BP Dev-Chat summary: January 6, 2021

BuddyPress 8.0.0’s kick off

Unfortunately, the meeting started 30 mins later than scheduled, so we were not able to talk about all the scheduled points. @johnjamesjacoby congratulated the great work the team has accomplished during the 7.0 development cycle and the recent updates we’ve published on the BuddyPress.org’s blog.

Features / bug fixes wishlist

The call for tickets is now closed (it ended on January 13), the least we can say is it didn’t gather much wishes 😬. @im4th seems to be motivated to progress on the BP Attachments’ front, 8.0.0 might be a good milestone to have some user media feature included into BuddyPress core.

@slaffik shared his concerns about introducing the Activity scheduling feature (#7953). He thinks it should be handled by a BuddyPress plugin rather than be included into Core.

He and @im4th agreed on the fact we should deprecate the BuddyBar into this development cycle (#7729). @rayisme ‘s patch was very close to make it during the 6.0.0 release, let’s have it done!

We then talked about continuous integration and build tools. The Travis CI (.org) shutting down announcement with no specific date is concerning. @im4th has tested the Travis CI (.com) migration with 2 of his free and open source plugins and is now requested to pay for the service after a bunch of builds done. The documentation about the migration seems to be a bit misleading about this subject. @slaffik is going to work on moving to GitHub Actions (#8421) 😍 . He also opened a ticket to modernize our composer.json file (#8420). He and @im4th are thinking we should start working on WP Code Standards (#7228).

Next Dev-Chat

Let’s carry on talking about 8.0.0 during our next dev-chat: it will happen on January 20 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!

#8-0-0, #dev-chat, #summary

BP Dev-Chat Summary: December 16, 2020

7.0.0 release first feedbacks & results

2 bugs related to the 7.0.0 release were posted on Trac:

  • #8411 The Groups Administration screen was not reachable anymore for configs using the multiblog constant BP_ENABLE_MULTIBLOG. ✅ It has been fixed.
  • #8414 Using the BP Blogs component tool to repair site icon / blavatar synchronization on non multisite configs was generating an error due to a WordPress function not available. ✅ It has been fixed.

We also spent some time investigating a possible bug about Activity recorded dates but it turned out it wasn’t involving the plugin. We’ve decided to package a minor release (7.1.0) before christmas. It should be available for download later today (around 21:00 UTC).

The 7.0.0 release had the best download spike of our 2020 releases. It was reached on December 11 with 34326 downloads 🙌

About the 8.0.0 features wishlist!

We’ll post a new call for tickets at the very beggining of 2021, the same way we did it for the 7.0.0 release. Everyone will be welcome to contribute to it. You can start looking for Trac tickets you’d like to see fixed for 8.0.0.

@slaffik will personally take a look at good-first-issue tasks, on those that he has created a while ago, and will open a new ticket to work on bringing Twenty Twenty One compatibility improvements to our default Template Pack 👍.

Finally and more globally about development cycles, we’ll have a discussion about how we can improve things such has release regularity, release leading, etc.

Next Dev-Chat

It will happen next year on January 6 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!

Many thanks to all BuddyPress contributors for their help during 2020, we wish you all great holidays and to stay safe. See you in 2021 for some great BuddyPress times!

🎄🎅🏻🤶🏾

#dev-chat, #summary

General Summary as of February 6, 2017

Apologies for not posting updates here lately. This is a compilation of all the dev chats for January 4, 11, 18, 25, and February 1 plus relevant activities.

BuddyPress 2.8

BP 2.8 Trac

BP Email: Allow end user to specify which PHPMailer should be used (#7286). @djpaul has committed patch to trunk.

Alphabetical sorting in the group widget (#7313). @dcavins has committed patch to trunk.

Make group search more flexible (#7418). @dcavins has committed patch to trunk.

Use BP_Groups_Group::get() where possible (#7419). @dcavins has committed patch to trunk.

get_group_extras function doesn’t “respects” the user_id variable from groups_get_groups() function (#6431). Ticket punted to Future Release.

BP 2.8 – Prevent loading if PHP < 5.3 (#7277). @boonebgorges has commited patch to trunk.

Add View link for users on BP Signups page (#7261). @slaFFik has committed patch to trunk.

Group Types Default Pagination Broken (#7423). @r-a-y has committed patch to trunk.

When user is not logged , in he/she clicks email link to view new messages gets 404 page when should get login page (#7349). Ticket punted to BP 2.9.

XProfile: use filterable field input name in radio/checkbox field type (#7425). @offereins has committed patch to trunk.

Group and member template functions should check current group/member as well (#3842). Ticket punted to Future Release.

Notice: Trying to get property of non-object (#7329). @r-a-y has committed patch to trunk.

Welcome Screen for 2.8.0 (#7426). Under construction.

Hook for custom email type schema (#7431). @DJPaul has committed patch to trunk.

Update and fix all the NPM things (#7429). Ticket punted to BP 2.9.

XProfile: a group’s first field becomes last after save (#7428). @offereins has committed patch to trunk.

BuddyCamp Miami, March 24, 2017

WordCamp Miami hosts BuddyCamp for the 6th time and this year, expect a REST API workshop along with interesting BuddyPress topics in this single full-day event.

As of Feb. 6, topics for the “BuddyCamp + REST API” track on Friday, March 24th, include:

  • “BuddyPress 101: What You Need To Know” by David Laietta
  • “Taming BuddyPress” by Tanner Moushey
  • “A BuddyPress Case Study” by Tara Claeys
  • “How To Build A WordPress/BuddyPress Mobile App” by Brian Messenlehner
  • “The State of BuddyPress” by John James Jacoby
  • “Working With The WordPress REST API” by Joseph Van
  • …more speakers and surprises to come!

WordCamp Miami 2017 will be held over the course of three days, March 24-26, at Florida International University.

Initial list of speakers for the BuddyCamp + REST API Track on March 24. Top row, L – R: David Laietta, John James Jacoby, Tanner Moushey. Bottom row, L – R: Joseph Van, Brian Messenlehner, Tara Claeys. (Image from WordCamp Miami 2017 site)

#dev-chat

Dev Chat Summaries for December 21 & 28, 2016

BP 2.8 Trac Tickets

BP 2.8 – Prevent loading if PHP < 5.3 (#7277) @boonebgorges has patch. Dev feedback requested (esp. @johnjamesjacoby & @djpaulgibbs).

Removal of `create_function` usage for BP 2.8 (#7325) @tw2113 has patches.

Anonymize BP Core Dependency functions file. (#7335) Closed as wontfix.

`groups_promote_member()` shouldn’t attempt to fetch ⁠⁠⁠⁠BP_Core_User⁠⁠⁠⁠ object (#7382) Patch needs unit tests. Assigned to @boonebgorges.

Add a “buddypress” class to body element of wp-admin (#7353) @slaffik has committed fix to trunk.

Component Maintainers

@slaffik will be contacting everyone who volunteered to maintain BP components in Trac.

@dcavins would like notifications from Trac for new tickets under the Group components. He mentioned different workarounds like getting Slack notifications for the Groups component to getting the RSS feed from Trac for the specific component. @johnjamesjacoby: “We’d need to merge into our Trac what’s already in WordPress Trac. That’s probably Dion and/or Nacin.” @netweb noted after the chat that there’s a ticket in Meta Trac to get this underway.

🥂 Wishing Everyone a Happy & Prosperous New Year! 🥂

Slack logs:
Dec. 21 https://wordpress.slack.com/archives/buddypress/p1482350517001398
Dec. 28 https://wordpress.slack.com/archives/buddypress/p1482955219002247

#7277, #7325, #7335, #7353, #7382, #dev-chat

Dev Chat Summary for December 14, 2016

BuddyPress 2.7.4

  • Release Date: TBA
  • There are currently 2 tickets in queue (1 open, 1 closed).
  • Can ‘change’ visibility on registration form even for fields marked “Enforce field visibility” (#7391) Ticket has been reopened to address coding standards.
  • Notice: Trying to get property of non-object (#7329) Has patch. Requested dev feedback from @rayisme
  • @djpaulgibbs: We are incompatible with PHP 7.1 as things stand – and I think we may have to rely on a fix in WordPress 4.7.x as well – so that’s the sort of thing that will likely go out once it’s ready.

BuddyPress 2.8 Tickets

Some more enhancement for translators (#5784) @slaffik recommended to close the ticket.

PHP Fatal error: Uncaught Error: Call to a member function get_do_autolink() on null (#7337) @slaffik has patch. @djpaulgibbs noted that patch should extend beyond preventing fatal errors to making the function usable outside the template loop.

Uninstall button and routine (#2755) This ticket would have to be put on hold until decisions are made on routines and details required to export/copy then delete/drop BP DB tables and other options.

Slack log: https://wordpress.slack.com/archives/buddypress/p1481745673000991

#2755, #5784, #7329, #7337, #7391, #dev-chat

Dev Chat Summary for November 16, 2016

Trac Gardening

@slaffik has been reviewing old tickets, closing some, adding others to 2.8, and “providing feedback where I see fit.” A friendly reminder to core devs to review tickets marked with `2nd-opinion`⁠⁠⁠⁠ and `⁠⁠⁠⁠dev-feedback`.

Welcome to our New Committers!

Congratulations to @slaffik and @netweb and @offereins for getting commit access! We all look forward to working with you in making BuddyPress greater than ever 🙂

Banners for the BuddyPress 2016 Survey

@johnjamesjacoby has added banners linking to the BuddyPress 2016 Survey at https://buddypress.org and https://codex.buddypress.org The survey will run through November 30, 2016.

buddypress-2016-survey

Bumping Required WordPress Version

BuddyPress 2.8 will require at least WordPress 4.3. (#7350)

Slack log: https://wordpress.slack.com/archives/buddypress/p1479326430001024

#7350, #dev-chat

Call for Components Maintainers

All the BuddyPress development takes place in Trac. All the tickets, most of the feature discussions and confirmed bugs, are all managed via Trac. For better tickets management, we use milestones, components, keywords and other ways to categorize everything. So far we have 24 components:

Component Tickets Maintainer
Activity 87 @lmoffereins
Administration 17  @slaFFik
Blogs 15
BuddyPress.org Sites 26
Build/Test Tools 8 @netweb
Core 157 @boonebgorges
Emails 17 @djpaulgibbs
Extended Profile 58 @lmoffereins
Forums 6
Friends 9 @henry.wright
Groups 58
I18N 10 @slaFFik
Media 13
Members 32 @espellcaste
Messages 16
Navigation 2
New User Experience 2
Performance 4
REST API 2 @espellcaste
Registration 6
Route Parser 7 @boonebgorges
Settings 4
Templates 55  @hnla
Toolbar & Notifications 22

WordPress (as well as some other OSS) uses an interesting approach where a person or a group of people are responsible for a specific component of a software project. The contributors have a specific interest in their chosen component, and enjoy or see the need to focus most of their contribution time on it.

In the long run, this helps that contributor quickly triage tickets in their preferred component, as they specialize in it and build up a knowledge advantage. The overall project benefits by faster review and prioritisation of new tickets.

I propose to implement BuddyPress component maintainers, with the hope that this will help move development even further and faster.

Some components, like Activity, Extended Profile, and Groups, need special love, as the number of tickets there is 50+. These components will benefit from having multiple component maintainers assigned to them.

Component maintainers don’t need to do anything special – just consider reviewing Trac tickets for your component, when you have a will and time to contribute to BuddyPress. You will be expected to look through all existing tickets, as well as new ones, provide feedback and help the larger project prioritise bug fixes and new features.

If you have any thoughts about this, or want to volunteer to become a component maintainer – please write in comments. And remember, it’s good to have several people per component, so join in even if you see someone’s mentioned your favorite component!

#buddypress

Dev Chat Summary for November 9, 2016

Trac Clean Up

@slaffik proposed the following actions to address the 654+ tickets in the Future Release milestone:
1) Go through tickets with 2nd-opinion and dev-feedback – and reply, close, or consider working on it.
2) Go through tickets that were updated years ago – and consider them to be closed by default, but read and investigate the value. If a ticket has been left for a long time in Trac, it’s either not that important, a duplicate, hard, or forgotten.

@johnjamesjacoby noted, “Proper organization, along with timely responses, I think are more important, but I agree that keeping it tidy reduces the cognitive burden of ‘holy moly there are 500 things to do.'”

Components maintainers

@slaffik and @djpaulgibbs will be preparing a post calling for BuddyPress component maintainers soon. Per previous dev chat, there’s a Google Spreadsheet @offereins prepared earlier this year. @slaffik has added a new sheet, ‘Blad 2’, listing components per trac.

Trac Tickets

BuddyPress MU (#4732) Closed as wontfix.

Add Help Pointers to Admin (#4672) Closed as wontfix.

BuddyPress 2016 Survey

The survey for Theme/Plugin Developers and Site Builders will be running through November 30, 2016. https://buddypress.org/2016/11/2016-buddypress-survey-site-builders-developers/

Slack log: https://wordpress.slack.com/archives/buddypress/p1478721656000684

#4672, #4732, #dev-chat

Dev Chat Summary for November 25, 2015

BuddyPress 2.4.1

  • As of 11/30/15, 2.4.1 will be released this week.
  • Six of the 7 tickets slated for this release are all good to go.
  • (#6675) WP 4.4. deprecates wp_title() will be moved to BP 2.4.2 which is scheduled sometime after WP 4.4.0 is released.

BuddyPress 2.5.0

  • @djpaulgibbs proposed start of dev cyle on Wednesday, Dec. 2, and release by March 2, 2016. He also mentioned that “we will lose probably a few weeks’ worth of development over Christmas, but I’d rather keep the pace up even if that means a smaller release.”
  • @boonebgorges noted that “in the last couple releases we’ve done fairly long beta/RC periods. I think it’s been good to be conservative. But they’ve also been too long for what we’ve actually needed. So if we think the release might be a bit smaller, we might consider a somewhat condensed period between feature-freeze and release. Not something we have to decide today.”

Wishlist

These are a few of our favorite things and suggestions for this dev cycle:

Improve BP Navigation from @im4th. @boonebgorges has started work on ticket last week refreshing the `BP_Nav` ideas. He will “dive into it after WP 4.4 comes out.”

Clear out all trac bugs from@tw2113.

Update Member home page to match new functionality of Group home page from @hnla. Can start off with user’s own `front.php` template and expand on top of this later.

BP Emails from @djpaulgibbs. This involves “architectural improvements to emails, and customizable emails. (#6592)

xProfiledata_meta from @boonebgorges.  Fix the way xProfile field visibility is stored (move from usermeta to xProfiledata_meta), which will make the data schema saner and also allow us to fix some search-related bugs.

Do the @todo items in codebase from @tw2113.

Improved caps from @im4th. Currently doing it in his template pack project.

Hashtags from @jconti. @slaffik noted that there are two BP-compatible hashtag plugins in WP repo. Chat continued on whether hashtags will be used for search vs. auto-completing hashtags or both.  @rayisme has worked on a fork of etiviti’s older hashtags plugin, will require at least some form of unicode support. He will be working on “Better compatibility when using ‘BP_ENABLE_USERNAME_COMPATIBILITY_MODE’ and UTF-8” which would also support emoji hashtags mentioned by @djpaulgibbs.

BP Template Versioning from @hnla. Feedback requested on current ticket to move the project forward.  (#6642)

developer.buddypress.org from @mercime. @djpaulgibbs noted the logistics required and testing will be needed before deployment. @boonebgorges mentioned some devs expect projects with stable APIs to have web-based documentation generated even when they are already big fans of the inline documentation.

Add “semi-private group” from @mercime. @boonebgorges pointed out that there were a couple tickets about separating the various parts of group status into standalone bits, so that you could make custom group types  like visibility vs join/invite vs who-can-invite etc. A version of “semi-private” would be some combination of these things. (#6094)

Bulk mentions for Groups from @jconti.  Feature is akin to Slack’s @ {here} {channel} {etc}. @djpaulgibbs noted that “the complexity there is around updating the notifications and probably a per-group setting to turn that on/off, when I rewrote the auto-suggest lookup stuff about a year ago, I had it in mind to be able to support group mentions, so there’s some work done already. @im4th brought up concern about notifications (emails) if a group has 200,000 members.

Reactions instead of favorites, dream from @im4th@boonebgorges replied with “A dream: BuddyPress Relationship Table and API.”  @djpaulgibbs: both ideas fill me with memories of many hours spent on those, I have like a quarter-done github branch somewhere porting Posts2Posts over if anyone’s really really keen. “

Update default templates from @hnla. Explore what we can do to update the default templates – perhaps with a focus on markup in core that can be extracted out to template directories.

There are more features, bug fixes, and enhancements not mentioned above that already have tickets in Trac and some that will have tickets soon. Join the fun in making this dev cycle another awesome one for the community!

Trac Tickets for the 2.5.0 milestone are available on this page.

Slack log: https://wordpress.slack.com/archives/buddypress/p1448481734000967

#6094, #6592, #6642, #6675, #dev-chat

BP 2.3.0 Dev Cycle – Contributor Priorities

This is a compilation of the planning and discussions held during the past three weeks (02/11/15, 02/18/15, and 02/25/15). Contributors have indicated the areas they are going to work on for the next three months or so of the 2.3.0 dev cycle:

@dcavins

  • New Invitations API where he’ll be building the API/lib first and add the component later as the need arises (#6210) with @johnjamesjacoby
  • Add tests for group invitations and membership request functions (#6209)

@tw2113

  • Complete documentation on BP Core files (#5940)
  • Complete documentation on BP Templates (#5948)
  • Reference: Docs initiative (#5022)
  • Afterwards, he will go over to all existing phpdocs and touch up ones that PHPStorm is reporting as inaccurate params and whatnot.

@im4th

  • New Attachments API (#5429) with @johnjamesjacoby
  • Local avatar management with new attachments API (#6004)
  • Possible new Relationships API with @djpaulgibbs based on https://github.com/paulgibbs/buddypress/tree/posts2posts for the Favorites/Likes features. Meeting at WCLondon to discuss this.

@boonebgorges

  • Member types API level such as member-type-specific xprofile fields (#5192)
  • “Only Me” profile fields are searchable by other users (#6211)
  • Member Types API: remove a user’s member type (#6188). Update: This issue was fixed today.
  • Check in other ongoing work in Trac

@hnla

  • Add companion stylesheets for all WordPress Default themes (#6248)
  • Twenty Fifteen theme BP Companion Stylesheet (#6124)

@rayisme

@mercime

  • 2015 BuddyPress Survey: launched 02/18/2015 through results post in April (#5980)
  • 2015 bbPress Survey: from ~ April 2015 through results in June/July 2015 (bbPress#2767)
  • WP Theme Repo: submit themes which support BuddyPress and bbPress
  • BuddyPress Codex: Add/update articles

@djpaulgibbs

  • Work with @im4th on the new Relationships API
  • Deleted activity items remain favourited (#3794) with @johnjamesjacoby
  • Activity Favorites: alternative management & new features (#5644) with @johnjamesjacoby
  • Improve representation of blog posts in the Activity Stream (#6177) which is virtually ready
  • BP Trac Maintenance and work on ideas for future releases

@johnjamesjacoby

  • New Notifications Meta (#6257)
  • Work with @rayisme on Message cache
  • Work with @im4th on new Attachments API
  • Work with @dcavins on new Invitations API
  • Work with @djpaulgibbs on Favourites/Likes
  • Work on new Administration UI’s for each component. @djpaulgibbs mentioned that he has UI for xProfile in wp-admin.

@slaffik

  • Will continue with his 5% for WordPress via BuddyPress and find ways to contribute in Trac.

You can keep track of the tasks for the 2.3.0 milestone on this page.

Commit Access

  • Commit access has been granted to @hnla for his work on the tickets mentioned above and other tasks to be assigned by the Lead Developers.

BuddyPress.org Issues

  • @slaffik raised an issue about the i18n sites of BuddyPress.org. @henrywright brought up an issue re BuddYPress.org forums. @ubernaut reported on an issue which was previously reported in trac which will be fixed when the WP trac ticket referenced in said ticket is fixed.
  • @johnjamesjacoby mentioned that these issues can be posted in https://meta.trac.wordpress.org/. The themes and plugins are open-sourced and can be patched. He added, “I don’t expect anyone to want to figure that all out (as it’s a bit non-standard at the moment.) It’s a bit unorthodox because BuddyPress.org & bbPress.org share resources amongst several sites & trac which does not run WordPress or PHP.”

New BuddyPress Welcome Screen Designs

  • Per initiative led by @djpaulgibbs in his post last Dec. 19th, @modemlooper presented two screenshots prepared by designers from WebDevStudios two weeks ago (#6224). Most of those present at the dev chat preferred the screenshot of the BP Welcome screen header (light version).
  • @djpaulgibbs encouraged interested parties “to think bigger than what we do on the Welcome screen already, not just make current screen look/work better”.

2015 BuddyPress Survey

  • Please help guide the direction of BuddyPress development in 2015 by taking the Survey at https://buddypress.org/2015/02/2015-buddypress-survey/ Thank you!

#6211

#3794, #5022, #5192, #5429, #5644, #5940, #5948, #5980, #6004, #6124, #6177, #6188, #6209, #6210, #6221, #6224, #6248, #6257, #dev-chat