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.