Call to arms – Own your task
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Do you really like the activity stream and have ideas on how to improve it? Are you working on a site where you’re beefing up Private Messages and want to contribute some code back to the project? Maybe you’re just really good at blogging and want to share some BuddyPress experiences?
Now’s your chance to help the BuddyPress core team get things done.
If there’s a task you want to *own* in BuddyPress, let’s start by talking about it here first. Later we’ll move onto development chats, etc… but for now I want to get a feel for who wants to commit to doing what.
Example – Things I am working on:
Step 0 – Better dedicated support forums via bbPress plugin – June
Step 1 – Redesigning buddypress.org – June
Step 2 – Releasing 1.3 – June’ish
Step 3 – Mirroring the WordPress development methods (UI/UX/Trac/etc…) – July
Step 4 – Improved collaboration with contributors – JulyExamples of things that could use ownership:
bp-default theme audit (make sure actions are in the right places, CSS is tidy, small visual tweaks to bp-default CSS)
phpDoc audit (verbose documentation on functions, classes, variables, etc…)
deprecated code clean-up (get rid of our old MU specific code)
Moderation tools (integrate them into the WP menu)
Admin interface UI (thinking far, far head here)
Wireframes, mock-ups, ideas, visual stuff
*anything that you think needs doing, and can commit to doing*
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I’m interested in working on the bp-default theme. Some ideas:
– Splitting up the bp-default.css file into smaller CSS files on a per component basis. Then in turn load these stylesheets conditionally using the BP conditionals..
Ideally you would end up with:
Base.css (all the layout, typography and regular WP styling for posts and pages)
Activity.css (only activity stream css)
Member-Group.css
Forums.css (BBPress stuff)In turn this means that theme development would be a little bit easier, since modifying the base theme would open up much more flexibility. In turn this means that the ajax functionality need to be refactored to apply the same concept as well. Splitting up the CSS and JS into “modules” and making them global and not tied to the core template layout would mean a huge step forward.
Besides that I’d like to work with @imath on extending the BuddyPress Shortcodes plugin. When this is handled properly it would allow you to display all kinds of BP content anywhere in a regular theme. It would not be a fully featured BuddyPress site, but it can be a powerful solution.
Finally I’d like to discuss the possibility of setting up a BuddyPress Supporter project powered by the community. The basic idea is so make one giant tip jar for (recurring) donations and using this money to fund cool BuddyPress related projects (chose and voted upon by the community). I understand that this might be hard to do on BP.org, but I’m willing to set up a special domain for that.
Looking forward to see more ideas pouring in
CSS
Decoupling the CSS into smaller pieces seems like it would go against the cardinal rule of minimizing HTTP requests to speed up page load times. Having everything turned on would load up 10 separate CSS files, just for the theme itself. They’d naturally be enqueued hierarchically so they cascade correct, so if one of them hangs for some reason, you end up with theme spaghetti.I’d suggest giving this a shot and comparing the speed differences with BP trunk on your average web host account to see what the real-world impact would be. If it’s negligible or we can minimize the impact, I’m for it. Would be nice to separate it into structure, colors, etc… too.
Shortcodes
check out how the bbPress plugin is incorporating shortcodes, and how it’s theme compatibility works to get a head start on what will get ported into BuddyPress core in the near future (after 1.3) – I’m filtering the_content() and loading template parts in an output buffer, to inject bbPress forums into *any* existing WordPress theme with a page.php template file (with appropriate measures taken to minimize conflicts, etc…)Supporter
The Supporter idea is neat, but doesn’t sound so much directly related to BuddyPress core. In the past, these kinds of donation based tasks don’t usually raise enough money for the hours of development that are involved in making something happen. Plus, who holds the money in escrow, who handles taxes and payouts, etc… It all gets really complicated, so you have your work cut out for you there.@JJJ: Yeah I thought about the performance implications. Although I must say that the opinions about this are vastly different. a few http requests might make it slower, but these days that might not a big deal if theme development would be a lot easier. Actually combining adminbar.css, reset.css and using style.css for the base layout would solve this problem
Shortcodes: Nice! I’ll look into that.. well I’ll ask @imath. Can’t program
Supporter: Yeah it needs work and a lot of effort and planning.. sounds like a challenge
@John James Jacoby
I need to check into that.I believe I am.
what about default theme?? can some of us start developing some examples then you guys can pick the best onesure, no problem
I’d like to chip in on making BP-Default 1.3 awesome as well
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