BuddyPress.org

Since the release of BuddyPress 1.0 we’ve been thinking of interesting ways that the community could directly participate in the roadmap for future BuddyPress releases.

We think we’ve found a fun approach, and so we’ve decided to run a bit of an experiment. Over the last week, those who participate in the BuddyPress IRC room on Freenode have had the chance to look over and comment on a list of new BuddyPress features. These features are what we’d like to see make their way into BuddyPress within the next 1-3 versions.

Here’s where you, as a community member come in. We’d like you to play a part in ranking these features, placing the most important features (to you) at the top, and the less important ones at the bottom. Hopefully we can tally enough votes to get a fairly decent overall perspective on what people want first.

These are just features for existing components, the two new components – status updates and albums are already at the top of the roadmap.

I’ve built an interface over the last couple of days that will allow any BuddyPress.org member to log in and start “Roadmap Ranking”. Each of the features are broken down into their respective component and only one component is displayed on the screen at a time. You should rank each component’s features separately. Just drag and drop features in the list.

Head on over to the roadmap ranking page, and cast your vote!

Now that 1.0 is out in the wild and the development style and standards of BuddyPress have been solidified, it’s time to share a few development style posts.

The first one is all about using custom slugs for the built in BuddyPress components.

BuddyPress (by default) functions around the URL structure. That is, when you punch in a particular URL it analyzes that URL and then works out what you are trying to do.

For example, the URL http://example.org/members/andy/messages tells BuddyPress that you are looking at the members area for member andy, and then in the messages component trying to view the newest messages in your inbox. BuddyPress will then perform all its internal checks to make sure you have the credentials to view this page, fetch the messages, then forward onto a template file to display them.

As you can see from that example, slugs in BuddyPress are an integrated part of how the application functions. So how do we change them?

It’s actually as simple as defining the slugs you want to use in your wp-config.php file. All the slugs for every built in component can be changed. Here’s a list of settings you can add (with some alternate slugs already set), that will change the slugs for each component:

define ( 'BP_ACTIVITY_SLUG', 'streams' );
define ( 'BP_BLOGS_SLUG', 'journals' );
define ( 'BP_MEMBERS_SLUG', 'users' );
define ( 'BP_FRIENDS_SLUG', 'peeps' );
define ( 'BP_GROUPS_SLUG', 'gatherings' );
define ( 'BP_MESSAGES_SLUG', 'notes' );
define ( 'BP_WIRE_SLUG', 'pinboard' );
define ( 'BP_XPROFILE_SLUG', 'info' );

/* Some other non-component slugs */
define ( 'BP_REGISTER_SLUG', 'signup' );
define ( 'BP_ACTIVATION_SLUG', 'enable' );
define ( 'BP_SEARCH_SLUG', 'find' );
define ( 'BP_HOME_BLOG_SLUG', 'news' );

It’s just a matter of picking and choosing which slugs you’d like to change. You can then just paste the lines you need for those slugs from above, into your wp-config.php file somewhere before the “Stop Editing!” line.

I’m happy to announce that version 1.0 of BuddyPress is now available for download.

This release marks over a year of solid development, starting from the roots of the ChickSpeak project, all the way to the blossoming developer community I see interacting on this site everyday.

This is just the first step on a long road ahead. So much is possible now that we have a solid WordPress-based social framework to build upon.

The status updates and gallery components are next on the roadmap, you can expect to see versions of those components appearing later this year. We’ll also be going through the hundreds of enhancement tickets we’ve received, and with your help prioritizing them for future versions.

I’m most excited to see what plugin developers and theme designers can come up with. Even in the pre-release stages, plugins to extend and add functionality have already been popping up. If you’re a plugin developer or theme designer, be sure to check out the skeleton component and skeleton theme. These packages will provide you with a solid starting point to build BuddyPress components and custom themes from.

I’d also like to give some serious thanks to the community that has rallied around this project. I was told that getting people excited and involved with a new OSS project can be one of the hardest tasks to accomplish. I’m really bowled over that so many people have become involved with BuddyPress development and feedback on a daily basis.

I’d like to give a mention to every developer who has helped with the project, whether it be with tickets, advice, feedback or support:

adrenalis, ageeshkg, andy, andrea_r, arghagain, arturo84, armchairGeneral, atrax, barry, beaulebens, bebopcool, belogical, benny148148, bercon, bergsten, bflora, blogestudio, bloom, bluestraw, borkweb, bpress-tr, brianbrey, burtadsit, buzz_lightyear, catiakitahara, cawoodm, cdancal, ceo, chouf1, chriscree, conceptfusion, coto, creede, crippledtechnology, DJPaul, Dace, da3rX, daiko, danielfelice, daysleeperxyz, ddmitry, developdaly, dfa327, diegoferrari, digitalsaints, dnusim, dreman1, drmike, duanestorey, dudboi, egerrits, ev3rywh3re, ezd, FrankVolkelm, famous, farmerinchina, fishbowl81, frumph, fserer, GIGALinux, gbellucci, geordee, gerbilo, gogoplata, gordie.lachance, gwrey, hally47, hudatoriq, hyper123, hyrxx, IdaWebCo, ian-wallace, iprashant, iqcuties, italways, Jehy, JurMous, j.conti, jag25, jasonago, jbasdf, jeffry.degrande, jeffsayre, jehy, jfcarter, jmax123, joalbright, john268, johnbillion, johnjamesjacoby, johnnypea, josswinn, jpelker, jvinch, KevinHeath, keppy, khmiin, kilmarac, lancewillett, lienxing, lilyfan, lostdeviant, lucahurst, matt, maagic-net, mark-k, martinnr5, matjack1, matt826, maxaud, mburp, mdawaffe, midwestbonsai, miguael, mikepratt, mikey312, milo317, momo360modena, mrwiblog, mufasa, mutiu, mypop, Nightgunner5m, nateritter, nbachiyski, ndrwld, neuromancer2701, nicolagreco, nolageek, noumansaleem, owrede, PerS, PierreR, PioneerSkies, Ptath, philpeter, phlux0r, pioneerskies, realfam, reprint, roypm, salsicha, sgrunt, sharvank, sharvankumar, shawnkhall, simonwheatley, slaFFik, sollaires, stecklars, Taffman, takayukister, takuya, talk2manoj, tekanji, terryjsmith, thezohan10, trent, tvc123, vachi, vintcn, walter24, wardeh, webzworks, westpointer, whyisjake, wildrot, williamsba1, windhamdavid, wordpressbob, wrkng, xmailr, xmailr, yoavf, zahirtas, zanzoon, zheng1212

BuddyPress version 1.0 RC-2 has now been tagged and made available for download.

This release requires version 2.7.1 of WordPress MU, but for good reason. It is now possible to automatically download, install and upgrade BuddyPress from within the WordPress MU plugin admin area.

If you are upgrading from RC-1 it is very important that you read the upgrade instructions as the installation and setup of BuddyPress has changed significantly.

If you’re installing BuddyPress for the first time, please follow the updated installation instructions.

We are now in the final stretch. Version 1.0 will be available within a week from today.

In the very early releases of BuddyPress, most actions that involved entering information were done in the WordPress admin area. With blogging this works really well, you want to focus on writing and there is no need for you to be dazzled by jazzy graphics during that process. With social networking the story is a bit different. You don’t want to have to jump into the WordPress admin area to update your profile or check your messages, then head back to the themed front-facing site to continue browsing the network. All this does is break continuity, and provides a fairly scattered and clumsy user experience.

To alleviate this problem, BuddyPress themes contain template files and functions for displaying and updating information. By doing this, the user never has to jump between two different worlds and they can happily browse through a consistent interface regardless of their task.

By moving this functionality into the theme, we have something new to consider – new feature support and backwards compatibility. In WordPress new features are normally handled within the administration area. This means existing blog themes will usually always work with new WordPress versions, and only occasionally need some new template functions added.

New functionality in BuddyPress will almost always be enabled through theme upgrades. However, our policy will be that existing themes will not break and backwards compatibility will always be assured. As a theme designer it is up to you to decide which BuddyPress features you want to provide support for, and whether you want to support new features introduced in future BuddyPress versions.

With each major BuddyPress version, template functions will be added to provide access to new functionality. With each release we’ll also provide a “template cheat-sheet”, this will show theme designers how to use the new template functions and introduce new features in their themes.

As well as the cheat-sheet, designers can also take a look at the default BuddyPress themes (bundled with every installation) and the skeleton theme that provides a clean base to start from. These themes will always stay up to date with the latest feature set.

If you have any specific questions about theming, please ask them in the comments and I’ll do my best to answer.

In developing Petomundo!, one of the biggest drawbacks that we faced was in using the default WordPress search. At an early meeting after the Pet Breeds database was created, we would type in Beagle, and in the search results, it would be show down the list as the fourth or fifth post.

Another situation arose in dealing with all of the sub-domain content of the site. We have tons of users creating great blog posts all about the animal world, and there was no way to search the other sites using the default search. So, this needed to be addressed too.

I was a little nervous about the integration with Google Site search as I had used a variety of plugins before that didn’t work the way that I wanted to, so off I went, determined to make it work the way that I wanted.

Here are the steps in a general order.

Google

1. Start off at Google Custom Search Engine and create an account. The reason that we are using Google Custom Search Engine and not Site Search, is that site search you have to pay for, and custom search is ad supported, so it is free. Also, you can set up your adsense account and even make some change for those searches.
2. Fill out all of the forms to get going. The magic comes when you get to the section about sites to search. Theoretically, you could add all of the sub sites, but Google provides a nice wild card setting by adding an asterisk the front or back end of the domain name for sub-folders, or sub-domains. I added these variables:
   • *.petomundo.com/*
   • petomundo.com/store/*
   • petomundo.com/petbreeds/*
   • petomundo.com/members/*

   The first element does a comprehensive search of the whole site, sub-domains, and sub-folders. The second and third provide a refined search that will explain in a moment.

3. Click on Standard (ad supported) Edition and the terms of service, and submit.
4. On the next page, there is a box to try out a query, and I FYI, I have never been able to have it return anything, but it has worked for me on the site.
5. Once you have completed the registration process, click on the control panel button for your site.
6. The basic area can be reviewed. You may wish to have the search engine public, (there are others for code, apple stuff, etc.) When you are done there, if you would like to make money one ads, click over to the make money button in the left column.
7. If you have an Adsense account, simply enter your info. One thing to keep in mind is that you need to make sure you are signed up for AdSense for Search and not just AdSense for Content or Referrals. This needs to be done to make money off the ads that will show up as part your search results.
8. Once that is done, click on the code button to get the code for your site.
9. For me, the goal was to host the results on my site, so I picked that option. If you are looking to make money via adsense, iFrame is the only option.
10. In WordPress, create a new page called search and note the permalink for that page. For Petomundo, it is http://petomundo.com/search-2/.
11. In Google, add the URL for your newly created page into the area where the search results will appear.
12. Now, time to create a few pages in WordPress to handle this new content.

WordPress

1. Let’s start off with the page results template. Take your page.php template in your theme folder and duplicate it, renaming it searchresults.php. At the beginning of the folder add this code to distinguish it as a template page.
2. Now, in the content area of your page, delete the contents of the loop and paste the code from Google into the area where the loop would have been.
3. Now, for the search form, there are few options here. You may want to add it somewhere in your header, perhaps in your sidebar, or elsewhere. With Petomundo, I added it in the header, and also in the sidebar where I had another search box that people where accustomed too. I also added it to the top of the search results page so that if someone wanted to refine there search, they could do it right within the same page as the search results. Like they would with Google.
4. Once the code is place, go back and edit the search page you created back in step 10 of the Google side. If you are running 2.7.* there is a box at the bottom right about page templates. Add the Search Results Page template and you should be set.

A lot of steps, but mostly copy/paste. As I mentioned up in step 2 of the Google part, there are ways to add refinements to your search. I wanted a way for people to search specifically in the Pet Breeds database, and the Petomundo Store, so I added refinements to those search items. With the Member wildcard, you can search just the member profiles for content. Looking for someone with a dog like yours? That is the method there.

Other items of note, some simple CSS will make the results look smashing on your page. I have a content box, with a white background, and then another div inside that that houses the results. That way there is some padding on the sides.

I would like to create a nice little box that houses the search box on the results page, and give it a nice header like I have done other place on the site too… But overall, I am super satisfied with the product. And unlike Google Site Search, I don’t have to pay for this, and you can have the potential to make money too.

This post was written by Jake Spurlock, a member of the BuddyPress developer community. If you’re interested in contributing to the BuddyPress blog, please log in and head to the “Write Post” link in the menu bar.

We just began using BuddyPress for a K-12 District in Dearborn, Michigan. As a pilot, Dearborn public schools began using BuddyPress as a student ePortfolio/journal network about three weeks ago.

Our student blogging world is quickly growing – particularly at the high school and middle school level where several teachers were clamoring for a controlled and safe environment for students to blog. Keeping the blog world safe was easy to solve.

We used several plugins to in-effect create an environment where students and staff need to log in in order to participate or view any of the content generated in our blog world. With this same plugin we are also able to allow certain blogs to be “public” and both students and teachers can publish posts to a blog that can be read by all. This feature is useful when the teacher wants to have a classroom website where all parties can participate in sharing and building knowledge. Of course, the teacher is ultimately the one who approves the postings of students before they go “live” much like approving comments.

The response from students has overall been very positive. They enjoy having the freedom to create blogs on their own as well as take ownership of the learning process as they write and reflect on classroom topics. BuddyPress gives students the look and feel of other web tools they use outside of school so they feel at home using it.

As a reference, here are the main plugins that we used:

• WPMU LDAP for authentication (We have over 18,000 students and several thousand staff members who all have access)
• Site-wide Privacy Settings
• Community Blogs for BuddyPress
• Content Monitoring (Finds keywords and alerts site admin of bad content from blogs)

This post was written by Chris Kenniburg, a member of the BuddyPress developer community. If you’re interested in contributing to the BuddyPress blog, please log in and head to the “Write Post” link in the menu bar.

When my wife became pregnant, as a first time dad I was over the moon. At that point, your life sort of changes. You start to read baby books and leaflets, meet health advisers and hospital staff. You’re plunged into a world of baby care, lactation, compromise and change. It can be quite daunting at first. I would say it’s quite common to feel a little out of your depth. You certainly start wanting answers to questions that doctors and midwives can’t answer like – can I really be a dad? I can’t even look after myself! Or, how will my life change when the baby is born?

After weeks of contemplation (possibly confusion to some degree), I read a book – a baby diary. What a revelation! The raw truths of mother and fatherhood were reassuring. Many of my questions were answered in that book, the rest were answered by speaking to other mums and dads, reassuring me that these questions I had were normal. It was a weight lifted from my shoulders.

So, what has me becoming a dad got to do with BuddyPress? Well, about 3 months into the pregnancy, after reading this baby diary I had an idea. I was so reassured by the raw truths of parenting that I thought, why not build a web site that lets mums and dads create their own pregnancy diary or baby diaries and chat with each other? Not only will it allow parents to remember and read back on the unforgettable special moments, it will also serve as a really useful tool to reassure others on the quirks of parenting like I was reassured by the book i read.

As I started on my quest to build such a site I already knew I was going to use WordPress MU. I’ve used it a lot in the past (and practically daily for my job) nothing else comes close. Shortly after setting up the foundations of my site I came across BuddyPress. Initially I was looking for a messaging / chat plugin for WPMU when I stumbled on this wonderful social networking plugin suite. I took one look at the site which was running an early incarnation of BuddyPress and I was hooked – and quite frankly taken aback by what it could offer.

In fact, BuddyPress opened up a whole host of opportunity for my conquest for an online community for parents. It is feature rich, built on an already excellent WP platform and supported, built and maintained by people like me and you. Who wants software supported by the hardcore of coders who speak to you in pseudo bable?

The customization of BuddyPress didn’t stop at the first glance. As soon as I installed it I managed to customize the language to suit my needs, branding my site as a diary site and not a blogging site. I created and plugged in a parent based theme and concentrated heavily on usability.

The administration of BuddyPress also allowed me to completely customize the member profile pages. Not long after the first few releases in alpha and beta, I had forums integrated into groups for my network. Honestly, I could be here all day singing its praises. It opened my eyes and allowed me to take my idea that extra step, a fully fledged social networking platform that’s actually easy to use.

In fact the BP guys have included most of the important features any good social network should have and it’s only a beta! Social networking is the future, it’s even taking over email for some people here in the UK. BuddyPress 1.0 looks to solidify those excellent features with yet more in the pipeline.

I’m very happy with the results, I’m giving something back to the parent community now. Even though it is early days, I’ve already had very positive feedback. I’ve even had the local paper contact us and we have an article going in next week!

Parent Diary.co.uk – with special thanks to BP and WPMU.

This post was written by Ben (oldskoo1), a member of the BuddyPress developer community. If you’re interested in contributing to the BuddyPress blog, please log in and head to the “Write Post” link in the menu bar.

If you’re reading this post in a feed reader, it’s time to head on over to BuddyPress.org and take a look at our shiny new look.

This site has been built from the ground up using WordPress and BuddyPress and now also acts as a complete developer network.

We’ve got a new plugin repository, theme browser, developer landing page, not to mention developer groups, integrated forums and developer profiles.

One thing you’ll notice as you begin to use the new site is the deep integration of all features. If you log in once, you’re logged into everything – the forums, developer network, codex and site blog.

Your activity stream will also track everything you do here, and that includes forum posts, trac tickets, blog comments and codex changes. We’re tracking your every move!

The final release of BuddyPress is very close. We’re currently looking forward to the release of WordPress MU 2.7.1. After that you’ll see some changes to adapt BuddyPress to the new plugin update functionality and then 1.0 release.

Happy BuddyPress-ing.

There are a couple of announcements to make that will effect both the BuddyPress project, and the WordPress MU project.

Over 300 commits and almost 200 bugs have been reported, confirmed and fixed since beta one versions of the BuddyPress plugins were released on December 15, 2008. Tomorrow the final versions are due, however instead of the final, release candidate versions of all plugins will be made available for download.

We don’t expect there to be any major changes between these release candidates and the final versions. We’re holding off on releasing the final versions for one specific reason, which brings me to the second announcement.

As it stands, site-wide plugin support in WordPress MU is fairly limited. You cannot activate or deactivate plugins, nor can you hook into the new automatic upgrade features introduced in version 2.7.

Over the next few weeks there will be work done to add integrated support for site-wide plugins in WordPress MU. Site-wide plugin support will provide the ability for plugins to be activated and deactivated site-wide via the administration panel. More importantly however, they will be able hook into the automatic upgrade features.

Once this feature is in place you will be able to download, install and update BuddyPress through your WordPress MU site administration panel. Having the ability to do this will greatly reduce the inconvenience of point release upgrades, which are an inevitable part of new product releases.

Tomorrow the download links for the release candidate will be posted on the downloads page. We’ll be putting the final version out as soon as site-wide plugin support in WordPress MU is completed.

Update: The download links for RC-1 are now live.