We haven’t updated the BuddyPress Codex for a while and it really needs a big refresh! The BuddyPress development team decided at the end of their last week meeting to spend the next 4 to 6 months on this very important task: make our documentation up to date, better organized, more accurate and more useful to all BuddyPress user “levels”.
That’s why we kindly invite you all to join this effort and why not become members of a new BuddyPress Docs team!
We’ll meet every other Wednesday for an hour to talk about docs during a new “documentation contributor hour”. Our kick off meeting is scheduled next week (March 2) at 20:00 UTC. It will happen into the #BuddyPress channel of the WordPress.org slack.
If you haven’t registered a WordPress.org account, you’ll need to do so: create your account on WordPress.org
If you haven’t joined the WordPress.org Slack (the tool WordPress contributors are using to communicate with), you’ll need to do it, once you did the 1st step, from this place: https://make.wordpress.org/chat/.
If you have questions, don’t hesitate to comment this post š
“La Pinoāz” is our first major release of 2022, and it’s version 10 of BuddyPress! It all started for us in 2009, 2 years before Sanam Kapoor opened his very first pizzeria in his hometown of Chandigarh, India. Known for its delicious and rich traditional Italian pizza, “La Pinoāz” soon became one of the most famous foods shared in the Indian community. From that very moment to 350 plus restaurants over India today and soon elsewhere in the world, Sanam and his team have unquestionably come a very long and successful way. La Pinoāz is also the only pizza chain in India equipped with giant pizza machines producing the 24ā inch monster pizza š
If youāre upgrading from a previous version of BuddyPress, itās always a good idea to back up your WordPress database and files ahead of time.
You can review all of the changes in this 10.0.0 release in the release notes. Please note that BuddyPress 10.0.0 requires WordPress 5.4.
That being said, let’s talk about the new delicious features we believe you are going to enjoy a lot!
Site membership requests
The pending accounts administration screen
Take control of your siteās membership! With site membership requests, administrators can significantly reduce the number of spam users trolling their sites.
When requests are enabled, visitors may submit a membership request, which must be manually approved by a site administrator. Read more about this feature.
More engaging logging activities
These simple activities about specific user interactions or events (for example, you and me are now friends) are more visually attractive to improve user engagement in your community.
The most impressive new activity is that which is generated when a user updates her profile photo: it will include the profile photo that spurred the creation of the activity item, even if it has been changed since. Learn more about it by reading this developer note.
As shown in the image above, the BuddyPress administration screens are now using the layout WordPress uses for its tabbed administration screens such as the Site-Health or Privacy screens.
Knowing the WordPress pages BuddyPress uses for its front-end directory screens is simpler with special status information displayed beside all BuddyPress pages.
A new area to discover our current and future BuddyPress Add-ons
BuddyPress Add-ons are experimental plugins, beta features packaged as plugins, that will be made available into the official WordPress.org plugins directory so that itās easier for you to test them and give the development team your feedback.
The more we are to get involved into the future of our open source project, the brighter it will be and the faster weāll be able to include great new features!
BuddyPress Add-ons are also stable complementary BP Components or BP Blocks, which we have decided to keep independent from the core of BuddyPress, leaving you the choice whether to use the feature or not. The BP Search Block is the first example of this second category of add-ons. Give it a try; you can easily install it from yourĀ BuddyPress Add-onsĀ administration screen.
Ready for Twenty Twenty-Two!
WordPress 5.9 will introduce Full Site Editing featuring the new default theme Twenty Twenty-Two.
We’ve adjusted our BP Theme Compatibility API so that you can enjoy this amazing feature, making sure that BuddyPress-generated content integrates optimally within themes supporting it.
ā The BP Nouveau Template Pack also includes a companion stylesheet to maximize BP pages layout within Twenty Twenty-Two.
Under the hood
10.0.0 comes with more than 70 changes including performance improvements to the BP Notifications, BP Activity and BP Signups APIs; Date Query support for the Members, Groups and Sites loops; new BP Avatar UI Recycle tab, improved inline documentation/translators comments and code formatting. Have a look to the release notes to discover them all!
Many thanks to the 39 contributors who helped us build & translate BuddyPress 10.0.0
“Release Candidate” means that we believe the new version is ready for release, but with more than 200,000 active installs, hundreds of BuddyPress plugins and thousands of WordPress themes, itās possible we missed something. BuddyPress 10.0.0 is slated for release on January 17, 2022, but your help is needed to get there š.
You can get the 10.0.0-RC1 pre-release package in 4 ways:
Try the BP Beta Tester plugin. (This is the easiest way!)
We’ve closed over 70 tickets in the process of developing BP 10. Here are some highlights:
š Site Membership Requests
Site Administrators wishing to have more control over who can join their community will be able to enable site membership requests from their BuddyPress Options Administration screen. Once done, BuddyPress sign-ups are transformed into membership requests to be manually reviewed and approved by an administrator to validate new user accounts.
š More engaging logging activities
These simple activities about specific user interactions or events (e.g.: a user became a friend of another user) will be more visually attractive to improve user engagement in your community. The most impressive new activity is that which is generated when a user updates their profile photo: it will include the profile photo that spurred the creation of the activity item, even if it has been updated since šø!
šØ WordPress Full Site Editing compatibility
You’re beta testing WordPress 5.9: first thank you, second please take a few more minutes to check the improvements we’ve made to our BP Theme Compatibility API to play nice with themes supporting Full Site Editing such as the next WordPress default theme: Twenty Twenty-Two.
ā A new place to easily discover our next BuddyPress Add-ons
BuddyPress Add-ons are side projects/projects as features/next BuddyPress blocks maintained by the BuddyPress development team we’ll soon make more widely available by publishing them on the WordPress plugin directory. When BuddyPress 10.0.0 is released, you’ll find a new tab to your “Add Plugins” Administration screen. On it, you’ll see a new add-on for a potentially upcoming feature: BP Rewrites. We think this will bring more contributions to the BuddyPress project as a whole.
Translate BuddyPress into your language. The release candidate also marks the string freeze point of the 10.0.0 release schedule. And we don’t have much time to update all of the BuddyPress translations. So if you speak a language other than English, please help us translate BuddyPress into as many languages as possible!
If you think youāve found a bug, you can share it with us replying to this support topic or if youāre comfortable writing a reproducible bug report, file one on BuddyPress Trac.
Thanks in advance for your help–we can’t build BuddyPress without you! Happy testing!
Immediately available isĀ BuddyPress 9.2.0. This maintenance release fixes three bugs, anticipates one issue which appeared while beta testing WordPress 5.9 and prepares the release of our first BuddyPress add-on (a community search block). For details on the changes, please read theĀ 9.2.0 release notes.
The BuddyPress developers and contributors wish you the best for this new year! Have fun, stay safe and carry on sharing great words & feelings with WordPress and BuddyPress š š¤
š¶ All BuddyPress wants for Christmasš§āš is you šµ … to test this new pre-release!
If you havenāt tested our first 10.0.0 beta release, hereās another opportunity to help us put the final touches on our next major release so that we make sure it will fit perfectly into your WordPress-/ BuddyPress-specific configuration.
Beta testing is very important, and we need you all, whether youāre a novice or an advanced user, a theme designer or a plugin author. Please contribute š.
Custom Group Extensions: if you activated one or more plugins adding a new tab to your groups or if you built one or more plugins playing with the Group Extension API. It’s very important you take some time to make sure everything is working as expected in this area.
Contribute to WordPress 5.9 beta tests as well! Let’s all check that BuddyPress pages are getting along well with Twenty Twenty-Two, the next WordPress default theme.
The Private Messages component just got a new feature: messages thread exit. Users can now remove themselves from a conversation.
The final release is slated for early January andĀ we need your help to get there: please test 10.0.0-beta2. If you find a bug, please report it on our Trac or as a reply to this forum topic.
The BuddyPress core team is wishing you all: Merry Christmas š
The current target for final release is early next year : January 5, 2022. Thatās only 3 weeks away š±, so we would appreciate your help making sure this next major version of your community engine is as good as it can be.
As usual, testing for bugs is the key to a safe upgrade. Itās the main reason we actually package beta/RC versions š so please give us a few minutes of your time to make sure this pre-release behaves the right way with your specific WordPress configuration, your theme, and the other WordPress plugins you are using. Try to use a testing site which is very close to the one you are using in production. If you find something weird (aside from the great new features below), please report it on BuddyPress Trac or post a reply to this support topic.
Around 70 changes to expect in 10.0.0
You can check out this report on Trac for the full list of them. Below are the ones we believe will improve your BuddyPress experience in the most significant way.
š Site Membership Requests
Site Administrators wishing to have more control over who can join their community will be able to enable site membership requests from their BuddyPress Options Administration screen. Once done, BuddyPress sign-ups are transformed into membership requests to be manually reviewed and approved by an Administrator to validate new user accounts.
š More engaging logging activities
These simple activities about specific user interactions or events (e.g.: a user became a friend of another user) will be more visually attractive to improve user engagement in your community. The most impressive new activity is that which is generated when a user updates their profile photo: it will include the profile photo that spurred the creation of the activity item, even if it has been updated since šø!
šØ WordPress Full Site Editing compatibility
You’re beta testing WordPress 5.9: first thank you, second please take a few more minutes to check the improvements we’ve made to our BP Theme Compatibility API to play nice with themes supporting Full Site Editing such as the next WordPress default theme: Twenty Twenty-Two.
ā A new place to easily discover our next BuddyPress Add-ons
BuddyPress Add-ons are side projects/projects as features/next BuddyPress blocks maintained by the BuddyPress development team we’ll soon make more widely available by publishing them on the WordPress plugin directory. When BuddyPress 10.0.0 is released, you’ll find a new tab to your “Add Plugins” Administration screen. On it, you’ll see a new add-on for a potentially upcoming feature: BP Rewrites. We think this will bring more contributions to the BuddyPress project as a whole.
BuddyPress 9.1.1 is now available. This is a security and maintenance release. All BuddyPress installations are strongly encouraged to upgrade as soon as possible.
The 9.1.1 release addresses three security issues:
The activation key was included into the responses of the create_item method of BP REST API Signup controller. Discovered by Brajesh Singh.
An SQL Injection vulnerability was fixed in BP_Notifications_Notification::get_order_by_sql(). Discovered by David Cavins.
An SQL Injection vulnerability was fixed in BP_Invitation::get_order_by_sql(). Discovered by David Cavins.
These vulnerabilities were reported privately to the BuddyPress team, in accordance with WordPressās security policies. Our thanks to the reporters for practicing coordinated disclosure.
BuddyPress 9.1.1 also fixes 3 bugs. For complete details, visit the 9.1.1 changelog.
If for a specific reason you can’t upgrade to 9.1.1, we also included the security fixes to our branches from 2.9 to 8.0. Here’s the list of the available downloads for the corresponding tags, you can also find on our WordPress.org Directory Advanced page:
If you are using BP 2.9.4 and can’t upgrade to 9.1.1, please upgrade to 2.9.5.1
If you are using BP 3.2.0 and can’t upgrade to 9.1.1, please upgrade to 3.2.1
If you are using BP 4.4.0 and can’t upgrade to 9.1.1, please upgrade to 4.4.1
If you are using BP 5.2.0 and can’t upgrade to 9.1.1, please upgrade to 5.2.1
If you are using BP 6.4.0 and can’t upgrade to 9.1.1, please upgrade to 6.4.2
If you are using BP 7.3.0 and can’t upgrade to 9.1.1, please upgrade to 7.3.2
If you are using BP 8.0.0 and can’t upgrade to 9.1.1, please upgrade to 8.0.2
9.0.0 is named after Mico’s Pizza in Sanary, a little town on the french riviera. The story of Mico starts in 1968 when Liliane and Jean-Louis bought a restaurant looking like a swiss chalet. “Mico” is the nickname customers gave to Liliane (Jean-Louis’s wife) because of the remarkable outfits and big colorful hats she used to wear. Their son Romuald, twelve years after following in his parents’ footsteps, continues the tradition and offers us a moment of happiness around a table that is always excellent, friendly and so uncommon, just like BuddyPress 9.0.0 š
You can get it clicking on the above button, downloading it from theĀ WordPress.org plugin directory, installing or updating it directly from your WordPress dashboardĀ or checking it out from ourĀ Subversion repository.
š If youāre upgrading from a previous version of BuddyPress, itās always a good idea to back-up your WordPress database and files ahead of time.
You can review all of the changes in this 9.0.0 release in the release notes. Below are the key features we believe you are going to enjoy most!
Itās all about Widget Blocks!
WordPress 5.8 is right around the corner and debuts a brand new way to manage widgets: the Widget Block Editor. With BuddyPress 9.0.0, we have introduced 10 new BuddyPress Blocks, so you can continue to use your favorite BP Widgets with the new WP Block approach.
The new BP Widget Blocks are simply Legacy Widgets weāve rebuilt as BP Blocks, which means you can also access them in the Block Editor for use in your posts or pages!
PS: Have you noticed that the icons for BuddyPress Blocks are now bright red?
Convert a Legacy Widget into a Block Widget in two clicks š
As shown in the image above, itās very easy to transform a Widget into a Block. Your existing Widget settings will automagically be imported into your shiny, new BP Block.
NB: Creating a BP Block for each existing BP Legacy Widget marks the first step toward the progressive retirement of these tiny pieces of BuddyPress content.
The BP REST API: Improved endpoints and a new one!
This BuddyPress release was built in a short time frame to be ready for the release of WordPress 5.8.
While doing the work on BP Widget Blocks, weāve also manipulated many of our REST API endpoints and took this opportunity to improve several of them. Weāre also introducing a new Sitewide Notices endpoint to allow site admins to create, edit, or delete notices and let all of your users fetch the active notice.
Under the hood
9.0.0 comes with fewer changes than most of our releases but includes fixes for issues which appeared in 8.0.0 and BP Nouveau Template Pack improvements.
Many thanks to the 24 contributors who helped us build & translate BuddyPress 9.0.0
How are you using BuddyPress? Receiving your feedback and suggestions for future versions of BuddyPress genuinely motivates and encourages our contributors. Please share your feedback about this version of BuddyPress on our website.
Important note: this BuddyPress release was built in a short time frame (we even skipped the beta release) to be ready for the release of WordPress 5.8. Our team’s primary goal for 9.0.0 was to migrate the BP Legacy Widgets to new BP Widget Blocks. You don’t necessarily need the latest WordPress 5.8 pre-release to test the BuddyPress 9.0.0 Release Candidate, but we’d be happy if you could use both pre-release versions to have your feedback about your experience with managing the BP Widget Blocks within the Widget Block Editor.
“Release Candidate” means that we believe the new version is ready for release, but with more than 200,000 active installs, hundreds of BuddyPress plugins and Thousands of WordPress themes, itās possible something was missed. BuddyPress 9.0.0 is slated for release on July 19, 2021, but your help is needed to get there š.
You can test theĀ 9.0.0-RC1Ā pre-release in 4 ways :
The 10 BuddyPress legacy widgets will have their corresponding BP Blocks so that you can fully enjoy them within the next Widget Block editor and of course inside your Post/Page Block Editor.
The BP Block collection is going to be tripled from 5 to 15 Blocks š
How you can help
This is really important: this release also marks the string freeze point of the 9.0.0 release schedule. And we have less than 4 days to update BuddyPress translation.
PS: If you think youāve found a bug, you can share it with us replying to this support topic or if youāre comfortable writing a reproducible bug report, file one on BuddyPress Trac.
