The BuddyPress team is proud to announce BuddyPress 1.8 “Di Fara”!

What’s new in 1.8

BuddyPress 1.8 is a major feature release, containing many bugfixes and dozens of new features. Some of these items are highlighted below, and a full changelog for 1.8 is available on the BP Codex.

Better theme integration

Since BuddyPress 1.7, BP has been compatible with practically every WordPress theme. But traces of the BuddyPress Default theme were still everywhere to be seen, in particular concerning the way that buttons, fonts, and form elements were styled. In BuddyPress 1.8, we’ve made a thorough review of our stylesheets to make them more minimal – we call it a “de-theming” – so that BP inherits CSS styling more gracefully from the active WordPress theme. We’re thrilled with how seamlessly BuddyPress 1.8 integrates with a variety of WordPress themes, and we think you’ll be thrilled too.

Template hierarchy

One of the most powerful tools available to WordPress theme developers is template hierarchy, which defines a set of file naming conventions for context-specific template overrides. BP 1.8 extends this concept to top-level BuddyPress templates – the templates that are first located when loading a BuddyPress page. Let’s say, for instance, that you want your Groups directory to have a single-column layout, while the rest of your BuddyPress content has a right-hand sidebar. Simply create a single-column page template in your theme at buddypress/groups/index-directory.php, and BuddyPress will use this file, instead of the fallback page.php, when loading the Groups directory. Documentation of this new feature can be found on the Codex.

Developer goodies

1.8 is loaded with improvements aimed at making it easier and more fun than ever to develop for the BuddyPress platform.

  • The popular Groups Extension API has seen a complete rewrite, fixing long-standing bugs, adding new configuration options, and dramatically streamlining the process of extending BP_Group_Extension.
  • The activity and groups loops now support filtering by 'meta_query', using syntax familiar from WP_Query.
  • Group member directories are powered by the new BP_Group_Member_Query, which extends the flexible tools of BP_User_Query to the Groups component.
  • Automated testing is now built into the trunk and stable Subversion versions of BuddyPress, complete with flexible tools for testing BP-dependent plugins.

Artisans at work

In Midwood, Brooklyn, there’s a pizzeria where every pie is handmade by a single septuagenarian, and diners can wait two hours or more for a pizza of their own. While the BuddyPress team doesn’t like to make anyone wait (the 1.8 dev cycle has been our shortest ever, with every milestone hit right on schedule), we do like to think that we bring passion and care to BuddyPress that’s similar to Dom DeMarco’s single-minded pizza-making. So, we’re proud to name BuddyPress 1.8 “Di Fara” after Dom’s classic pizza joint.

Thanks

As always, the BP core team extends appreciation to the scores of developers, designers, and community volunteers who have spent thousands of hours on this version of BuddyPress. The following individuals contributed patches during the 1.8 release cycle:

boonebgorges, borkweb, chouf1, chriskeeble, chroniko, czarate, danbp, dcavins, dcowgill, ddean, djpaul, dontdream, eggproject, ericlewis, grahamwashbroo, hnla, imath, johnjamesjacoby, karmatosed, lenasterg, magnus78, megainfo, rogercoathup, mercime, merty, mjustice, modemlooper, mort3n, mukkundthanki, nacin, needle, r-a-y, saurabhshukla, sbrajesh, SergeyBiryukov, SGr33n, shanebp, splatte, thebrandonallen, themightymo, tivnet, trishasalas, vegasgeek, wpdennis

Buon appetito

Questions about BuddyPress 1.8? Make the BuddyPress Codex your first stop. A growing community of volunteers can also be found in our support and discussion forums. If you’ve found a bug in BuddyPress, or if you want to contribute code to the next release, our development home is buddypress.trac.wordpress.org

There’s always a line at Di Fara (except that one time I went there after a tornado!), but the wait is over for BuddyPress 1.8 “Di Fara”. Download it today from the wordpress.org plugin repository, or from your WordPress Dashboard.