Invite Anyone makes BuddyPress’s invitations features more powerful. The plugin has two components:
-
The ability to invite members to the site by email. The plugin creates a tab on each member’s Profile page called “Send Invites”, which contains a form where users can invite outsiders to join the site. There is a field for a custom message. Also, inviters can optionally select any number of their groups, and when the invitee accepts the invitation he or she automatically receive invitations to join those groups.
The email invitation part of the plugin is customizable by the BP administrator, via Dashboard > BuddyPress > Invite Anyone.
-
By default, BuddyPress only allows group admins to invite their friends to groups. In some communities, you might want members to be able to invite non-friends to groups as well. This plugin allows you to do so, by populating the invitation checklist with the entire membership of the site, rather than just a friend list.
Because member lists can get very long and hard to navigate, this plugin adds a autosuggest search box to the Send Invites screen – the same one that appears on the Compose Message screen – which allows inviters to navigate directly to the members they want to invite.
Some users have reported problems when the plugin is activated sitewide. If you are getting PHP errors on subdomain blogs when the plugin is activated across your WP installation, consider activating it only on the BuddyPress blog.
Invite Anyone has been downloaded 8,345 times. Are you using this plugin? Consider a donation.
Read an old comment thread related to this plugin here.
Translation credits
- Dutch – Jesper Popma
- Italian – Luca Camellini
- French – Guillaume Coulon
- Russian – Jettochkin
Version history
- 0.6.5 – July 10, 2010
- Workaround for “headers already sent” issue on group invites
- Fixed a number of variable type problems with email invitation pages
- 0.6.4 – July 7, 2010
- Fixed bug that kept item group invitations from being sent
- Fixed bug that prevented Send Invites profile tab from being hidden when access control was set to Administrator
- 0.6.3 – May 12, 2010
- Fixed bug that showed non-activated users in group invitation list on some instances of single WP
- Fixed bug that limited number of displayed groups on invite by email screen
- Cleaned up the appearance of the group list on the invite by email screen
- Fixed bug that may have cause foreach problem in email invitation
- 0.6.2 – May 8, 2010
- Fixed bug that kept group invitation member ddst from being populated on some non-MU setups
- Fixed bug that kept non-admins from seeing Send Invites group tab
- Fixed bug that prevented JS and CSS from loading on invitation step in group creation
- Fixed bug that caused email fields not to load properly in IE – thanks, techguy!
- Added do_action hooks for other plugins (eg Cubepoints) to access
- Added filter on acceptance URL and action hook before accept invitation screen for plugins to access
- 0.6.1 – April 27, 2010
- Added checks to allow email invitations to work when groups component is disabled
- Fixed l18n bugs in error messages
- French translation added – thanks, Guillaume!
- Russian translation added – thanks, Jettochkin!
- Updated translations
- 0.6 – April 23, 2010
- Plugin now includes a widget for email invitation from any page
- Sent Invites sortable by email address, date invited, date
- Invites can be cleared from Sent Invites list: individually, all accepted, all invitations
- Created admin controls over who group admins/mods/members can invite to groups
- Admins can now allow customization of invitation’s main message but still have control over a non-editable footer
- CSS issues fixed
- 0.5.2 – April 12, 2010
- Added Italian translation (thanks, Luca!)
- Removed “Want to invite…” prompt from Send Invites screen during group creation
- Attempted a fix for certain in_array errors in css/js loader file
- 0.5.1 – April 9, 2010
- Fixed bug with subject/message content when email is returned as an error
- Fixed error with email error messages when no groups were selected
- Changed width of textareas on Invite New Members tab
- 0.5 – April 9, 2010
- Enabled Opt Out option for invitees
- Subject line is now customizable by the admin
- Admin can toggle whether users can customize subject line and message body of invitation emails
- Some localization bugs fixed
- Filtered spammers from group invitation list
- Fixed bug that may have caused problems with some MU limited email domain lists
- Email Address field is now auto-populated on Accept Invitation screen
- Created admin toggle for group invites attached to email screen
- Added hook for additional fields on Invite New Members screen (as well as a hook for processing the additional data)
- 0.4.1 – April 5, 2010
- Fixed problem with email validation causing fatal errors on single WP
- Fixed bug that allows members to see Send Invites tab on profiles other than their own
- 0.4 – April 5, 2010
- New feature: Invite by email from the new Send Invites profile tab
- Links from group invite pages to profile Send Invites tab
- Removed “Send Invites” button during group creation on BP 1.2+
- Created admin panel for managing plugin settings
- 0.3.5 – March 30, 2010
- Corrected localization function (d’oh)
- Added Dutch translation – thanks, Jesper!
- 0.3.4 – March 29, 2010
- Added POT file and localization function
- 0.3.3 – March 16, 2010
- Fixed bug that kept non-active users from appearing in member list
- 0.3.2 – March 2, 2010
- Made it possible to use the plugin with friends component turned off (thanks for the idea, Tim!)
- Turned off Site Wide Only to remove PHP errors on some subdomain blogs (thanks for the feedback, Mark!)
- 0.3.1 – March 1, 2010
- When creating a group and not inviting anyone, success message now reads “Group successfully created” rather than “Invites sent” (thanks for the idea, Ray!)
- 0.3 – February 27, 2010
- Compatibility with BP 1.2 bp-default; file rearrangement to ensure proper loading with BP 1.2+
- 0.2
- Compatibility with BP 1.2 bp-classic theme (bp-default forthcoming); bugfixes regarding file locations
- 0.1
- Initial release
82 Comments
Hi,
Is there a way to make this plugin work in a single user WP + BP installation?
I tried to install it, and it seems to be working except for the last part, the sending of the invitations. I’m running a small community site with Friends disabled, and I would really like to be able to make use of this plugin’s features.
Thanks,
Rune
Hi,
Love this plugin. But I’ve noticed a bug.
Sending via email to join the site is working great .. but the invite for a group isn’t working.
Stef
Hi Stef – Do you mean that the invitations are not getting sent at all? In other words, invited users are able to register but they don’t get the group invitations that were sent to them? Do friendship invitations work properly?
Version of the plugin + BP + WP would be helpful too.
Hi Boone,
The friendship invitations are working fine for me. Though one member recieved the following error.
http://img.skitch.com/20100406-kb836wr9546uwswgbnhyf8ihjb.jpg
Not quite sure what that means.. But I don’t think this is a bug in the plugin. If you know a sollution for this.. I would be very happy.
In the buddpress notifications (admin bar) there is an message for the group invite after the users registration.
But there isn’t an email with an invite for a group. Or isn’t this a feature?
Thanks anyway for your reply.
I’m using Buddypress 1.2.3 & WPMU 2.9.2
Regards,
Stef
Hi Stef – When the new invited member goes to his/her profile -> Groups, is there an Invites tab with group invitations on it? In other words, are the invitations themselves actually being send (which means that the problem is with the email notification) or are the BP notifications the only thing that’s happening?
As for the error you posted a screenshot of – it might be due to my plugin, at least in concert with a particular kind of list of limited email domains from Dashboard > Site Admin > Options. I’ve put a fix in the trunk version of the plugin, which you should see the next time I tag a new version.
I’m having a few problems with the plugin.
The “Select members from the directory” box never seems to have any members in it and when I search for people and choose them they appear twice in the list to the right.
Any idea what I am doing wrong?
Mikael – can you tell me a bit more about your setup? BP/WP (and Invite Anyone) versions, other BP plugins you are running. How many members does your site have? Is it a fresh install of WP/BP, or did you install BP after your WP site was active for some time? Have you tried admin and non-admin accounts to see if the problem arises everywhere?
I am running WP 2.9.2, BP 1.2.3 and Invite 0.5.1.
I have the problem with both admins and regular members.
It’s a fresh install with only two members and a custom theme based on Pagelines’ White House Pro theme.
Besides that I currently have these active plugins:
BP-NotificationWidget
BP Include Non-member Comments
Links
BuddyPress Template Pack
cforms
Facestream
flickrRSS
Group Activity Subscription
pageMash
WP-FB-AutoConnect
WP-PageNavi
WP125
Mikael – Sorry to ask an obvious question, but is it possible that the other member on your installation is already a member of the group? The list on the Send Invites page won’t show people who are already members of the group. Try creating a fresh user.
Does the plugin work with WP 2.9.2?
I see in some of the comments above that WP 2.9.2 is used, but on the download page WPMU is a minimum requirement.
Andre – I believe that the plugin works on WP single 2.9.2. I know the email invitation part does, anyway. Try it out, and let me know whether you’re successful. If so, I’ll change the minimum requirements to reflect it.
Hi, I’ve got the Spanish translation, how can I send it to you in order to share with the community?
Thanks for this great plugin!
Hi Boone – tried it …mostly works, but the invitation did not replace the variables so the actual email received by friends looks like this:
You have been invited by %INVITERNAME% to join the community.
Visit %INVITERNAME%’s profile at %INVITERURL%.
@Andre
It’s because the actual variable names you have to use are %%INVITERNAME%%, %%INVITERURL%%, etc. In other words, you have to use two % simbols ;)
hi,
there is a problem in my site.I see a white page when I active my plugin.what I must do?
Andre – thanks for the feedback. I think I know the problem – I’ll address it in an update soon.
morteza – Log onto your site via FTP and navigate to the plugins folder (probably wp-content/plugins). Rename the folder invite-anyone to invite-anyone-backup. Then try reloading your blog.
Hey Boone!
No, that’s not the reason. Both users are ones that I have created myself, so I have tried this option.
Brilliant work as always.
How hard would it be to create a widget for this plugin so folks could invite people from the sidebar? I think this would get a lot more people to notice the feature.
Thanks.
Might be something I’m completely overlooking but I’m at my wits ends. I am testing out BP on a single WP 2.9.2 install, installed at a sub-domain of my site. (As a replacement for a NING network) It works, and everything seems to be ok. I really like the idea on Invite Anyone, but when I go to change the settings of the plugin, or try to send email invites, I get this 400 error. If you have any idea at all I’d love to hear it! Thanks!
Error 400: Bad Request
Your browser sent a request that this server could not understand.
Probable reasons are:
* You sent a plain HTTP request to an SSL-enabled server port. Instead please use the HTTPS protocol to access this URL, like this: https://example.com:8443/
* You made a typo in the request, e.g., typed a comma instead of a colon. Please re-check the URL.
Please contact your webmaster if you are not sure what goes wrong.
Mikael – No idea. The plugin pulls an entire list of users from the wp_users table and displays those who are not a member of the group.
Wesley – In the next release I plan to include a widget or something like that which will allow site admins to put Send Invites links wherever they’d like. Great idea.
Mike – Sounds like it’s an SSL issue. Are you running your WP admin screens on https? What’s your host?
Boone,
No I’m not running through htps, should I be? For testing purposes I just ran a basic straight forward install of the single version of WP, and don’t currently have SSL enabled on the domain, since I haven’t needed it for other WP blogs I run. Would that be a problem?
Mike – no, there’s no reason why you should be using an SSL. It’s just that your error seems to be due to your host complaining that something in my plugin is requesting something over HTTP when it should be using HTTPS. (BTW, I find this especially strange because the plugin doesn’t actually request any information via HTTP *or* HTTPS – everything is done via the internal WP API.)
Are you running a lot of other plugins? Have you experienced similar problems anywhere else on your installation?
Hi Wesley, I found some time today to add the widget. If you’re interested, you can get the development version from the WP repo http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/invite-anyone/download/ and check it out on a test server. It’s a pretty simple widget, but I think a nice start. Any suggestions are welcome.
Hi Boone,
Does the latest update include the fix for single WP?
Thanks
Andre
Not yet, Andre, but it’s on my list of fixes.
Hi Juan – Sorry for the delay in my response – Akismet ate your comments :)
Send the translation to my email account, which is my Twitter handle (as you can see in the left-hand column of my blog) at gmail.com. Thanks!
I’m going on the assumption that my host requires some part of the plugin related to sending email from the site to run through SSL or something. I can use the plugin to invite anyone to a group (and sending that email notification works, oddly enough), but any effort to tweak the email settings, or sending an email invitation results in the error.
I even tried it as the second plugin, after BP, on an MU install after deciding that maybe I wanted to test that out too, so can’t really be a conflict!
Oh well, I’ll have to try something else to get members to invite their friends, maybe add the Add-to-any button to the front page or come up with some sort of form. Looks like a great plugin though!
Boone: the new widget seems to be working great. No hitches encountered yet. I just added a little clunky CSS to keep the boxes from running flush into the right side of my sidebar (looked OK in Chrome, but not in Safari or Firefox). Will let you know if I run into any problems. Thanks much for the great plugin and super-speedy responses on this forum.
Hi, love the plugin.
Wesley, can you please share the CSS with us. I’ve got the same problem with the e-mail text boxes running into my sidebar. And I’m somewhat clueless as to what to edit / change.
Thanks a mill.
- J
Jacek – I fixed this yucky CSS issue in the next version of the plugin, which I should be launching in the next day or two. Watch your Plugins page for an update message!
Hi Boone – hope the fix for single WP is high up your list :)
Andre – I realized that there is no fix necessary for single WP. Just change %INVITERURL% to %%INVITERURL%%, etc. Double those %s.
Jacek: I’m sure Boone’s done better than my hackish-CSS, and I’m away from my office, so I’ll encourage you to use his CSS (as I will, too). I don’t want to break your site, too (grin).
Great – now works on single WP!
Love your plugin but, like others the %%INVITERNAME%% etc does not seem to operate as expected. Latest version of your plugin and BP and WP 3.0 beta. Everything else is fine. Can you help please?
gunfios – I just updated the plugin to version 0.6. Upgrade and see if it solves your problem. If not, let me know and maybe I can help troubleshoot.
Thank you so much Boone. Superb service. Everything works fine now. On day I’ll return the favour.
Excellent! So glad to hear it works, gunfios.
I have another question regarding this plugin.
I am using the plugin WP215 for showing custom ads on my site, and one of these ads I’d like to be a link to the invite new users function (like http://mysite.com/members/admin/invite-anyone/). However this link is obviously not the same for all users, as their username is a basic part of it. My challenge is that due to the nature of the WP125 plugin I can’t use in the ad URL, so how am I going to link the ad to the invite page in a way that works for all users?
Can anyone figure out a workaround for this problem?
Mikael – I have never used that plugin, so I’m not exactly sure what you’re trying to do. But you should be able to dynamically generate a link to the Invite Anyone page as follows:
$link = bp_loggedin_user_domain() . 'invite-anyone';Sorry I missed a word. The question was supposed to read:
“My challenge is that due to the nature of the WP125 plugin I can’t use _PHP_ in the ad URL”
So that rules out the solution you suggested right?
Aha – yes, that does make it trickier. I assume that the ads are inserted with Javascript? In theory it’d be possible for you to use Javascript to either get the correct URL from the server using AJAX, or to concatenate it out of the current page URL using jQuery or something like that. Would take a bit of playing around, though.
Hi,
ready to provide translation for the plug-in Russian (ru_RU)
Jettochkin – Awesome! I will email you.
translate sent! I hope to develop plug-in;) has some interesting ideas:)
Great plugin, but I have this problem when I tried to send an invite through email invitation. Please help. Thanks.
Warning: Invalid argument supplied for foreach() in /home/public_html/wp-content/plugins/invite-anyone/by-email/by-email.php on line 760
Warning: Cannot modify header information – headers already sent by (output started at /home/public_html/wp-content/plugins/invite-anyone/by-email/by-email.php:760) in /home/public_html/wp-includes/pluggable.php on line 868
Becky – I just fixed this problem in the stable release. Download a fresh copy and you should be OK.
Thanks Boone, the error is gone. But I still couldn’t invite anyone through email. It keeps saying that “You didn’t include any email addresses!”
I have inserted 1 email address – i tried with the option of 10 and then only 1 email permitted for each time, neither worked. I am using the latest BP and WPMU 2.9.2
Becky – Are you running any other BP plugins? It sounds like there might be a conflict that is causing the form post not to go through. Do group forum topics work? How about changing and saving your profile settings?
Hi Boone,
Group Forum Topic works fine. I am having issues with BP Groupblog too, dashboard won’t show up.
I have the following plugins activated sitewide:
cets_simple_dashboard
Buddypress Album+
Buddypress Profile Privacy
Smart Youtube
Facebook Dashboard Widget
BP MyFriends Widget
BP Groupblog
Welcome Pack
The following plugins activated on main blog:
Contact Form 7
Google XML sitemap
Invite Anyone
Login Lockdown
Next Gen Gallery
Peter’s Login Redirect
Really Simple Captcha
SI Captcha Anti Spam
Visitor Maps and Who’s Online
Wordpress File Monitor
WP DB Manager
WP Hide Dashboard
Boone, what should I change in the Profile Settings?
The invite to other members works well though.
Hi,
Love the plug-in, I am having one issue however. When users click the accept link from the email they are bounced to the sites homepage.
Example of an acceptance link is
http://swordsroad.com/register/accept-invitation/first.last%40test.com
That link opens in the browser and then sends you to the home page. I have tested in Chrome and IE8.
Any ideas?
Becky – Very strange. I’m having a hard time reproducing it. How much do you know about PHP? If I told you where to paste a little bit of code for testing, so that you could report the restuls back to me, would you do it?
Steve – The accept-invitation page is built on top of the registration page, and it looks like you have registration for your site turned off. BP is set to redirect attempts to visit the register page when registrations are turned off. You’ll have to switch it on at Site Admin > Options (for WPMU) or Settings > General (non-MU).
Hi Boone,
Plugin is working great here..
But I have one question:
Is it also possible that the receiver of the invitation can see who is inviting him?
For example in the subject field of the email:
is inviting you to join
Thanks!
hmm..
the comment didn’t pick up all the text..
I meant..
For example in the subject field of the email:
(firstname) (lastname) is inviting you to join (sitename)
Hi Stef. Absolutely. Visit Invite Anyone admin panel (Dashboard > BuddyPress > Invite Anyone). Use the wildcard definitions near the top of the page to define whatever custom subject you’d like. For instance:
%INVITERNAME% is inviting you to join Stef’s Site
You can also make the subject line editable by end-users, who could then make the subject line into whatever they’d like.
ah.. i see. Works great! Thanks!
another question.. is it also possible that I can change the url of the plugin?
instead of: /invite-anyone to /uitnodigen
Hi Stef – Yes, you can do that. I notice that right now there’s an error in the code that means you’ll have to make the change in two places, but in the future it will be just in one place.
1) In your bp-custom.php,
define( 'BP_INVITE_ANYONE_SLUG', 'uitnodigen' );2) In by-email/by-email.php, change ‘invite-anyone’ on line 54 to whatever you’d like.
In future versions, only (1) will be necessary.
Please be sure to test this feature extensively. I haven’t done a lot of testing myself, so I’m not 100% positive that the change will work everyone (and that it won’t break any links). Thanks!
works perfect! thanks..
Just one small issue with the localization.
After accepting the invitation.. the registration appears with the following message.
http://img.skitch.com/20100519-xxspgnjqqbdnueqf2xnr35u57a.jpg
I’m not sure where I can remove remove the ‘by’ and change the ‘and’ into ‘en’.
I have this covered in the translation of buddypress and the theme translation.
Pretty weird huh?
Do you have any ideas?
Hi Boone,
I did a re-install of my website and the plugin works fine now. I still use all the other plugins (except for bp groupblog plugin)and there doesn’t seem to be any conflict on a fresh install. So I guess, bp groupblog must have somehow messed up my site. Because after further testing, some of the other plugins didn’t work as well. That’s why I have to re-install. Luckily it’s a new site.
Thanks very much for this fantastic plugin :)
On another plugin which you have developed (equally fantastic) is the group email plugin. This may not be the right place to post but just wanted to ask a quick question – the site admin was able to send group email under any group but the group admin has been unable to send any email notification out. Is there something I can check on to see if the plugin has been installed correctly?
O, just to add, when an email is sent out by the site admin, there is a message to say that the email has been sent successfully. When the group admin sends an email out, there is no such message. There is no error message either. The activity notification works fantastically.
If you disable groups for entire site. Plug throws errors when ever inviting. always bombs on
Class ‘BP_Groups_Group’ not found in /plugins/invite-anyone/by-email/by-email.php on line 573
I don’t have groups enabled for the site. Is there a quick fix for the plug to stop looking for groups enabled?
Hello!
Great plugin! It almost has everything I need. I was wondering if you had in mind adding a number of invites limit?
I’d like for my members to have only 5 invitations each and as they become more active, I would extend that number.
Also, a good idea is to have a reporting in the backend that will allow an easy viewing of who is the person that sends most invites and gets most invites accepted.
I’m sure it’s not difficult I just don’t know WP syntax and no time to learn … little by little I’m learning! I know how to do that with mySQL and PHP but it would be bad coding. =)
Thanks again and I’d love to know if you would consider making this changes. I would be willing to pay.
Hi, I’ve just installed Buddypress and invite-anyone and am trying to test the email invite function.
I’m sending the email invites and getting confirmation that they have been successfully sent – they are just not arriving! (I know because they are my own alternative addresses.)
Does anyone know if there are any Buddypress settings which might be liable to cause this?
I have WordPress 2.9.2 with no other plugins as yet.
Hi Linda. Are you having problems with any other BP emails? When a new user registers for an account, does the verification email come through? Do email notifications of private messages work? Etc. Have you checked spam folders? Invite Anyone uses the same email functions as the rest of BP, so it’s unlikely that the problem is specific to IA.
Hi Boone,
Another question.
How do I set the language to dutch in Invite Anyone?
Actually I have this questions for all my plugins. I just can’t get them to dutch. :)
Thanks
Hi Stef – Do you have your WordPress language set as Dutch? Plugins like Invite Anyone *should* just inherit their language settings from the WordPress setting.
Rob – I will make this fix and release a bugfix very soon.
Giovanni – Both great ideas. I will try to put them in version 0.7 of the plugin.
Hi Boone,
Wonderful plugin! After a lot of searching, I finally found your plugin which allows for users with a specific title to invite people. I would like to note however, that when set to “Administrator” I could still send invites as a normal “Subscriber”, however, when the limitation was set to “Editor” the ability to send invitations as a Subscriber vanished.
This is not a problem for me since I only have administrators and subscribers. I just wanted to let you know. I am running wp3 and bp1.2.5
I can concur with comment 69 setting as administrato allows “subscribers” to send invites…
Max & Joseph – Thanks for pointing this out! It was a silly error I’d made in the code, which is fixed with version 0.6.4.
Thanks for the awesome plugin Boone!
I have one problem….When sending out invites from a group, this is displayed after you click the send invites button and selected a couple of members from the directory: Cannot modify header information – headers already sent by…
Thanks, Anton. Others on the bp.org forums have noticed the same thing. I just published 0.6.5, a bugfix for this very issue. Hope it works for you!
Please check the download of 0.6.5 as it doesn’t seem to work.
John – Can you be more specific? I just downloaded a fresh version from the repo and it seems to be working fine. What problem are you experiencing?
Thanks Boone. 0.6.5 fixed the header problem.
Another bug….Once again…I’m finding all of them
When an Invitation is sent and the user has to click on the final registration email link, this is displayed: Call to undefined function friends_add_friend()
Do you have the friends component turned off? (I don’t think the plugin checks to make sure that it’s turned on before attempting to establish friendships.)
Hi Boone,
Yes. It is turned off.
Hey Boone.
Having a little trouble: the invites are sent perfectly to the new users, but when they register, the group invites aren’t there. The sender of the invites doesn’t show any outstanding invites on his or her list, either. I’ve been playing with a lot of plug ins on this install, and I’m wondering if perhaps I’ve got some relic in my db that is causing this problem. Any thoughts?
Sorry, should have included this:
WPMU: 2.9.2
Buddypress: 1.2.3
Just tested, and the group invites to current members works fine.
Thanks a lot for this excellent plugin! I have a suggestion though, a tip I got from our users:
When you invite people from the list they will appear in the right window and most people are expecting an invite is send straight away so they forget to scroll all the way down to the bottom to push the button Send Invites. To fix it: imo that bottom should be placed close to the selection box so people know they need to press it to send the Invites.
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