BuddyPress 6.4.0 is now available. This is a security and maintenance release. All BuddyPress installations are strongly encouraged to upgrade as soon as possible.
The 6.4.0 release addresses one security issue: non-capable users could add a style attributes to “span” and “p” elements in possible rich text fields of their profile page. The vulnerability has been fixed.
Version 6.4.0 also fixes 7 bugs, including compatibility updates to welcome PHP 8.0 release (Congratulations to all PHP 8.0 contributors!).
This is an important milestone as we progress toward the BuddyPress 7.0.0 final release date. “Release Candidate” means that we think the new version is ready for release, but with more than 200,000 active installs, hundreds of BuddyPress plugins, thousands of WordPress themes, and many possible specific WordPress configurations it’s possible we missed one or more details.
BuddyPress 7.0.0 is slated for release on December 9th, 2020. Do you want to help us get there? Here’s how you can:
You are a BuddyPress Plugin and/or Theme developer? You should test your code against BuddyPress 7.0.0. If you find compatibility problems, please report a ticket on our Trac environment.
You are using BuddyPress and can easily set up a staging environment? Please use our Beta Tester plugin or directly install the Release Candidate on your staging site to make sure everything works as expected for you. If not: tell us what’s wrong on Slack or reply to this specific support topic with a detailed explanation of your trouble.
You are a WordPress news writer? We’d love you to share this post with your readers: the more testers, the better!
It’s always best to anticipate than having a bad surprise after updating the plugin from your WordPress Dashboard: get involved!
What to expect from BuddyPress 7.0.0
First, note that BP 7.0.0 will require at least version 4.9 of WordPress. Then, read an overview of its top features in the post we published to announce the first beta of 7.0.0. If you would like more detail, you can read our 7.0.0 developer notes.
First of all, we’d like to thank all the contributors who tested the first beta of our next major release. Beta testing is very important to us as it’s a good way to check the improvements we brought to BuddyPress are behaving as expected on your WordPress/BuddyPress configurations.
BuddyPress 7.0.0-beta2 is now available for testing, and we’d love to have your feedbacks about it!
Since 7.0.0 beta1:
We fixed some issues about the newly introduced features (BP Activity Embed block : 12763 ; BP Types Admin UI : 12764, 12767, 12775, 12776 & 12778).
We improved the performance of the BP xProfile component : 12768 & 12781.
We changed Member Types to behave more like Group Types: 12765, 12767 & 12778.
We gave a default avatar to the BP Blogs on multisite configurations : 12772 & 12779.
We fixed issues with the BP Nouveau Template pack : 12773 & 12774.
We’ve also updated the 7.0.0 release schedule : the 7.0.0 final release is now scheduled to December 9.
And we need you to get there: do test the 7.0.0-beta2 release so that we can eventually solve issues you might find with your plugins, themes or specific WordPress/BuddyPress configurations.
Testing for bugs is an important part of polishing the release during the beta stage and a great way to contribute. Here are some of the big changes and features to pay close attention to while testing (Check out this report on Trac for the full list).
New Administration screens to manage BuddyPress types
In BuddyPress 7.0.0 site administrators will be able to add, edit or delete Member & Group types using their WordPress Administration Screens just like they would do for Post tags.
WP-CLI is the command-line interface for WordPress. You can update plugins, configure multisite installs, and much more, without using a web browser. In 7.0.0, you will be able to Enjoy new BuddyPress CLI commands to manage BuddyPress Group Meta, BuddyPress Activity Meta, activate or deactivate the BuddyPress signup feature and create BuddyPress specific testing code for plugins.
If you think you’ve found a bug, you can post in the support forums. We’d love to hear from you! If you’re comfortable writing a reproducible bug report, file one on BuddyPress Trac.
We will soon publish a maintenance release (6.2.0) to prepare BuddyPress to some changes that will introduce WordPress next major release (5.5.0). WordPress 5.5.0 is slated for August 11, and we’d love you to help us use the coming days to make sure your favorite community engine is ready to fully enjoy this new version of WordPress.
BuddyPress 6.2.0 will make sure our BP Email feature is using the 6.0 version of PHPMailer when WordPress 5.5.0 is installed on your site and will carry on using its version 5.2 when your WordPress version is lower (4.8 to 5.4 for the supported versions of our 6.0 branch). For more information about it, please have a look to this ticket.
If you’re a plugin or a theme developer and are extending our BP Email feature, we strongly advise you to test your code with the latest pre-release of WordPress 5.5.0 (eg: 5.5.0-beta3) and BuddyPress 6.2.0-beta1.
WordPress 5.5.0 will also remove the jQuery Migrate library, as BuddyPress uses a lot jQuery, we’ve been checking the impact of this removal. We haven’t found any issue so far, but if you do, please warn us about it commenting this ticket.
A detailed changelog will be part of our official release notes, but, until then, you can check out this report on Trac for the full list of fixes.
You can test the 6.2.0-beta1 pre-release in 2 ways :
Immediately available is BuddyPress 6.1.0. This maintenance release fixes 6 bugs related to the 6.0.0 release, and is a recommended upgrade for all BuddyPress installations.
We are very excited to announce the immediate availability of BuddyPress 6.0.0 code-named “iovine’s“. You can get it clicking on the above button, downloading it from the WordPress.org plugin directory or checking it out from our Subversion repository.
If you’re upgrading from a previous version of BuddyPress, it’s always a good idea to back-up your WordPress database and files ahead of time.
You can review all of the changes in this 6.0.0 release in the release notes. Below are a few of the key features we know you are going to love!
BP Blocks
BuddyPress 6.0.0 comes with two awesome new blocks for your WordPress Editor: Members and Groups. Made available from the BuddyPress blocks category of your WordPress Block menu, these lovely blocks let you insert a rich content block featuring a specific Member or Group from your community site inside any WordPress Post or Page.
If you’re an Advanced BuddyPresser and wish to fine-tune the BuddyPress blocks for your community site, learn more in this section of our development note about these new blocks.
The BP REST API is now complete!
In 5.0.0, we introduced the first REST API endpoints and provided reference documentation for them. In 6.0.0, we are adding the 6 remaining endpoints you were waiting for: Blogs, Blog avatar, Friends, Group Cover Image, Member Cover Image, and User Signups. You can now build full-featured applications using the BuddyPress REST API!
BP Nouveau has been improved
Does your theme support wide layouts? Awesome! The BP Nouveau template-pack now supports wide (and really, really wide) content areas! This is the first of the many improvements we are bringing to our default set of styling components. It never looked so beautiful in your theme.
Under the hood
6.0.0 includes more than 80 changes to improve your BuddyPress experience as users, as contributors to our code and as contributors to our translations. The biggest change moves local avatar management to the Members component. Read more about it in this development note.
Knowing how you use BuddyPress and getting your point of view about future BuddyPress development is very important to us. Please, take some time to help us decide what’s best for the BuddyPress project.
If you come to Paris (France), you’ll probably want to visit the Louvre Museum. The greatest Pizza restaurant around is Nicola Iovine’s place. You’ll fall in love with how he cares to respect culinary traditions, share authentic flavors, select great quality products imported from Italy and use the real neapolitan pizza dough.
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 in the comments area of this post. And of course, if you’ve found a bug: please tell us about it into our Support forums.
A detailed changelog will be part of our official release note, but you can get a quick overview by reading the post about the 6.0.0 Beta1 release.
Polyglots contributors, there’s some extra work.
This release candidate should introduce around 50 new strings to translate (the ones that were not included previously due to the issue), so thanks in advance for your comprehension and for your help .
