BP Dev-Chat summary: January 4, 2023

Last 11.0.0 final release tasks

Before releasing 11.0.0 on January 5, we had another look to #8783. This is still a mysterious issue we haven’t manage to reproduce yet (Displaying The Opt-outs Administration page is not generating an error for us on multisite). We also decided @im4th would package the release & draft the announcement post & @dcavins would take care of the release changelog.

Focus on the BP Messages component

Specific needs about this component BP REST API endpoint were brought to @espellcaste‘s attention (see #8696). It made him think about this component more broadly. So far BP Messages is fetching all messages belonging to a thread and he thinks we can improve this behavior and performance using pagination. He shared the roadmap we all agreed on about it:

  • Remove the default behavior of loading all messages;
  • Set reasonable default for page and per_page ;
  • Update the BP Theme to support pagination (currently, it loads all messages);
  • Cache with bp_core_get_incremented_cache – The same approach used in the Activity component;
  • Apply the same suggestions to the recipients’ query.

How do you see BuddyPress at the end of 2023?

That’s the question we took a few minutes to try to reply to.

  • @espellcaste‘s priority is mostly dev-focused: a developer reference site, BP GraphQL Extension, PHPCS/PHPDoc Improvements, VSCode BP Extension,
  • @dcavins would like to see a simple “private site” option land in BP, he believes another big possibility is to make core BP template pieces “insertable” using the WP Site Editor.
  • @im4th‘s predictions are: “To me, at the end of 2023, BuddyPress Activities will use the Blocks API, the Post Form will be a block based one and we’ll have a brand new Block Templates based theme”.

We’ve also discussed about:

  • the opportunity to move the Site Wide Notices feature outside of the BP Messages one,
  • splitting optional components into plugins,
  • community media,
  • the ActivityPub protocol to make BuddyPress a bridge between WordPress sites.
  • the need to organize all the feedbacks we got from last year to take wise decisions.

Open floor

@espellcaste has a conflict of meeting, so he won’t be able to attend future meetings. @im4th & @dcavins are flexible about the meeting day and time (as long as it’s after 19:30 UTC for @im4th), let’s find asap a new day to “biweekly” meet!

Next Dev-Chat

It will happen on January 18 at 19:30 UTC in #BuddyPress. If you have specific points or ideas you want to discuss about, don’t hesitate to share them in comments.

#11-0-0, #dev-chat, #summary, #the-future