Hi BuddyPress community members!

The first release candidate for BuddyPress 7.0.0 is ready for a last round of testing!

This is an important milestone as we progress toward the BuddyPress 7.0.0 final release date. “Release Candidate” means that we think the new version is ready for release, but with more than 200,000 active installs, hundreds of BuddyPress plugins, thousands of WordPress themes, and many possible specific WordPress configurations it’s possible we missed one or more details.

BuddyPress 7.0.0 is slated for release on December 9th, 2020. Do you want to help us get there? Here’s how you can:

  1. This release candidate also marks the string freeze point of the 7.0.0 release schedule, so if you you speak a language other than English, please help us translate BuddyPress into many languages!
  2. You are a BuddyPress Plugin and/or Theme developer? You should test your code against BuddyPress 7.0.0. If you find compatibility problems, please report a ticket on our Trac environment.
  3. You are using BuddyPress and can easily set up a staging environment? Please use our Beta Tester plugin or directly install the Release Candidate on your staging site to make sure everything works as expected for you. If not: tell us what’s wrong on Slack or reply to this specific support topic with a detailed explanation of your trouble.
  4. You are a WordPress news writer? We’d love you to share this post with your readers: the more testers, the better!

It’s always best to anticipate than having a bad surprise after updating the plugin from your WordPress Dashboard: get involved!

What to expect from BuddyPress 7.0.0

First, note that BP 7.0.0 will require at least version 4.9 of WordPress. Then, read an overview of its top features in the post we published to announce the first beta of 7.0.0. If you would like more detail, you can read our 7.0.0 developer notes.

Thanks in advance for your contributions!