BP Dev-Chat Agenda September 21, 2022

Hello BuddyPress contributors 👩🏽‍🤝‍👨🏻

Our next development meeting will happen on September 21 at 19:30 UTC (this coming Wednesday) in #BuddyPress. Below is our agenda:

• 11.0.0 & BP Attachments global progress.
• 11.0.0 Trac tickets needing some attention :
  • #4184: @espellcaste did right including this ticket into this development cycle: being able to exclude activity based on their author is an interesting enhancement.
  • #8734: we talked about it 2 weeks ago and we should really consider adding a BP Native way to set a site’s community as restricted to its members.
• Who’s in to build a new great looking BuddyPress theme? We had very interesting discussions lately into #BuddyPress about working on a BP standalone theme and why not one supporting block templates (in other words a “Full Community Site Editing” theme). We think it’s a great idea, let’s organize to make this happen 🎨

If you have specific/additional points you need to discuss about, please share them into the comments area of this post.

👋

#11-0-0, #agenda, #dev-chat

BP Dev-Chat summary : September 7, 2022

• See previously BP Dev Chat summary (August 17, 2022)
• In attendance: @dcavins @espellcaste @im4th
• Slack archive.

BP Attachments / Activity block editor update

• @im4th has started working on templating to display single media on the front-end.
• He also made it possible to share media using the Activity Block Editor when the BP Attachements plugin is active. This means block developers could soon enjoy a new playground to express themselves.
• The BP Attachments Admin UI now includes an “Edit Item” view. See the screenshot below.

11.0.0 updates

• @im4th shared he was hesitant about #8052. Now the blog post title is directly included into the corresponding activity type’s content, we don’t need to use a blog meta to retrieve it inside the activity action string anymore.
• @dcavins suggested to request a feedback from @rayisme who worked on this part and should be the best of us to know whether it’s safe or not to make this move in 11.0.0.

11.0.0 schedule reminder

• First beta: October 19, 2022.
• Release: December 14, 2022.

Open floor

@im4th started discussing about the drop on the active installations stat we observed on the BuddyPress WP.org plugin’s page as it went down from 200k to 100k 😱. Thanks to @johnjamesjacoby we were able to get more precise numbers about this decrease and it turns out we’re around 190/195k active installs. But the trend since year 2017 is concerning as it’s 📉 not to mention the fact there are less and less contributors to the project 😭. We’ve discussed about the possible reasons for these bad results:

• lack of cool front-end things added to the plugin recently,
• hesitancy to install a big plugin like BuddyPress for a single feature,
• lack of privacy tools, of a media component,
• growth of the use of things like Teams and Slack,
• BuddyBoss’s commercial aggressivity (eg: Google Adwords) or their slick-looking theme attractivity,
• etc..

As the BP Attachments add-on should be available around the 11.0.0 release date, the first action we took was to open a ticket about including a basic private community feature into our next major release.

After some more discussions with @espellcaste we came to the conclusion we need more data from users. A new survey was suggested as well as asking the WordPress Marketing Team for help. We finally thought about posting into our support forum this simple question “what is the most important feature that BuddyPress is missing?“. We decided to test this last idea as soon as we have a text to explain why we are questionning ourselves about it. If you believe you have answers to share with us, don’t hesitate to comment this post 🙏.

Next Dev-Chat

It will happen on September 21 at 19:30 UTC in #BuddyPress. If you have specific points you want to discuss about, don’t hesitate to share them in comments.

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

BP Dev-Chat Agenda September 7, 2022

Hi!

Our next development meeting will happen on September 7 at 19:30 UTC (tomorrow) and of course in #BuddyPress. Here’s our agenda:

• 11.0.0 global progress.
• 11.0.0 Trac tickets needing some attention :
  • #8052 this ticket was reopened and now have a wider perimeter. It questions the way we’ve delt with activity action formatting for blog post.
• BP Attachments & BP Activity Block Editor latest progress

If you have specific/additional points you need to discuss about, please share them into the comments area of this post.

👋

#11-0-0, #agenda, #dev-chat

BP Dev-Chat Summary : August 17, 2022

• See previously BP Dev Chat summary (August 3, 2022)
• In attendance: @dcavins @espellcaste @im4th
• Slack archive.

11.0.0 updates

• #7228: using PHP Code Standards linter, @espellcaste plans to commit the code he worked on from this PR soon.
• He also requested feedbacks about this BP REST API issue, @im4th brought his!
• @im4th reminded the team about latest improvements about our PHPUnit tests suite.
• #8722: @im4th started working on the Activity templates and JavaScript for the BP reNouveau template pack. He’ll need to find a « no-jQuery » way to deal with live date and time updates as well as activity heartbeat refresh. He also decided this new template pack will have a dependency to the BP Attachments plugin to deal with profile and cover image features.
• The BP Attachments plugin now includes blocks for the Post Block Editor as well as the coming Activity Block Editor.
• #8693: site membership issue on Multisite configs. @dcavins is confident it will be pretty straightforward to fix.
• @dcavins will deal with #8713 to bring type meta to types registered using code.

11.0.0 schedule reminder

• First beta: October 19, 2022.
• Release: December 14, 2022.

Next Dev-Chat

It will happen on September 7 at 19:30 UTC in #BuddyPress. If you have specific points you want to discuss about, don’t hesitate to share them in comments.

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

August 3 dev-chat Summary & August 17 dev-chat Agenda

• See previously BP Dev Chat summary (July 20, 2022)
• In attendance: @dcavins @espellcaste @tw2113 @boonebgorges @im4th
• Slack archive.

10.4.0 Maintenance release

• @im4th & @dcavins had another look to the fix applied in #8715 and agreed it was the right move to avoid having the page to send group invites viewable by non-members of the group (even if it’s not usable to actually invite people to join the group).
• This fix is the main reason why @im4th thinks we need to package a maintenance release.
• Decision was made to release 10.4.0 before next dev-chat (as dev-chat is tomorrow, it’s more likely to happen before the end of the week, sorry for this delay 😞).

11.0.0 tickets needing attention

• #8643 .webp image support for user profile images & user cover images. @dcavins gave his feedback about it & thanks to it @im4th improved the patch and committed it. In 11.0.0, you’ll be able to use a .webp image to set your profile photo or cover image 🙌 ✅.
• #7614 Group members count routine needed improvements. @dcavins will give a deeper look to it. @im4th suggested to put in place a specific repair tool to eventually perform a recount for out of sync group members counts. This suggestion led to a longer discussion later during the chat see this part of the summary.
• Some other tickets were discussed during the chat:
  • #8604 @dcavins & @im4th agreed generating a richer content for mini activities when they are displayed into single items is a bit “too much”. We’ve decided to bring back mini displays for these activities in these areas. In other words, Richer content will only be generated when viewing these mini activities into the Activity Site Wide directory. See this commit for more information about it.
  • #4535 @dcavins volunteered to work on adapting @im4th first patch so that it also fixes the issue about activity duplicates when loading the load more button for the BP Legacy template pack.

Open floor

• Let’s introduce a mechanism to safely upgrade a big range of data in batch. This was the subject of the long discussion we had first, calling @boonebgorges to the rescue 🦸🏼‍♂️. To go straight to the point, he suggested us to use the same mechanism he included into WordPress Core when he needed to upgrade taxonomies to achieve shared-term-splitting, because “you have to make sure that upgrades of this sort degrade gracefully. You have to leave logic in place for what happens when a site hasn’t run through its upgrade routine“. He shared with us links to the key parts of the WordPress code so that we can get some inspiration from his work 😍.
• BuddyPress PHP Code Standards: @espellcaste suggested to create a custom BuddyPress PHPCS ruleset that any BP project can use. @im4th agreed it was a good idea and this GH repository has been created to house this ruleset. @espellcaste‘s plan is to progressively improve BP Core’s code so that it comply with this ruleset. It’s a lot of work and if some of you want to give him a hand, you’re very welcome.

Next Dev-Chat

It will happen tomorrow on August 17 at 19:30 UTC in #BuddyPress. Here’s our agenda :

• Latest improvements to our PHP Unit tests suite.
• #8722 Progress about the reNouveau template pack
• Progress about the tickets that were mentioned into this summary (#4535, #7614) & BP Attachments.
• Open floor

Thanks in advance to the contributors who will join this chat 🙏🤝

#10-4-0, #11-0-0, #agenda, #dev-chat, #summary

BP Dev-Chat Agenda August 3, 2022

Hi!

Our next development meeting will happen on August 3rd at 19:30 UTC (tomorrow) and of course in #BuddyPress. Here’s our agenda:

• 10.4.0 Maintenance release schedule, see tickets list here.
• 11.0.0 Trac tickets needing some attention :
  • #8643 .webp image support for user profile images & user cover images.
  • #7614 Group members count routine needed improvements.
• BP Attachments latest progress

If you have specific/additional points you need to discuss about, please share them into the comments area of this post.

👋

#10-4-0, #11-0-0, #agenda, #dev-chat

BP Dev-Chat Summary : July 20, 2022

• See previously BP Dev Chat summary (July 06, 2022)
• In attendance: @dcavins @im4th
• Slack archive.

11.0.0 latest updates

• #8687: improving the way we load deprecated functions. @dcavins & @im4th had a new discussion about the updated patch @im4th suggested. The new logic is still to only load the last 2 versions deprecated functions in case BuddyPress was upgraded. Improvements were made about dealing with the BP_IGNORED_DEPRECATED constant. If set to true: no deprecated functions are loaded, if set to false all are loaded. @dcavins also thinks we’re going into the right direction. The ticket has been fixed since July 26, 2022. Please read this commit message for more information about it.
• #8679: only load template pack assets (styles and JavaScripts) in site’s BuddyPress specific areas. We’ve finally decided to carry on loading template pack assets everywhere by default in version 11.0.0. But we introduced the needed code to stop doing so and restrict the loading of these assets to BuddyPress pages only. Site owners who wish to enjoy it and help us identify potential issues with BuddyPress plugins still expending assets to be loaded everywhere are encouraged to use the filter we’ve put in place – add_filter( 'bp_enqueue_assets_in_bp_pages_only', '__return_true' ); – and keep us updated so that we can safely switch to restricting assets loading during the 12.0.0 development cycle. Have a look at this commit message to know more about it.
• #8052: improving how new_blog_post activities content is generated. To go straight to the point: opening the corresponding post should be more intuitive. Links to it were added to the title, featured image and “more link” of the activity content. This “read more” link is generated using the WordPress the_content_more_link filter which means if your theme is using this filter to adapt the “read more” link, these adaptations will also be applied to the activity “read more” link. Have a look at a preview of how it will look soon:

11.0.0 Tickets needing feedbacks

• #8604 Richer logging activities display according to context.
• #8643 .webp image support for user profile images & user cover images.
• #4535 Avoid loading duplicates when clicking on the Load More button.

During the development meeting @dcavins wisely advised to check the number of the WordPress version when the .webp image support were added. After checking, it was in WordPress 5.8. As BuddyPress 11.0.0 will support WordPress back to its 5.7 version, we’ll need to include a version check to the patch.

BP reNouveau and BP Activity Block Editor demo

We’ve used the private audio/video chat feature of slack to run this demo. It worked pretty well! People who attended to it were able to see our latest progress about both features and they look very promising 🤩. About the new template pack, you can follow our progress from this ticket. About the BP Activity Block Editor, @im4th will soon make it testable from a BuddyPress GitHub repository. The achieved worked so far on both features already brought some interesting improvements to our BP REST API (See PRs #447 & #448).

11.0.0 schedule reminder

• First beta: October 19, 2022.
• Release: December 14, 2022.

Next Dev-Chat

It will happen on August 03 at 19:30 UTC in #BuddyPress. If you have specific points you want to discuss about, don’t hesitate to share them in comments.

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

BP Dev-Chat Agenda July 20, 2022

Hi!

Our development meeting will happen on July 20 at 19:30 UTC (tomorrow) and of course in #BuddyPress. Here’s our agenda:

• 11.0.0 Trac tickets almost ready to be committed:
  • #8687 Change the way we load deprecated functions
  • #8679 only load Template packs assets in BuddyPress pages.
  • #8052 Improve new_blog_post activity type content
• 11.0.0 Trac tickets needing feedbacks:
  • #8604 Richer logging activities display according to context.
  • #8643 .webp image support for user profile images & user cover images.
  • #4535 Avoid loading duplicates when clicking on the Load More button.
• BP reNouveau (see #8722) & BP Activity Block Editor first demos!!!

About the last point on our agenda, we’ll try to use the Slack Group DM’s Audio/Video/Screen sharing tool. If you want me to add you to this group chat, don’t hesitate to say hi! at the beginning of our public dev-chat.

If you have specific/additional points you need to discuss about, please share them into the comments area of this post.

👋

#11-0-0, #agenda, #dev-chat

BP Dev-Chat Summary : July 6, 2022

• See previously BP Dev Chat summary (June 22, 2022)
• In attendance: @dcavins @im4th
• Slack archive.

11.0.0 tickets needing attention

• #8709: bumping BP 11.0.0 required WP version to 5.7. @im4th added a patch to the ticket and will soon commit it. He requested some new eyes to check nothing was missed.
• #8687: improving the way we load deprecated functions. @dcavins & @im4th had a longer discussion about it. The new logic is to only load the last 2 versions deprecated functions in case BuddyPress was upgraded. This means brand new installs won’t load deprecated functions. Defining the BP_IGNORED_DEPRECATED constant to true would let new installs load the 2 last versions deprecated functions and defining it to false would load all deprecated functions. @dcavins is amazed by the fact BP > 2.7 installs never had issues although deprecated functions is never loaded in thesee cases. @im4th pointed him to #8702 to illustrate this was actually the opposite happening and said this ticket also needs to be fixed.
• #8679: only load template pack assets (styles and JavaScripts) in site’s BuddyPress specific areas. @im4th sees potential issues with Legacy widgets about the first patch he added to the ticket. @dcavins suggested to include a constant to still load these everywhere as some BP plugins might still expect this kind of availability. @im4th agreed we need to think more about it. If you have opinions about it, please add comments to the ticket. We’ll try to be the more conservative possible about it.
• #7614: group members count issues. This ticket was reopened after a bug was raised about the changes we introduced in 10.0.0. @im4th asked @dcavins to have a look at it. He believes we might need a new repare tool in case this count is out of sync.
• #8693: site membership issue on Multisite configs. @dcavins has a plan about it 💪

Progress on roadmap

During June 22’s dev-chat, we discussed about this roadmap for our next couple of major releases. Here’s how we’re progressing about it.

• After exploring potential impacts about our will to remove our dependency to jQuery, @im4th thinks the best approach is to build a new template pack to make this happen. It would be like an evolution of BP Nouveau. He already thought about the name of this new template pack: « BP reNouveau » (FYI: nouveau is the French for new and renouveau is the French for renewal). The idea is to keep all Nouveau look and feel (CSS), avoid code/template duplication by using it as a fallback and focus on using modern JavaScript along with the BP REST API instead of Ajax calls. @im4th secretly hopes reNouveau will be part of the 11.0.0 release.
• Attachments / User generated media: it’s 11.0.0 dev cycle main top feature. It’s being developed from our BP Attachments GitHub repository and will be released as a feature as a plugin. After discussing with @dcavins, @im4th thinks v1 should only focus on the Members component. Groups support needs more time to find the best approach about it. So far @im4th has chosen « the media shared in a group belongs to it » approach but doesn’t feel comfortable about it as media should probably always belong to the member who shared it. Problem is: what happens when a member leaves a group? If you have ideas about it, don’t hesitate to share them adding a comment to this GH issue.

11.0.0 initial schedule reminder

• First beta: October 19, 2022.
• Release: December 14, 2022.

Next Dev-Chat

It will happen on July 20 at 19:30 UTC in #BuddyPress. If you have specific points you want to discuss about, don’t hesitate to share them in comments.

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

BP Dev-Chat Agenda July 6, 2022

Hi!

Our development meeting will happen on July 6 at 19:30 UTC (tomorrow) and of course in #BuddyPress. Here’s our agenda:

• 11.0.0 Trac tickets review:
  • #8709 required WP version
  • #8687 Change the way we load deprecated functions
  • #8679 only load Template packs assets in BuddyPress pages.
  • #7614 Group members count routine
  • #8693 Site members invitations for Multisite configs
• BP Attachments progress.

If you have specific/additional points you need to discuss about, please share them into the comments area of this post.

👋

#11-0-0, #agenda, #dev-chat