Have to agree, finding BuddyPress plugins that integrate with & add to BP is getting harder because of the current extend section.
i’m sure a simpler filter would do the trick. Or better yet, only include plugins that have the keyword buddypress or BP in the title. all the real ones seem to.
would this be easy to change?
I’m not sure this is really necessary. Why shouldn’t plugins that work with BP, but aren’t specifically made for it, be listed? You mentioned Default Blog Options, which can add a lot of value to a BP installation, if you allow user blogs.
Also, forcing plugin authors to add BP into their plugin name is a bad idea. If a plugin also works on a WP install without BP, it would put some users off. A good example for that would be s2member…
I’ll have to go back and rename some of my plugins, if this happens. There’s got to be a better way. Maybe sortabllity by rating or popularity as determined by bp.org users, which would filter out the irrelevant stuff.
The real issue is that any plugin in the WP Plugin Repo that is tagged “buddypress” is automatically listed in BP.org’s Extend Section. So, any plugin dev that uses that tag will have their work listed.
We could request that plugin devs use the tag “buddypress-compatible”, instead of “buddypress”, when tagging plugins that are not dependent on BP but can run under BP. This way, only those plugins that are truly BuddyPress specific (dependent) will be listed in the BP.org Extend Section. Of course, it would be up to each plugin dev to honor that request.
One could argue that plugins that provide a new widget could be tagged buddypress as they don’t break BuddyPress, per se. Jeff, I don’t think asking people to use a different tag for BuddyPress compatibility will work, people won’t change what they know.
The page will turn into junk unless there is some degree of oversight applied to the plugins listed.
@DJPaul
That is a good point. However, since BP.org is currently pulling in all plugins that include the “buddypress” tag, there is not much we can do. If we had a BP.org plugin and theme moderator, that would be different!
since there is attention on the extend section – i noticed the “last updated” is off by 15 hours. on one i just updated: “Last Update: 15 hours ago”
Might I suggest tag BP plugins as “buddypress-extend” or “bp-extension” plus “buddypress” just to make the distinction that that the plugin is bp-dependent as opposed to just being bp-friendly.
Why dont you make your own directory?
@mercime –
Yeah, that was my suggest above as well.
@jeffsayre –
And you are absolutely correct on both points, thank you 
Now what is the SOP to make this come true?
@Dwenaus is spot on guy, (IMHO) sorry. Let’s face it, the examples he gave all put their listing here for viz purposes only. It’s almost spam-like. The photo gallery one is the worst infraction as it is the most misleading. Everyone in BP-land anxiously awaits a fully BP aware image plugin (we’re talking ones that integrate with xprofile, the activity stream etc) There are tons of gallery plugins on WP (I use NextGen Gallery a lot) but they are no different than this one. Why don’t they ALL get listed here? They shouldn’t. The only reason they added #buddypress to their listing was exposure. I have written that plugin dev many times to get clarity on this and they have disappeared. That’s because they just wanted exposure.
Are there useful WP only plugins in a BP world, of course. Should they be tagged as such? Debatable. Boone, Jeff, and others have done such great work in BP specific stuff that it becomes an insult and a disservice.
This is different than the WP plugin repo. It requires some moderation ( @jjj and @apeatling you listening?) because to build a BP plugin is non-trivial.
@mikepratt @jeffsayre @djpaul and others, I’m glad a conversation got started here. It sure would be good to hear from the powers-that-be about this.
I especially like the suggestion about using a new extension such as bp-extension that makes it clear that this is an extension of BuddyPress rather than compatible. Heck, maybe even introduce a bp-compatible tag as well so no one feels left out. However getting everyone to switch over would be tough.
I also like the idea of basing the list on the rating plugins get in the buddypress site. but new interesting plugins might not get rated, so that might not work.
having a separate repository will take time, and may never happen because it has to synch with the WP backend, trac, and many other things. possible, but more work.
What about my idea of just filtering the non-buddypress plugins from the buddypress tag. It might be a bit of work, but it is more inclusive. maybe we can even start some folksonomy where we tag certain plugins with keywords somewhere so at least others know not to waste our times figureing out of they are real BP plugins or not. something like not-bp or not-bp-plugin or even wp-plugin.
The problem with using another tag like “bp-extension” is a non-related BP plugin can still use that tag.
I think moderation is the only way to go.
@r-a-y true.
A good approach might be to add a few new tabs to the extend section. In order they could be:
Featured Plugins – a hand picked list of the good stuff
Compatible Plugins – any plugin with buddypress tag (the current list)
Higest Rated – this could work if it was based only on the buddypress.org ratings.
