author of the post and the post status).

Registering a Form Instance:-

To create and register a post form(with settings), you will need to use the following code

$form=bp_new_simple_blog_post_form($form_name,$settings);

The above code creates an instanace of ‘BPSimpleBlogPostEditForm’ class and registers it to the editor. You can create any number of forms you want. The above code must be called on/before bp_init action priority 10.

Here is a working example with the details of allowed parameters.

add_action('bp_init','my_post_form',4);//register a form
//it will register a fomr
function my_post_form(){
$settings=array('post_type'=>'post',//which post type
'post_author'=>  bp_loggedin_user_id(),//who will be the author of the submitted post
'post_status'=>'draft',//how the post should be saved, change it to 'publish' if you want to make the post published automatically
'current_user_can_post'=>  is_user_logged_in(),//who can post
'show_categories'=>true,//whether to show categories list or not, make sure to keep it true
'allowed_categories'=>array(1,2,3,4)//array of allowed categories which should be shown, use  get_all_category_ids() if you want to allow all categories
);

$form=bp_new_simple_blog_post_form('my form',$settings);//create a Form Instance and register it

}

You can modify any  parameter as you like. Even you can set it to allow non logged in users to submit post and save it to another user account.

The above code will register a new form with name ‘my form’ and you can retrieve it later at any point and show the form anywhere using the following code. We need to register the form on/before bp_init priority 10 to allow the controller to have access to this form. If you register the form after bp_init action, the controller will be unaware of the form’s existance and can not handle the save action.

Once a form is registered, you can show it anywhere you like using the following function.

//now let us  find the form and render it

$form=bp_get_simple_blog_post_form('my form');

if($form) //if this is a valid form
  $form->show();//it will show the form

You can use above code anywhere in your template to render the form.

Though registering the form on/before bp_init action may seem like a bad choice to some of you, It allows for server side validation of the credentials/authentication and thus helps from any misuse of the form.

It is a free plugin, please feel free to download it and use it on your custom projects. The Blog Categoris for groups plugin version 1.0.4 supports this plugin. You will simply need to activate this plugin and the plugin will work as the form handler for Bp Blog Categories.

Download Link:http://buddydev.com/plugins/bp-simple-front-end-post/

Code Repository: https://github.com/sbrajesh/bp-simple-front-end-post

Looking forward to hear your suggestions for the improvement of this plugin

Related posts:

1. Introducing BuddyPress Simple Google Map Plugin
2. Blog Categories for Groups Plugin
3. BuddyPress Ajax Registration Plugin: Allow users to quickly register on any page of your website and increase participation

BP Testimonials is a plugin which allows your users to leave recommendations/testiomonial for other  users on your BuddyPress based social network.

Purpose:-

• Allow users recommending other users
• Can be used as in Linked In recommendation feature or orkut testimonial feature(Or may be as review)

This plugin uses custom post types in optimized way and will be easy on databases.

Screenshots:-

User Testimonials

Writing Testimonial

After writing Testimonial

Pending Testimonial

Local Notification:

and the mail notification settings for testimonials

I hope the screenshots are enough to convey the working and the features.

Please note this is a premium plugin so you will need to have BuddyDev premium membership to download it.

Download Link:

http://buddydev.com/plugins/bp-user-testimonials/

Looking forward to hear your thoughts on it.

Related posts:

1. Introducing BuddyPress Message Privacy Plugin
2. Introducing the first stable version of Global Forums Plugin
3. Introducing BuddyPress Live Notification Plugin: A facebook like notification plugin for BuddyPress

BuddyPress Ajax registration plugin allows your users to register quickly on your website. User can register from any page of your website. The plugin not only registers them but also logs them to the website automatically.

Features:

• Easy Registration using Ajax
• Users can register from any page of the site
• Automatically logs the new user to website
• Will increase the participation of users(As they can register and login on a specific page without any redirects)
• Allows you to control which xprofile fields/groups are shown(programatically)
• Developers/Designers have full control over layout(Yes, you can theme the popup as  you want and also control the template if you want)
• Compatible with BuddyPress on WordPress(standard) as well as WordPress Multisite(Including blog registration)

I will like to thank @Greg for the Idea. He mentioned it a couple of time for our global forum plugin and increasing participation in the forum topics a few months ago. I got some time recently and created the plugin.

Credit: This plugin uses the jQuery modal plugin by Richard Scarrott

It is a flexible and will allow you to control the layout/look and feel.

Screenshots:

Let us see some screenshots first

Here is the registration screen

If there is an error, the user will be notified immidiately as shown below

And if the registration is successfull, user sees the welcome message and is then logged in to the current page

The message will appear for 1 second(You can control it from the javascript file) and then the page will be refreshed to make the user login.

The plugin automatically filters BuddyPress standard signup links(In the admin bar, sidebar) and activates the modal . So, once you have installed it, you are ready to go.

If you want to show the registration popup box on any other link, just give it a class ‘bp-ajaxr‘ and the the modal box will automatically work for that.

Customizing the Layout template:-

I have included a registration page(register.php) in the plugin. If you want to use your own registration page, you can create a register.php in your theme and It will load automatically.

Controling which Xprofile fields/groups are shown:-

Use the filter ‘bpajaxr_xprofile_args’ to filter on Xprofile loop arguements. Let us say if you want to show all the fields from xprofile field group 2, you can use it in your functions.php /bp-custom.php as below

add_filter('bpajaxr_xprofile_args','my_custom_registration_fields');

function my_custom_registration_fields($args=''){

return 'profile_group_id=2&hide_empty_fields=0&hide_empty_groups=0';

}

Download: http://buddydev.com/plugins/bp-ajax-registration/

I hope this plugin will help you all. Looking forward to hear your feedback from you

Note: this is a premium plugin. Also, if you are using  BP Autoactivate Autologin plugin, please download the version 1.2.6 which is compatible with it.

Related posts:

1. Introducing BuddyPress Facebook Connect+: Advance Facebook login/registration Plugin for your BuddyPress based Social Network
2. Introducing WordPress Ban Registration Domain Plugin
3. Enhancing The new User registration Message On WordPress Multisite and BuddyPress to make it more informative for Site Admins

How many of you use facebook for connecting with Friends and family, I believe almost all Today, I am going to show how to make the BuddyPress Activity Stream activity commenting look/work like facebook activity commenting. I will be doing it by using bp-default theme as an example. you can easily modify it for other themes.

In addition to writing css/js, we will need one jquery plugin to autogrow the text area as a user types.

Github Repo: https://github.com/sbrajesh/fb-style-activity-commenting

Goals:-

• Make activity comment section look like facebook
• make activity posting like facebook

External script required:-

jQuery AutoGrow textArea:- We will use it for autogrowing comment text box. The script is a part of jQuery grab bag by Jason Frame

Lets get started. But before that, lets have a look at the final screenshot.

Step 1: No multilevel commenting

I know it is a bad decision, but this is what facebook does. I am just following the lead.

You can put the following code in functions.php to stop mulitlevel commenting

add_filter('bp_activity_can_comment_reply','__return_false');

Since I don’t want to temper with core files of bp-default(read it whatever theme you use), We will be including the code to load out comment.js and the autogrow textarea plugin. You should create comment.js in the_inc folder of your theme and also put the autogrow plugin there.

Here is the code you need to put in functions.php

//include the javascript, change it as you want
add_action("wp_print_scripts","bp_fbstyle_comment_js");
function bp_fbstyle_comment_js(){
    if(!is_user_logged_in())
        return ;//we do not want to include the js
    wp_enqueue_script("bpfb-comment-js", get_stylesheet_directory_uri()."/_inc/comment.js",array('jquery','dtheme-ajax-js'));
    wp_enqueue_script("bpfb-comment-autogrow-js", get_stylesheet_directory_uri()."/_inc/jquery.autogrow-textarea.js",array('jquery'));
}

I am including these from my child theme, you can change the above line to make sure you are loading it correctly from your theme.

That’s all we need to do in php. Now, we will write some javascript and css to make it work like facebook activity commenting.

Step2:  The CSS

Let us make the activity comment form visible. Onething to note here, facebook puts a visible comment form only for those activities which already have atleast one comment. I am following the same. You can change that behaviour and make it visible for all activities(I will be mentioning how to do that)

I have adjusted the margin of the form appropriately for our page formatting.

li.has-comments div.activity-comments form.ac-form {
    display:block;
    margin:0 0 5px 0;
}
/*if you want to make it visible for all activity, change the above css selector from 'li.has-comments div.activity-comments form.ac-form' to 'div.activity-comments form.ac-form'. Note, we removed the li.has-comments from the selector*/

Now, as the form is visible, we will need to hide the commenter avatar(the logged in user avatar and remove the unnecessary margin/padding)

.ac-form .ac-reply-avatar{
    display:none;
}

div.activity-comments form div.ac-reply-content{
    margin-left: 0;
    padding-left: 0;
    margin-bottom: 5px;
    height:35px;/* you may need to adjust height according to the one you choose for your textarea*/
}

That’s nice. Now, we will need to fix the height of the textarea to fit one line of text and hide the submit button. After all, we assume pressing enter will post the comment.

div.activity-comments form textarea {
    height: 13px;
}
div.activity-comments form input[type='submit']{
    display:none;
}

So, that’s the basic css. It will make the comment form visible for the appropriate activity entries.

Now, When a particular text area gains focus, we will add class ‘active’ to its parent form. So, we will need to update our active form css when a comment textarea gains focus.
Here is the css for that

/*on active/focus*/
form.active .ac-reply-avatar{
    float:left;
    display: block;
}
form.active .ac-reply-avatar img.avatar {
    float: left;
    margin: 0 3px 0 0;
     height: 25px;

    width: 25px;
}
/*reset the height of comment box wrapper to make the comment box grow later*/
div.activity-comments form.active div.ac-reply-content{
    height:auto;
}
form.active .ac-textarea{
    margin-bottom: 10px;
    padding: 0px 8px 8px 8px;
    }
    div.activity-comments form.active div.ac-reply-content{
    margin-left: 30px;
    padding-left: 2px;

}

So, that is the complete css we will need.

Let us write some javascript code to emulate the fb effect. All these code goes to comment.js

Step 3: The javascript

So, as jQuery says, let us do everything when the dom is ready. All the code blow this section is wrapped inside this block

jQuery(document).ready(function(){

//the actual code

});

Now, the initial setup. The BP default theme hides all the activity form using javascript. We will need to make them visible again.

var jq=jQuery;//we do no want to keep the value to mess our layout, and we do not want to do the complex calculations too
 jq("form.ac-form textarea").val('');

 jq(".has-comments form.ac-form").show();//make all the activity comment form visible whose parent have at least 1 previous comment.
 //if you want to show the activity comment form for all the activities , irrespective of whether there are already comments or not, comment the above line and uncomment the below line
 //jq("form.ac-form").show();
 jq("form.ac-form").show();//make all the activity comment form visible

Please note what I mentioned in the last 2 lines of above code. If you have made your css to show the comment form for all the activity entries, then comment and uncomment the above code as instructed.

Now, let us bind the auto grow plugin to all the activity comment text area

jq('.ac-textarea textarea').autogrow();

Add class “active” to the parent of the text area which has gained focus and remove the class ‘active from all other forms.

//on focus, add remove active class
 jq('.ac-textarea textarea').live('focus', function(){
     var ac_form=jq(this).parent().parent().parent();//parent form
         ac_form.addClass('active');

         jq('.ac-textarea').parents('form.ac-form').not(ac_form).removeClass('active');

  });

The above step could have been done in easier step by first removing the class from all forms and then adding it to current textarea’s parent.I just wanted better usability by first activating this form.

Let us handle the Pressing of ESC button and the Enter. We are resetting the form on escape key pressing and posting the comment when the enter key is pressed.

 /* Handle the ESC/ENTER key with more specific element and cancel even bubbling for these actions to void bp-default's way of handling this */
jq('.ac-textarea textarea').keydown( function(e) {
	 element = e.target;

	//if meta keys, don't do anything
          if( e.ctrlKey == true || e.altKey == true || e.metaKey == true )
		return;

            var keyCode = (e.keyCode) ? e.keyCode : e.which;

                    //if ESC key was pressed
           if ( keyCode == 27 ) {
                   jq(element).animate({'height':'13px'});//reset back to its original height

                   return false;

                }
            else if(keyCode==13){//if enter pressed
                //jq(element).parent().next().click();//since we have not removed the submit button
                  ac_post_comment(element);
                return false;

            }

});//end of ESC/enter handling code

As you can see in the above code, I have mentioned that writing the ac_post_comment function could be avoided by uncommenting the previous line(submit button clicking). The problem is the javascript in bp-default hides the reply box below the posted comment but we don’t want that. So, you can either uncomment a line in global.js or use the code below.

  /**post activity comment*/
  //just a copy of bp-default activity comment posting code with  slight modification to avoid hiding the forms
  function ac_post_comment(target){
    target=jq(target);

    	/* Activity comment posting */
		if ( target.hasClass('ac-input') ) {
			var form = target.parent().parent().parent();
			var form_parent = form.parent();
			var form_id = form.attr('id').split('-');

			if ( !form_parent.hasClass('activity-comments') ) {
				var tmp_id = form_parent.attr('id').split('-');
				var comment_id = tmp_id[1];
			} else {
				var comment_id = form_id[2];
			}

			/* Hide any error messages */
			jq( 'form#' + form + ' div.error').hide();
			target.next('.loader').addClass('loading').end().prop('disabled', true);

			jq.post( ajaxurl, {
				action: 'new_activity_comment',
				'cookie': encodeURIComponent(document.cookie),
				'_wpnonce_new_activity_comment': jq("input#_wpnonce_new_activity_comment").val(),
				'comment_id': comment_id,
				'form_id': form_id[2],
				'content': jq('form#' + form.attr('id') + ' textarea').val()
			},
			function(response)
			{
				target.next('.loader').removeClass('loading');

				/* Check for errors and append if found. */
				if ( response[0] + response[1] == '-1' ) {
					form.append( response.substr( 2, response.length ) ).hide().fadeIn( 200 );
				} else {
					form.fadeOut( 200,
						function() {
							if ( 0 == form.parent().children('ul').length ) {
								if ( form.parent().hasClass('activity-comments') )
									form.parent().prepend('<ul></ul>');
								else
									form.parent().append('<ul></ul>');
							}

							form.parent().children('ul').append(response).hide().fadeIn( 200 );
							form.children('textarea').val('');
							form.parent().parent().addClass('has-comments');
						}
					);//form hiding
					jq( 'form#' + form + ' textarea').val('');
                                        target.height(20);
                                      //  form.removeClass('active');
                                        form.fadeIn(200);

					/* Increase the "Reply (X)" button count */
					jq('li#activity-' + form_id[2] + ' a.acomment-reply span').html( Number( jq('li#activity-' + form_id[2] + ' a.acomment-reply span').html() ) + 1 );
				}

				jq(target).prop("disabled", false);
			});

			return false;
		}
}

Now, we have done everything and the code will work. The last thing we need to fix is clicking on the comment(x) link below the activity entry. By default, bp-default theme show the comment form for that activity and hides all other comment form. we need to stop it hiding other comment form. You can uncomment a line in global.js or just use the code below.

/* You can avoid the code blow if you want to change a line in global.js, if you don't, then this code does it for you*/
//the code below is taken from bp-default activity comment link clicking code, I have attached the evnt to more specific element and also remoded the form hiding code
jq('div.activity .acomment-reply').click( function(event) {
		var target = jq(event.target);

                var id = target.attr('id');
                ids = id.split('-');

                var a_id = ids[2]
                var c_id = target.attr('href').substr( 10, target.attr('href').length );
                var form = jq( '#ac-form-' + a_id );

                form.css( 'display', 'none' );
                form.removeClass('root');
                //jq('.ac-form').hide();//you can just comment out this line in the global.js of bp-default and avoid this whole block of code

                /* Hide any error messages */
                form.children('div').each( function() {
                        if ( jq(this).hasClass( 'error' ) )
                                jq(this).hide();
                });

                if ( ids[1] != 'comment' ) {
                        jq('div.activity-comments li#acomment-' + c_id).append( form );
                } else {
                        jq('li#activity-' + a_id + ' div.activity-comments').append( form );
                }

                if ( form.parent().hasClass( 'activity-comments' ) )
                        form.addClass('root');

                form.slideDown( 200 );
                jq.scrollTo( form, 500, { offset:-100, easing:'easeOutQuad' } );
                jq('#ac-form-' + ids[2] + ' textarea').focus();

                return false;

});

That’s it. You are ready to see your supercool facebook like activity commenting.

I have put the above code as a child theme of bp-default on github. If you want to take a look and see it in action, download it from here and active.

Github Repo:https://github.com/sbrajesh/fb-style-activity-commenting

My tutorial uses the reference of bp-default theme for BuddyPress 1.5 but you can modify it for any of the existing theme with some minor css/js changes if any.

Hope it helps some of you. Looking forward to hear your thoughts and feedback

Related posts:

1. Disable Blog Posts and new Blog Comments recording/tracking In the activity by BuddyPress
2. BuddyPress Activity Comment Notifier Plugin Update
3. BuddyPress Sitewide Activity widget Updated