How to use BuddyPress Groups for a Collaborative Publishing Process of Blog Posts

by Sven Lehnert | Uncategorized

In this post, I want to look deeper into BuddyPress Groups and how to make use of groups to collaborative publish posts in WordPress.

WordPress starts as a Bloggin system and is all about blogging. But Blogging was never a part of BuddyPress and it was always surprising to us that the social network builds by core WordPress community not cover collaborative publishing.

The WordPress BuddyPress Blog Network Idea

Every user can get his blog in a BuddyPress multisite install. The blog network gives every user a complete own site to publish and design, but most of the time is quite heavy and It is a complex solution that does not apply to all the use cases.

It was never possible to publish from member profiles or in groups and I believe that BuddyPress missed a huge opportunity in this area.

This is where our solutions with BuddyForms Members and BuddyForms Post in Groups come into action.

 

We start building BuddyForms as a BuddyPress plugin to add this missing functionality. Over time we build more and more tools around it and with the new Post in Groups extension, we get a new publishing experience in BuddyPress.

It’s such a great idea to publish from inside a group with the people responsible for the content. In a group, you have lots of team communication features you need for collaborative content creation

Team Communication

With BuddyPress Groups, you can already bring people of one topic together, collect and store all relevant media and make it available to all group members. Group members with the correct rights can invite members to join the group. Group administrators and moderators already have the right of access.

For post-management we will need to extend the already created groups to create, edit and delete rights for the post.

The BuddyPress Activity Stream is super useful for internal use and communication Groups and Members have an activity component and this means you can see changes or action in the team(group) easily and keep on with the content creation process.

For content creation, this feels even more stable than slack as the communication around one topic stays in the same place and does not get lost in the timeline. 

David Bisset one of the strongest supporters of the BuddyPress project created the BuddySlack to send Activity Stream messages to Slack. This keeps your normal workflow in the team and also makes it your data in the team group of the relevant topic to easily jump there from slack and find it later if you need it and it will not get lost like we found out often happens in the free slack :).

You own the content and you have it stored on your Server and Database

There are other services like Google Docs or publishing services. But then you have your team, and all the data stored on a different server. With WordPress and BuddyPress Groups you have a great place to store your data on your server and on the site where you want to publish the post in the end.

BuddyPress Docs was one similar idea

Boon Georges one of the lead developers of BuddyPress builds the BuddyPress Docs plugin. But the plugin is limited if you want to use it out of its original use case for other sorts of content creation than documents. It’s not supporting different post types and not offer a form builder to support post meta needed by WordPress in many ways.

The WordPress 404 issue 

WordPress is not build to edit published posts. of course, it’s possible, but if you change a post in WordPress to draft it will end up in a 404 for all users trying to access the post from the frontend.

Not a good idea or what do you think? We have Build BuddyForms Moderation to solve this issue

Moderation System

BuddyPress Groups already come with great user management and have different member types to generate different views and group functionalities

That means an user can get different member roles to have different rights in the group. With our new post in groups extension, we extend this functionality to also define the member is allowed to create, edit or delete content and how the content is displayed in a group.

The Lock Screen

Right now if you edit a post and someone else starts also edit this post a lock screen message will pop up and will ask you if you want to take over the post. There is no system like in GoogleDocs where you can see other users cursor in a different color.

 


This is something we are keen to change and in which we already started to work on ideas about how we can build an extension for BuddyForms to solve this issue and make true writing at the same moment possible. There are free frameworks like https://yjs.dev/ to help us build this. 

Gutenberg Phase 3

In the State of the Word 2019 Matt Mullenweg says that in phase three, they will introduce a feature that allows multiple authors to collaborate and co-edit posts on a site in real-time and that they partner up with Google to make this happen as it requires some technical difficulties.

So hopefully WordPress will build in a proper system for multiple authors and live editing one day. Right now we are in the middle of phase two and it looks like we will need to wait years to have this in the core. So there is a good reason for us to build it with a third party framework for now and follow the process until WordPress can manage multiple editing by its own system.

Switching the Author and Group

Right now WordPress has a one to one relation. One post below to one author. We have created two new form elements to select the author of the post and assign the post to a group. This means it’s possible to create and edit a post in the group, but in the end, one user needs to be the author. We store the group in the post so it is possible to also list the group members as the author of the post.

Attache Post with Groups

With the Attache Post with Groups extension, you can automatically create a new group if a new post is created and attache the post and the group to each other. You can define if you want to redirect to the group or to the post if the post permalink is clicked and also display the post within the group.

 

Conclusion

The use of BuddyPress for authors and the fact that they can create and manage content from their profile also inside Buddypress groups has a huge potential for many use cases and It can be a solution for any site trying to create a big content generation workflow and for the ones that do not want to use the backend to manage their authors.

If you are interested in building this workflow check out our Bundle to get all the extension needed for the best offer possible.

0 Comments

Submit a Comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

More from the Magazine

What is Web hosting?

Web hosting is a type of service that helps Individuals and big venture to make their website accessible via the internet. Web Hosting is the combination of hardware and software just like CPU which helps any website or its webpage to be live over World Wide Web....

Which Is Better, A Custom Website Design Or WordPress Themes?

Should you opt for a custom website design or a WordPress Theme when it comes to your website?  You’ve already decided that it’s time to get a website for your company, but now you need to choose between a custom design and a WordPress theme?  In this article, we...

Why It’s Easier to Succeed with WordPress than Might Think?

Creating awesome CMS goes a long way, but making sure the content is showcased the most impactful way is the key to your website’s success. Visitors should feel engaged with the content and it should gently nurture them towards the intended objective. To achieve these...

The Importance of Good Product Documentation.

The goal of this blog post is to reflect on the importance of having good documentation available to your users, so they can solve their problems themselves and thus decongest your developer's team in the support inbox. In ThemeKraft we are always trying to develop...

10 reasons why WordPress is the best CMS for SEO

WordPress is the world's most standard content management framework (CMS). Great numerous organizations base their online presence on a WordPress platform, because of its great SEO potential. Since its dispatch in 2003, WordPress has been on the up, so much that it...

How to update WordPress?

WordPress updates are very important, for the reasons we have explained in a previous article and in this article we'll explain the ways you have to update WordPress, but first, we'll tell you what you should do before the updates. We invite you to read this article...

The benefits of creating a blog

By knowing the benefits of creating a blog, you will know why you definitely need one. Our intention is that you make the most of the online resources that are at your disposal, so you can achieve your goals. So, keep reading and discover what are those benefits that...

Precautions for updating WordPress

In a previous article, we talked to you about the importance of keeping WordPress up to date, now we want to ask you what are the precautions to update WordPress, in that way you will avoid making mistakes that are serious for the operation of your website. Here are...

Importance of updating WordPress

Knowing the importance of updating WordPress will allow you to stay alert to this important action and always do it on time. Some people think that if their WordPress business has not been updated for so long, and nothing happens, then why to bother with it. However,...

Top 10 Best WordPress Hosts Reviewed & Compared 2020

Do you want to host your WordPress site? Then this is the right blog post to read. This article will show you the Top 10 Best WordPress Hosts Reviewed & Compared 2020. Which WordPress Host you choose will be crucial for SEO, ranking on search engines, and...
Share This