Initial Setup for import from Banner pull data
- In dB `banner`.`admin`
- `item`='bp_group_avatar_upload_path' set `info`='/var/www/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/group-avatars'
- in above folder, place files "class.png" and "class_thumb.png"
- `item`='group_id_faculty' set `info` to Groups plugin "faculty" group (currently "2" on InsideLaw)
- `item`='group_id_students' set `info` to Groups plugin "student" group (currently "4" on InsideLaw)
- For the transition, photos are pulled from gsulaw.gsu.edu - this functionality will be commented out later.
- `item`=group-populate-semester for the default semester to process
- `item`='group_ids_cohorts' - comma delimited list of Groups plugin "student cohorts" (new,1L,2L,3L,transient)
- `item`='add_students_to' - comma delimited list of blogs to add students to.
- `item='add_faculty_to' - same for faculty
Issues with BuddyPress
Search and pagination are problematic. Disabling ajax results listing has helped, but some bugs persist. With ajax on, Group-members lists always returned a "no results" error on all pages except the initial one. With ajax disabled (by adding "no-ajax" to the class="pagination" in the templates), we now only get a "non results" error on some last page(s), especially if there are only a few entries in that page.
Documents
Tried out two different documents add-on plugins:
- BP Group Documents - less collaborative - comments are only in the activity stream (not with the document itself!), do not show up in search results, less granular access control, no revision history
- BuddyPress Docs - funky styling (can fix in CSS), multiple attachments per "doc", actual page for each doc, show up in search results (identified with [BP_DOC]), no count of docs on main group page, comments use the global settings, not editable from the BP screens (fixable!).
All-in-all, decided to go with BuddyPress Docs
Add-ons and plugins tried
- Bowe Codes - does not seem very useful - but more testing needed
- BuddyPress Groups Extras - didn't dispaly the custom pages in our template
bbPress
We considered bbPress for group forums, but decided that group comments are good enough for our use - no need for the extra complexity and overhead of bbPress. We get enough functionality from BuddyPress Docs and the regular commenting on groups.