Fundamentally Broken on Subsites

  • While this plug-in looks, and I believe very likely is, great for simple multi-site installations, where the social network is activated on the main site, it’s fundamentally broken on sub-site installs. The problem is that when you create a group page on the sub-site, this software actually makes a call to the main site. The page thus gets instantiated there, not on the subsite. Even though the page *is* accessible through the groups/extras/all-pages link, it’s *not* visible in the “Group Pages” area of the sub-site. That, in turn, is fatal. The problem is that when you access a group page through groups/extras/all-pages, the shortcode are all expanded, so you can’t change them! The only way to edit a page is through Admin > Group Pages; but the pages don’t show up there! Furthermore, this problem is NOT well documented in user-facing documentation, AND has been posted as an issue on GitHub for the better part of a year with no apparent progress to resolve it. And yes, it is a *bug* — possible a design bug, but a bug nonetheless. In a nutshell, this software does not work with what is a clearly valid WP configuration: option “F” under multisite configuration in the WP Codex. At a minimum, folks, DOCUMENT THE PROBLEM so that people don’t waste their time re-debugging this known problem.

Viewing 7 replies - 1 through 7 (of 7 total)

  • This is exactly what we were afraid of. Before we get too deep in the weeds on this, I hope the author will respond to your post and let us know if he has a plan to address it. As it stands, it’s a deal breaker for us. I just wish there were alternatives for creating pages in the BP ecosystem, but not seeing much

    Plugin Author Slava Abakumov

    (@slaffik)

    Multisite support does have some problems.
    I want to thank you, @drkevinsullivan, for a detailed explanation of the issues you have.

    Related Github “master” issue: https://github.com/slaFFik/BP-Groups-Extras/issues/70

    That makes me sad, that you gave the plugin 1 star because of that, but I may understand your disappointment. But please remember, that this is a free plugin, that is developed in a spare time, and it has useful and working features for a majority of WordPress and BuddyPress users. I would be very thankful if you could reconsider your stars review with adding one or two more, but this is definitely your choice.

    This problem does evolve as we have 70+ groups using this plugin on a multi site and used on a subsite. I did have a dev come in and make some changes so that when you do any editing on a groups pages, it wouldn’t link back to the Main site. After the fix, it works perfectly. Its the best plugin we have on our BuddyPress page is used extensively. I love this plugin and hope the author keeps it updated. Maybe someday a pro version with extra features like a calendar for each group.

    • This reply was modified 7 years, 7 months ago by tammy1999.

    Tammy, any chance you could share your code fix with the author or drKevinSullivan so they might fix it for the rest of us? I really would like to use this, but must have it work with multisite. Sounds like you repaired it. If you don’t code, perhaps you could ask the dev to explain what was done and/or include a code snippet?

    Thread Starter drkevinsullivan

    (@drkevinsullivan)

    Thanks, everyone, I appreciate the responses and support. A few points:

    * I’ve looked around (including pay plugins) and haven’t yet found anything better
    * So I’m using a work-around for now: go to the main site admin to edit group pages
    * I’d encourage the community to adopt simple wording to create up-front awareness
    * Perhaps, Tammy, if you issue a pull request (equivalent) for you changes, they could be considered for integration into BP; that’d be a benefit to you in the long run, as you would avoid having to merge your changes into each subsequent release of the software

    I am impressed with the response to my message. It speaks well of the people committed to this code. As a matter of professional judgement, I guess I’d stand by the position that there’s a basic, if not design flaw with respect Multisite F, then at least a real architectural mismatch between what BP tries to offer and how WP is designed.

    The most urgent need is simply to let people know not to go down this rathole. I will think, and I see that others already have, about solutions. I’ll certainly update my stars as we make progress.

    Thank you, all. Happy to hear your further thoughts.

    Kevin

    My partner is a very talented programmer. He’s rusty with wordpress, but that won’t last long. If you and perhaps Tammy can specify the exact problem you need fixed, just spec out what you know is already there, and what it must do. He can probably do it very quickly because we must have some way of making subpages and this looks like the only plugin coming close to that, although I really don’t understand why. I am a bit concerned that Buddypress (which I am new to after aborting a project over 5 years ago) just isn’t evolving much. Certainly not in the plugins ecosystem, anyway. I see very few modules that interest me, yet a great many needs of them, like this one, yet few developers showing much interest.

    Anyway, it sounds like you know the problem, and tammy has a working solution. So surely we should be able to generalize one. Can i pass my email to you all thru this system?

    Interesting!!!

    so is there a planned fix for this bug?

    I’m also running WPMU on sub-site so this is very interesting to follow…

    Thanks!
    Cheers.
    Angrywarrior.

    • This reply was modified 7 years, 7 months ago by angrywarrior. Reason: typo
Viewing 7 replies - 1 through 7 (of 7 total)
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