Over the past few weeks we’ve released 3 bug fix versions of BuddyPress; more than we’ve released for the entire beginning of the year. What I noticed is that when development was slow, so were our support forums and so was the general buzz about the project. Since we’ve started patching bugs and cranking out bug fix releases again, things are picking back up which totally rocks.

I think this is a great example of how activity breeds activity, and it reminded me that social networks and niche communities are as susceptible to becoming stagnant as normal WordPress blogs can be. Most of us have probably had a great idea for a website, spent the $10 on the domain name, installed WordPress, made a fancy theme, posted 3 updates and then for whatever reason, just lost interest in it.

The same thing is totally possible with your social network, and when development slowed down here on the BuddyPress project in the past few months, the community felt that impact and over time there was some concern about what the future of BuddyPress was going to be.

Let me tell you that “the state of the word is strong.” – MM

We’ve recently added some really fancy functionality to BuddyPress.org that integrates any plugin in the WordPress repository that is tagged ‘buddypress’ and gives it a public discussion group. It passes over a plugins’ information like ratings and statistics, gives it its own dedicated support forum where you can assign administrators and moderators, and comes with a built in donate link so people can drop a few bucks in your pocket to show their appreciation. If you’re a plugin author, be sure to check it out!

In the coming months we have a lot of exciting things planned that will revitalize the BuddyPress.org website and help solidify BuddyPress as the ultimate social networking solution for your WordPress powered site. We’re looking at adding more core contributors, more forum moderators, redesigning the site with a completely custom template, improving the codex, and diving head first into some new features for 1.3.

For everyone that was worried about BuddyPress, you can breathe a sigh of relief. For everyone else, thanks for hanging out and staying interested while things were slow. We’re full steam ahead and you can count on seeing much more activity in our community in the coming weeks!