BuddyPress 1.7.2 was released a little while ago. It contains some bug fixes but the most notable items include several MySQL Injection possibilities that have been patched. 1.7.2 is being classified as a recommended upgrade for anyone using BuddyPress 1.5 or above.
I’m keeping tabs on BuddyPress because at some point in the future, this site will be utilizing it combination with bbPress.
It was announced earlier today that that BuddyPress 1.5.5 is now available for download. This is considered a maintenance release which addresses 14 issues, some of which are security related. Congrats to the team and I hope you had a blast at WordCamp Netherlands Paul Gibbs.
John James Jacoby of BuddyPress.org has announced that the BuddyPress Codex has received a much needed refresh. Here is the kicker, the BuddyPress Codex is powered by a WordPress installation where all registered users are an editor. Users can share information as in a traditional wiki but everything is housed on individual pages. Interestingly enough, this very idea was proposed a couple of times during the past few years for the WordPress Codex but it never gained much traction.
Head on over to the NEW BuddyPress Codex and check it out. It will be interesting to see how this approach scales.
Shortly after the release of WordPress 3.3, BuddyPress 1.5.2 was released and is simply a compatibility release intended to fix some cosmetic issues with the new WP 3.3 toolbar. If you experience any issues with WordPress 3.3 and BuddyPress 1.5.2, you should participate in the following support thread on the official BuddyPress forum. ∞
One of the coolest things about BuddyPress is that when it was developed by Andy Peatling, he made sure to put in a considerable amount of effort into creating a BuddyPress Starter theme as well as a BuddyPress starter plugin. Knowing that those two things would be often used as the beginning stages of a plugin or theme, only the best coding practices were used as a means of not only having a blank slate to start from, but also teach developers at the same time. It’s like Hello Dolly! but without the lyrics. Boone Gorges has announced that the tradition has continued with the release of BuddyPress Skeleton Component v1.6. The new release features the following:
BP_Component class, making it dead-simple to register globals, create navigation items, and hook into the BP load orderWP_DEBUG notices removedIt’s important to know that any plugin built from version 1.6 of the Skeleton Component will be incompatible with BuddyPress versions prior to 1.5. It’s recommended by Boone that you first create the plugin for BuddyPress 1.5 and build in backwards compatibility as an after thought.
1.2.6 Release – Many of the tickets left for 1.2.6 have patches. Ticket 2587 appears to be the only blocker dealing with the ability to hide multiple child-level comments. The feeling is that 1.2.6 is really close but a firm date can not be given.
When JJJ entered the chat about a half hour after it started, he mentioned that 1.2.6 needs to be pushed out ASAP. It’s likely that we’ll see it released by the end of this week.
Strict Release Cycles – There was some discussion on whether it was time for the BuddyPress project to adhere to a more strict release cycle. In defining strict, I noted that it probably is more about predictability rather than a strict release cycle. The core development team along with contributors will in the future, discuss whether or not if it’s possible to release 2 or 3 major versions a year per the amount of development effort that BuddyPress currently has.
BuddyPress.org – There was a call for volunteers to help clean up the Codex along with filling in the gaps. The BuddyPress.org support forum will soon show topics you’ve participated in.
I put in the suggestion that the moderator team be expanded so that more users have the capabilities to delete spam user accounts as they pollute the activity stream. It looks like in the future, some additions will come to BuddyPress that helps this issue not only for the BuddyPress website, but BuddyPress powered sites in general.
If you would like to participate in the chat next week, install IRC or an IRC compatible client and connect to the following IRC server.
chat.freenode.net or any random server on the Freenode network and then join this channel at 3:00PM Eastern time on Thursdays. #buddypress-dev.
The log for this chat can be found here.
John James Jacoby who is one of the core developers of BuddyPress has published a post on the BuddyPress development blog that talks about the future of bbPress and BuddyPress as he sees it. In fact, if you didn’t know it by now, John is leading the initiative in turning bbPress into a plugin versus stand-alone software.
Since BuddyPress 1.1, bbPress has come bundled in the package to help make the installation as smooth and easy as possible. Through a little bit of massaging we successfully integrated bbPress into a dedicated forum component to allow for group discussion, and we included a central discussion directory to help put all of these topics in one easy place. All of these ideas were great on paper but have had mixed feedback and results in practice. Making bbPress a standalone plugin will help allow for more customizable installations which is great news for anyone that’s currently using BuddyPress for the forum component, or has been holding off because of the complexity of it all.
Our goal with me giving some attention to the bbPress plugin project is to keep it tightly integrated with BuddyPress, but have them act totally independently or alone if necessary. This means in a future version of BuddyPress, bbPress will no longer come packaged in the download, and both plugins will be aware of each other being activated. When that happens, additional features will be available to you to help create the kind of community that you’d like to have, instead of forcing forums to be tucked away into BuddyPress discussion groups.
John ends the post by saying BuddyPress 1.2.6 is on its way out the door. It will contain a few bug fixes with perhaps an enhancement or two. As for BuddyPress 1.3, it should be shipped before the end of the year while bbPress 1.2 might be ready for testing around September 15th with a ship date of around the same time BuddyPress 1.3 is released.
Users of Ning who are upset about the recent changes that have taken place regarding the service now have at least one avenue to take. Thanks to Boone B. Gorges, Ning users can now use a special plugin that will transfer both users and their custom profile data. This migration plugin is free of charge. John James Jacoby has also mentioned that people are standing by in the BuddyPress.org support forums to help those that decide to make the migration from Ning to BuddyPress.
I can’t help but think about the time MovableType decided to go from free to a piece of paid software which created a backlash so large, it was the tipping point for the WordPress.org software. I can’t say whether that is what is happening here but it sure would be interesting to time travel into the future and see if this event has a similar effect for BuddyPress.
Much has been said about Ning already but I still find what they did to their free userbase as wrong. It would have been much better to just cut off free registrations and work with the userbase they already had. Instead, they have all of a sudden become a gated community and have told everyone that hasn’t paid that if they don’t pay, to get out. A shame that a company would do that to the very userbase that put them on the map. However, Ning is a great case study into one of the best features of BuddyPress. The ability to run your own network, to own your data, to control what happens to it without the middle man.
Marshall who goes by the user name MrMaz in the BuddyPress community has been appointed the newest member of the BuddyPress core team. Marshall will be focusing on the BuddyPress API which will make the lives of developers easier to seamlessly integrate their plugins into BuddyPress. His work will be slated for release in 1.4 and onward. Marshall has a successful BuddyPress plugin called BuddyPress Links which adds rich media sharing. How this plugin integrates into BuddyPress as if it’s a part of the core was a sure sign that Marshall knows what he’s doing and was one of the major reasons why he was asked to join the team.
Congrats to Marshall.
Although the announcement has not yet been published on the BuddyPress blog, the release history page on the site has been updated to show the changes in version 1.2.2. A number of bugs have been fixed such as:
You can get the new version from the download page.