BuddyPress

Earlier today, we released BuddyPress 1.5.3, with a number of fixes related to WordPress 3.3+. Shortly after release, a number of users let us know that one of these fixes – related to users changing their passwords – had uncovered a more serious bug with the way settings are saved. BuddyPress 1.5.3.1, available immediately, fixes this bug.

One the one hand – boo to Boone for letting the bug through! On the other hand – many thanks to blindMoe, luccame, and johnjamesjacoby for their help isolating and fixing it in very short order.

BuddyPress 1.5.3 is now available. This is a compatibility release to fix a few issues with WordPress 3.3+, and is a recommended update for all existing BuddyPress 1.5+ and WordPress 3.3+ installations.

For information on what’s changed, please see the 1.5.3 release notes. Download BuddyPress 1.5.3 from WordPress Extend or BuddyPress.org.

Today we’re exited to unveil a refresh to the BuddyPress.org site. It’s something we’ve been tinkering with for a while, and we think you’ll like some of the improvements we’ve made:

1. Activity updates are turned off
   Over the course of using the previous design, there was always confusion whether to use the Support Forums or ping someone directly via their activity stream. The verdict is in, and the Support Forums won.
2. Hidden Groups and Members Directories
   Since BuddyPress.org is used primarily to support the platform itself, we really wanted to show off everything it can do here. That proved to be more than we needed, so we’ve scaled it back a bit and hidden the links to the directories. They still exist, there’s just not really any reason to visit them anymore.
3. Restyled Profile Pages
   We consolidated the user profile into the header area to better match the new WordPress.org profiles site. With the removal of the direct activity stream updates, we think this simplifies the whole profile browsing experience.
4. Updated Plugins, Themes, and Showcase
   This is huge, and these areas have needed some attention for a while.
5. Group Gravatar Changes
   In the past we’ve relied on Gravatar to serve up monsters for Plugin Groups. We’ve turned them off in most places honestly because it really didn’t make any sense; we’re using the primary plugin author’s Gravatar instead.
6. Toolbar Integration
   We’ve updated BuddyPress.org to the latest versions of WordPress and BuddyPress to take advantage of the cool new toolbar introduced in WordPress 3.3.

A big thank you to everyone that’s been using BuddyPress.org so far. You’ve really helped us shape BuddyPress.org into something we’re happy and proud to be using. If you experience any weird issues with these new changes, please leave us some feedback and we’ll be sure to get things fixed.

Available immediately is BuddyPress 1.5.2. This is a compatibility release intended to fix some cosmetic issues with the new WordPress 3.3 toolbar, and is a recommended update for all existing BuddyPress 1.5/1.5.1 and WordPress 3.3 installations.

Download BuddyPress 1.5.2 from WordPress Extend or BuddyPress.org.

Come and get it! BuddyPress 1.5.1 is now available. This release fixes over 25 issues that have popped up since BuddyPress 1.5 “Lombardi” was rolled out in September.

BP 1.5.1 is a recommended upgrade for all sites currently running BuddyPress 1.5. Haven’t upgraded to BP 1.5 yet? Be sure to check out our 1.5 upgrade guide and some of the other resources suggested in the BuddyPress 1.5 release post.

As usual, this release couldn’t have happened without the fantastic BuddyPress community, valiantly manning (and womanning) our support forums and Trac. Special thanks to the following community members, whose code patches appear in BP 1.5.1: boonebgorges, djpaul, Grimbog, mind1, r-a-y, sushkov, techguytom, wdfee, wpmuguru.

Download BuddyPress 1.5.1 from WordPress Extend or BuddyPress.org.

Are you (or do you aspire, from the bottom of your heart, to be) a BuddyPress plugin developer? For several years, the go-to template for building BP plugins has been the BuddyPress Skeleton Component, originally written by Andy Peatling and Jeff Sayre. Through time, the original BPSC has gotten a bit out-of-step with the current best practices for BuddyPress plugins. And with the recent release of BuddyPress 1.5 – with its new BP_Component class and a whole load of new goodies for plugin devs – the time was ripe for revisiting the Skeleton Component.

And so, available immediately is the brand new BuddyPress Skeleton Component, version 1.6! A quick overview of improvements:

• Refactored to use the BuddyPress 1.5′s new BP_Component class, making it dead-simple to register globals, create navigation items, and hook into the BP load order
• File structure reorganized to better reflect BP 1.5′s organization, and to provide more fine-grained access to functions
• Data storage class totally refactored, to use custom post types and WP_Query, instead of custom database tables.
• Added a small guide for creating a top-level component directory (a “root component”), which was missing in earlier versions
• Tons of documentation added and revised
• All WP_DEBUG notices removed

Please note that, due to its use of BP_Component class and other new features, plugins based on BPSC 1.6 will only work with BuddyPress 1.5 or greater. If you need to retain compatibility with earlier versions of BuddyPress, it’s recommended that you *first* build your plugin for the current version of BP, and then build the 1.2.x compatibility as an afterthought. See the “1.5 plugin update” series on bpdevel.wordpress.com and earlier versions of the Skeleton Component for more details on building plugins for BP < 1.5.

Questions, comments, or suggestions about the BuddyPress Skeleton Component? Check out the buddypress.org forums. You can also follow (and contribute to!) the plugin’s development here.

BuddyPress 1.5 “Lombardi” is here!

Version 1.5 is a major feature release for BuddyPress, encompassing hundreds of bug fixes, enhancements, and all-new features. BuddyPress 1.5 comes with a completely reworked Default theme, a brand-new installation and update wizard, integration with the WordPress navigation menus and Admin Bar, a rewritten interface for managing profile fields, and scores of smaller improvements. To see the complete list of BuddyPress 1.5′s fixes and features, check out the dedicated BuddyPress Codex 1.5 features and fixes page.

We’ve given BuddyPress 1.5 the codename “Lombardi”. The BuddyPress core development team is made up of pizza fanatics who thought it fitting to pay homage in this release to the first pizzeria in the United States. (As a bonus, two of our developers hail from the Badger State where the name “Lombardi” has a different but no less important connotation.)

Do you have an existing site that you want to upgrade to BuddyPress 1.5? We’ve worked our hardest to ensure that your upgrade will go off without a hitch. The most popular BuddyPress plugins have been updated for full BuddyPress 1.5 compatibility, and on standard installations most of your other plugins and themes will continue to work as well. There’s a page on the BuddyPress Codex devoted to the process of upgrading to BuddyPress 1.5 where you’ll find lots of helpful resources on making your upgrade as smooth as possible. Don’t forget that the Codex is a wiki – if you’ve got some words of wisdom to share with the community, don’t be afraid to jump in and edit (using your buddypress.org account)! As usual, you’re encouraged to run upgrades in test environments before upgrading your live site.

If you’ve never used BuddyPress before, there’s never been a better time to try it out. BuddyPress 1.5 is the most secure and stable version to date.

If you experience problems with your BP 1.5 installation or upgrade, the BuddyPress community has assembled a collection of resources for you. In addition to the fixes and features and upgrade pages, there are many other tutorials and guides available from the Codex home page. buddypress.org is also the home of a vibrant set of support and discussion forums where you can read, ask, and answer questions about 1.5 and BuddyPress in general. And if you find bugs in BuddyPress itself, our development community’s home is http://buddypress.trac.wordpress.org.

BuddyPress 1.5 is the result of thousands of hours of work by hundreds of community members, in the form of patches, design, and testing. The following folks contributed patches that ended up in the release: AaronCampbell, AD7six, aesqe, andrewteg, apeatling, Backie, balbert, BB_Othella, bizybee, boonebgorges, bowromir, calvin_42, chestnut_jp, cnorris23, davidtcarson, dchase, ddean, deadpan110, defunctlife, delayedinsanity, denis.ogun, Dennissmolek, dgwatkins, enderandrew, for, francescolaffi, Ghost_ufa, gian-ava, greuben, gzeidan, Harry, hnla, intimez, ipstenu, j.conti, jefferai, jessica120, jfarthing84, johnjamesjacoby, johnpbloch, jond, Jonnyauk, karmatosed, kunalb, LanceHudson, lpryor, luccame, lucianop, lunabyte, mareck, mdawaffe, mercime, mikekennedy, modemlooper, mrmaz, nacin, nerrad, nuprn1, Paul Gibbs, PedroMiguel, ptahdunbar, r-a-y, rebootnow, sboisvert, sbrajesh, SergeyBiryukov, slaFFik, slambert, smurkas, sorich87, stas, sushkov, swinton, to, TobiasBg, travel-junkie, wpmuguru.

Many thanks to them and to everyone who helped test during the entire 1.5 development cycle. Without the contributions of this awesome community, BuddyPress simply would not be possible.

Now that that’s out of the way, order yourself a pizza and download BuddyPress 1.5 today!

BuddyPress Template Pack is a Totally Tubular plugin that helps you to bring BuddyPress functionality to any WordPress theme. And now, after a bit of elbow grease, the latest version (1.2) is fully compatible with the so-close-it-hurts BuddyPress 1.5!

BPTP works, in brief, by copying over some necessary template files from BuddyPress into your existing theme, where you can customize them to your heart’s content. In order to protect any customizations that you may already have made if you’re already using the Template Pack with a BuddyPress 1.2.x site, BPTP won’t overwrite the any BP-specific template files in your theme, even after upgrading to BPTP 1.2 and BP 1.5. If you’re upgrading, and you’d like to get the shiny new templates from BP 1.5, you’ll need to remove the BP template directories from your theme (activity, blogs, forums, groups, members, and registration), and hit “Reset” under Dashboard > Appearance > BP Compatibility. If you’ve previously made customizations to the BP templates copied into your theme, you’ll then have to copy those changes over to the newly moved template files. Sound like a lot of work? Don’t worry – the template changes between BuddyPress 1.2.10 and BuddyPress 1.5 are not huge, so it’s likely that your old templates will continue to work just fine. In any case, make sure you back up your theme before attempting any monkey business!

Special thanks to r-a-y, who did most of the work to make BuddyPress Template Pack compatible with the latest BuddyPress. Woo hoo, r-a-y!

Download BPTP 1.2 from the wordpress.org plugin repository.

Over the past few weeks, we’ve released three – count ‘em, three! – beta versions of BuddyPress 1.5. During that time, we’ve gotten some great feedback, and some great patches, from our user and developer community. With a clear mind (and a clear milestone), today we are releasing the BuddyPress 1.5 Release Candidate.

The “release candidate” label means that we think that the current codebase is rock solid, and this final stage in the release cycle gives users one more chance to find any remaining kinks before the stable release.

We’d like this RC period to be short – we’re as anxious for the 1.5 release as you are! – so please give the RC a go in your test environments, and try the latest code in a live testbed at testbp.org. As usual, we recommend that you don’t run pre-release code in mission-critical production environments.

You can download BuddyPress 1.5 RC 1 today, from the bottom of our Trac page.

In addition (it’s been quite a weekend): available immediately is BuddyPress 1.2.10. This minor update includes an important security fix, as well as fixes for a few deprecated function calls. It’s a recommended update for all BuddyPress installations. Upgrade through your WordPress Dashboard, or download BuddyPress 1.2.10 from WordPress Extend or BuddyPress.org.

With BuddyPress 1.5 due any day now, we’d like to invite you to take the next major release for a test drive. If you’d like to help us out or even if you’re just curious what’s coming in 1.5, check out the official test site at testbp.org. It’s always running the latest versions of BuddyPress and bbPress, has almost 30,000 members, and is the best way to help us make sure everything is ready for release while letting you be safely behind the driver’s seat.

As a general reminder, we’re keeping running list of API changes for 1.5 in our codex at codex.buddypress.org.

We are putting the finishing touches on the forums component now, and are aiming to release 1.5 as soon as this week. Keep an eye out!