BuddyPress.org

With BuddyPress 1.5 due any day now, we’d like to invite you to take the next major release for a test drive. If you’d like to help us out or even if you’re just curious what’s coming in 1.5, check out the official test site at testbp.org. It’s always running the latest versions of BuddyPress and bbPress, has almost 30,000 members, and is the best way to help us make sure everything is ready for release while letting you be safely behind the driver’s seat.

As a general reminder, we’re keeping running list of API changes for 1.5 in our codex at codex.buddypress.org.

We are putting the finishing touches on the forums component now, and are aiming to release 1.5 as soon as this week. Keep an eye out!

Available immediately is BuddyPress 1.2.9. This is a bug-fix release of the 1.2 branch to ensure full compatibility with WordPress 3.2. (Note: This does not use the new bbPress 2.0! We’re working on it!)

BuddyPress 1.2.9 includes fixes related to the new version of jQuery (1.6.1) that comes packaged with with WordPress 3.2. These changes affect the javascript and ajax behaviors in the bp-default theme. You can read more about them on the WordPress development blog. If your BuddyPress site runs bp-default (or a child theme of it) you’ll need to update to BuddyPress 1.2.9 immediately after updating to WordPress 3.2.

Questions? Let us know in the comments or in the support forums, and stay on the lookout for an early preview of BuddyPress 1.3 sometime in July!

Download BuddyPress 1.2.9 from WordPress Extend or BuddyPress.org.

Our next item up for bid is BuddyPress 1.2.8, which includes a few small bug fixes to the 1.2 branch of code and is a highly recommended update if you are updating to WordPress 3.1.

This release backports a few important fixes from the currently in-development 1.3 version of BuddyPress to play nicely with the new and very much improved WordPress network administration interface. We’ve also updated the bundled version of bbPress from 1.0.2 to 1.0.3, which addresses a few issues that do not effect BuddyPress directly.

Every effort has been put into supporting both WordPress 3.0 and 3.1 with this release to make updating your sites as painless as possible, so this should be another worry-free update!

This year at WordCamp New York there will be a whole track dedicated to WordPress MU and BuddyPress. Some of the topics being presented are:

Getting off the Farm:
WPMU Beyond Blog Hosting. We all know that WPMU can be used to host multiple blogs for public or internal signups. But what else can you do? How far can you stretch it? I’ll be showcasing a number of sites that use WPMU in interesting ways. Speaker: Andrea Rennick.

Writing Plugins for WordPress/MU:
This session will be directed toward plugin developers. We will discuss platform differences & guidelines to keep in mind when writing a plugin for both WordPress & WordPress MU. Speaker: Ron Rennick.

User Authentication with MU in Existing Ecosystems.
Speaker: Casey Bisson.

How-to with MU: Using Multiple Domains, and Building a Member Directory.
A two-part session where we will dig in to two different concepts. First up, we’ll cover how to domain map member blogs, and the difference between multiple sites and multiple domains. The second half will cover how we built a business/member directory and what plugins we used to accomplish this so you can build one too. Speaker: Andrea Rennick.

Growing Community with BuddyPress:
Speaker: Lisa Sabin-Wilson.

Creating Killer Group Extensions in BuddyPress:
In this session learn how to build highly custom feature extensions to BuddyPress groups. Andy will be talking through how you can use the new group extension API to build Twitter stream integration right into your groups. Speaker: Andy Peatling.

Developing BuddyPress as a Collaboration Hub:
In this presentation, I’ll discuss some of the BuddyPress development I’ve done to bridge the WordPress/bbPress/MediaWiki platforms, taking BP beyond its roots as a social networking platform and turning it into a collaboration hub: a space where users can find, friend, and team up with each other (the social networking part BP that does well), work together to produce content (that’s the “collaboration” part), and feed the content back into BP (that’s the “hub” part). Speaker: Boone Gorges.

Other soon-to-be confirmed sessions: Setting up BuddyPress (workshop); BuddyPress theme framework.

For a full list of sessions please see the program page.

It should be a fantastic event with space for up to 1000 people. Tickets are selling out fast so if you’re thinking of attending, now is the time to hop in and buy a ticket. It looks like this is going to be the east coast WordCamp to attend. I’ll see you all there!

The latest version of BuddyPress is now ready for download.

This release includes a substantial number of core code improvements as well as an array of useful new features.

Some highlights of this version are:

• One click internal bbPress forum integration allowing you to set up group forums in less than a minute.
• A global forum directory (example) allowing you to easily browse public facing forum posts regardless of the group they are attached to.
• Completely re-written theme handling. One theme now controls all of your installation. No hidden HTML, everything is in the template ready for you to skin.
• Easily create themes that are upgraded automatically when BuddyPress is updated.
• Total site admin control of all content within an installation. Edit user’s profiles, update avatars, mark users as spammers, manage all groups, delete site activity entries.
• Activity streams everywhere. Activity streams can be filtered allowing for feature specific activity streams or adding an activity stream to your custom plugin.
• A new status updates feature is included in BuddyPress 1.1. Actions and filters are included to allow plugin developers to hook into any external service.
• An awesome group extension API allowing developers to easily extend groups and add completely new features.

If you’re starting with a brand new installation, check out the new setting up a new installation help guide. If you’re upgrading from a previous version of BuddyPress, please make sure you read the upgrading from 1.0.x help guide before upgrading. There is a specific help guide on upgrading your 1.0.x custom theme to 1.1.

If you’re interested in building themes and plugins for BuddyPress 1.1, be sure to check out the new version of the BuddyPress Skeleton Component and the creating a BuddyPress child theme help guide.

I’d like to say a big thank you to everyone from the community who has helped in reporting problems, submitting bugs, writing patches and answering support queries. Without your help BuddyPress would not have the thriving community and development momentum it has today.

A special thanks to the following developers who submitted multiple bug reports and patches and also spent countless hours in IRC (#buddypress-dev) talking through issues:

JohnJamesJacoby, DJPaul, Junsuijin, JeffSayre, JasonG, Chouf1, GIGALinux, burtadsit, Ezd, Mariusooms, r-a-y, slaFFik, pertronic, j.conti

Happy BuddyPress-ing, and onwards to version 1.2!

BuddyPress 1.1 release candidate is available for final testing. As with the beta, this version is intended for testing, so please do not run it on production sites.

As with the beta, the release candidate is available for download via zip or via subversion.

If you download the zip version you will still need to download bbPress 1.0 separately. Please extract bbPress into the folder “bp-forums/bbpress” inside of the BuddyPress plugin directory. This will not be the case with the final 1.1 version.

There have been more than 70 bugs reported and fixed since the beta last week. Thank you to those who opened tickets and submitted patches.

Please report bugs on our trac site with the milestone “1.1”. There are currently no outstanding bugs at the time of writing. Put me to work! Please use your BuddyPress.org username and password to log into the trac site.

BuddyPress 1.1 final is on target for September 30.

BuddyPress 1.1 is now available for beta testing. This version is intended for testing only, you should not try running it on production sites. You can download the beta via this zip file, or via subversion.

If you download the zip version you will need to download bbPress 1.0 separately. Please extract bbPress into the folder “bp-forums/bbpress” inside of the BuddyPress plugin directory.

As always, please report bugs on our trac site with the milestone “1.1”. You can also view all outstanding bugs for this version. Patches for any of those bugs are very welcome. Please use your BuddyPress.org username and password to log into the trac site.

Update: Please make sure you read the installation instructions as there are changes from previous versions.

The GPL from the Free Software Foundation is the license that the bbPress software is under. Its text follows.

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BuddyPress is a powerful community plugin for WordPress that takes your site beyond the blog. It includes all of the features you’ve come to expect from any online community, like user profiles, groups, activity streams, notifications, and more.

Some fantastic uses we’ve seen are:

• A campus wide social-network for your university, school or college
• An internal communication tool for your company
• Niche social-networks for very specific interest groups
• Focused communities for products & services
• Integrated with bbPress to enhance community forums

If you’re using BuddyPress in a unique or interesting way, be sure to let people know on the forums; we’re always interested!

BuddyPress is not “all or nothing”

BuddyPress comes with several components that integrate directly with your site, with each other, and even with other plugins (check out bbPress for support forums.) If you only want to use a few features, BuddyPress will automatically adapt, showing only the menu items, pages and buttons for the features you have enabled.

BuddyPress.org

This site is built on WordPress with BuddyPress and bbPress. We hope you’ll consider registering & becoming part of our community. By doing this you’ll be able to contribute to the documentation, ask questions in the forums, and build your user profile so other developers & contributors can keep in touch.

The Team

BuddyPress is a GPL licensed open-source project made possible by thousands of contributors and believers around the world. Patches and RFC’s are helpful and encouraged and props are given and gathered for each major software release.

Some updates on the release status of BuddyPress:

– The target is to release beta versions of all the available plugins on Dec 15.

– From then, there will be a feature freeze and there will be a period of bug fixing to stabilize the plugins ready for a 1.0 release.

– Each component will be released as an individual 1.0. There will be no ”BuddyPress 1.0”. BuddyPress is a collection of official component plugins, each adding a new feature with its own roadmap. However, there will always be a zip file available with the current versions of official component plugins to download in one package.

– As soon as all major issues have been resolved, 1.0 versions of each official component plugin will be released. As it’s around Christmas time (most people will be too busy eating turkey to test) I’m not attaching a final date. Each component will be released ASAP after its beta one by one, when ready. By doing this you won’t have to wait for all components to reach release quality before any are made available.

– The photo gallery and status update components will not be available along with the first release of available official components. These will be a priority after the first release and can be added to any installation at a later date. There just wasn’t enough time to fit these in.

So what’s left to do before Dec 15?

– Filtering of friends and groups lists to show ”Recently Active Friends”, ”Recently Added Friends” etc. In groups ”Groups I’ve Created”, ”Groups Recently Updated”, ”Groups Recently Joined”, etc.

– Finish the members directory as well as adding blog and group directories, accessible via ”domain.com/groups/”, ”domain.com/members/”. ”domain.com/blogs/”.

– bbPress forums for groups.

– Private messaging autocomplete on friend names.

– RSS Feeds for activity streams.

Not long to go now, thank you all for helping to test and your contributions. I’m really excited to see what people will do with release quality components. Rock on!