I spent all day troubleshooting yesterday. In the end I had to start the whole website again. Oh well, got it back to the same functionalities.
Plus added a few more little things this morning, like better private messaging capabilities and pop-up chat windows. Just to give it more of that facebook feel.
This is the front page now:
The pop up chat window is not integrated with the private messaging, i think due to those two plug-ins being developed by different companies. Nonetheless, both give the option to upload files, which makes video and audio sharing very simple.
Another thing that was added was forums! I used bbpress, which is another native wordpress plug-in, integrated into the buddypress plug-in, to create an environment where people can ask questions, request collaborations, and in general just share ideas.
It's totally unpopulated at the moment, apart from some test posts.
Here's a short clip of how to navigate to the forum page from the home page:
In the forum, you can tag your topics and replies which is good because other people can then search for those tags to find relevant topics they want to participate in. On a musical note, for people requesting collaborations they can attach tags to their requests for other users to find. You can also create categories in which to put these topics i.e. a Wind Orchestra category where people can create a topic like 'Holst' in which to post their requests or recordings of their instrumental part of Jupiter.
At the moment, I am having difficulty with changing upload file size limits as it seems to be capped at 8 Mb...not great if we're trying to share videos.
Once the forum is populated, users will be able to extract (download) files, edit offline, then re-upload either to the forum or onto their profile activity page. From there they can tag users - which would be great for crediting the contributors to a project.
I really need to make some simple arrangements of songs to use for demonstration on the presentation night...just so much to do in the next two weeks!