Boone Gorges

CUNY Academic Commons

Out of the box, BuddyPress automatically turns some words and phrases in the fields of a user’s profile into links that, when clicked, search the user’s community for other profiles containing those phrases. When activated, this plugin allows users and administrators to have more control over these links, in the following ways:
1) By using square brackets in a profile field, users can specify which words or phrases in their profile turn into links. For example: under Interests, I might list “Cartoons about dogs”. By default, Buddypress will turn the entire phrase into a link that searches the community for others who like cartoons about dogs. If I instead type “[Cartoons] about [dogs]”, then the two words in brackets will turn into independent links.
2) Administrators can specify certain profile fields that will not turn into links at all. The standard setting for the plugin is that fields labeled ‘Phone’, ‘IM’, and ‘Skype ID’ will not become linkable (it doesn’t make much sense to search a community for what should be a unique handle, after all). See custom-profile-filters-for-buddypress.php to configure this setting.
3) Administrators can specify certain profile fields that link to social networking profiles. If I enter my Twitter handle ‘boonebgorges’ into a field labeled ‘Twitter’, for example, this plugin will bypass the default link to a BuddyPress search on ‘boonebgorges’ and instead link to http://twitter.com/boonebgorges. See custom-profile-filters-for-buddypress-bp-functions.php to configure this setting.
This plugin was created as part of the CUNY Academic Commons of the City University of New York. See http://commons.gc.cuny.edu to learn more about this bodacious project.
<h3>Notes</h3>
The plugin checks each profile for square brackets and activates if it finds any. If no square brackets are found, the default automatic filter will kick in.
You might want to insert a small explanation into your BP profile edit template (/wp-content/bp-themes/[your-member-theme]/profile/edit.php that tells your site’s users how to use these brackets. Here’s what I use:
“Words or phrases in your profile can be linked to the profiles of other members that contain the same phrases. To specify which words or phrases should be linked, add square brackets: e.g. “I enjoy [English literature] and [technology].” If you do not specify anything, phrases will be chosen automatically.”
Future features include: admin tab with toggle switch; ability to tweak BP’s automatic profile filter (e.g. to parse semi-colon separated lists in addition to commas).

Custom Profile Filters for BuddyPress

Allows users to take control of the way that the links in their Buddypress profiles are handled.

Jason Coleman

Paid Memberships Pro

Jared Atchison

<h4>Add an avatar upload field on frontend pages and Edit Profile screen so users can add a custom profile picture.</h4>
Community and Membership sites on WordPress use this plugin as a lightweight solution for custom user avatars. The plugin is compatible with bbPress, as well as many popular plugins with frontend user registration and profile management features.
Admins can upload a user’s avatar on the Edit User admin screen.
Basic User Avatars also supports front-end avatar management for sites that want to keep users out of the dashboard. To use this feature, add the shortcode <code>[basic-user-avatars]</code> to any page in your WordPress site. We recommended placing this shortcode on another logged-in account type page, such as the WooCommerce My Account page, the Membership Account page, or any other front-end profile edit form.
The Avatar Upload form is automatically added to the bbPress User Profile > Edit frontend page.
If you do not want your users to be able to update their avatar, navigate to Settings > Discussion and locate the “Local Avatar Permissions” setting. Check this box to only allow users with file upload capabilities to upload local avatars (Author role and above).
<h4>Seamlessly Migrate from WP User Avatar Plugin</h4>
Version 1.0.5 includes a feature to automatically convert avatars formerly loaded through the WP User Avatar plugin. This means that you can disable WP User Avatar, activate Basic User Avatars, and have a seamless transition for existing avatars in your site. Be sure to update any avatar upload form that used the <code>[avatar_upload]</code> shortcode to use the shortcode: <code>[basic-user-avatars]</code>.

Basic User Avatars

it may have been around for a while but this plugin still works well

still works with WP4.9.1

Add an avatar upload field on frontend pages and Edit Profile screen so users can add a custom profile picture.

Custom Profile Filters for BuddyPress vs Basic User Avatars