rsteer

> Group Blog works only with wordpress multi site (obiviously because each group blog is a site)

Bummer! I don’t want the administrative hassles of multi-site, and I also want close integration among the blogs used in the groups. (E.g., posts in all the group blogs should be picked up by any “recent activity” widget on the website home page.)

I guess what I really want is a plugin that creates a blog in each group that is “locked into” a category associated with that group — all posts are automatically put in that group’s category, and everything in that category shows up in the group blog.

What file could I edit to change the default tree view to expanded rather than collapsed?

If a user is not already familiar with the site, and knows that there are more groups than the ones showing initially, they may not realize they should click the [+] symbol. They might take the initial collapsed “tree” listing at face value, and say to themselves, “Oh, I guess there are only two groups!”

By the way, I’ve found that my problems with not having all of the IdeaStream features accessible IS due to using BuddyPress (BP). BP’s default template is quite primitive, and doesn’t include footers and some of the other features that IdeaStream wants to use to display its menu etc.

Perhaps if I go through the cumbersome process of adapting some other theme to BuddyPress, then IdeaStream will also work better.

imath —

Thanks for getting back so quickly. By the way, the website link to the “Plugin Page” in the WP plugins directory seems not to work. I don’t really know PHP, but if there are some ways I can help with this, let me know.

Alaskan —

As a temporary fix I’ve added text in the all-ideas.php file to instruct the reader to click on the idea title in order to vote, like this:

<div class="entry-meta">
	<?php wp_idea_stream_posted_on(); ?>
	<?php wp_idea_stream_ratings();?> <b><i>(Click on idea title to vote!)</i></b>
</div><!-- .entry-meta -->

imath —

I like this plugin, but I can imagine it being much better with a few improvements like Alaskan is talking about.

— Perhaps make “Allow voting on summary page” an option that users can switch on and off. I also believe that most of the ideas that will be submitted will be short, and the reader will have a good understanding just from the summary page.

— A more sophisticated approach: turn on voting on the summary page by default, but whenever the “Read More” is triggered, turn OFF the voting on the summary page and add a note that says “To vote, [link]read complete idea description[/link].” That way, your concern about people reading the full idea is handled automatically, while providing the greatest convenience for readers when the full dieas are visible on the main page.

— You could also make the amount of text that is displayed before a “Read More” break to be a configuration parameter for the admin — if the admin wants to devote an extra line or two to each post to get the full text of most of them into the summary, he can do that.

The plugin would also be much easier to use if it automatically created a new tab/item in the main menu called “Ideas” that would take the reader to a summary Idea Stream page (what I call an “Idea Wall”) that shows N (configurable) recent ideas along with a form for submitting a new idea and a link to the FULL list of ideas.

— I know on one experimental site where I installed this plugin, I somehow was able to create such pages — I actually ended up with two menu items both going to the idea stream. (I’m not sure how either one is defined or where I go in the site admin pages to eliminate one of them.)

But on another site I’m playing with, I haven’t been able to get ANY link to the idea stream on the menu. (That second site is also using BuddyPress, which may be interfering with Idea Stream.)

If getting a page were simply automatic, that would be a big help.

Merci beaucoup for all of your work on this plugin to-date!

Thanks! It says it’s “experimental”, but it seems to work fine.