The is a “bug” in Buddypress that allows any user to send a private message to any other user simply by entering the username in the “to” field of the compose message form. This isn’t an obvious flaw since the ajax function that shows the available users as you type in the box does indeed only show your friends.

I looked all over the web for a solution, but the only one I found, a hack at that, wasn’t compatible with the version of BuddyPress I’m using. There was only one thing for it, and that was to roll my sleeves up and sort it myself.

The solution I came up with, while not the most elegant, works.

This may vary slightly depending on your version of BuddyPress, so instead of offering line numbers, I’ll explain where in the code you need to look. Don’t worry, you only have to edit a single file with just a few lines.

The file you want is /wp-content/plugins/buddypress/bp-messages/bp-messages-classes.php

Annoyingly, because I hate doing this, there are a few classes in the same file, so you need to find “class BP_Messages_Message”

In there is the method, “send”.

Quite near to the top of that method is the line “if ( $this->thread_id ) {”

That is instructing the code to take a different path is the “message” already exists, i.e., somebody is replying to an existing thread. We don’t want to change this, so look for the else component of that if statement; it should be marked with the comment “// Create a new thread.”

Directly under that, paste this code.

foreach ($this->recipients as $recipientName)
{
$recipientId = get_user_id_from_string( $recipientName );
if (!friends_check_friendship($bp->loggedin_user->id,$recipientId))
{
return false;
}
}


Save the file, upload it to your site, and you’re done. Users can now only send a message to their friends.

The only downside to this is that the failure message isn’t ever so elegant. Rather than giving the reason for the failure, it simply says that sending the message failed. This shouldn’t be a problem for normal users though, if anything it just makes the spammers life a little more confusing, which I’m sure we can all agree is a good thing.

So there you go, that’s how to prevent spam private messaging within BuddyPress.

So, to enable the slow query log in WAMP is as simple as adding

log-slow-queries=PATH to your config file.

The config file is located in your wamp installation directory, under bin/mysql/mysql.version/my.ini

In there you will find an entry for standard logs, which will look something like log-error=c:/wamp/logs/mysql.log

Add the slow query flag, and change the log file name to something like log-slow-queries=c:/wamp/logs/mysqlslow.log

Restart wamp, and you’re done.


function the_title($before = '', $after = '', $echo = true) {
$title = get_the_title();

if ( strlen($title) == 0 )
return;

$title = $before . $title . $after;

if ( $echo )
echo $title;
else
return $title;
}

How entirely pointless that is, indeed, it gets worse, the entire thing is bloody well restrictive.
$title = get_the_title(); goes off and gets the title, but it adds HTML to it. I just want to get the title, but instead I end up getting <span blah blah>TITLE</span>.

Very poor code folks, and I think the naming conventions for the functions are not even worth commenting about… oh go on, I can’t resist “the _title”? Nice and descriptive, ain’t it.

The thing is, I cannot understand why somebody would have done this. It’s just adding code that is in no way required. I think you’ll find that this particular program is riddled with dodgy designs, or lack thereof, like this, and if it was just coded properly in the first place, I dare say it would run considerably quicker, not to mention making the lives of us developers infinitely easier.

I use Wordpress. My company uses Wordpress. I recommend Wordpress. Wordpress serves a purpose, and it saves me time, but it’s written like shit and a nightmare to work with. That’s just the way it is. It’s life. Move on.

Comments closed.

Presuming you’ve put your ZF index file in the webroot, here’s what the 1and1 htaccess file should look like.


AddHandler x-mapp-php5 .php
AddType x-mapp-php5 .php
Options -MultiViews

RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule !\.(txt|swf|js|ico|gif|jpg|png|css|xml)$ /



Note: The same file will not work on my local dev machine, which is running only PHP5. You will need to comment out the first two lines (AddHandler, AddType) to get it to run on a stadard PHP5 installation.

The solution was the htaccess file as so…


Options -MultiViews

RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /website
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule !\.(txt|swf|js|ico|gif|jpg|png|css|xml)$ /website/

The blog is about my boat, ‘Kudu’. It’s a 21ft Corribee – a sailing yacht – and we are planning some substantial voyages toghether. Anyway, the other evening I got an excited facebook message from a friend saying my blog was listed on the wordpress.com’s Blog Of The Day stat’s page. I had the 7th fastest growing blog on all of wordpress. I was ecstatic about it. The 7th fastest growing blog on all of wordpress!

I awoke in the morning to find I was no longer 7th, but 1st. I was shocked. I had THE fastest growing blog on all of wordpress, which means I had one of the fastest growing blogs on the entire internet at that point in time. Sadly it was short lived, I’ve since dropped off the list, but to sustain the sort of growth I was seeing was never going to happen.