Allow group admins to choose a groups front page.

[modemlooper]

I posted a trick on BPTricks but I think this could be an enhancement added ​http://bp-tricks.com/featured/creating-a-custom-front-page-for-your-buddypress-groups/

When you create a group you have the option to have a forum or not but you can't turn off an activity stream per group, only site wide. I'm suggesting a way to have an option to choose the activity stream or a custom front group page as well as the ability to turn off activity streams per group.

Site owners can use groups/single/front.php to put what ever they like on the front pages.

[DJPaul]

I don't know if we will have time for this in 1.3, but it's a good idea.

[boonebgorges]

I took a swing at making home content configurable by user without having to change theme files. See 2742.patch.

A couple considerations for when you look at this (as of yet only half-baked) patch:
1) It adds a dropdown to group Admin > Group Settings. Seemed like the logical place
2) To allow for maximum flexibility, especially in terms of group extensions, I build the dropdown menu dynamically. But I realized when I was done that this won't be good enough, because template names (eg groups/single/activity.php) are not enough to differentiate between multiple group extensions, which all use plugins.php and then populate the page with hooks. So my method won't work exactly. It suggests two possible solutions: (a) make it so that only core tabs (Members, Forum, Activity, Send Invites) can be Home (easy but lame), or (b) intercept the Home loading process higher up the chain so that things like current_action can be swapped out. One possibility is for example.com/groups/group-name/ to never actually resolve; it always gets redirected to the sub-page (...group-name/activity, ...group-name/members) that is set as the group home. Not sure what the SEO implications are for this move.
3) As it stands, the patch doesn't directly address modemlooper's original goal, which was to allow arbitrary content on the Home page. But, when combined with a very simple implementation of the BP Group Extension API - one that has a static display() method and nothing else - it *does* solve the problem, in a theme-independent way.
4) I haven't written the logic to deal with fallbacks when the selected Home component is disabled. Should be fairly trivial. Allowing group admins to disable the Activity tab should be trivial as well - just another checkbox on the Group Settings page.
5) There is also the issue of which tabs are shown. Right now, the Activity tab is not shown on the group, because it's assumed that Home = Activity. As this patch stands, changing to Members (for example) makes group activity inaccessible. I kinda think that we should show all active tabs all the time, even if it means that two of them (eg Members and Home) show the same content. Or maybe we just get rid of the Home tab altogether.

Feedback welcome. Is this patch a step in the right direction? Or is a more theme-specific approach more desirable?

[DJPaul]

I think this is an interesting idea, but the patch needs refreshing as it's a little out of date :

[sooskriszta]

I like the idea, but it should not be forced on an installation as it's obviously not great for consistency.

Related #6148

[r-a-y]

With the introduction of group front templates in v2.4.0, is this still needed?

Also, I agree with @sooskriszta here:

it's obviously not great for consistency.

Proposing to close.

[DJPaul]

I disagree. Front templates are a global decision, but further allowing group admins to control their own space is something I think our site builder target audience would appreciate.

[sooskriszta]

@DJPaul In that case, I recommend that the Admin has an option to turn this off if (s)he doesn't want the site turned into another MySpace.

[DJPaul]

I think Nouveau does this, so moving in.