BP Dev-Chat Summary: August 26, 2020

7.0.0 release cycle updates

Everyone was pretty busy during the two weeks preceding this meeting. @espellcaste still have to work on the tickets/issues he shared about the BP REST API & the BP WP CLI during the previous dev-chat.

@im4th informed he decided to commit the patch about adding @wordpress/env to the BuddyPress repository (see #8317): here’s the commit message, it contains some informations about how to install and launch the BuddyPress development environment. He will write a documentation page on the BuddyPress codex. @vapvarun will copy-review this page.

About Members Invitations #8139 @dcavins will update the patch soon to rename some function and variable names according to the conversation he had with @im4th on the Trac ticket.

7.0.0 release schedule

  • 7.0.0-beta1: October 15
  • 7.0.0 : December 1st

BuddyPress.org redesign project

For this part of the dev-chat, we decided to postpone it to August 31st. With @mercime, @vapvarun & @im4th we mainly talked about organizing our development environment (WP Multisite just like the BuddyPress.org network). It is now almost ready. A GitHub repo will house both themes (parent & child) and we now have first wireframes about the main site’s pages 🙌. Here they are!

Next Dev-Chat

It will happen on September 9 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!

#7-0-0, #dev-chat, #summary

BP Dev-Chat Summary: August 12, 2020

BuddyPress.org redesign project

@vapvarun shared with us about his progress on the project, he planned on start designing wireframes for BP pages, starting with the homepage, the codex landing page and the forum (support) page first. He also worked on the style guide adding a 3rd page to it, see below.

Finally we discussed about using a single repository for both theme and child theme, this is something we’ll need to have @mercime‘s opinion on (she wasn’t able to join the dev-chat).

7.0.0 release cycle updates

“Network invites”

@dcavins gave us updates about his progress on this very promising feature. He added a first patch to #8139 to get feedbacks from other members of the team about the direction he chose to take for the development of this feature. Please, just like I did: do take some time to test the patch and give him your thoughts about it. During the dev-chat I couldn’t resist to share a concern about the use of the “Network” term which I believe echoes too much to Multisite configs. I believe the extract of this comment by @dcavins on the ticket can help us use a less confusing term.

It allows site owners to use a referral system to build a community of trusted users

@dcavins

BP REST API & BP WP CLI

@espellcaste still needs to confirm Grunt will fetch the renamed BP REST default branch once it will be “main” instead of “master”. He plans to work on the create_item() method of the Blog’s endpoint (See #310). The last_activity issue has been tackled, see #342 for more information about it.

Support for Activity meta has been added to BP WP CLI and the 2.0 milestone of the plugin is almost complete: there’s only one last command to add.

BP Types Admin UI

@im4th requested feedback about the patch he added on #7181.

BP Blocks

A new block has been added to ease embedding an Activity into a post or a page. See this merged pull request for more information about it.

7.0.0 release schedule

  • 7.0.0-beta1: October 15
  • 7.0.0 : December 1st

Next Dev-Chat

It will happen on August 26 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!

#7-0-0, #dev-chat, #summary

BP Dev-Chat summary: july 29, 2020

BP Types UI

We took a decision about whether to package a plugin or directly merge the Member Types and Group Types Administration UI into BuddyPress. BP Types UI will be introduced in BuddyPress 7.0.0. You can already test/review the patch about it.

6.2.0 Maintenance release

We’ve released it as scheduled on August 6. See this announcement post for more info about it.

7.0.0 release cycle updates

@boonebgorges has committed a more permanent fix than the one we included in 6.2.0 about the deprecation of WordPress options containing the black/white terms into their name and also remove these same terms from the xProfile component & moderation code (#8339). If you find some more places in our codebase where we can improve the language used for a better contributors inclusivity, don’t hesitate to add patches to the ticket.

@espellcaste requested and got a second opinion about #8011 & #8308. We then discussed about the best way to tackle the BP REST API’s #342 issue. @boonebgorges wrote a summary of what we decided into this comment.

@dcavins gave us updates about his progress on Network invites (see #8139). The new code will be added to the Members component and a new DB table will be created to handle opt-outs for non-site-members.

@im4th shared about his work on the BP Blocks’ front. A new block is now included to share posts/pages into the activity stream. It uses the Activity Block based post form. See this PR for more info about it.

7.0.0 release schedule

  • 7.0.0-beta1: October 15
  • 7.0.0 : December 1st

BuddyPress.org redesign

Unfortunately we ran out of time (@im4th ‘s fault!). @mercime & @vapvarun are doing great progress you can follow from this GANTT chart.

Next Dev-Chat

It will happen on August 12 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!

#6-2-0, #7-0-0, #dev-chat, #summary

BP Dev-Chat summary: july 15, 2020

6.2.0 minor release

The main goal of this release is to prepare BuddyPress for the 5.5 WordPress upgrade expected to be published on august 11. The change that touch the plugin the most is the PHPMailer 6.0 upgrade that comes with WordPress 5.5. We’ve been working on a patch (see #8322) to support this PHPMailer upgrade and ensure backward compatibility with previous versions of WordPress (4.8 to 5.4). We agreed to test this ticket’s patch until july 22: the day when we plan to package a beta of 6.2.0 to let some time to BuddyPress plugin developers to test it before early august.

6.2.0 release schedule

  • 6.2.0-beta: july 22
  • 6.2.0 : ~ august 6

7.0.0 development cycle updates

@espellcaste has been working hard on improving the BP REST API and preparing the WP CLI 2.0 upgrade (see #8308).

@dcavins started putting the network invitations together (see #8139). One of its feature will include the possibility to invite users to join a group using their emails. Some changes will probably be needed into the BP REST API and the BP Nouveau Messages UI.

@im4th has been working on adding our block survey most voted block idea. A pull request is opened to feedbacks on the BP Blocks GitHub repository.

@IAmTheWebb informed he would test #8317. As this ticket is about providing a Docker testing environment, we’ll probably need to write a codex page to explain how to have it up and running.

7.0.0 release schedule

  • 7.0.0-beta1: October 15
  • 7.0.0 : December 1st

BuddyPress.org new design project

@mercime has been working on “sassifying” bb-base and buddypress-org themes stylesheets.

@vapvarun worked on a style guide about the project. See images below:

Homework

Unfortunately we were not able (time was over) to talk about the BP Types UI plugin, please have a look at this part of the July 1st’s Dev-Chat summary so that we can start our next meeting by this point.

Next Dev-Chat

It will happen on July 29 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!

#6-2-0, #7-0-0, #dev-chat, #summary

BP Dev-Chat summary: july 1st, 2020

7.0.0 development cycle

  • @vapvarun & @mercime have tested #8317 (Many thanks to them 😍). Results are: it works using Ubuntu server, MacOs, Windows 10 Pro and better, Windows home (after enabling WSL2). @im4th believes we should include the @wordpress/env into our repository to simplify the way people can quickly have a development environment to start contributing to BuddyPress.
  • We spoke about #8291 and the attached patch to the ticket. @vapvarun tested it in current WordPress and WordPress < 5.3 successfully 👌. The patch has been committed a few days ago.
  • @im4th gave updates about the delete confirmation screens @adil has been contributing to (many thanks to him 💪). There are now confirmation screens on the same way we’re doing it for Group items when you delete a group of xProfile fields #8305, an xProfile field #8321 and an activity #8304 from their Administration screens.
  • @mercime will soon update a first patch to #8301 to improve BP Nouveau’s compatibility with Twenty Twenty.

BuddyPress.org new design

@mercime explained how she and @vapvarun could progress on the project posting tickets and patches on Meta Trac. It’s the most direct way as the bb-base and the buddypress-org themes are hosted on this SVN repository. A possible downside would be commit access, but we can always set a GitHub repository to iterate and post tickets/patches regularly on Meta Trac. @mercime is working on scheduling/organizing tasks and has shared a GANTT with the contributing team.

Homework! 👨‍🏫

At the end of our development meeting, @im4th shared about the improvements he and @boonebgorges have added to the BP Types UI plugin lately. The goal of this plugin was to explore ways to add an Administration UI to manage BuddyPress Group and Member Types. After exploring a Post Type possible road, we are now extending the WP Terms UI so that it’s possible to add/edit/delete new types and it’s possible to customize types registered by code (we’re keeping the best of both processes). Below are some screenshots about how it looks at the current stage:

Here comes the homework: how should we make these UIs available for testing to eventually include them into BuddyPress 7.0.0 (or up) ? I see 2 big options:

  • include this into core directly and use our beta releases to test it.
  • package a plugin from GitHub and ask contributors to test it.

What is/are yours? Let’s talk about it during our next dev-chat!

7.0.0 Release Schedule

  • 7.0.0-beta1: October 15
  • 7.0.0 : December 1st

Next Dev-Chat

It will happen on July 15 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!

#7-0-0, #dev-chat, #summary

BP Dev-Chat summary: june 17, 2020

6.1.0 Maintenance release

@im4th will package this maintenance release next Monday (July 29).

7.0.0 development cycle

The call for tickets is now closed. Many thanks to all the contributors who replied to it 😍

BuddyPress.org / BuddyPress theme

We agreed with @mercime about how it’s best to work on this:

  • the BuddyPress.org redesign & the BuddyPress theme are 2 separate projects.
  • the BuddyPress theme project will kick off around august once WordPress 5.5 will be released and will land after WordPress 5.6 will be released to enjoy full site editing.
  • the BuddyPress.org redesign will start asap and the project will use progressive iterations. the VVV WP Meta environment will be needed to contribute.
  • @vapvarun will be able thanks to a GitHub repository @JJJ will set up. @mercime will commit changes on the Meta SVN repository.
  • This blog will be used to share progress about the BuddyPress.org redesign project. A kick off post about it will soon be published.

Updates about 7.0.0’s milestone

Please join us to congratulate @immeet94 first code contribution to BuddyPress: #8315 is now fixed thanks to him.

To make it easier to new contributors to quickly get a testing environment to work on patches we’re discussing about including @wordpress/env to our building tools: #8317. Don’t hesitate to share your thoughts about it. During our meeting we’ve been talking about Docker’s compatibility with MS Windows powered computers.

We are also thinking at raising our WordPress required version to 4.9: #8318

Finally @im4th shared about the work he’s been doing about introducing a Block Based Activity post form. A detailed PR is available on the BP Blocks GitHub repository and you can also read this WP Tavern great post about it.

7.0.0 Release Schedule

  • 7.0.0-beta1: October 15
  • 7.0.0 : December 1st

Next Dev-Chat

It will happen on July 1st 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!

#6-1-0, #7-0-0, #dev-chat

BP Dev-Chat Summary: June 3rd, 2020

For this meeting we chose to focus on defining the next features the team will work on for the 7.0.0 development cycle as well as first information about the 7.0.0 release schedule.

7.0.0 Features whishlist

@im4th first thanked the contributors who submitted tickets to our Call for Tickets. If you haven’t had the chance to add yours yet, you still have time: the call’s deadline is set to June 17.

7.0.0 Release Schedule

At the end of our meeting we agreed on this schedule:

  • 7.0.0-beta1: October 15
  • 7.0.0 : December 1st

I’ve just updated the 7.0.0 milestone: let’s start contributing to this great release!

Next Dev-Chat

It will happen on June 17 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!

#7-0-0, #dev-chat, #summary

BP Dev-Chat Summary: May 20, 2020

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 @dcavinsBP 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: May 6, 2020

Before discussing about the points on our agenda, @im4th explained why he quickly packaged a second Release Candidate on May 3rd. His goal was to early fix an issue about the BuddyPress build process regarding how JavaScript i18n strings can be identified by GlotPress on our WordPress.org plugin repository. The idea was to leave as much time as possible to Polyglots Contributors to help us make available our next major release in as much languages as possible.

BuddyPress 6.0.0 Hello & Credits Screens, & the 2020 survey

We’ve been discussing about an a11y issue @mercime raised into this comment. @im4th said he will look into it asap to try to fix it before 6.0.0 release. The improvements @dcavins (many thanks for your help) brought to the initial patch has been taken in account during the first commit about the Hello Screen. We will add the link to the 2020 survey at the last minute. @mercime already opened a ticket on Meta Trac to request for survey banners on our sites (BuddyPress.org, the Codex and the Developer Ressources site). @mercime (many thanks to you too!!) also committed to update the props of the Credits Screen for 6.0.0. The 2 last steps about props are to:

  • include the Polyglots contributors to the Props list.
  • introduce a new section “Noteworthy Contributors to 6.0.0” and do the required updates about the drop of the “Recent Rockstars” one.

About this new section @im4th suggested to add  @vapvarun @IAmTheWebb and @Passoniate to it and left “nomination” opened if other members of the team want to add other important contributors to 6.0.0.

Finally, we’ve listed the ultimate tasks to achieve before 6.0.0 release.

  1. Fix last PHP 7.4 issues. Many thanks to @rayisme for dealing with it and fixing it 💪.
  2. Update the 6.0.0 changelog.
  3. Write the 6.0.0 announcement post.
  4. Choose the Pizza name for this release (@im4th will reach out to team’s member privately in Slack to keep it secret until d-day!).

BP REST API Documentation updates

After @im4th‘s first pass about it less than 10 endpoints needed a review/update. He thinks it’s doable before the release date and since the dev-chat, it’s important to mention that @mercime has been doing an amazing job about it reviewing and updating 11 endpoints so far 👏🏆.

6.0.0 Final schedule

BuddyPress 6.0.0 is slated for release on May 14

@im4th is confident we will be able to release it for May 14th. No blockers were raised during the meeting, so let’s do it !

Next dev chat

It will happen on May 20 at 19:00 UTC (a week after release) 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!

#6-0-0, #dev-chat

BP Dev Chat Summary: April 22, 2020

Hello screen & BuddyPress 2020 survey

The ticket for the Hello Screen has been created on Trac (#8270). @im4th started the meeting by asking feedbacks about it. @IAmTheWebb after a brain to html conversion of the patch thinks it looks good. A screenshot of the Hello Screen has been added to the ticket to ease this conversion 😅. @im4th also said there was a placeholder to insert the link to the BuddyPress Survey 2020.

@mercime volunteered to draft the 6.0.0 changelog 😍. She already prepared a first version of it using @rayisme‘s BP Changelog. Here’s the link to its preview if some of us wants to give a hand to fine tune it.

BP REST API documentation updates

@im4th shared the GH issue we can use to follow our progress about this task. He said he would take care of documenting the 6 new endpoints as the process to create new documentation pages using the BP REST API inline documentation is a pain to complete. He just finished adding these 6 new documentation page today (April 29). We still need to check all the other endpoints are up to date with latest BP REST API improvements.

Discussions about 6.0.0-RC1 & 6.0.0 schedule

At the time of the dev-chat there was 3 tickets in the milestone’s queue. As @IAmTheWebb noticed the ticket about the removal of the Legacy BuddyBar (#7729) was needing some extra time to be fixed during this release, so @im4th moved it to next major release. @im4th said he would take a deeper look to the ticket about the privacy data introduced in WP 5.4 (#8266). He did so 40 hours ago and decided to also move this ticket to next major release.

We agreed on a new schedule to leave 2 weeks between RC1 and final release so that translation contributors can help us making BuddyPress 6.0.0 available in as many language as possible. So here it is:

  • 6.0.0 RC1: April 29 (in a few hours 🏃‍♀️🏃‍♂️)
  • 6.0.0: May 14

Open floor

@im4th started by saying a big “TY” to @boonebgorges who packaged the 5.2 maintenance and security release the day before the dev-chat.

About #meta-5141 @mercime suggested to add a new page on BuddyPress.org to introduce our two documentation resources (The Codex & Developer site). @im4th agreed it was a great idea.

Next dev chat

It will happen on May 6 at 19:00 UTC (a week before final release) 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!

😷 Stay safe

#6-0-0, #dev-chat