Group Bulk Edit

[sooskriszta]

So, I imported some Groups using a ​plugin.

When users started joining the groups, I realized that the first member automatically became the administrator of the group!

Hmm...looks like these groups were created without any members (or administrators) and since every group needs an administrator, therefore, the first member to join was being made administrator.

Ok, no problem, methinks...just like I can bulk edit posts/pages to change author, I should be able to bulk edit groups to change/add administrator, right? Wrong! There is no bulk edit function for groups.

Well, there should be.

[sooskriszta]

Select the groups to bulk edit

[sooskriszta]

Make the changes to the selected groups

[sooskriszta]

Select the groups to bulk edit

[sooskriszta]

Make the changes to the selected groups

[web24coder]

Patch #6161

[web24coder]

This patch allows "Bulk edit" the Administrators and Status of several groups in one time.

[DJPaul]

Thanks. Let's take a look at this for 2.4.

[imath]

@web24coder thanks a lot for your patch.

I just gave a first look at it, and i have a few questions:

• why introduced: BP_Groups_Member::get_all_members_groups() ? Couldn't groups_get_group_members() be used instead ?
• would it be possible for you to adapt the code to ​WordPress Coding Standards ? Because this is something we'll need to do, so it could save us some time :)
• If i understand well the code the form to bulk update the groups is always shown, in your opinion would it be possible to use/extend WordPress builtin WP_Posts_List_Table->inline_edit() method instead, so that the UI is similar to WordPress one ?
• Finally (i know this is a detail but i'm trying :) ) Could you use BuddyPress trunk to build your patch ? If you need help, i'll be happy give you a hand.

And i'm sorry, I think we're too close to the end of 2.4.0 dev-cycle. So let's take the time to work on this later. I agree it's an interesting feature. It would be great if @dcavins could have a look at it.

[dcavins]

Thanks for suggesting this functionality. I'm interested in any improvements to the groups section of wp-admin.

Before working on this piece, though, I'd like to think about what group attributes make sense to be bulk edited. With WP posts (the interface where we're used to seeing bulk edits), an admin can set taxonomy term associations and various status settings, like published, sticky, and more. Changes to taxonomy terms are additive, meaning if "Post 1" has the term alpha and "Post 2" has the term beta, then bulk editing those posts and selecting the term gamma will result in "Post 1" having the terms alpha and gamma and "Post 2" having the terms beta and gamma. Also, in the bulk editing interface, none of the terms appear to be checked, so it's not trying to show you the current state. (Also note that the various status dropdowns default to "no change".)

With groups, the only status that is included in BP-vanilla is "Privacy: Public, Private, Hidden", but we'd need to add hooks so that plugins could add their own bulk status updates, say for group categories or whatever. If we were to add user management, would it make sense to show
Add an Admin [___________], Add a Mod [___________] and Add a Member [___________] entry fields?

How would we handle the results if you add Johnny to each group as a member, but he's a mod in one group and an admin in another? Would he be demoted? Does that make sense if we're following WP's additive approach? Would he only be added to groups to which he doesn't currently belong?

Thanks for your suggestion; let's figure out what makes sense before we try to make any changes.

[sooskriszta]

@dcavins Have you tried out the attached patch?

[DJPaul]

Anyone interested in helping @sooskriszta moving this forwards?