imath 11:34 pm on December 19, 2023
Tags: , , , recap,   

BP Dev-Chat Summary December 18, 2023

NB: this development meeting was the last one of 2023.

12.0.0 Release Recap

1 week after 12.0.0 “Nonno” final release, we’ve discussed about its first results, feedbacks, needed fixes and possible improvements on how we should prepare our next major releases.

First results

  • Downloads spike – December 12: 33,745 (highest of 2023)
  • 1 of 4 BuddyPress active installs is now using 12.0.0 (11.4.0 is now 1 of 6).
  • 12.0.0 is also the release with the highest number of support replies to the topic we share with the BuddyPress community after each release.
  • the BP Classic backwards compatibility Add-on now has 2000+ active installs.

As @dcavins noted about support replies: “It’s the release that changed the most internal workings (since 1.7 and theme compat), so that doesn’t surprise me.”

The BP Team was expecting such a high number of support questions, even if we anticipated a lot of these taking actions such as:

First feedbacks

@im4th has been monitoring our support forum as soon as the 12.0.0 release was published on the WordPress.org Plugin directory. He found that most of the users difficulties were coming from:

  1. custom code,
  2. the fact BP directories and pages are no more managed from the WordPress pages & the Pages tab of the BuddyPress settings.
  3. premium themes,
  4. the change we added to template packs CSS & JavaScripts loading (only in BP generated pages by default since 12.0.0),
  5. deprecated Legacy Widgets,
  6. the “grimlock-buddypress” plugin

No issues were raised about the BP Default theme, which is good news as it was deprecated 10 years ago.

First needed fixes

  • #9039 As shown above: we’ll improve the new URLs tab of the BuddyPress settings informing about the directory/page permalinks.
  • #9037 Some BP Block Widgets missing CSS rules will be restored (eg: Active or Online members).
  • #9035 The default xProfile field type will be reset to the text box.
  • #9033 The no-js class added by BuddyPress everywhere will only be added into BP generated pages (just like Template packs’ JavaScript assets).

PS: the 12.1.0 minor release should happen early next year, unless an important issue is raised in support forums or on Trac.

Things we did great

  • The BP Classic backwards compatibility Add-on (a huge job which made 12.0.0 possible).
  • Being very conservative with the schedule

Things we need to improve

  • A more detailed testing plan (what are the most important changes needing tests in the pre-release).
  • Improve Admin Notifications to include an advice to temporarily disable the automatic BuddyPress updates for major releases (automatic updates are fine with minor releases, but can be problematic for major ones).

Accomplished 12.0.0 Schedule

Documentation (re)reboot

@im4th summarized the current situation about Documentation contribution this way: “There was a good energy and everything has stopped probably due to one of my convictions about it”. @im4th strongly believe we should prepare everything from GitHub and synchronize created docs with one or more BuddyPress.org websites, while the Documentation team strongly wants to organize user documentation directly from a BuddyPress.org website as using GitHub could discourage people from contributing. The GitHub plan was clearly announced from the very beginning (July 12, 2023).

As it was getting late, the BP Team agreed about organizing a new Docs-Chat at the beginning of next year to see if we can “rereboot” the documentation task: it’s now becoming more and more needed.

@im4th also informed he added an alternative way to how anyone can contribute to documentation without using GitHub to contributor docs.

Next Dev-Chat

It will happen on January 8, 2024 at 21:00 UTC in #BuddyPress. We wish you all great Christmas holidays, see you next year!

🎄🎅🏼

#12-0-0, #dev-chat, #documentation, #recap, #summary