@Andy Peatling (“If you want a new feature or something changed, write a patch…”)
It’s not about new features. Less is more. Buddypress needs to decide what it is and what it isn’t. At the moment it’s the kitchen sink. The problem is in the architecture and underdeveloped core features like member management and privacy/security. More community activity won’t fix that, it will only build on the confusion. Only Automattic can bring clarity.
KISS (Keep It Simple & Stupid).
There will be a dev chat this next week, on Wednesday 30th @ 19:00 UTC.
IRC: irc.freenode.net
Channel: #buddypress-dev
Web-based IRC client: http://java.freenode.net/
We’ve had very few questions for the last few sessions, which is why they haven’t happened (if nothing to talk about, there’s nothing to talk about). Post on the agenda on this thread.
Again, if you’ve got a question you aren’t sure can go in the agenda because you haven’t posted before, feel free to check with me (paul at byotos.com, Twitter, on the forums here, smoke signals, etc) or any of the other forum moderator team.
We recently tested and (we think…) have settled with WP3+BP for a site. Our only thoughts are that BP should be much simpler, and as others have said, have more clearly defined objectives and uses. And of course, be optimised for speed and reliability. Not asking much from a freely available Open Source project, eh..? 
Thanks to all who put in so much time and hard work.
And before this turns into a total roast or disagreement session (which I don’t think it will, but I want to prevent the slightest chance of that), I want @johnjamesjacoby and @apeatling to know how grateful I am for all the work that you’ve done.
The amounts of time, effort, sweat, and thankless work that yall have both put in is phenomenal, and for that I thank you. Without BP my site would be nothing. So thank you.
Paul, I don’t think it’s ever been in question how much is owed by so many to so few (that’s a hacked famous quote :wink:) and I think we’ve all expressed thanks and acknowledgement to that small band of brothers at one time or another; as for the thread turning into a ” Roast or disagreement session” why would it, I don’t think it’s showed signs of that thus far? has it? Threads such as this are extremely important to the health of projects/forums/communities – As long as they do not simply devolve into meaningless off topic rants.
Are you actually invoking the “Nazis” or “Hitler” rule on this thread? 
(Godwins Law if one were wondering)
I am definitely very thankful to Matt & Andy for starting this idea and bringing Open-Source-Social-Networking to the world !
I am also very thankful to JJJ, MrMaz, Ray, Jeff, Paul, Boone, Marius and all the many other great people writing code and helping out on this forum – I have donated a few bucks already and will donate to those other guys in the future as well !
Andy, please do not take this thread in any offensive way, but only as constructive criticism.
Criticism is important for every project to move ahead. I am always happy when somebody criticises myself, so I can think it over and learn from it.
ALL of you did an awesome job so far, just let us commonly find the best direction of where BP is going next.
@hnla Godwin’s Law was a new one for me. I looked it up on the Wikipedia. I’ll need to remember that one.
(sorry, I digress from the topic of this thread)
No harm done and I think we all feel better after a little conversation.
well after my last comment on this thread I must say I am surprised that with WP3.0 out a week now, there still hasn’t been any mention of a BP point release even just to fix the WP3.0 issues such as incorrect avatars & activity stream on front page.
I know there are fixes in trac but I doubt most users will go looking in trac to fix these simple issues.
I see on the trac roadmap that BP 1.2.5 is due today but have seen few issues closed recently, will it be released today?
also, will it have the required bits for @jeffsayre‘s privacy plugin? I presume this will be a well used plugin and many are waiting on it.
I am busy with a very pregnant wife and a two year old, but I took the time to read this thread and I want to comment about one thing.
The “grab a shovel” quote is being poorly used here. If you have a bunch of guys digging holes, and nobody telling them where to dig, eventually they are going to start throwing dirt in someone else’s hole. Sooner or later they are all going to look around and the giant mess and walk away when they realize they aren’t getting anywhere.
You also end up with a situation where guys are putting in time to write code that has a good chance of never being used, and that is endlessly frustrating.
I don’t have a solution, but let’s please come up with something better than “grab a shovel.” Software is much more complicated than ditch digging.
Back to my comment to Andy to give those guys that know their way around BP commit access it will lighten the load on Andy & John James.
There is a interim fix for the activity stream on front page issue and if I could find the link I’d post it 😉
@mrmazz I’m glad you drew attention to that metaphor as it worried me somewhat and simply asking that everyone and their dog pitch in and submit patches can well be a recipe for disaster.
That’s why we have a roadmap: https://buddypress.org/about/roadmap/
If you want to contribute something you know is going to take the project in the right direction then that’s the place to start. The roadmap represents the one place to dig.
I am not able to contribute to the code or programming aspect of this discussion but i can and have tested as many things as I could. I am a user of the BuddyPress software and have been for a while now, where do we (users) fit in this puzzle? I would be willing to contribute some $$ if that would help in any way.
I have to add that at this point it would be awesome to keep underlying framework flexible and constant long enough so that each new release builds not breaks the previous one. That might not be sexy or exciting but it sure helps when running a site with many users to have it be functional at all times.
+1 on KISS
Just a note to say you don’t have to be a coder to participate in dev chats. Want a say? hop into the dev chat, that’s the place to hammer out things like where the development is headed.
And the main devs need a break too. Often, they were plowing through trac & dev and the forums here faster and more often than the main dev of wordpress. Slowing down does not mean dying. It means they get tired. Tired devs make mistakes. they also have a big job – half the users want faster dev, the other half doesn’t. Vocal people want this change, two months later, more vocal people want the last change ripped out. See the problem there?
Do you want the devs to dev or just get pulled all over by lots of forum threads?
So. Without trying to speak for Andy or JJ or channel Jane too much, grabbing a shovel means get dirty. And like I said at the start, there’s more to do than just code. Want to influence development? Show up at the dev chat. Hammer out the details for what’s next (baby steps). Roll up your sleeves. Give them a chance to breathe and think long term beyond putting out fires.
non-code ways to help:
– post tutorials in the main blog or your own
– help new users
– if you’re answering the same things all the time here in the forum, write it up in a codex page. Point people to that.
– test plugins
– submit trac ticket or comment on exisiting ones, even to say “yeah it broke for me too” or “I can’t reproduce this”
– say thanks
Also, it’s nice outside. Play a round of golf, cuddle a puppy. There is actually more to life than code.
(and yes, I make living from this code – my mortage depends on it. )
Much love for all,
me
Andrea is correct. The grab a shovel phrase is only meant as an analogy to say that the best way to get what you want done is to do it. If you can’t, that’s okay too, and try not to be upset if someone else isn’t doing it either.
There’s no rush to push the next version out because that’s how mistakes are made, and pushing out a new point release means telling 300,000 people it’s safe to move on based on 4 peoples wandering eyes in the trac. If more people want more results then more people need to be involved.
1.2.5 is due very soon. There are less than ten tickets in that milestone and I’m loosely aiming for Sunday. Don’t throw tomatoes if it isn’t until Monday. 
There are mentions through out the trac, various forum topics, and IRC that drop when we’d like to push 1.2.5 out, but it isn’t something that we can just “do” because no one is testing the branch and no one is reporting back how various fixes have affected them.
Lastly, I’ll say that I want 1.2.5 out just as badly, because I want to focus on building cool new stuff for 1.3 instead of bug creator/exterminator for 1.2.x
<quote JJJ>because no one is testing the branch and no one is reporting back how various fixes have affected them.</quote>
If that is the case how have any branches arrived at RC/stable stage. Is this one of the fundamental issues with the project development as I’ve wondered how it is that releases seem to have as many issues as they seem to. Is there insufficient feedback on bleeding edge, if there were more testing prior to release would there be fewer bugs/issues passed on to the next milestone or point release. I’ll admit I haven’t run any bleeding edge installs, I have various versions hanging around but all running stable releases of one version or another, so perhaps really I ought to have a version always running current dev branch.
“Slowing down does not mean dying. It means they get tired. Tired devs make mistakes. they also have a big job – half the users want faster dev, the other half doesn’t. Vocal people want this change, two months later, more vocal people want the last change ripped out. See the problem there?”
Very understandable. Solution: Stop listening to all the feature requests and all the questions about forums/bbpress, event management, galleries, etc. Focus on the core: users, posts, comments. Make those solid and flexible, standardized as much as possible on what is already in WordPress, but with the member management and privacy/security you need for a social network. What are the minimum requirements to run a social network on top of WordPress? Boil it down. All the rest is for theme and plugin developers. Activity stream etc. is just one way to display data. Without a solid, coherent core it will only become a bigger mess as everybody piles on their hacks and ideas.
@hnla When there’s no tickets in the trac for that milestone, it’s a safe bet that the community at large feels it’s safe to proceed. So, we did it that way with 1.2.4 and the activity feed on the front page broke. The branch was there to test for months and lots of people worked hard to patch what they found, which is the reason 1.2.4 happened. I forget the numbers exactly, but 1.2.4 fixed something like 70 known issues, but it created 2 other annoying bugs at the same time that WP3.0 was launched. I typically have 5 or 6 different local test installations that I work from, with varying amounts of data between WordPress/MS/subdomain/subdirectory/Windows/Linux/English/Spanish. I do my best to run code through as many different variations as I can, but sometimes random bugs just slide through. The activity on the front page was one of them. 
@andrea_r My puppies are snuggle thieves. They just take snuggles whenever they want them. Blame any lack of BuddyPress progress on my pups. 
@johnjamesjacoby pointless argument but the activity on front page error was known for weeks before WP3.0 was released. I know the hassles of point releases but thought easy solutions like those posted in trac would have warranted one by now if you want to keep all of us encouraged to keep WP up to date for various reasons still working with BP. Any new users to BP since WP3.0 could easily be led to believe it just doesn’t work so walk away.
@JJJ
“……because no one is testing the branch and no one is reporting back how various fixes have affected them…..”
“……I typically have 5 or 6 different local test installations that I work from….”
Can we get a few more test-websites online (probably with different set-ups) at which we ALL can test the bleeding-edge-version ?
Currently it is hard to test new fixes at testbp.org as this website has no MultiSite-Blogs and also some other features disabled.
testbp.org is more a marketing-website than a testing-platform.
There are many people here who would like to do testing, but it is hard for a non-coder to set-up a local install at his computer as this know-how is simply not there for a non-coder. But having a few online-websites to do the testing, this would be possible even for non-coders.
Just try to imagine for a minute: you are not a coder and have no experience in PHP and are not able to install WordPress or BuddyPress at all.
Like myself, I do like testing very much and have reported a few TRAC-tickets in the past, but I do have no clue about PHP or how to setup a BP-installation.
Yeah, you have 5 or 6 different local test installations that you work from, but we are not able to go and test on your local installs and report feedback.
I do have one live-website, but I would not dare to test the bleeding-edge-version at my own website, as I even do not know how to install the bleeding-version at my own website
.
Put your different local-setups online and I am sure many non-coders will go and test.
Many thanks,
Erich
@Peter,
I do agree 100%.
– Put the social-layer onto the Core features of WordPress: BLOGGING & MULTI-BLOGGING
(being able to blog without the need to access the DashBoard, the DashBoard is very complicated for the average internet-user).
– Put in the must-haves for a Social-Network: Privacy and extended User-Profiles.
– Let the Plugin-developers do the rest and the talented ones of them will make lots of money…….
I am sure Automattic agrees on that one 100% as well.
@thekmen Where was the ticket in the Trac? I comb through the trac myself once a week and put tickets in the milestones that I can personally work on. Anyone else is free to grab a bug, move the milestone up, and patch it themselves all the same. This bug may have existed, but it wasn’t on the trac before 1.2.4 was released. If it was and we missed it, then we fix it now. We even put out 1.2.4.1 to fix a bit of code that snuck in that belonged in 1.3 without anything being said about the activity stream yet.
@erich73 Not a bad idea, but that kind of setup comes with added responsibility. I would love for someone to take that initiative and setup a BuddyPress testing farm of various installation types and domains if anyone is interested? TestBP.org is sort of a different animal too because it’s still hosted on a shared box with other sites that need to remain up to the world. Yes, it’s a testing ground, but it can’t be broken for /live/ testing and cripple the server either.
