Do users participate with BP?

[Paul]

Does anyone have experience of using BP on a live site, and seeing users actively participate in using it as intended?

I ask because I’ve only recently been testing it properly but to use BP in the same manner as other ‘social networks’ requires constant manual refreshing / reloading of the browser. Unless you reply to any users update using their @handle, that user will never be notified of your reply. You can reply all day but without using that @handle, they’ll never know unless they refresh and inspect their update themselves.

Also, replies to updates will never be shown in Sitewide Activity without a manual refresh. Replies won’t trigger ‘load more’, that’s only for new updates.

These sound like small issues, but IMO they affect the whole usability of BP, and make it feel very dated to use. Unfortunately, since BP made quite a leap forwards I think with 1.8 (or 1.9?), the upcoming developments all read as tinkering around the edges.

The first issue is noted here – https://buddypress.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/6057#ticket

But still, if you want to hold a conversation, debate, see others users replies, or just engage others in general, you’d better be prepared to constantly refresh whichever device your using.

Any thoughts? Have I got this wrong?

[Paul]

Something I forgot – does the complete lack of active BP example sites out there back this up?

[Christopher Williams]

I ponder the same question every day is BP it self missing some abilities to bridge the gap is this there a plugin that is needed to be developed to fix BP so it can be used on a larger scale ?

[Paul]

I know the guys here go to great lengths to make things work, but it’s within the framework of BP, and you can twist that anyway you like, BP for me, is some distance off the big players. Or even, more tellingly, those apps I stumble upon. I don’t want to degrade, and I love BB on mobile, or Super Mobile on iPad, but the core isn’t there for me. Even though it could it be…

[Paul]

Don’t raise functional concerns on the BP forum. A couple of guys are really good, the rest will return with, at best, a sarcastic and derogatory response. Unfortunately.

[Milena]

And also bbpress does not send emails about new topics posted in a subscribed forum anymore.
https://bbpress.org/forums/topic/email-notifications-not-working-looking-for-help/#post-158069

[Milena]

Hi @style960,

Can you help me test something?

I am going mad since yesterday when I discovered that after all my hard work on the forums, all the addons and customizations with buddypress- there is a bug or something in the latest bbpress and email notifications are not being sent to subscribers- unless as you said one is tagged.
So if a user is subscribed to the entire forum or topic through the upper link, or if he opened a thread and subscribed automatically, or replied on someone else’s thread and checked the “notify me me of replies” box at the bottom of the post- he doesn’t get emails.

I read about 4 threads about this in bbpress – nobody knows what do do.
Something changed with wp email notifications system.

However I noticed that the buddypress notification on the user’s admin bar are also not working every time.

Are you using a forum? Can you see if that happens to you too?
I am subscribed to the buddypress forum and I get email all the time, also here I think it was working, how can that be..?

Thanks

[Paul]

@milena

I haven’t been able to replicate the issue with bbPress email notifications. I created a test topic and updated with both Keymaster and Subscriber level, and both receive email notifications.

Toolbar notifications were a little different as by default WordPress now hides the Toolbar for Subscriber level users. As soon as I upgrade that account to Contributor or above, I see the Toolbar and notifications do update as expected. However, what is odd is that until you upgrade the permissions level of that account, the Notifications remain at 0 when viewing the user profile.

That issue to me seems like it needs to be reported. The latest build of WordPress breaks a key element of bbPress, one of it’s most popular plugins.

[Paul]

@milena https://buddypress.org/support/topic/wp-toolbar-subscriber-accounts/

[Milena]

@style960, Paul thank you for checking.
What version of buddypress, bbpress and wp do you have?

[Paul]

@milena The latest versions of each. Note – the last update to bbPress was two weeks ago. If your problem is more recent than that, it’s likely bbPress isn’t at fault.

[Milena]

@style960, I wish it wasn’t. I tried everything, turned off all the plugins but bbpress, another theme, reinstalled bbpress. Still no notifications by email. I haven’t updated WP yet, and reading what you share here, I think I won’t for a while:) so I see notification in the admin bar.
I am not alone in this in bbpress:
https://bbpress.org/forums/topic/subscription-email-notifications-not-working/
https://bbpress.org/forums/topic/email-notifications-not-working-looking-for-help/
https://bbpress.org/forums/topic/reply-email-notifications-are-not-being-sent/
https://bbpress.org/forums/topic/admin-subscription-emails/#post-154515
there is this ticket from bpress, but I don’t get how to fix it https://bbpress.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/2618.
the forums are silent..