[buddypress-trac] [BuddyPress] #4831: BP bases site data/activity entries on WP search engine instructions

[buddypress-trac]

#4831: BP bases site data/activity entries on WP search engine instructions
--------------------------+-----------------------------
 Reporter:  hnla          |       Owner:
     Type:  defect (bug)  |      Status:  new
 Priority:  normal        |   Milestone:  Future Release
Component:  Core          |     Version:
 Severity:  minor         |  Resolution:
 Keywords:                |
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Changes (by hnla):

 * component:  Blogs => Core


Comment:

 I've always understood the logic thus: If your blog posts are sent to the
 network activity   feed, they will be indexed by Google (assuming that
 your BP_ROOT_BLOG is open to   crawlers). So, if you have actively marked
 your blog as no-robots, then it follows that   you wouldn't want your
 content crawled on the activity stream either.

 My problem here would be  ''"your blog " '' it seems from the bp function
 that we aren't actually checking the blog options value so can't
 differentiate between blogs, we simply place a blanket dictate that all
 sub blogs won't be able to feed into the root blog activity feed, perhaps
 one blog does want to  yet another not?

   <snip>If we ignored the blog_public setting, on the other hand, the
 worst that could happen is that people would unwittingly have what they
 thought were "private" blog entries showing up in search engines

 The danger here is two fold 'blog_public' might suggest something other
 than what is really is, a instruction that is not mandatory to search
 engines, and having people even for a minute assume that what was
 happening here was setting a privacy level is in itself dangerous -
 nothing about this setting has anything, truly, to do with privacy, any
 user assuming it has is technically being misled; even if BP prevent the
 activity from being recorded that does not actually prevent search engines
 accessing that content from some other avenue and it will be a case that
 somewhere that content will have been indexed unless one fancies gathering
 a list of the bad bots and adding them to ones htaccess file. However I
 realise that in some manner if the blog_public setting is false then
 somewhere somehow we do need to pay heed to that setting.

   At a very minimum, we should filter the text on Settings > Privacy (or
 supercede it - I can't remember how filterable it is)

 It does appear filterable or at least a hook is provided
 'blog_privacy_selector' which oddly? changes the nature of the settings
 block if hooked into - not sure why but does let one pass some additional
 text:


 ```function bp_blogs_activity_feed() {
  _e('Enabling the setting \'Discourage search engines from indexing this
 site\' will remove all MS blogs content from the BP activity feed',
 'buddypress');
 }
 add_action('blog_privacy_selector', 'bp_blogs_activity_feed');```

 That would be best run from bp-blog-functions I guess and based on what
 state the blog is set as e.g. flip the message  'site visibility is set to
 discourage, BP is not adding blogs to activity feed' / 'enabling this
 setting will remove blogs from activity feed.

 Looking further at the functions in bp-blogs-functions.php I do see
 functions that take a param to set a blog as 'not tracked' but feel the
 $blog_id ought to be checking blog_option($blog_id, 'blog_public') then
 it's a viable check for individual blog settings options.

-- 
Ticket URL: <https://buddypress.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/4831#comment:5>
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