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  • Paul Gibbs 7:37 pm on March 31, 2012 Permalink | Reply
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    Trip to WordCamp Netherlands 

    Last weekend was my first WordCamp of 2012: WordCamp Netherlands. Utrecht was a great place to visit, and is a picturesque city of sun, canals, and cyclists. Only a forty-five minute flight from London, it’s a short hop into Europe, so I wasn’t surprised to find some fellow Brits who made the flight, too — Tammie Lister, Siobhan McKeown, and Jon Cave (aka duck_).

    If I had to say one thing about Utrecht, it’s that I was more worried about being hit by a cyclist than a car! The weather was fantastic, and the colours of the light illuminated the old, compact buildings in a friendly glow. The Dom Tower dominated the skyline, and doubled-up as a handy landmark for me (my hotel was next to it).

    If you live on the other side of the Atlantic, and were thinking about a WordCamp holiday into Europe next year, look no further: WordCamp Netherlands has you covered.

    There are tons of photos of the WordCamp around the interwebs, and all the talks were recorded on video, so I’m looking forward to reliving the event through them. Here’s a teaser (I’m in green at about 11 seconds):

    I was invited by the event’s organisers to talk about BuddyPress, so I shared information about the new 1.6 version of BuddyPress, and the core team’s ideas for future versions. My presentation’s slides are on slideshare, and the video of it should be up online in the next couple of weeks.

    One of the most exciting things for me was to meet Bowe Frankema, Peter Hofman, and Stas Sușcov, all long-term BuddyPress contributors / developers / designers. With those three and Tammie, and myself, we had the most BuddyPress that I’ve ever seen at a single conference. Very cool.

     

    • Chantal 8:06 pm on March 31, 2012 Permalink | Reply

      Thanks for joining us in the Netherlands. Good vibe!

  • Paul Gibbs 11:54 am on March 17, 2012 Permalink | Reply
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    WordCamp Netherlands 

    Next weekend, I am attending WordCamp Netherlands in Utrecht (24-25th March). It’ll be my first visit to the Netherlands, so I’m looking forward to it lots, and very excited about meeting old and new friends.

    I am presenting about BuddyPress in 2012, and there are also two other sessions – Tammie Lister’s and Bowe Frankema’s – covering BuddyPress, which is really great. I am in Utrecht a couple of days before the WordCamp, so I’m hoping to catch up with the likes of Tammie, Bowe, Peter Hofman, and Stas Sușcov, to have a chat about BuddyPress.

    Tickets are still available for the event, and the line up is awesome. Go check it out.

     

  • Paul Gibbs 7:58 pm on December 22, 2011 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: akismet   

    New Plugin: Disable BuddyPress’ Activity Stream integration with Akismet 

    I’ve just made available a super-simple plugin that disables BuddyPress 1.6′s Activity Stream integration with Akismet. Most cool kids will never ever want to disable Akismet. And this plugin has an even more limited scope, because it requires BuddyPress 1.6, which isn’t out yet. Doh!

    Download from WordPress.org

     

  • Paul Gibbs 11:07 pm on December 19, 2011 Permalink | Reply
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    BP Labs – You May Like This 

    You may have heard of my BP Labs plugin for BuddyPress, which contains my own unofficial and experimental BuddyPress features for testing and feedback.

    I’ve just got a new feature to the proof-of-concept stage; a Like button. It works similarly to all social networks’ like buttons. Right now, I’ve hooked it up to appear in the toolbar when you’re reading a blog post. Big thanks to Tammie Lister for contributing the button graphic.

    I’m not sure when this new version of BP Labs will be out, but if you’re running BuddyPress 1.6-trunk, you can download BP Labs trunk here, and check it out. I’ve put a gallery of screenshots below.

    It’d be really handy to get some feedback on this early version; do you like the idea? Is it implemented in a useful manner? What other features would you consider core to such an implementation?

     

    • Sarah Gooding 11:15 pm on December 19, 2011 Permalink | Reply

      Hello Paul! Cool idea – I love it! Will the liking work for individual activity items or only blog posts? Is it backwards compatible or only working with the trunk? Thanks!

      • Paul Gibbs 11:37 pm on December 19, 2011 Permalink | Reply

        Right now, it’s proof-of-concept, so only blog posts. If I decide to put more time into this feature, the plan is to try to get it to work for any content on your website.

        It should only be used with BP 1.6-trunk. This is because we’ve put in a lot of optimisations around memory use and caching in 1.6, and this takes advantage of that. Without those changes, this could slow down your server.

    • mrjarbenne 11:42 pm on December 19, 2011 Permalink | Reply

      This is an nice concept, and could potentially replace the functionality of the “favorite” button on the activity stream. Would it make sense to be able to view items that users have “liked” via their Profile?

      • Paul Gibbs 10:55 am on December 20, 2011 Permalink | Reply

        Yep, it would. It’s built with that in mind, though that isn’t done (yet — it’s surprisingly tricky).

    • donnacha WordSkill 12:18 am on December 20, 2011 Permalink | Reply

      Very handy, I like this.

      The ability to Like individual comments and to display the number of Likes per comment would stimulate participation and reward good commenters.

      Integration with Achievements would compound that effect.

      The option to limit the ability to Like to logged in users or certain categories of user could be useful, although I think I would generally prefer to allow everyone to express their approval, whether logged in or not.

      A matching Dislike option could lead to a lot of interesting uses, especially if Likes and Dislikes could be weighted differently.

      If integrated with BuddyPress Moderation, a large number of dislikes and zero or very few Likes could trigger a flag.

    • Ray 3:00 am on December 20, 2011 Permalink | Reply

      I might need this feature sooner than later, so I might spend some time helping to get this working with group forum posts… as soon as BP 1.6 drops that is! :)

      • Paul Gibbs 10:56 am on December 20, 2011 Permalink | Reply

        :D I’d love to work with you or, indeed, anyone on this, or any other cool Experiments that they’ve had.

    • jackhowland 6:14 pm on January 8, 2012 Permalink | Reply

      Hi Paul,

      I’m very interested in a Like/Add to Favorites feature and would love to be part of any testing. I’m creating a BP site for writers to share, edit, and react to one another’s work. Like a flickr or 500px.com but dedicated to more constructive, less fanny-patting (if you will) feedback. Anything I can do to help?

      Thanks! Jack

      • Paul Gibbs 8:17 pm on February 10, 2012 Permalink | Reply

        During development of BuddyPress 1.7, I’ll be revisiting the Like in BP Labs.

    • Philipp 8:10 am on January 11, 2012 Permalink | Reply

      Amazing Paul! It just amazing! ;)

    • Towfiq I. 8:12 am on February 4, 2012 Permalink | Reply

      Thanks for the plugin. Is it possible yo add the like button under each post? along with the avatars of the members who liked it?

  • Paul Gibbs 7:16 am on December 5, 2011 Permalink | Reply
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    Welcome Pack 3.2 available now 

    Available now at http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/welcome-pack/. Fixes:

    • Missing admin menu in multisite
    • Some links not being correctly replaced into certain emails
    • Incorrect default text for the “you’ve been promoted” email.

    I’m still tracking a known issue with internationalisation and hope to have that addressed in the next version.

     

  • Paul Gibbs 11:39 pm on October 7, 2011 Permalink | Reply  

    Welcome Pack 3.1 is now available!

    It is a minor update to fix a bug reported by Simon Kartar involving error handling when the welcome messages could not be sent. I have also re-added the i18n .pot file to the package for easier localisation.

     

    • Dèdess (@Dedess_) 2:29 pm on October 17, 2011 Permalink | Reply

      Hi Paul,

      Great plugin !

      I try to set your welcome pack and it seems you can and ad html to “Welcome message” in settings panel :

      ” When a user logs in to your site for the first time, send them a message:”

      Is it true or do I miss something ?

      Lamine

  • Paul Gibbs 4:40 pm on October 4, 2011 Permalink | Reply  

    BP Labs 1.2.2 released 

    BP Labs 1.2.2 is now available. BP Labs contains unofficial and experimental BuddyPress features for testing and feedback.

    This is a minor release to improve compatibility with BuddyPress 1.5 (which is now a requirement). Some of the internals have been updated, and the @mentions autocomplete now works correctly with BP Default 1.5 theme.

     

    • Mike 6:43 pm on October 4, 2011 Permalink | Reply

      Thanks a million! You may want to update the WordPress plugins page for this plugin, too – it still says for BP v1.3.

      • Paul Gibbs 7:07 pm on October 4, 2011 Permalink | Reply

        Thanks – I think wp.org is just lagging behind a bit. It looks okay in the repository so hopefully it will update itself, soon.

  • Paul Gibbs 7:31 pm on October 3, 2011 Permalink | Reply  

    Welcome Pack 3.0 release 

    Welcome Pack 3.0 is available immediately.

    When a user registers on your site, Welcome Pack lets you automatically send them a friend or group invitation, a Welcome Message and can redirect them to a Start Page. You can also customise the emails sent by BuddyPress so that they match your site.

    In this release, I’ve updated the admin page design, and totally overhauled the email customisation options. Using post types and easy-to-theme HTML templates, Welcome Pack 3.0 is BuddyPress emails done right.

    Big thanks to Tammie Lister of Logical Binary for contributing both email templates that are included in the release. If you need awesome design done, you’d do well to talk Tammie.

    Be sure to check out the new documentation for Welcome Pack to learn how you can create your own email templates; ever wanted to use short codes, or even WordPress’ Loop to show your recent posts in your emails? Now you can.

     

  • Paul Gibbs 10:14 pm on October 1, 2011 Permalink | Reply  

    Welcome Pack 3.0 Preview 

    The plan is to get a beta release of Welcome Pack (3.0) out early next week. To show what’s new, I’ve recorded a brief screencast:

     

    • Slava UA (@slaFFik) 10:26 am on October 2, 2011 Permalink | Reply

      That’s really cool, Paul!
      Welcome Pack will give a lot more options to customize the community.

    • Boone Gorges 2:12 pm on October 3, 2011 Permalink | Reply

      Whoop! Now turn that email stuff into a BP patch ;)

      • Paul Gibbs 7:38 pm on October 3, 2011 Permalink | Reply

        I certainly intend to propose changes to how BuddyPress sends emails; will have to see what people think about the post type approach, however, before I can try making a case for that in core :)

  • Paul Gibbs 12:17 pm on September 27, 2011 Permalink | Reply  

    BuddyPress at WordPress London, 22/09/11 

    Last week, I went to my first WordPress London meetup, hosted at and by Headshift Ltd. I enjoyed the talks and catching up with Jeff Ghazally, Todd Halfpenny, Peter Westwood, and meeting Shakur Shidane and Emily Webber. Emily uses BuddyPress on yeah! Hackney, so check it out if you live in Hackney!

    I gave a talk introducing BuddyPress 1.5, which was released the day before. I think it went pretty well, and I’ve embedded my slides and a YouTube recording of yours truly below.

    The Telegraph‘s hosting the next meetup on October 20th, so why not come and say hi?

     

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