Excluding Users From BuddyPress Based On User Meta In WordPress

I’ve recently taken on a fairly large project that I’m excited to be bringing to life.  The project will encompass several different elements, one of them being a BuddyPress integration.  I’ve worked with BuddyPress in the past but never with this much customization so I’ve definitely be doing some digging into different built-in functions.

One element I needed to achieve involved excluding specific users from the BuddyPress members list based on a custom user meta field.  Which brings us to our first function.  The below would go in your active themes functions.php file.  Here it is in its entirety:

// Remove users from BuddyPress

add_action('bp_ajax_querystring','bpdev_exclude_users',20,2);
function bpdev_exclude_users($qs=false,$object=false){
	$excluded_user = '';
	$i=0;
	 //list of users to exclude
	 $args = array(
		'meta_query' => array(
			'relation' => 'OR',
				array(
					'key'     => 'meta_name',
					'value'   => 'meta_value',
		 			'compare' => '='
				),
		)
	 );
	$user_query = new WP_User_Query( $args );
	$businesses = $user_query->get_results();
	// Check for results
	if (!empty($businesses)) {
		foreach ($businesses as $business) { $i++;
			$excluded_user = $business->ID . ', ';
		}
	}
	 
	 if(!empty($excluded_user)) {
	 
		 if($object!='members')//hide for members only
		 return $qs;
		 
		 $args=wp_parse_args($qs);
		 
		 //check if we are listing friends?, do not exclude in this case
		 if(!empty($args['user_id']))
		 return $qs;
		 
		 if(!empty($args['exclude']))
		 $args['exclude']=$args['exclude'].','.$excluded_user;
		 else
		 $args['exclude']=$excluded_user;
		 
		 $qs=build_query($args);
		 
		 return $qs;
	}
 
}

//Remove from member count

add_filter('bp_get_total_member_count','bpdev_members_correct_count');
function bpdev_members_correct_count($count){
$excluded_user = '';
	$i=0;
	 //list of users to exclude
	 $args = array(
		'meta_query' => array(
			'relation' => 'OR',
				array(
					'key'     => 'meta_name',
					'value'   => 'meta_value',
		 			'compare' => '='
				),
		)
	 );
	$user_query = new WP_User_Query( $args );
	$businesses = $user_query->get_results();
	// Check for results
	if (!empty($businesses)) {
		foreach ($businesses as $business) { $i++;
			$excluded_user = $business->ID . ', ';
		}
	}
$excluded_users_count= $i;
return $count-$excluded_users_count;
}

The only aspect of this function you will want to change is both of the user queries (one for removing members, one for updating member count):

'key'     => 'meta_name',
'value'   => 'meta_value',
'compare' => '='

This will need to be updated with the user meta name and then the value you are looking to match it to. Overall a great function to kick off this BuddyPress work and to exclude a specific group of users.

Enjoy!