BuddyPress Album+ Features

• Users can upload picture to their albums, and they can add title, description, choose privacy option (public, visible to members, visible to friends, private) and enable/disable comments for the pic. Users can edit and delete their pictures.
• Admin can set limit for picture upload total count, to enable/disable privacy options and limit for each of them, if description can be empty, pic per page in the default query.
• For each upload pic will be generated a thumb and a middle size pic, admin can set thumb size, middle size and if original file should be kept.
• Site admin can edit or delete any picture. They can also hide pictures to members without deleting them.
• Pic comments are connected to a pic activity, so enable comments for a pic also post an activity for that pic, disable comments also delete the activity, delete the activity also delete and disable comments.
• Templating should be easy as the pics template class works in a way similar to the wp posts template.

Now please don’t get your panties in a wad, but you’ll have to manually configure this plugin in the wp-config.php file with constants that are written in the beginning of the bp-album-core.php file. The developer is working on an admin page and that will be added ASAP. This plugin does not work with BuddyPress versions older than 1.2.

Features in consideration for future releases include albums for groups, an admin panel, object caching, a command to delete all options, database table and files, widgets, multiple albums, and several other exciting options. Head on over to Francesco Laffi’s site to check out his plans for the plugin, request features, or get support.

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Removing non-friend updates from the activity stream makes sense for a number of reasons. It builds meaningful relationships between community members who have chosen to be friends. Instead of seeing all updates for all users of the community, the user will be better able to keep up with his friends by seeing only their updates, which are probably of greater interest to him. This will enrich the user’s experience on your site far more than if you throw updates from all members at him. For a very active BuddyPress community, all updates can be simply too much information to process and can cause the user to devalue your site.

The Friends-Only Activity Stream plugin will limit the activity stream for general users to postings from their friends only. The admin user will see all activities, regardless of friendship. This plugin removes activity stream postings from non-friends all together with the exception of the admin and public groups. Right now WPMU.org is the only place you can download it. It should also be available in the WordPress.org repo soon. Simply install it, activate it, and it works! Many thanks to Rich Fuller for his work on this handy hack.

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Add a New User With Admin Permissions and Delete the Admin User

You may have heard this before but may not have taken the time to do it. This is the easiest and perhaps one of the most important adjustments you can make to boost your security. Don’t ever use “admin” for a username. All the robots who target WordPress know that it automatically generates the admin user and that most people are unlikely to change it. Create a new user first and make it an administrator. Select a username that is not easy to guess. Then use it to delete the admin user.

Allow Only Your IP Address to Access the wp-admin Directory

If you are the only person you want to have access to your blog and you don’t have any editors or contributors, considering denying access to every IP address except your own.  The wp-admin directory is vulnerable to attack, but this quick .htaccess trick will help you to protect it from security risks. Add the following code snippet to your .htaccess file. Replace the xx.xx.xx.xx with your static IP address. You can list multiple IP addresses by entering them on another line if you wish to allow access from other places.  

AuthUserFile /dev/null
AuthGroupFile /dev/null
AuthName "Example Access Control"
AuthType Basic
<LIMIT GET>
order deny,allow
deny from all
allow from xx.xx.xx.xx
</LIMIT>

Credit: Web Designer Ledger

Use SSH Instead of FTP

If you really want to cover your tracks and keep sniffers off your trail, use SSH to access your WordPress files instead of FTP. PuTTY is a free SSH client that you can use to transfer files between your machine and your server. SSH uses cryptographic technology to secure your session and will help keep you safe from traffic sniffers.

Get Regular Security Scans

This is essentially like a dental checkup for your WordPress blog to ensure that you don’t have any cavities. There are plugins that will take care of this for you. One is WP Security Scan. This plugin will scan your blog and notify you of any vulnerabilities and suggest things for you to do to make your blog more secure. It checks passwords, file permissions, database security, version hiding, WP admin protection/security, and removes WP generator meta tag from the core code of your blog.

Keep Your WordPress Version Updated

Chances are that your blog has not attracted the attention of a malicious hacker intent on destroying you. However, there are wicked armies of robots out there using any number of automated methods to try to exploit security holes in your installation. I know that upgrading can cause some tangles with plugins and is from time to time a huge pain, but it is necessary for your blog’s security, even if you’re not desiring new and updated features. Robots are very familiar with WordPress and know how to hack it, but if you keep your blog on the cutting edge you will generally be one step ahead of them.

Password Protect Your Most Important Directories

Enlist the help of AskApache Password Protection For WordPress. It adds multiple layers of security to your blog. The plugin is simple tot use. Simply choose a username and password and you are done. The plugin writes the .htaccess file without messing it up, encrypts your password and creates the .htpasswd file as well as setting the correct security-enhanced file permissions on both. Beyond keeping you safe from malicious attacks, it may even assist you in decreasing spam received on your blog.

Change Your WordPress Database Tables Prefix

This will help to protect you from SQL injections that can make your blog into a link farm. If this has ever happened to you, then you know it’s basically like getting heartworms. If you want to add an extra boost of protection when you install WordPress, make your table prefixes unique by editing wp-config.php file:

$table_prefix = 'wp_';

Change the ‘wp’ to something that is meaningful to you and this will automatically make your database more difficult to inject than 99% of all WordPress blogs.

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How to Highlight Admin Avatars:

This will add a little white border around all of your avatars site-wide with a light blue border around the admin’s avatar:

img.avatar {
	background: #ffffff;
	padding: 4px;
	border: 1px solid #ddd;
}
img.avatar.user-1-avatar {
	background: #ebf7ff;
	padding: 4px;
	border: 1px solid #ddd;
}

Note that the admin’s user number is 1. If you have other moderators whom you’d like to highlight as well, you can easily find their numbers by using Firebug to see what class BuddyPress is giving them. Or you can hover over the username in the Dashboard >> Users list and note the number that follows “user_id=” in the status bar at the bottom of your browser. Then simply add multiples like so:

img.avatar.user-1-avatar, img.avatar.user-5-avatar {
	background: #ebf7ff;
	padding: 4px;
	border: 1px solid #ddd;
}

The light blue is a slight, unobtrusive distinction for the avatars that matches the BuddyPress default theme, but you can change it to any color you like.

How to Add Rounded Corners to BuddyPress Avatars Site-wide

If you’re a fan of rounded corners, this bit of CSS will add it to your avatars site-wide. Please note that this doesn’t actually round the image but rather the corners on the border and its background.

img.avatar {
	background: #ffffff;
	padding: 4px;
	border: 1px solid #ddd;
/* Round Corners (native in Safari, Firefox and Chrome) */
	-moz-border-radius: 6px;
	-webkit-border-radius: 6px;
}

This technique does not work in IE (the bane of every developer’s existence). You’ll need to use JavaScript to accomplish this if you want it to match in IE.

How to Add a Shadow to BuddyPress Avatars with Rounded Corners

This is a cute thing you can do to your avatars to make them pop a little more:

img.avatar {
	background: #ffffff;
	padding: 4px;
	border: 1px solid #ddd;
/* Round Corners (native in Safari, Firefox and Chrome) */
	-moz-border-radius: 6px;
	-webkit-border-radius: 6px;
/* Add the Shadow */
	-moz-box-shadow: 2px 2px 2px #dddddd;
	-webkit-box-shadow: 2px 2px 2px #dddddd;
}

I hope this was helpful for those of you who want to add a little bit of customization without having to be a CSS or PHP wizard. Enjoy customizing your theme and let us know if there other tutorials that would be helpful to you. Happy theming! :)

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What Are Custom Post Types?

If you think of WordPress as a site-building framework, custom post types are the different kinds of content blocks that make up your website. For example, you can have a unique post type for portfolio items, houses for sale, podcasts, journal entries, or anything that might warrant its own formatting. If a site is set up specifically for a client who is not so familiar with WordPress, a custom post type can be easier to understand than sorting out posts and pages, which have more of a generic meaning. Adding custom post types is a helpful way to tailor a WordPress site specifically for the content that it will be delivering.

How To Use Custom Post Types

The first thing you need to do is set up a test install of WordPress 3.0. The WordPress Beta Tester plugin makes this easy. Simply set up a WordPress installation the same way you normally would with the Famous 5 Minute Install. Then upload and activate the beta tester plugin. Navigate to “Tools” and select “Upgrade and update to the latest Beta Release.” This will automatically switch your blog onto the point release development track. It also offers the option to select the bleeding edge nightly, but this is not for the faint of heart. ;)

Now you can try out the magical world of custom post types. Install the Custom Post Type UI plugin. Navigate to Settings > Custom Post Type UI. You should see a fancy new menu where you can set up your new custom post types. The clear advantage here is that you can limit whether or not this post type includes custom fields, excerpts, comments, post thumbnails, etc., so that the editing screen is not cluttered by superfluous content boxes that you or your user may not require.

Once you create a custom post type it will automatically add it to the dashboard menu as you can see pictured left. You create as many as you need, so that future content updates can be quickly cranked out according to the unique specifications of your post.

Many thanks to Brad Williams, the developer for this plugin. He also created CollabPress, a project management and task tracking tool for WordPress and WPMU, which is another giant leap in establishing WordPress as a leader in open source CMS. Managing content with WordPress has never been easier! Set up your own test site and make sure you’re ready to deliver all the exciting new features that 3.0 has to offer.

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BP Group Management Features at a Glance

(as listed by the developer)

• Lists all the groups in a single place for easy scanning and deletion
• Allows the admin to add users directly to groups, bypassing the need for invitations
• Displays a list of all members of a site for adding to the group, instead of just the admin’s friends

One thing I noticed when I installed this plugin is that it is packaged two folders deep, so if you get an error about it not having a valid header, just move the plugin files up one folder and delete the extra one. After you activate the plugin, you will see ‘Group Management’ added to your BuddyPress menu. Click on it and it will show you an index of all of the groups in your BuddyPress installation, as well as the group ID, date created and the number of members for each. This can be particularly handy if you need to quickly gather the ID’s of some groups you’d like to feature.

Click on ‘edit’ under one of the groups. This is where all the good stuff can be found. Here you will have the options to quickly add members to groups, kick and ban a member, promote a member to moderator, or demote a member.

This is a serious time-saver if you have an active BuddyPress groups community and need to be able to designate additional moderators or block repeat offenders from joining and abusing groups. It only takes a little bit of poison to start making a community stink, so make sure you can nip that kind of thing in the bud by giving yourself the ability to manage your groups. Even if you simply want to be able to monitor your groups more easily and manage them from one screen in the backend, this is a great tool for you. Since it requires no configuration, grab the plugin today and start fine-tuning your community’s groups.

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This plugin has been thoroughly tested with WPMU and the developer claims it as as one of the advanced features of the plugin. If you’re looking to attract more vloggers and podcasters to your blogging community, this is one tool you cannot live without. Never underestimate the power of a viral video clip or popular podcaster. Monetizing your blogging community could be as simple as tapping into your bloggers’ talents and making multimedia posts a possibility for them. Multimedia blogging is a key factor in social media optimization, because any content that is good is very likely to be shared. When people share your bloggers’ content among friends and associates online, it generates links back to your site and establishes your blogging network as a source for valuable or interesting content.

PowerPress Features Include:

• Full iTunes Support: Adds iTunes compliant podcast feeds to your WordPress blog.
• Integrated Media Players: Audio/video web players with video embed support from sites such as YouTube and Ustream.tv.
• Modifiers: Easily add, modify and remove podcasts form blog posts and pages.
• Migration tools: Quickly migrate from PodPress, Blogger or Movable Type without losing episodes.
• Multi-podcast support: Create separate podcasts by category (category casting) or by media format.
• Supported Media Formats: mp3, m4a, ogg, wma, ra, mp4a, m4v, mp4v, mpg, asf, avi, wmv, flv, swf, mov, divx, 3gp, midi, wav, aa, pdf, torrent, m4b, m4r.
• Integration: Synchronize with Blubrry’s Free and Premium media hosting and statistics services.

Media Player Options:

PowerPress also comes with five audio mp3 players to choose from when displaying your podcasts:

If you’re migrating from PodPress, all you have to do is install PowerPress, Configure the “PodPress Episodes” setting in PowerPress to “Include in Posts and Feeds”, and then disable PodPress. It’s that easy and you won’t lose any of your episodes.

PowerPress iTunes Support and Features:

The ability to tag and categorize videos and podcasts within WordPress is really important for increasing their exposure to search engines and social networks. This plugin supports that need by providing category casting and tag casting, which also adds iTunes compliant attributes to tag feeds. If you’re offering podcasting capabilities as part of a paid blogging service, then you need a plugin that will help your users comply with iTunes listings, tags and file formats, since iTunes users are the overwhelming majority of many successful podcasts. PowerPress also allows you to upload artwork to iTunes from directly from within PowerPress settings.

The episode entry box is shown above. As you can see, it’s very simple to post media through Edit Post screen. If you’re looking to add podcasting capabilities to your blogging network or your single user blog, PowerPress makes it very easy to get off the ground without having to worry about all of the technical requirements for interfacing with the necessary third parties that make a successful podcasting engine. You can find more information about the plugin’s extensive features and download it at the WordPress repository.

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How to Customize Your BuddyPress URL

Check out this tutorial for simple instructions on how to customize the slugs for BuddyPress, i.e. to change /members to /students. Changing the slugs to more accurately reflect your community can be a large boost to SEO as well as a strong usability improvement for your site. Always remember that the default theme is simply a starting point that is meant to be bent and customized to serve your unique community.

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Adding Sign in With Twitter to a Buddypress Site

This is a very in-depth tutorial on configuring BuddyPress to allow users to sign in using their Twitter usernames and passwords with the help of the Twit Connect plugin. If users are able to sign in using an account they most likely already have, then they are more likely to take your community for a test drive and start connecting with others. Anytime you can save your users time, everybody wins.

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Enabling Twitter Avatars Within BuddyPress

This tutorial also makes use of the Twit Connect plugin. It walks you through the process of adding a new function which enables Twitter avatars on regular WordPress blogs.

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BuddyPress Hack: Remove New Member Registration From Activity Stream

Here is a handy hack that you may find useful to clean up your BuddyPress activity stream. It simply removes the public notice of new members that are registering with your site. This is really helpful in case you are getting a lot of spam users and you don’t want them showing up in the activity stream.

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BuddyPress Hack: Disable Activity Stream Comments/Favorites For Certain Types

This is another hack that may be useful to your community. It will exclude commenting and favoriting on friendships created or shared links. This is great if you’re wanting to keep your activity stream lean, clean and more news-oriented.

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What Are Parent and Child Themes?

This is a great tutorial from our BuddydPress Manual that will introduce you to the architecture of parent and child themes. It details the process of creating and working with a child theme, as is the recommendation for BuddyPress. If the concept is new to you, go ahead and check out this simple explanation as well as the rest of the BuddyPress manual. You’ll find yourself ready to begin customizing your community in no time.

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Simple BuddyPress Guide

This guide provides a very simple introduction to BuddyPress in general and gives an overview of the platform, along with a quick list of FAQ’s. I found this article to be a short and sweet resource for getting started with BuddyPress.

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If you’re writing about BuddyPress, let us know! We’d be happy to check out some of your resources and review new techniques.

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Many thanks to the folks over at Binary Moon who wrote the BM Shots plugin in order to serve their wpvote.com site. This is an incredibly useful (and free) tool for anyone using a WordPress or WPMU blog. It’s not available in the WordPress repository, so you’ll need to download it from the plugin developer’s site.

BM Shots makes use of the WordPress API to resize images that are called through either shortcodes or functions added to your theme. Some images take longer than others to load because of the site they’re coming from, but they’ll usually show up upon page refresh. There are two ways to put the plugin into action after downloading and installing it:

Shortcode:

This is the easiest way to use the plugin and it allows you to make the screenshot any size you like:

[browsershot url="http://link-to-website" width="foo-value"]

PHP Function:

Add to your theme’s functions.php file:

bm_mshot ($url, $width = 250);

Then add the template tag wherever you want it:

<?php
$url = 'http://www.binarymoon.co.uk/';
$width = 300;
echo bm_mshot ($url, $width);
?>

Use it. Love it. Save time. :)

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There have also been a few tweaks and we’ve added the load_textdomain() element, so don’t delay… upgrade today :)

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