Published on October 14th, 2012 by John James Jacoby
The first ever BuddyCamp is happening right now at BCIT Campus in Vancouver, BC. The whole BuddyPress core team (minus Paul) is here, along with WordPress co-founder Matt Mullenweg, and we all just participated in a panel discussion on the social web and BuddyPress’s place in it.
If you weren’t able to make it out to Vancouver, don’t worry; the BuddyCamp Vancouver organizers setup a live stream. For $10 CAD, you can watch the whole event in the comfort of your own home. Check out the link below for details:
https://2012.vancouver.buddypress.org/tickets/
On behalf of Matt and the core team, we’re super happy to be here and hope that everyone has a fantastic day!
If you’ve ever attended a WordCamp, you know how valuable – and fun – it can be to spend a day or two learning from like-minded WordPress users. Now, for the first time, fans of BuddyPress have an event all their own.
BuddyCamp Vancouver 2012, the very first gathering of its type dedicated to BuddyPress, will take place on Sunday, October 14 and Monday, October 15, in Vancouver, British Columbia. Read much more about the event – including the call for speakers – at the BuddyCamp Vancouver 2012 website.
Hope to see you in Vancouver in October!
Boone, Paul, and I, are excited to announce we’ve promoted r-a-y to be the newest member of the BuddyPress Core team!
r-a-y has been involved with BuddyPress since the early days, and has been one of our strongest forum moderators since the very beginning. He’s been diligently iterating on his core patches and contributions, so we’ve asked him to come aboard the crazy train.
r-a-y’s responsibility for the 1.7 release is taking on the tickets and patches he is already familiar with, chipping away at individual issues until he’s built up the courage to take on full feature development. I suspect it won’t take long.
Congrats r-a-y! Woo woo!
When we were beginning development on BuddyPress 1.6, we had the idea of building a new child theme for BuddyPress Default – something that would show off some of BP’s coolest features by highlighting a single of BP’s several components. The BuddyPress core team put out a call for community contributors to take the lead on this new theme, and we soon had some of the best and brightest theme developers in the BP world working on the project. Today, we’re thrilled to announce the availability of the new theme, Status. You can download it today from its home at Github: status.zip. (It’ll be available in the wordpress.org theme repository soon.)
What follows is a short introduction to Status – why it was built, what it does, and how you can get involved – written by the Status team.
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Starting something social
Status started out life thanks to this ticket, where it was suggested to build a new theme alongside of BuddyPress 1.6, which would – in @djpaul’s words – “flex some muscle”. Several months of work and a fair few people later, we have today’s release announcement.
After several initial chats, it was decided that ‘Status’ – as it obviously had to be named – would be an ‘activity focused’ theme, along the lines of Twitter. The aim was to show BuddyPress in a more specific guise, to demonstrate how BuddyPress can work well by focusing on just one of its several features. A secondary goal was to re-factor the BuddyPress templates with leaner code, focusing on HTML5 as much as possible.
Because work on Status was done in close connection with the BuddyPress core team, some of the improvements that arose during development were passed upstream to BP itself. For example, as Status was being built, it became aware there were limitations in the JavaScript used by the BuddyPress Default theme. The Status team took the lead on this ticket, where bp-default’s JS was reworked in a way to be much less dependent on the specific markup of the bp-default templates. This was done not only to benefit Status; it also means others can have extra flexibility in their templates.
Status is designed toward a specific function – Twitter-like activity streams – but it also functions as a more general BuddyPress theme, for maximum flexibility.
Status’s Activity page
That little something extra
Status has been blessed with having some great minds working on its code. As a result, it’s got a few features above and beyond your everyday BuddyPress theme:
- Per-user profile customization: Under Profile, there is a new navigation element called Design, where users can set custom backgrounds and link colours for their profiles.
- Friends list: A list of your friends shows in the sidebar
- Member stats: On member profiles, you can see how many status updates, forum topics, forum replies, blog posts, and blog comments the user has created.
- Fully responsive: Status looks good on screens of all sizes
- Navigation menu in the admin bar : A custom menu area has been added to the WordPress/BuddyPress admin bar.
- Show/hide comments in the activity stream: You can open or close any nested comments in the activity stream for a cleaner, less cluttered view.
- A login template to mean content doesn’t show on the front unless logged in
Not one designer not one developer
At the heart of the creation process was the idea this project would be developed on GitHub and open to anyone who wanted to be part of it. There was also a ‘just do it’ approach to both the design and development, with most design work done directly in code.
A big thank you to the BuddyPress core team for allowing a different type of contribution to the project in the form of this theme. Thanks go out to all those involved so far in this project:
@hnla, @vebailovity, @mercime, @DJPaul, @karmatosed
Also props go to @jarret for saving the day with the last bug fix during the chase to the finish line.
Call to arms
Status is an ongoing open project. If you want help shape version 1.1, 1.2, and beyond, check out the project on GitHub. Want Status to have x or y feature? Well, you can get involved and add it in.
BuddyPress 1.6.1 is now available! This version contains fixes for a few edge case bugs that came up after BuddyPress 1.6 was released last week, including: full compatibility with Multisite installations using NOBLOGREDIRECT; a regression in one of our avatar functions that caused avatars to be malformed in some themes; and a load order issue that caused fatal errors with some legacy themes. You can check out the changelog for the release at our bug tracker.
BP 1.6.1 is a recommended upgrade for all installations running BuddyPress 1.6. Have you been holding off on upgrading to 1.6? We’ve got you covered: the BP 1.6 section of the BuddyPress Codex is full of helpful information that’ll help you get your site up to date.
Upgrade to BuddyPress 1.6.1 from your WordPress plugin updater, or download directly from the wordpress.org plugin repository today!
BuddyPress 1.6 “Lucali” is here!
Version 1.6 is a major feature release for BuddyPress, introducing several hundred of bug fixes, dozens of enhancements, and several major, all-new features.
Whether you’ve never used BuddyPress before or are a longtime BP guru, you’re in for a treat. BuddyPress 1.6 is the most feature-rich, secure, stable, and fun-to-use version to date. Feature highlights include: new Activity Management screens and Akismet integration for activity items; fine-grained visibility levels for profile fields; drastically improved performance on activity, group, and member directories; complete integration with the WordPress Toolbar; canonical redirects for improved search engine performance – and the list goes on. For an exhaustive list of BuddyPress 1.6’s notable fixes and features, check out the BuddyPress Codex 1.6 features and fixes page.
We’ve given BuddyPress 1.6 the codename “Lucali”, after a well-known pizza place in Brooklyn. (A few years ago, several members of the BP team had a brush with fame at Lucali. Hoo boy…) The pies at Lucali are constructed with the utmost care, using only the finest ingredients. Sorta like this version of BP, we think!
We’ve worked hard to ensure that your upgrade to BP 1.6 will be completely smooth. If you do happen to experience experience issues with your BP 1.6 installation or upgrade, the BuddyPress community has assembled a collection of resources for you. In addition to the fixes and features page, you’ll find numerous resources on the Codex home page. The buddypress.org support and discussion forums are another important stop, where you can read, ask, and answer questions about 1.6 and about BuddyPress in general. And if you’re a developer, and you’ve found a bug or have ideas for how to improve BuddyPress, visit out development hub at http://buddypress.trac.wordpress.org.
BuddyPress is software built for communities. So it’s appropriate that behind BP is a community all its own. Version 1.6 wouldn’t have been possible without thousands of hours of volunteer work by hundreds of developers, designers, friendly folks in the forums, site owners, and bug testers. Many thanks to all these community members. Special thanks to the following developers, who contributed patches toward BP 1.6: Aaron Edwards, aliso, andre.w8, apeatling, arpit.tambi.in, augustknight, beaulebens, boonebgorges, chrisbliss18, chrisclayton, chriskeeble, cnorris23, CoenJacobs, davidtcarson, ddean, DJPaul, ebellempire, fanquake, fanquake, filosofo, gagan0123, gary_mazz, Grimbog, hnla, imath, j.conti, johnjamesjacoby, Jonathan Davis, kamatosed, lackingpenguin, lancehudson, Lee Willis, leemour, lsparks, magnus78, Mamaduka, masonjames, mercime, mind1, modemlooper, nacin, needle, Ninos Ego, npetetin, pkchrisjohnson, ppaire, r-a-y, rachelbaker, rbahumi, RuBAN-GT, sboisvert, sbrajesh, slaFFik, slaFFik, SlothLoveChunk, Spitzohr, sushkov, techguytom, Tom J Nowell, travel-junkie, vnd, wdfee, wpdennis, wpmuguru, xeqta.
There’s often a line outside Lucali, and you could easily wait hours to get a pizza. But the wait for BuddyPress 1.6 “Lucali” is over. Download it today from the wordpress.org plugin repository, or from your WordPress Dashboard. Buon appetito!
Available immediately is BuddyPress 1.5.7. This is a security release that affected all previous versions. Thanks to Vnd for responsibly disclosing the bug to our security team. If you are using anything from the BuddyPress 1.5 family, this is a 100% safe update to make.
Also available is BuddyPress 1.6-RC2 which fixes a few issues that were reported in RC1. If you’re a BuddyPress plugin or theme developer, this is your last chance to ensure BP 1.6 compatibility before release. If you’re involved in BuddyPress localisation, you should do one last check that your language packs are up to date.
As always, please report bugs on the support forums or at BuddyPress Trac. Get BP 1.6-RC2 from wordpress.org (zip).
That BOOM! you just heard was the sound of BuddyPress 1.6 Release Candidate 1 dropping.
“Release Candidate” means that we think we’ve got the important bugs ironed out, and we’re on the cusp of releasing BuddyPress 1.6. If you’re a BuddyPress plugin or theme developer, this is your last chance to ensure BP 1.6 compatibility before release. If you’re involved in BuddyPress localization, you should do one last check that your language packs are up to date. And if you run a BuddyPress-powered site, consider running BP 1.6 RC1 in your development environments to help us identify any remaining issues.
As always, please report bugs on the support forums or at BuddyPress Trac. Get BP 1.6-RC1 from wordpress.org (zip).
BuddyPress 1.6 Beta 2 is now available for download. BP 1.6 is just around the corner, and you can help us get there sooner by testing the latest beta version today!
The shiniest new features in BuddyPress 1.6 are: the new Activity Management panels in the Dashboard; Akismet integration for the Activity stream; improved SEO in the form of canonical redirects; full integration into the WordPress Toolbar; and Extended Profile field visibility. If you’re a developer or site admin testing BP 1.6-beta2 in a development environment, you might want to spend a bit of extra time on these new features.
As always, we recommend that you do not run beta software in production environments. If you think you’ve found a bug, or have feedback, please leave a message on the support forums or report a bug on our bugtracker.
Download BuddyPress 1.6 Beta 2 (zip) from the wordpress.org plugin repository.
BuddyPress 1.6 Beta 1 is now available. Download BuddyPress 1.6 Beta 1 (zip) from wordpress.org, or check out the milestone on Trac.
Beta time means that we think 1.6 is almost ready to be released. But first, we’d like some feedback from BuddyPress plugin authors, theme designers, or those who manage BuddyPress sites. Now is your chance to help us help you, and check out all the work that’s gone into making the next version of BuddyPress more efficient and more powerful.
If you think you’ve found a bug, or have feedback, please leave a message on the support forums or report a bug on our bugtracker.
As always, please DO NOT run BuddyPress Beta software on your live production site. There may be quirks with existing plugins and we will be updating code rapidly as bug reports come in. Install BuddyPress 1.6 Beta 1 on a local installation or a test site, and let us know if you find anything that isn’t working the way it should. We’re shooting for a release in the next few weeks – and the more testers we get, the quicker it’ll be. So get testing!
