BP Dev-Chat Summary: May 20, 2020

• See previously BP Dev Chat summary (May 6, 2020)
• In attendance: @vapvarun @IAmTheWebb @mercime @dcavins @espellcaste & @im4th
• Slack archive

Results and Feedbacks about BuddyPress 6.0.0

6.0.0 was released on May 14. The first subject we’ve discussed about was checking for issues related to this release that may have been published into our support forums. @vapvarun has been very active on support forums lately and confirmed there wasn’t any topics specific to this release.

@im4th talked about statistics and more precisely about this release’s download pike. It was reached on May 15 with 28300 downloads: almost 5K more than the 5.0.0’s download pike.

@im4th congratulated all BuddyPress contributors who got involved into the 6.0.0 release and did a great work.

What we think went well during the 6.0.0 development cycle?

For @mercime we had more contributors, “Fast-and-furious commits” and we kept enough time for polyglots (2 weeks of string freeze) to let them contribute to the translation of the 6.0.0 release.

@dcavins was pleased by the activity & engagement of this release lead 😍.

@im4th was happy we could work on the priority we defined after the 5.0.0 release : work on getting more beta-testers to help us add the final touches to 6.0.0 : the BP Beta Tester plugin has been published on the WordPress.org Plugins directory and it does the job pretty well according to @dcavins “BP Beta Tester is fantastic“.

We also said we were happy:

• We shipped BuddyPress 6.0.0 huge props to every contributor
• We shipped the 2020 BP Survey (If you haven’t replied to it yet, do it right away!) Huge props to @mercime
• We completed the BP REST API and updated the reference documentation. Huge props to @espellcaste and @mercime
• We moved user profile photos & cover images from xProfile to Members, and so far: nothing broke! Self Props to @im4th 😉.
• @mercime added: we introduced the 2 first BuddyPress blocks. Props to @karmatosed @espellcaste & @im4th
• JavaScript translations are working!
• We gave props to the 4 polyglots contributors who made the plugin available in French, Spanish (Costa Rica), English (UK) & Romanian as soon as the plugin was updated!

What we think should be improved during the 7.0.0 development cycle?

• We haven’t managed to motivate Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, German, Dutch & Russian polyglots contributors. It’s really too bad BuddyPress is no fully translated into these languages.
• We haven’t made progress on make.buddypress.org (@imath’s bad), we should try to set up this site to organize contributions and bring our development updates from this site to the BuddyPress.org network.
• We haven’t moved any AJAX features to the BP REST API, we should try to benefit from the BP REST API (as soon as it’s possible) to improve the performance of the BuddyPress plugin.

PS: if you’d like to share your opinions about these two sections, you’re welcome to do so commenting this summary.

The 2020 BP Survey

@mercime gave us the very first learnings of this survey:

• the majority of participants are using shared hosting and activate BuddyPress in their root WordPress sites.
• Most are using the BP Nouveau Template pack.
• Plugins and themes developer are testing BuddyPress with the latest stable BuddyPress release.
• 60% of the contributors who are testing BuddyPress are using BP Beta Tester.
• Most are checking the changelog to see what has evolved during the development cycle.

Of course these points are temporary results. We’ll be more specific as soon as the survey will be ended.

7.0.0 features wishlist

As we were running out of time @im4th suggested to publish a call for tickets on this blog, just like WordPress does on their Make WP/Core blog. We also agreed to think about it for the next 2 weeks and use our next development meeting to share our ideas. @IAmTheWebb suggested to organize a survey to “ask for feedback on features people would want“. @im4th thinks results of such survey are a bit difficult to use. We’ve experienced it for Blocks and we were not so convinced by the involvement it got. He also added he’s rather have something like “what feature do you want to contribute to for 7.0.0 release?“. We’ll test the call for tickets, it’s a good way to show how we are contributing to BuddyPress on our tool to manage the BuddyPress code source.

Next dev chat

It will happen on June 3rd at 19:00 UTC and of course in #BuddyPress. If you have ideas or questions, feel free (and we are strongly encouraging you) to comment this summary to share them!

Start picking the BuddyPress tickets, you’d like us to work on, we’ll soon publish the “BuddyPress 7.0.0 call for tickets” 😉

#6-0-0, #7-0-0, #survey

BP Dev Chat Summary: January 29, 2020

• See previously BP Dev Chat summary (January 15, 2020)
• In attendance: @mercime @dcavins & @im4th
• Slack archive

BuddyPress Survey

@mercime asked for the questions we’d like to include for this new version of the survey (see #8153). In other words, what do we need to know from BuddyPress users to help us in our decisions?

• We agreed we need to keep questions from previous surveys to be able to compare results.
• Knowing which components are mostly used should help us to validate/improve the activation process. How could we improve/facilitate the BuddyPress setup process?
• We’d like to know how people choose to “display” BuddyPress content. Are they using a regular WordPress Theme with a template pack (and which one? Legacy or Nouveau?), are they using a BuddyPress standalone theme like BP Default ?
• We need to evaluate the idea of including a new full featured BuddyPress Theme.
• @im4th shared his wish to know what approach people prefer between BuddyPress bundled optional components Vs optional components as plugins (see #8148). @mercime noted that, in previous surveys, people usually ask to bundle new optional components or to include BuddyPress plugins into Core.

We shared some other potential questions during the meeting (What are you using BuddyPress for? Would you be willing to switch to a BP Specific Theme? What are must have customizations? What are the every BuddyPress installs components?…), @mercime will work on a first pass of the 2020 survey so that we can discuss about it during our next dev-chat.

New day of week for our dev-chat?

@im4th thanked again the members of the team who gave their preferences into the Doodle poll. We have a first important information: 19:00 UTC will stay our time of meeting. We are now waiting for @espellcaste preference about the day between these possible ones: Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday or Thursday?

6.0.0 Progress

@im4th began to talk about the many PHP/JavaScript code standards patches that has been submitted by new contributors such as Passionate, WPAmitkumar, Mukesh27. Thanks a lot for your work and feel free to carry on helping us.

@dcavins is making good progress about Network invites and membership requests and is confident this feature will land into the 6.0.0 release.

@im4th shared his progress about BP Blocks and thanked @karmatosed for her great help contributing to design sketches of the single Member and single Group blocks. BuddyPress 6.0.0 will include these 2 blocks. Here are 3 early screenshots of what could look like the Member one.

6.0.0 schedule & main features

• Schedule:
  • First beta at the end of march.
  • Final release at the end of April.
• Main Features:
  • BP REST API remaining endpoints
  • BP Blocks
  • Network invitation & Membership requests
  • & maybe some surprises!

Next dev chat

It will happen next week on February 12 at 19:00 UTC (unless @espellcaste informs us about his preferred day 😉soon) and of course in #BuddyPress.

PS: if you have ideas or questions, feel free (and we are strongly encouraging you) to comment this summary to share them!

#6-0-0

BP Dev Chat Summary: January 15, 2020

• See previously BP Dev Chat summary (December 18)
• In attendance: @mercime @espellcaste @dcavins @johnjamesjacoby & @im4th
• Slack archive

Main features for 6.0.0

BP REST API (improvements and remaining endpoints)

@espellcaste has been working on fixing some issues posted on the GH repository. With @im4th they discussed quite a time about one specific issue that is now resolved (many thanks to @espellcaste for his work on it 💪). About the tasks scheduled for 6.0.0, you can take a look at this GH project. Here are the remaining endpoints:

• Member’s cover endpoint
• Group’s cover endpoint
• Friends endpoint
• Blogs endpoint
• Blog’s cover endpoint
• Blog’s avatar endpoint
• Signups endpoint

FYI this Core ticket should also be fixed for 6.0.0: #8156 (Move Avatar into the Members component).

BP Blocks

@karmatosed has shared sketches and thoughts about the first 2 BuddyPress blocks we will add in 6.0.0:

• Single Member
• Single Group

@im4th will start working asap on the first implementations of these 2 blocks building an autocomplete control to select the member or the group to display. @dcavins suggested this could be a good opportunity to review our Suggestion API so that it uses the BP REST API.

Network invitations & Membership requests.

@dcavins will work to make it happen in 6.0.0, you can still add your feedbacks on this ticket #8139.

Surprises!

@mercime & @im4th will also try to work on some surprises for this next release. We are keeping the features secret for now 😂

Core improvements

@im4th also shared his wish to use WordPress Rewrites instead of our legacy way of building URLs, see #4954. A possible way of progressing about it could be to use a plugin… He will look into it to see if it needs some Core adjustments.

BuddyPress survey

Discussing about the previous points took us a while and we decided to talk about the survey during our next dev-chat.

Open floor

@espellcaste cannot attend our dev-chats at the date/time they are scheduled. I’ve published this doodle to let us try to find a new day / time of the week for our meetings. I’ve left the current day / time: choose it if you prefer to leave the day / time unchanged.

6.0.0 schedule & main features

• Schedule:
  • First beta at the end of march.
  • Final release at the end of April.
• Main Features:
  • BP REST API remaining endpoints
  • BP Blocks
  • Network invitation & Membership requests
  • & maybe some surprises!

Next dev chat

It will happen next week at the time/date we decide replying to this doodle (and of course in #BuddyPress).

PS: if you have ideas or questions, feel free (and we are strongly encouraging you) to comment this summary to share them!

#6-0-0

BP Dev Chat Summary: December 4, 2019

• See previously BP Dev Chat summary (October 30)
• In attendance: @karmatosed @espellcaste @im4th & @johnjamesjacoby
• Slack archive

5.1.0

A maintenance release will be packaged at the beginning of next week (December 9).

BP Beta Tester

The first version of the plugin has been deployed on the WordPress.org repository. An announcement has been published on BuddyPress.org. A first issue has been raised and @im4th will work on fixing it asap. If you want to contribute to this plugin (you’re very welcome), please make sure to share your issues or pull requests into its GitHub repository.

BuddyPress blocks

The full results of the poll and information about the BP Blocks GitHub repository has been published on BuddyPress.org.

@im4th will work on preparing the data stores for the Groups and Members component and @karmatosed will soon share sketches to help us on the design part.

6.0.0 and up

Tickets needing feedbacks

Moving the BP Devel site (this site) to a new Make.BuddyPress.org site (see #5525). There’s now a test drive you can use to contribute to the BuddyPress contributor documentation or to review the developments made so far. You can read more about it from here.

@im4th insisted to have feedbacks about #8156: Move the Local Avatar and Cover Image features into the Members component. He’d like to early commit the changes and inform about them as there are some functions and hooks to deprecate. The good news is : there’s no need to edit existing templates.

@dcavins would be very happy to get feedbacks about #8139 and @espellcaste will work on #8173 during this development cycle.

A full featured standalone BuddyPress Theme

This is @johnjamesjacoby ‘s plan to improve our users experiences and captivate a new audience. It would be a 3-columns social layout theme (that’s become the obvious go-to for everything from Slack to VSCode).

the original “bp-sn-parent” theme, read more about it here.

In his opinion, the original “bp-sn-parent” theme was what originally attracted many folks to BuddyPress, 10 years ago. It was opinionated, design wise, pretty, and it showcased everything that it could do all at once.

As we are still shipping the BP Default theme and as we kept BuddyPress compatible with standalone BuddyPress themes, it should be easy to replace BP Default or give him a new neighbour into the bp-themes directory of the built BuddyPress.

Finally it could be developed from GitHub. @im4th & @vapvarun volunteered to give a hand. @johnjamesjacoby will soon write a ticket about it on BP Trac.

Next dev-chat

It will happen on December 18 at 19:00 UTC in #BuddyPress.

PS: if you have ideas or questions, feel free (and we are strongly encouraging you) to comment this summary to share them!

#5-0-0, #6-0-0

BP Dev Chat Summary: October 30, 2019

• See previously BP Dev Chat summary (October 16)
• In attendance: @espellcaste @boonebgorges @dcavins @im4th & @johnjamesjacoby
• Slack archive

Actions

The BuddyPress Blocks poll

@im4th shared the final result of the poll. There was 161 votes and top results are mostly corresponding to existing widgets. Here are the “top expected blocks” :

1. A block to share a post or a page via the Activity Stream (17 votes)
2. A block to list the recently published posts from across your network (Exists as a widget) (13 votes)
3. A block to display Sitewide Notices posted by the site administrator (Exists as a widget) (12 votes)

@johnjamesjacoby confirmed Widgets were obvious converts and @boonebgorges suggested to work on the block highlighting a single Group (10 votes) as a starting point. Highlighting a single group is not something we make possible yet and he confirmed it’s something people want. We’ve decided to:

• Start working on this block for 6.0.0 from a specific GitHub repository: BP Blocks
• Merge the « JavaScript built » blocks into BuddyPress Core to avoid adding too much node modules to it.
• Publish the full results and the decision above on BuddyPress.org

Moreover, we’re very happy to announce @karmatosed (Tammie Lister) will give us a hand about designing BuddyPress Blocks 😍 🙌

5.1.0

Before releasing this maintenance version to fix these issues, @im4th will package a 5.1.0-beta release so that we can test the BP Beta Tester plugin with a “real world” example. Once the results of this test are satisfying, we’ll publish the plugin on the WordPress.org directory.

BP REST API

@espellcaste shared the latest news about it. We’ve been talking about adding a controller to manage the Blogs avatar. Renato is wondering why we are falling back to the Blog’s Administrator’s avatar if the site does not include a Site icon. @dcavins thinks it only makes sense when displayed blogs are really “weblogs”. @im4th will soon create an issue on the GH repository of the BP REST API to explain why this fallback choice was made.

NB: To work on the Blogs avatars, we first need to have this ticket (#8150) fixed (in particular for the get_item() controller’s method).

@espellcaste also talked about the historical dependency of users local avatars to the xProfile component. So far, it’s not possible to upload/delete a local avatar using the Member’s Avatar controller if the xProfile is inactive. As a result, the BP REST API documentation has been updated and 5.1.0 will move this controller’s loading into the xProfile component’s class. @im4th as he “promised” during the dev-chat has been working on trying to make the local avatar and the cover image Members features for 6.0.0. There’s already a first patch available for testing/review on this ticket (#8156).

@espellcaste finally talked about the decisions he made about developing a BP GraphQL API using the WP-GraphQL plugin: he’ll focus more on specific components rather than adding support to several components.

Tickets needing feedbacks

As there were only 5 minutes left, @im4th briefly announced the work he has been doing about moving the BP Devel site (this site) to a new Make.BuddyPress.org site (see #5525). This ticket contains screenshots and the needed plugins and themes to make it possible. Please have a look at this 🙏

@dcavins also reminded everyone he was expecting more feedbacks about his ticket dealing with “Network Invitations and Membership Requests” (see #8139). Thanks in advance for looking at it 👀

2 other tickets are needing feedbacks: please have a look at them before our next dev-chat:

• #8148 A new direction regarding optional components management (using the WordPress.org Plugins API).
• #8153 BuddyPress survey for 2019.

Next dev-chat

It will happen on November 13 at 18:00 UTC in #BuddyPress.

PS: if you have ideas or questions, feel free (and we are strongly encouraging you) to comment this summary to share them!

#5-0-0, #6-0-0

BP 2.9 Kick-Off Meeting – March 22, 2017

BP 2.9 Scoping/Wishlist

bp-nouveau Template Pack

@hnla, 2.9 Release Lead, will focus on getting bp-nouveau ready for integration into core this dev cycle. He noted, “bp-nouveau represents a clean break from those older templates, clean markup, new styles new file structure with include files and function files managing components and affords us the opportunity to build a better BP than ever before.”

@hnla encouraged all core devs to have a local install running the plugin version and to reconvene at next meeting for a renewed focus & to air any concerns. He has added the following guides to the project for all who want to contribute:

• Milestones: https://github.com/buddypress/next-template-packs/milestones
• Project cards: https://github.com/buddypress/next-template-packs/projects

The major steps to get this project for inclusion are pretty much covered by the milestones but broadly fall into:
1. Core integration: adding the switching mechanism to core admin settings, working out the logic for default selection & some means of registering packs in use.
2. Testing the process for stylesheet building and testing the core files merged to trunk along with possible gruntfile adjustments required.
3. Testing of components by device( mobile/ desktop & browser versions) and testing.
4. Testing Accessibility.

@boonebgorges: “I share Hugo’s belief that the time has come to move beyond bp-legacy, and I think that a new set of templates is critical for the future of the project. I’m going to be working with Hugo over the next few weeks to develop some materials that’ll introduce the rest of the team to the workings of bp-nouveau, as well as more details on a plan for moving toward merge, with the idea of soliciting as much energy and contribution from the broader team as possible.” He will help to get bp-nouveau in for 2.9.

@mercime noted that per her initial a11y audit of bp-nouveau (last year), there were items which needed to be fixed in core first. Edit – Most items have been fixed, there are only a few remaining a11y issues which will affect template pack left in core.

@modemlooper likes the Template Pack UI in admin which he thinks will open up lots of customization … spawning child themes of bp-nouveau.

@dcavins volunteered to help with bp-nouveau. @hnla mentioned his concerns with group creation wanted it more a one step process that we could then paginate if we wanted to but accessing certain meta is hard such as group ID at some points where you need it. @dcavins: “I also have some feelings about group creation. (Like change it to one step then redirect to the new group to setup.)”

@boonebgorges will be working on a summary document about bp-nouveau’s status plus user-facing and developer-oriented features over the next week or so.

BP REST API

@rayisme would like to see where we’re currently at and what we can accomplish in this dev cycle. @boonebgorges responded, “it needs someone to take the lead – there was some initial work done on the Members endpoint but it needs to be seen through.”

BuddyPress.org Redesign

@hnla brought up the redesign site/mockups by @modemlooper and @karmatosed and wanted to know the best way to get the redesign implemented.

@rayisme: “There are elements I like about both. modemlooper’s orange header + iconfont section and karmatosed’s “Are you a user / developer” section. At first, I didn’t like the orange header, but I like that it’s a little in-your-face.”

@modemlooper‘s design was à la https://jetpack.com/ and said, “the design reboot started because I thought the homepage lacked alot of marketing points.” @karmatosed thought that doing original design is good. She’s happy to noodle some more.

@johnjamesjacoby: “Naturally, I have opinions, but mostly I really want all of y’all to feel like these themes are yours to create/enjoy also. It seems like everyone is still in the “I wonder what this or that might look or feel like” which is totally fine. No rush, no agenda, and if something naturally suddenly clicks into the place, we should head that direction.”

Dev Chat Schedule

This is a friendly reminder that starting Wednesday, March 29, dev chat at the #buddypress channel on Slack.com will be at 19:00 UTC through the end of Daylight Savings Time for both U.S. and Europe.

Slack log: https://wordpress.slack.com/archives/C02RQBYUG/p1490212929620791
(Slack account is required)

#bp-nouveau, #dev-chat

Dev Chats as of March 15, 2017

BuddyPress 2.9 Schedule

• March 22 – Kick off
• June 7 – Beta 1
• June 14 – Beta 2
• June 28 – Release Candidate 1 – String freeze
• July 5 – BP 2.9.0 Target Release Date

@hnla, BP 2.9 Release Lead, looks forward to discussing project scope/focus/tasks with the team on March 22.

Dev Chat Schedule

Daylight Savings Time for the United States started Sunday, March 12, while DST in Europe will begin on March 26. In keeping with schedule adjustments from previous years, following is the schedule of our dev chat till further notice:

• March 22 – BP Dev chat will remain at 20:00 UTC (4:00 P.M. EST / 1:00 P.M. PST for U.S. residents).
• March 29 through end of DST – Dev Chat will be moved to 19:00 UTC.

BuddyPress.org Redesign

• The redesign of BuddyPress.org has been discussed many times over a number of years.
• Feb. 22: @modemlooper initiated discussion this year about BuddyPress.org colors, adding a showcase page, work on the product side, among other things. He also posted some screenshots on that day and following days to ask for feedback.
• March 6: @modemlooper set up a responsive demo site.
  
• March 15: @karmatosed uploaded her design  during dev chat. She mentioned @djpaul asked her to look at a BuddyPress.org redesign last year.
  
• Other notes:
  • Redesign is also needed for codex.buddypress.org plus a new design for developer.buddypress.org to hold the BP developer reference which @tw2113 has on his site https://trexthepirate.com/buddypress/
  • BuddyPress.org themes are located at https://meta.trac.wordpress.org/browser/sites/trunk/buddypress.org/public_html/wp-content/themes

Slack log: https://wordpress.slack.com/archives/C02RQBYUG/p1489608197865211

#dev-chat

General Summaries for April 27 – May 4, 2016

This post covers the following meetings:
1. BP Template Pack on April 27 @ 18:00 UTC,
2. Dev Chat Summary on April 27 @ 19:00 UTC, and
3. Dev Chat Summary on May 4 @ 19:00 UTC.

BP Template Pack Meeting

Participants: @dcavins, @hnla, @im4th, and @mercime

• @im4th: will open a new task about the activity post form to summarize what he has in mind so that we can discuss it.
• @mercime: Google spreadsheets with screenshots of pages with current UI and how we would address each one of the component pages … then attach images of screens addressed in the next-template-pack for comparison
• @hnla: has a draft of basic outline on bpdevel (not for publication at this time).
• Use the Github repo Wiki pages for documentation
• Review some wireframes made by @karmatosed in 2012 which already have feedback from the community as shown in BP Trac, bpdevel, and Github. We have to decide whether any of those can still be used or whether it would be better to make new wireframes.
• Process: Discovery -> Design -> Development -> Launch.

Next meeting: Wednesday, May 11, same time (18:00 UTC), same #buddypress channel in Slack.

Dev Chat, April 27

A new API to manage single items navigation (#6534) @im4th has patch. Dev feedback requested. “The patch is replacing nav arrays with a new class. and make sure the nav is attached to an item ID. The user id for the displayed user nav or the group ID for the current group. Group nav and displayed user nav are separated – meaning there are no more slug collisions.” @boonebgorges and @im4th had a long discussion on the implementation in this Slack log. @im4th and @rayisme have uploaded patches after the meeting.

BP Users front.php (#6769) Kudos to @im4th from @rayisme and @boonebgorges for the mystery group avatar. @dcavins and @hnla said that they will test the patch and post feedback.

Dev Chat, May 4

A new API to manage single items navigation (#6534) @boonebgorges will be checking out the progress and at “how much we need to support old ways of reaching into the `bp_nav` and `bp_options_nav` globals and spending some time formalizing the various compatibility breaks with unit tests” Update: @boonebgorges has uploaded a new patch with unit tests.

BP Users front.php (#6769) @im4th has patch. Positive feedback during dev chat, testing welcome.

Audit all DB fetch methods to return integers where appropriate (#6977) @rayisme has patch. Work on this is about 90% done.

bp_send_email function not working with numeric string for $to argument (#7042) Will leave decision of ticket status to @djpaulgibbs.

BuddyPress Embeds for activity, user profiles, groups (#6772) @rayisme requested feedback on the display of the embeds in the template as well as the embeds template. Update: @mercime has posted feedback and @im4th has uploaded revised patch.

Screen notifications settings page (#6712) @rayisme: “I need to refresh #6712. @djpaulgibbs‘ feedback in the ticket was quite helpful for future iterations. I’m not sure if this can make 2.6 or not.”

Use WP page names for BP directory pages headings (#6765) Discussion between @hnla, @johnjamesjacoby, @im4th, and @boonebgorges resulted in the decision that this enhancement would require an migration for existing installations when they upgrade while new installations will get the shorter page names.

BuddyPress Style Modules: @hnla has provided the example one so it’s clear how they work and are formatted etc. at https://github.com/hnla/style-modules/tree/master/members-list-module. Update: A new Style Modules repo has been added to the BuddyPress account at https://github.com/buddypress/style-modules

Slack log: https://wordpress.slack.com/archives/buddypress/p1461780248000496

#6534, #6765, #6769, #6772, #6977, #7042, #buddypress, #dev-chat

Dev Chat Summary for March 23, 2016

BuddyPress 2.5.2

Four tickets have been slated to date for this milestone. Possible release date: March 28, 2016.

Release Leads for BuddyPress 2.6.0 and 2.7.0

@djpaulgibbs, @boonebgorges, and @johnjamesjacoby have been talking about what they could “adopt from WordPress core’s development processes and see how they work out for BuddyPress.” Starting 2.6, we’re going to have release leads as described in this RL announcement in WP Core by Andrew Nacin.

@boonebgorges noted, “The RL gets a sense at the beginning of the dev cycle what he/she would like to accomplish, as well as what others want and are willing to contribute. Within those parameters, there is likely lots of room for the RL to make decisions about what the focus should be.”

David Cavins will lead BuddyPress 2.6. @dcavins (twitter) has been a member of the BuddyPress Core Team since January 2015. David is a huge fan of the groups component and the collaborative possibilities it offers a community. He also builds acoustic guitars in his adopted hometown of Columbia, Missouri.

Next at bat for BuddyPress 2.7, @mercime has been a member of the BuddyPress Core Team since April 2014. Mercime (twitter) enjoys building sites with an eye on accessibility as well as contributing to open-source projects like BuddyPress, bbPress, and WordPress via trac, codex, forums, theme reviews, and surveys.

BuddyPress 2.6

@dcavins will be setting the release schedule this Wednesday during our dev chat. One of the things he’d love to see are optimizations, like extending “our use of caching to group memberships, for instance.” (#6327). He’d love to get everyone’s feedback on ways to make BP run more lightly, “so please be thinking about your favorite component.”

BuddyPress 2.7

@mercime will share the focus and scope at a later time. In the meantime, @bowe suggested, “a release cycle focused on the community aspects. Bring some lesser known but awesome BP stuff to the forefront and implement some long standing UI/UX improvements and rethinking of what BuddyPress should be in 2016 and onwards.” 🙂

It takes a strong volunteer community to improve the BuddyPress project for each release. Your contributions are most welcome and appreciated!

Open Floor

1. Theme Review

@djpaulgibbs reiterated @karmatosed‘s invitation to join the WP Theme Review Team and review BuddyPress-specific themes currently in queue.

Hey amazing BuddyPressers :wave: – I come bringing good news. We have 4 themes waiting for theme review for BuddyPress which is unusually high. Unfortunately I also bring bad news and we don’t have enough reviewers anymore to do this without it taking ages for the poor themers. I know you’re all super busy, but if any of you with theme experience want to give us a hand it would be brill!

For those interested, please read how to conduct a theme review. @bowe mentioned that he will be reviewing a theme this weekend.

2. BuddyPress.org Theme and Plugin Pages

@bowe is currently working on the outline of the proposed new theme/plugin pages to replace the ones @djpaulgibbs deleted the other week. Let someone know at the #buddypress slack channel when you’ve got something ready Bowe.

3. Audit of Components in BuddyPress Trac

@offereins inquired about other development process ideas which the Lead Developers found useful besides having release leads, like having component maintainers and whether BuddyPress would benefit from the concept. @boonebgorges and @johnjamesjacoby noted the pros and con. @djpaulgibbs opined that BP trac components would probably need some review to see that they’d fit into this kind of model (BP Components e.g. groups would be way too big). @boonebgorges stated, “That would be a good first task for someone interested in making it happen.”
Result: @offereins has accepted the task of auditing components listed in BP trac 🙂

Slack log: https://wordpress.slack.com/archives/buddypress/p1458763237000341

#6327, #dev-chat

Core Dev Chat Summary for January 20, 2016

This summary includes pertinent developer conversations in Slack before and right after the official chat time last week.

Trac Tickets

Email API and customisation features (#6592) Three hours before dev chat, @boonebgorges and @djpaulgibbs had a long and interesting discussion about the new Email API. Topics covered: standardizing verbs for method names, choosing taxonomy for Email Types to give admins the option of implementing multiple templates, among others. Latest: @djpaulgibbs has since updated the `amazing-emails` branch at https://github.com/paulgibbs/buddypress/

XProfile field database schema (#6350) @johnjamesjacoby will be writing down his vision for improving the xProfile tables.

Groups: Add Profile Fields and Profile Field Groups (#6783) From an enhancement for the Groups component, @im4th has proposed a change in direction to making this a generic component which would work for any object (Members, Groups, and Blogs) in ticket. @im4th consulted with @johnjamesjacoby about the best way forward.

Comment syncing between activity and post comments for Custom Post Types (#6482) @imath and @rayisme deliberated and agreed on adding `bp_activity_type_supports()` which works similar to WP’s `post_type_supports()` function. This would provide some flexibility if/when more features are added to BP activity types in the future.

General Administration

Messaging

A lively brainstorming session arose from a proposal by @johnjamesjacoby to replace the old “social network” association used for the past 8 years. There were slogans, taglines, and observations shared during and even after the chat:

• If we’re going to change it, can we think of it more as a strategic/goal/mission statement—more than just a tag line? ~@dcavins
• Social network” and “in a box” are both icky. Something having to do with “community” is better than “social network”. As for “in a box”, it glosses over the developer-focused flexibility of BP, which IMO is one of its strong points. ~ @boonebgorges
• It (“BP as a platform”) seems technically accurate, and speaks to the breadth of purpose, and I think it’s meaningful to a non-technical audience. I think we have two audiences – network builders and developers – so maybe our branding should have two parts too ~ @boonebgorges

• BuddyPress. Go Social. Build Communities. Create Networks. ~ @mercime
• Enabling Community Platforms ~ @hnla
• Building Blocks for your Community ~ @jjj
• Community toolbox ~ @karmatosed
• Community components you can put together in a very easy and funny way ~@im4th
• A suite of social components for building communities ~ @pollyplummer
• BuddyPress. A developer/professional platform that can scale up to millions of users. ~ @mercime
• BuddyPress: Create your own community space ~ @rayisme
• You have the users, BuddyPress (has) the building blocks to kit out your community to the fullest ~@netweb
• BuddyPress, an online community building kit ~ @robkk

• Fun & flexible software for online communities, teams, and groups.
BuddyPress helps you build any type of community website using WordPress, with member profiles, activity streams, user groups, messaging, and more.
~ @johnjamesjacoby

New BudddyPress.org Theme

@johnjamesjacoby noted that the “theme needs a complete revamp and redesign to make it more attractive. I would like for BuddyPress & bbPress to be powered by the same theme, so that they are effectively co-branded as such.” Someone’s going to be tapped to work on the new theme.

Slack log: https://wordpress.slack.com/archives/buddypress/p1453320187003820

#dev-chat

#6350, #6482, #6592, #6783