3.org is a very appropriately named project that is focused on building and polishing the surrounding elements of WordPress rather than on WordPress itself. Part of this initiative is the conversion of bbPress from a standalone platform into a neat little WordPress plugin. I’ve volunteered to lead that initiative, and wanted to take a moment to explain what that means for BuddyPress, bbPress, and what you can expect for the next few months.

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.

The end result will be two plugins working harmoniously together, to easily enable setups where bbPress forums can be created for any other kind of object, component, or plugin. This is particularly awesome for BuddyPress developers because it will allow them to internally extend bbPress to fit the specific needs of their own custom BuddyPress components as they see fit.

With all this going on, the loose expectation is for BuddyPress 1.2.6 to roll out asap with a few bug fixes and maybe even a small new enhancement or two, with 1.3 to follow by the end of the year. bbPress 1.2 (the plugin) should be stable enough to start testing as soon as September 15 (give or take a few days and/or missing features) with a full release due around the same time as BuddyPress 1.3.

Our support team, which also consists of Jeff Sayre, Paul Gibbs and Ray, frequently traffic the forums, help resolve problems, and share their advice and best practices. We’re all you’ve got, and we’re not so bad after we’ve had our coffee.

As a general reminder, if you have a support question please try to provide the information detailed in this post; it really does help us help you.

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!

We’ve also bumped the WordPress version requirement up to 3.0. BuddyPress 1.2.5.2 has been tested to work with WordPress 2.9.2, but our mantra has always been to support the current version of WordPress and maintain backwards compatibility as much as possible.

For the best possible BuddyPress experience (and for the security of your social network and your users) be sure to upgrade to WordPress 3.0.

Happy social networking!

This version addresses a few WordPress 3.0 compatibility issues introduced in 1.2.4, and fixes a total of 49 reported issues.Check out the BuddyPress release history for details on the important fixes in this release.

We are Family

This time around we had a lot of community participation, which rocks because we’re starting to find lots of little obscure bugs that would have been overlooked otherwise. Props go out to abackstrom, boonebgorges, cnorris23, dwenaus, erich73, francescolaffi, hempsworth, jeffsayre, paulgibbs, paulhastings0, nuprn1, r-a-y, rvenable, wpmuguru, and everyone else that contributed. (If I missed you, leave a comment below and I’ll add you.)

Communication

Near the end of this versions’ development cycle, participation really ramped up mostly in part to better communication in the support forums from our core developers and moderation team. 1.2.5 would not have been possible without the passion and enthusiasm of our users, and we really appreciate your involvement in the project.

Plugin Authors

If you are a plugin author, you’re going to want to read this post about the new actions you should be using to load your code exactly where it belongs. BuddyPress 1.2.5 takes a big step forward towards being much more ‘dependent plugin’ friendly, but possibly at the risk of breaking existing plugins depending on how they’ve been developed.

Now go update!

This highly anticipated version provides fixes to 74 reported tickets and adds improved support for WordPress 3.0 to help ensure a safe and worry free upgrade. Check out the BuddyPress release history for details on the important fixes in this release.

A tip of the hat to boonebgorges, dwenaus, wpmuguru, paulgibbs, rvenable, and everyone else that contributed. Your involvement in the community is very much appreciated and thanks for helping out this time around!

If you’re looking for an easy way to import from Ning then this free plugin is a great choice.

You can find all the latest details and download link over at Boone’s site: Free import from Ning to BuddyPress plugin.

First is the Ning to BuddyPress Blog, currently operated by yours truly. It’s meant to be a raw and simple collection of tools and links to anything relating to easing the transition. It’ll be updated frequently over the next couple of weeks to provide the most up-to-the-minute resources.

Second, Boone B. Gorges has built a Ning to WordPress/BuddyPress user importer, which is a great start at getting some of your data moved over.

Third are our support forums. We have a bunch of really awesome people that are all willing to help should you have any questions or issues.

Lastly, we have our Codex. If you’re not familiar with the word Codex, think of it like a FAQ on steroids. There you’ll find everything from installation steps to higher level techie stuff including how to extend BuddyPress and build your own unique feature set.

Please feel free to ask any short questions in the comments, we’ll do our best to answer common queries.

Marshall is the developer of the BuddyPress Links plugin that adds rich media sharing to your BuddyPress install. If you’ve used it you’ll know it’s one of the most tightly integrated plugins available, interacting with the core BuddyPress components as though it’s actually one itself. He’s done a fantastic job and that’s one of the main reasons he’s now coming on board as the newest core BuddyPress developer.

Marshall will be focusing specifically on developing the BuddyPress API and making it easier for developers to seamlessly and efficiently integrate their plugins into the BuddyPress experience. He’ll be working his API wizardry for version 1.4 and onwards. In the meantime to ease himself in he’ll be helping JJJ and I out with outstanding tickets and patches for version 1.3.

Welcome aboard Marshall! We’re really looking forward to what you can do to continue to make BuddyPress one of the best social platforms around.

If you’re interested in discovering exactly what the book has to offer, you can download a sample chapter (pdf link), or take a look inside via Amazon.com.

BuddyPress For Dummies is currently on promotion at Barnes & Noble through April 30, or you can always grab a copy at Amazon.com.