BuddyPress Privacy Component (BP Privacy, BP_Authz, or BPAz)WordPress Plugin

The buddypress privacy component (also referred to as BP Privacy, buddypress authorization component, BP_Authz, or BPAz) is a BuddyPress component that provides users with fine, granular control over who has access to which pieces of their BuddyPress-core generated personal data. It provides this service by hooking into BuddyPress’ core functionality, thereby giving users the ability to control (grant or deny) access to each piece, or grouping of, their BuddyPress-core generated personal data. It does not offer privacy filtering services for data generated by 3rd-party buddypress components.

bp privacy deals with authorization by verifying and managing access rights an authenticated user has to another user’s objects. The plugin also provides the option for a user to choose to expose their data to non-logged in, non-authenticated users as well (which is the default behavior for BuddyPress).

The core buddypress objects on which rights can be set:

• profile fields
• activity stream actions
• friends list
• messaging
• blogs (targeted v1.0-RC2)
• groups (targeted for v1.0-RC2)

WARNING:

This plugin is a release candidate version to be used only in a development sandbox and not in a production environment. Use at your own risk. This plugin is also not being developed or supported anymore by the author. It is released to the BuddyPress community for it to be adopted and further developed.

Disclaimer

This plugin is provided “as is.” It is free software licensed under the terms of the [gnu general public license 2.0 (GPL)] (http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-2.0.html “GNU General Public License 2.0”) or any later version. It is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. Past, current, and future copyright holders are not liable for any damages or losses. Your only recourse is to stop using this plugin. See the license.txt and disclaimer.txt files distributed with this plugin for full DISCLAIMERS, TERMS AND CONDITIONS, and NOTICES.

* disclaimer.txt – contains additional disclaimers, TERMS AND CONDITIONS, and NOTICES for BP Privacy

* license.txt – contains the GNU General Public License 2.0 (GPL) license

* future.txt – contains a proposed roadmap for future versions of the BuddyPress Privacy Component (BPAz) and features to implement for v1.0-RC2

WARNING:

This plugin is a release candidate version to be used only in a development sandbox and not in a production environment. Use at your own risk.

Installation Instructions:

Before installing BP Privacy, it is crucial that you make sure that you are using the versions of PHP, WordPress, and BuddyPress indicated in this readme.txt file and that they are properly installed and working. You must also be using a modern Web browser and you and your users must have javascript enabled.

Place the /bp-privacy folder in your WordPress /wp-content/plugins folder and then activate as you would any other WordPress plugin.

BP Privacy Administration

When logged in as a super admin, you can access BP Privacy’s admin settings by navigating to the “BuddyPress > Privacy Settings” menu.

BuddyPress Privacy Manual

The BuddyPress Privacy Component comes with a 38-page, PDF-based manual located in the plugin’s /manual subdirectory. It contains details on administering, using, and developing with BP Privacy. It is a draft manual not fully complete.

Installing the Optional Special Privacy Template Files

To offer privacy filtering, BP Privacy does not require its own template system. The use of the following three special template files are purely optional and only necessary if you choose to take advantage of BP Privacy’s “Privacy Acceptance Checkbox” and “Site Lockdown Control” features. With the exception of these two features, privacy filtering in BP Privacy will work fine if you do not use these special files.

If you wish to take advantage of these extra features, you will need to copy the /privacy template files folder, located in BP-Privacy’s /themes directory, into the proper place. It is as simple as copying the /privacy subdirectory (which contains the maintenance.php, privacy-policy.php, and welcome.php files) into Buddypress’ /bp-default directory. Only copy the /privacy subdirectory into the indicated place. DO NOT copy the /themes directory. So the /privacy subdirectory (not the /themes/privacy directory) should be copied which will result in the following setup: /bp-default/privacy.

These are barebones template files that you will have to finish. Please see sections iii and iv in Part B: Site Administrator’s Guide of the BuddyPress Privacy Manual for more details on using the special privacy template files.

Using the InnoDB MySQL Storage Engine

The BuddyPress Privacy Component offers the option of creating the ACL (access control list) tables with the InnoDB storage engine instead of the MyISAM storage engine–which WordPress and BuddyPress use as the default. This offers a number of advantages such as referential integrity with cascading deletes and updates and row-level locking instead of table-wide locking–which increases performance by facilitating multi-user concurrency, a crucial point for under-powered servers or highly-trafficked sites.

Please see the BuddyPress Privacy Manual located in the plugin’s /manual directory for details on how to install the BP Privacy tables to take advantage of the InnoDB MySQL Storage Engine.

Files and Folders That Can Be Removed

The following files and folders are not required for the functioning of BP Privacy. You can remove these files if you wish. Just make sure that you keep a copy of the BuddyPress Privacy Manual.

Files that can be removed:

future.txt

Folders that can be removed:

/manual

The manual is a rather large PDF-based file, so removing it before installing/uploading it to a server is not a bad idea.