<span>
<?php
global $blogs_template;
echo get_blog_option($blogs_template->blog->blog_id, 'post_count');?> Posts
</span>

This important detail has already influenced how I will use G+ moving forward. Had I not taken this track I don’t know that I would use the service like I am currently, for my personal updates. You’d think I would be doing that on FB, but I’ve been on Facebook forever and I’ve never posted my personal updates there, only recently have I started posting some family photos but I was always reluctant to do so. I’m still hesitant to make comments like I see people make there. Same goes for Linkedin. I’ve been on there since about 2006 and my profile is still under 50% complete. Twitter I stopped using more than a year ago because it’s just a noisy mess.

There something now about Google Plus that is welcoming and easy for me to post my updates. Maybe it’s because there’s no one on G+ right now and I like showing to places early just in general before it gets crowded.

So I’m here on Google Plus. Until the laggers, the marketers, businesses, celebrities, brands and News organizations begin to tire of all the noise on their current service and graduate into G+ to mess everything up like they always have. At that point I may be too intertwined in this social network to give a care about leaving, plus in terms of major social networks, I think this is probably the end of the road, the final chapter in major networks, I mean it’s Google. What else could possibly come along? Nothing, it’ll all be about the niche networks. (eh, Automattic/WordPress may come along with their social layer to tie all WordPress blogs for .com & .org — that’ll make a blip if it happens.)

{code type=PHP}

$count_posts = wp_count_posts('portfolio');
$published_posts = $count_posts->publish;
echo $published_posts;
?>
{/code}

<?php global $current_user;global $members_template, $bp;$current_user = wp_get_current_user();?>
 <?php if ( $user_info->ID == $current_user->ID || !is_user_logged_in() ) : ?>
 <?php else:?>
 <?php if ( !$members_template->member->is_following ) : ?>
 <div><a href="<?php echo wp_nonce_url( bp_core_get_user_domain( $user_info->ID, $members_template->member->user_nicename, $members_template->member->user_login ) . $bp->follow->followers->slug . '/start/', 'start_following' ) ?>" id="follow-<?php echo $user_info->ID ?>"><?php printf( __( 'Follow' ), bp_get_user_firstname( $members_template->member->fullname ) ) ?></a></div>
 <?php else:?>
 <div><a href="<?php echo wp_nonce_url( bp_core_get_user_domain( $user_info->ID, $members_template->member->user_nicename, $members_template->member->user_login ) . $bp->follow->followers->slug . '/stop/', 'stop_following' )  ?>" id="unfollow-<?php echo $user_info->ID ?>"><?php printf( __( 'Stop Following' ), bp_get_user_firstname( $members_template->member->fullname ) ) ?></a></div>
 <?php endif; ?>
 <?php endif; ?>

Why did I do this. Well I actually wanted a modified version of the BP Follow plugin that only put follow buttons on user profiles that owned a blog but since I’m not the one to modify or create plugins I had to get creative. So I made sure that the follow buttons were taken off all the profiles and other BP listings so the only place you can follow someone was the user’s blog.

After removing the follow buttons by doing this….

remove_action( 'wp_footer', 'bp_core_admin_bar', 8 );

remove_action( 'admin_footer', 'bp_core_admin_bar');

remove_action( 'bp_profile_header_meta', 'bp_follow_add_profile_follow_button' );

remove_action( 'bp_directory_members_actions', 'bp_follow_add_listing_follow_button' );

remove_action( 'bp_followers_list_item_actions', 'bp_follow_add_listing_follow_button' );

remove_action( 'bp_following_list_item_actions', 'bp_follow_add_listing_follow_button' );

I made some little modifications to the plugin so that the following tab under the activity stream would only show Blog Posts and subtract all other activities.

That’s how I made BP Follow, a poor man’s BP Follow My Blog. Please someone let me know there’s an easy way…or make a plugin that will do this!

Since I was here last I’ve learned the parent/child theme relationship along with a few other handy snippets of knowledge I’ve picked up along the way. Everything is about learning. The Canvas is my friend now that I know how to run a child theme.

Oh yea. I’m Thirty. That’s years old. And no all the Dad knowledge didn’t come rushing in on the night of my birthday like I thought it would. So I’m now hard at work trying to learn the parent/child relationship offline!

I’ll be around more as I’ve made my birthday resolutions.

First I created a copy of the post-form.php found in the /activity/ folder. This is the post form that powers all the status update activity in profiles and in groups.  I called it something like post-form-too.php (we’ll come back to this file later to modify it to make it check for friend’s @username)

From your theme/members/single/activity.php replace the following lines:

<?php if ( is_user_logged_in() && bp_is_my_profile() && ( '' == bp_current_action() || 'just-me' == bp_current_action() ) ) : ?>

<?php locate_template( array( 'activity/post-form.php'), true ) ?>

<?php endif; ?>

…with this:

<div id="_mcePaste"><?php if ( is_user_logged_in() && bp_is_my_profile() && ( '' == bp_current_action() || 'just-me' == bp_current_action() ) ) : ?></div>
<div><?php locate_template( array( 'activity/post-form.php'), true ) ?></div>
<div><?php elseif ( is_user_logged_in() && bp_has_members( 'user_id=' . $bp->displayed_user->id == $bp->loggedin_user->id)) : ?></div>
<div><?php locate_template( array( 'activity/post-form-too.php'), true ) ?></div>
<div><?php else:?></div>
<div id="_mcePaste">/*nothing*/</div>
<div id="_mcePaste"><?php endif; ?></div>

Place the above snippet in the /members/single/activity.php manually after the( bp_before_member_activity_post_form) or you could it as a function and use the hook.

As you can see in the line using the post-form-too.php, it is checking to see if the other user is your friend if they are then you will see the post-form, if not the post-form will not appear.

Now lets adjust the post-form-too.php to post the activity to your friend as @mention…which is the only way to get it to post “directly” to the other user. And is how Bp.org is doing it but their version has hidden the @mention in the form…this version doesn’t hide the @username, so you will see it inside the form.

In the post-form-too.php replace this line:

<textarea name="whats-new" id="whats-new" cols="50" rows="10"><?php if ( isset( $_GET['r'] ) ) : ?>@<?php echo esc_attr( $_GET['r'] ) ?> <?php endif; ?></textarea>

….with this:

<textarea name="whats-new" id="whats-new" cols="50" rows="10">@<?php bp_displayed_user_username() ?></textarea>

That should be it. Check it out and let me know how I can hide the @username in the form if you figure it out.

Note: if you want to have the character limit of the text, you’ll need to include the same modifications you have in the post-form here in the new post-form-too file as well.

The idea of this plugin was to have a nice way to collect posts that you find across a Multisite network and display them from your Member Profile. The second part of the plugin is to have a contextual  widget for posts that displays all the users who have also favorited a post. This creates relationships or micro communities  for users that are centered around posts.

Download

After downloading and unzipping the files.

1. Add the bp-my-follow-blogs folder to the plugins directory.
2. Add the myfaveblogs folder to your theme directory
3. Add both the follow and following-me to your theme directory

Activate the plugin. (You will need to Network Activate for Sitewide functionality…but first get it working on your main to see if it works!)

Place the following clip in your single.php or single.php’s designated sidebar* (*meaning its a sidebar only used for single.php)

<?php include (TEMPLATEPATH . '/myfaveblogs/myfaveblogs.php'); ?>

This line adds the Favorite/unFavorite link

<?php include(TEMPLATEPATH . '/following-me/following-me.php');?>

…and this line adds the members avatars widget of those who have favorited this post.

You don’t need have both of the files in for this to work. You can just have the widget or just have the link which will still save the post to your profile’s favorite posts section. Or use both, style that as you wish.

Now try favoriting post and see if it works.

To get it working on multisite blogs

Network Activate the Plugin!

Add the myfaveblogs folder and following-me folder to any other theme directory that are in use in the Multisite network where you would like to favorite post.

Add the includes from above to the single.php or dedicated sidebar* to the new theme directories just as you did before.

Try favoriting and see if the posts are saving in your profile and if your user who is favoriting is getting his avatar added to the post widget.

Let me know if it works, if you can help improve it, take it over.

Here are some known issues.

Doesn’t quite work with Child Themes

Doesn’t register activity items when someone favorites.

Sometimes post images in your Profile favorites section are wrong.

Can’t unFavorite from your profile, user has to go to the post.

Comment me any other issues or enhancements.

Hopefully the community can pick it up and make it run. I’ve not release this plugin officially because I didn’t want to responsibility of providing support for it. I use for my sites only but a couple of people from the community have asked to try it so it would be cool to see it take flight with community input.