Different user type , different profile fields buddypress

Question

I have a buddypress site build for a social media for Entrepreneurs and workers to help each other. now, this site can have different user types and according to type, different profile informations, as example, a user can be Agency manager, or, Developer, so, All I need is, having different directory instead of one 'members' directory, and have different profile informations, and also, user type tagging, I am also thinking to have different access for different type users, like wordpress roles Any idea how can I do that with buddypress?

Answer 1

You can save information about the users with a form and add it to the WordPress wp_usermeta table with the simple function update_user_meta()

And then you can access the data with the get_user_meta() function.

Here is an example:

Lets say you have a drop-down with the values Agency manager and Developer.

<form method="get" action="/">
   <select name="drop-down">
      <option value="agency">Agency manager</option>
      <option value="developer">Developer</option>
   </select>
</form>

Then get the information:

$info = $_GET['drop-down'];

Add it to the database and current logged in user

$user_id = get_current_user_id();

update_user_meta($user_id, 'user_is', $info);

Now the data is saved as user_is to get it just use get_user_meta()

$user_is = get_user_meta( $user_id, 'user_is', true);

<pre>
  <?php print_r( $user_is ); ?>
</pre>

Read more here:

http://codex.wordpress.org/Function_Reference/update_user_meta http://codex.wordpress.org/Function_Reference/get_user_meta

Answer 2

The plugin mentioned by Rimon might be all you need, but it might not be compatible with BP 1.7

btw - you should state which versions of WP & BP you are using.

The answer from Pontus, while detailed, doesn't address the fact that you're using BuddyPress.

BP has a way to create custom profile fields via /wp-admin/ Users -> Profile Fields. You can use this to force new signups to choose a member type.

Otherwise, you need to hack or extend the BP profile and reg code to show his strictly WP approach.

In fact, either way or some combined way, you'll need some extra custom code to accomplish the other things you want.

Have you looked at the http://www.s2member.com/ plugin ? It's not a complete solution for what you want but it will get you started.