[buddypress-dev] Data Portability and Microformats & activity feed

[Chris Taylor - stillbreathing.co.uk]

Hi Wessel, welcome on board.

You mentioned two different levels for users to change their theme:
changing it wholesale, using the "Presentation" tab or tweaking an
existing theme. I can imagine that a lot of people will want this
second feature, so they can give some flexibility of style without
having to create entirely new themes. Therefore they give their users
some degree of control, within regulated boundaries.

And I think I know the way to do it. Bear with me, this is
stream-of-consciousness stuff.

A theme developer could create a theme and insert "theme keywords"
(needs a better description) at certain points. For example, they
might set some inline CSS that controls the colour of the header div,
and use a function like theme_keyword("header_bg"). In the "Site
Admin" tab would be a new page called "Theme keywords" where you could
set a theme keyword, in this case "header_bg" and set the options you
want to be available for people. For example: "red", "green", blue"
etc. The site admin would also be able to set which one is the
default.

Users would then be able to select which of the predefined colours
they want for their theme header. This system could be used to do many
things in the theme PHP files, including inserting images and text,
configuring CSS, even turning on or off entire sections of the page.
The flexibility would be entirely down to the theme designer and site
admin working together.

Anyway,thanks for the idea.

Regarding the "**Personalized activity feed**", this is something we
already have working in myJournal (http://myjournal.com) and works
very well. When that site goes live you'll be able to see it in
action. But the short answer is it's not hard to do and would be a
great addition to BuddyPress.

Chris

On Sun, Apr 6, 2008 at 4:58 PM, Andrea <sillyandrea at gmail.com> wrote:
> I don't use FB, but I know in MU you can wrangle all kinds of separate feeds
> via plugins. Soooo.... I'd say if it isn't planned, it's probably possible.
> :D
>
>  Andrea
>
>  Wessel van Rensburg wrote:
>
> > Secondly, the core features that BuddyPress have now does not seem to
> include an activity feed. It is the simple but brilliant idea of a
> personalized activity feed that set Facebook apart form other social
> networks IMHO. Any plans for one?
> >
>
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