CUNY Academic Commons

Hi Maura - I think I remember your saying somewhere that you'd found the group blog function and put it to use already with LILAC. Is that correct?

Hi Boone, yes, I did add a blog to my group, thanks! Matt mentioned that there's still no way to automagically add all group members as blog authors yet -- should I add that as another issue? It's not at all urgent. Thanks!

Hi Maura. Yes, that ability is now in BuddyPress. As the group admin/mod, go to the Admin section of the group in question, and find the Group Blog tab. Scroll down and check the box that reads "Enable member blog posting". Then select the permissions you'd like to give to members of the group.

Hi Boone, I just tried it and it's only added one member: Alexandra DeLuise. I'm happy to add folks by hand right now -- we only need a couple of us on it at first. Thanks1

Ugh, you're right. Here's how it's working right now: the group blog settings only kick in for a given user when that user visits (or at least attempts to visit) the blog. So if I were a member of your group, and you set the group blog up such that members of the group would be authors, I wouldn't become an author until I loaded the blog itself. The real problem with this is that many blogs are private, which means some weird workarounds. If you wouldn't mind, just add authors manually for now - I will rework the way that authors are handled so that it happens automatically. Thanks for testing for me, Maura.

I retooled the plugin this afternoon so that it works in a more logical way. When a user first sets up a group blog, if she checks the "enable member blog posting" box, users will be added to the blog automatically. Individuals who join the group in the future will automatically be added to the blog.

In order to get it to work with already existing group blogs (of which there are just a handful, including the LILAC blog) I had to toggle that Enable box on and off. You'll see now when you look at your group blog admin page and the blog's Dashboard > Users page (open them in different tabs) that you can use the former to change the latter. Please go in and play with the settings just a little bit, just to verify that they work the way you'd expect. Thanks!

Works perfectly, Boone, we are all set up with everyone in LILAC on the blog now, w00t! Thanks!

I know I say this all the time, but it's worth saying again: Great work, Boone.