1.0 used to work on WordPress 3.0.x but 1.1 requires at least 3.1.x

1. Embed external images – Not only Flickr via oEmbed, but you can now embed any external image into activity by pasting image urls.
2. Custom embed size – Add define(‘BPFB_OEMBED_WIDTH’, 300, true); to wp-config.php to customize embed media size such as videos.
3. No thumbnail option – Don’t want any thumbnails when sharing links?  You can do that from version 1.1

WPMUBP is another example of this configuration enabled. wpmubp.org is in Japanaese, and en.wpmubp.org is in English. No matter where you post from, and in any languages, contents are shared in both languages.

However it seems there’s an activity stream bug when handling image links.

Current environment

WordPress 3.0.1
BuddyPress 1.2.8
BP_ENABLE_MULTIBLOG enabled on wp-config

Reproducing procedures

1. Upload an image to wpmubp.org (parent blog) and paste that image url to its activity.
2. Go to en.wpmubp.org (child blog), view the activity post from procedure 1. Test if the image displays or not.

Testing with img tags (core method)

1. Image I’m going to use is the BuddyPress logo you see on the right top of this post. Image url is: http://wpmubp.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/buddypresslogo-150×150.png. Posted an activity entry at: http://wpmubp.org/wpmubp/activity/40
2. http://en.wpmubp.org/wpmubp/activity/40. Image displays fine. URL isn’t changed.

Testing with BuddyPress Activity Plus image upload

1. I used the same logo, this time uploaded via Activity Plus plugin’s upload menu. Image uploaded from parent blog at http://wpmubp.org/wpmubp/activity/34/. Image url is: http://wpmubp.org/wp-content/uploads/bpfb/1_0.566311001306460472_buddypresslogo-bpfbt.png
2. http://en.wpmubp.org/wpmubp/activity/34/. Image is broken, url is somewhat changed to: http://en.wpmubp.org/files/bpfb/1_0.566311001306460472_buddypresslogo-bpfbt.png

So the conclusion is… BuddyPress Activity Plus has a bug where it controls how the image is displayed.

I was too excited to test the plugin last night and found the problem this morning.

The solution is…when you see the error message while creating groups, just return to group directory page. Even if you pass avatar upload step while group creation, the group is created. You can then edit group settings, upload avatars, do whatever you like.

This isn’t a proper solution, but it worked for my install here at WPMUBP.

Until the plugin is updated with fixes, try this once but without guarantees.

There’re similar plugins like BuddyPress Album+, oEmbed for BuddyPress, and, BuddyPress Links to mimic Facebook media sharing functions, but it would be better if one plugin does all.

BuddyPress Activity Plus
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/buddypress-activity-plus/

Sample screen shots:

See live demos here:
http://wpmubp.org/wpmubp/

I’ve also translated the plugin into Japanese.  Please feel free to download it.

Download:
http://wpmubp.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/bpfb-ja.zip

Suggestions to the plugin developer (if he/she reads):

• Detailed plugin description missing.
• Icons are too big, how about using default wordpress media uploads icons.
• Some strings are not translatable.

For anyone looking to more functionalities, a paid plugin BP Gallery does the same and more.

To fix this, you’ll need to edit one of plugins files called, custom-profile-filters-for-buddypress-bp-functions.php. The part is around line 47 (I’m using Notepad++), where it says:

$field_value = strip_tags( $field_value );

Now you’ll need to add HTML you wish not to be filtered out. Here’s what I did for one of my sites to keep line breaks.

$field_value = strip_tags( $field_value, '<p><br>' );

Note: These changes are more likely to be deleted if you auto upgrade the plugin.

Major changes/features quoted from Involver‘s message.

1-Photo strip above the Wall (with most recent photos you posted or tagged)
2-Tabs move over to the left panel, in the form of a list (maximum of 6 above the fold)
3-Profile picture reduced from 200 x 600 pixels to 180 x 540
4-Blurb box that was below the Page picture moved to info tab
5-Pages can Like other Pages, not just favorite them
6-Featured Pages and Admins
7-Page category
8-Choice for Wall posts between “Everyone” and Page posts only
9-Mutual Friends and Interests section
10-Ability to interact on Facebook as your Page
11-Ability for admins to post and comment around the site under their Page’s alias
12-News feed of updates from Liked Pages
13-Pages can now feature iFrame tab applications
14-Email notifications when users post or comment

From now on, I don’t have to worry about missing any comments posted on WPMUBP page.

Image: ‘Oh the society! Oh the networking!!‘

The reason why I needed to write this custom function called, bp_member_user_login (I don’t have PHP skills…and I still wonder how I came up with this code that worked!!), was to replace member avatars with Twitter avatars via tweetimag.es API.

Members of my BP site used exactly the same ID as they use for Twitter, so I wanted a function to return user ID but couldn’t find it on the codex. If you want to test this, please save this into your child theme’s function.php.

Hack it the way you want.

Matt says:

we’ve fixed a pretty critical vulnerability in WordPress’ core HTML sanitation library, and because this library is used lots of places it’s important that everyone update as soon as possible.

Read more at http://wp.me/pZhYe-qt

Japan’s most used social bookmarking service, Hatena Bookmark lately released new series of buttons for web masters. The new buttons look like TweetMeme and Topsy buttons, following the current trend. You don’t need any plugins to use these buttons, but I think it’d be great if it was available as Sharedaddy addon.

(anyone interested to create the addon to work with Sharedaddy?)

Demo buttons (buttons link to this post):

Useful if you target Japanese users on your blog, not limited to WordPress. I’ll update this post once I find a plugin supporting these new buttons. To create buttons, visit this page in Japanese.

I use Hatena Bookmark with my Japanese Twitter account to automatically save any links I tweeted on Hatena Bookmarks. Social bookmarks gets better with social media.

By default, WordPress supports the following services:

• YouTube (via oEmbed)
• Blip.tv (via oEmbed)
• Flickr images and videos (via oEmbed)
• Hulu (via oEmbed)
• Viddler (via oEmbed)
• Qik.com (via oEmbed)
• Revision3 (via oEmbed)
• Google Video (via an internal handler)
• PollDaddy (via an internal handler)
• DailyMotion (via an internal handler)

But today we’d like it better if we can easily paste tweet just like this.

This can be done manually by using Blackbird Pie, and there’s plugin, Twitter Blackbird Pie for this. But want to make it simple? Then you should install Embed.ly plugin, which supports more than 100 different kinds of embeds, according to Embed.ly.