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Updates from May, 2010 Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts
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Paul Gibbs
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Paul Gibbs
Achievements 2.0 Feature Listing
I have had a few questions recently about what exactly will be in the next release of my Achievements plugin for BuddyPress, so thought I’d post the list here.
- Allow site admins to create custom Achievements via front-end – this includes specifying name/description/points and avatar (via WordPress media gallery). And, of course, what site event to hook it into (i.e. to fire on new user registration, etc).
- Achievements can also be granted to a specific user, to mimic a “badge” – i.e. “this month’s top contributor” or “competition winner.”
- Groups Directory, like regular BuddyPress Members/Groups Directory. Lists each of the Achievements, and by going into each, you can see who has “unlocked” that Achievement.
- A new area on a user’s profile page to show which Achievements they have unlocked.
Are there any features you’d like to see in sequential releases?
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Alex W
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AJ
When will you be releasing 2.0?
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Sarah Gooding
This is very exciting! One feature that I know some people have been asking about is an avatar overlay that would put a tiny little badge on the corner of their avatar (kind of like the BuddyPress twitter ribbon) …would this be difficult? Also, since users would be racking up lots of achievements, would it be possible to show on the user’s page the achievement avatars of the last 5 that they’ve earned right under their BP avatar? Just another idea. When is the next version coming? Sometime this month maybe?
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Paul Gibbs
No, not too hard re: avatar overlay
http://trac.buddypress.org/ticket/612. I’m going to ensure I get the core of the plugin out in the next release, and extra bits will follow in sequential release; once I get 2.0 out, I’ll probably do a poll and ask for community feedback on things that people want to see.
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Paul Gibbs
Hi all, thanks for writing.
Might be a beta out this month. I’m mentally targeting this for BuddyPress 1.3, which AFAIK will be in little over a month’s time. Trying to fit this in between Real Life, Work (x2) and contributing to BuddyPress, but Achievements definitely has full focus now.
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Sarah Gooding
Very cool. I will check out that orange hats plugin and find out how you do it
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balebond
This sound exactly like what I Googled for.
BuddyPress badge plugin ala Foursquare. 
Looking forward to it.Does your plugin use a table to track achievements/badges? I’m curious if I could trigger the adding/removal of badges when certain custom database events occur after I run a cron job. So instead of manually selecting a “competition winner”, for example, it would be set via a query. Do you think that would be possible?
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Paul Gibbs
Hi balebond
Yes it does/will use a table. Yes you could add records via a cron job; the only problem I immediately see is that people won’t get the notification email/link in the “buddybar” alerting them that they have an Achievement. To solve, you’ll just have to add an entry into the BuddyPress activity database tables. Maybe once Achievements is out, we can have a look at figuring out how to do this?
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balebond
Sounds like a plan. Having earned badges listed in the activity stream would actually be sufficient for my needs in most cases. But having the choice to have those trigger the emails would be cool too.
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John Lynn
I see that you did a search for all the BP actions for this plugin. Will what you’re building also grab the actions that are added by plugin authors so that you users can provide Achievements based on the plugin’s actions? Or I guess you could let plugin authors hook into something in Achievements so they can define what’s worth having listed in your list of actions.
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Paul Gibbs
Not all BP actions are suitable for Achievements. I will be going through the major BuddyPress actions and implementing those if possible. Will try to let other plugins register their own Achievements but I’m not sure if that will get into the 2.0 release.
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Chris
my blogs use the same account list, meaning if you sign up for one, you sign up for all of them. can you please make some way for me to share the points through all the different blogs?
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Paul Gibbs
Hi Chris, thanks for writing.
I certainly will try to do handle this. Assume you’re using the network features in WordPress 3 (aka WPMU). Do you know if your wp_usermeta table is shared between all sites?
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Armin
Can the points be integrated towards the CubePoints plugin?
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Paul Gibbs
I have not considered any integration with CubePoints, as the softwares compete with each other in some key areas. What exactly do you have in mind? A user’s points total, or? Thanks for the idea.
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Nahum
Would be cool to carry your badges Sitewide in to an individual blog by way of a widget. Example, My Badges Widget with thumb versions of the badges in a grid with see more link to go “new area on profile” (I’m opting for this type of display instead of traditional since I’m out of room in the profile nav for any more components – so moving forward it would be great for new components to start out with a At-a-Glance widget for the profile page sidebar with “View All” link that will open the component page instead of the nav link)
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Paul Gibbs
Cool idea! I’ll add it to the todo list. Thanks for writing.
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Nahum
Thanks for the consideration. Had another idea but didn’t want to get ahead of even the first release, but then I saw Membership levels come thru from wpmudev (http://premium.wpmudev.org/project/membership) and was thinking that would compliment achievements very well, that by acheivement you could unlock access to subblogs or any special content as defined by the membership level plugin. maybe something to keep in mind as well.
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LOmiG
Hi,
this sounds like THE plugin i’m looking for for about one year. ….sadly it’s for BuddyPress, and i’m using WP.
Is there a way to use it anyway ? I guess not. Do you know if the same kind of stuff exists for WP ?thanks for this great job, anyway !
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Paul Gibbs
CubePoints has a slightly different focus, but it works with WordPress. Check it out
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LOmiG
Thanks for your answer. I know Cube point but it’s not made in the same way. I want just something for people commenting my blog : Cubepoints is just working for registered users. Sad for me.
regards, and sorry for my frenchy english
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Paul Gibbs
Welcome Pack 2.0.2
Due out this evening (23rd April), Welcome Pack 2.0.2 will contain a pair of fixes which will correct the filenames of the bundled localisation files, and fix a bug where the text in the email selection menu wasn’t showing the translated text.
Slava kindly contributed the above bug fixes and has sent in a Russian translation, which is cool; thanks very much.
Ray suggested that the username and group name lists should be sorted alphabetically rather than by user ID, which I agree with, so that will also be in the new version.
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Mate
Dear paul!
I have a problem with the welcome pack. Once I installed, I changed the “new message” part of the e-mail section. I would like to reset the default. Therefore I removed and reinstalled it, but it kept the changed version.
Please help, if you can!
Thanks in advance!
Mate Varga (Hungary)
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Paul Gibbs
Hi Mate
That’s a good idea for a new button in the next version. In the interm, delete the ‘welcomepack’ record in your wp_options (or wp_1_options, etc) database table. This will clear all the settings.
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Paul Gibbs
Welcome Pack 2.0.1 coming today [updated]
Welcome Pack 2.0.1 will be released today. It will fix a bug with the email dropdown box not working correctly on some upgrade installs, and will optimise memory usage for loading the configuration pages on sites with many thousands of users.
[update] It’s available now from your WP Admin Plugins page.
Paul Gibbs, 
Paul Gibbs
Welcome Pack 2.0 released
The other day, I released version 2.0 of my Welcome Pack plugin for BuddyPress. The big new feature is the ability to customise the text of the default emails that BuddyPress sends.
For those new to Welcome Pack, check out this intro video:
http://vimeo.com/moogaloop.swf?clip_id=10852413&server=vimeo.com&show_title=1&show_byline=1&show_portrait=0&color=&fullscreen=1
I haven’t had huge amounts of feedback yet, which probably means I didn’t break anything — always a good sign. There has been a report on the BuddyPress forums from someone running into difficulty with Welcome Pack on a site with over three thousand users; I’m waiting for some feedback from the person concerned and will probably do a minor patch to resolve it.
Guillaume are discussing. -
Guillaume
Hi,
Great plugin !
My problem is when I want to customise the default emails sent by BuddyPress, I have empty list whithout any email title..
I’m using BP 1.2.3 translated in french (as WPMU). I’ve tested with english language : same bug.
Any idea ?
Excuse my english !
Thanks, Guillaume.
PS, I’ve post this problem here : http://wordpress.org/support/topic/387433?replies=1
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DJPaul
Hi Guillaume
Thanks for posting. I’ll investigate, I probably will need some more details from you.Regards
Paul
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Tim
The Welcome Pack is great – but as admin I seem to be getting a copy of the Welcome email every time someone joins!
Messages are reaching new joiners, as I’ve checked with a test account.
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Paul Gibbs
Thanks for this; I’ve fixed it in Welcome Pack 2.0.3
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Paul Gibbs
Hijacking WordPress Internationalisation
As part of a new feature I am developing for the next release of my Welcome Pack plugin for BuddyPress, I needed a really smart way of dynamically adding my own translations for strings at page-load time; creating a stand-alone .mo file to load the strings wasn’t a great solution, for reasons of requiring people to know how to configure file permissions on the server, having to figure out how to write a .mo file (I wish they were as easy as XML, but they aren’t), and — honestly — doing it that way feels like such a hack.
Ray and -
Ray
Hey Paul,
Was meaning to reply to this the other day, but got sidetracked!
Just tried it and it does what I want it to do, except for one instance.I’m trying to override a string that BP uses on an AJAX request (in my case, when a private message is sent, BP outputs a message).
I’ve tried overriding the string by hooking into the “init” action, but not sure if this is the correct action I should be hooking into.
Here’s the full function:
function ray_override_l10n() {
global $l10n;$mo = new MO();
$l10n['buddypress'] = &$mo;
if ( isset( $l10n['buddypress'] ) ) {
$l10n['buddypress']->entries['There was an error sending that message, please try again']->translations[0] = 'You are not friends with the person(s) you are attempting to send a message to. Your message has not been sent.';$l10n['buddypress']->entries['There was a problem sending that reply. Please try again.']->translations[0] = 'You are not friends with the person(s) you are attempting to send a message to. Your message has not been sent.';
}
}
add_action( 'init', 'ray_override_l10n' );
Any ideas?
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Paul Gibbs
For Welcome Pack’s email feature, I use the above technique and have it hooked in like so:
add_action( 'init', 'dpw_load_dynamic_i18n', 9 );Have a look dpw_load_dynamic_i18n() in Welcome Pack’s core.php. It is a bit hard to read as there’s a pair of nested FOR loops, but would suggest you use MO->add_entry() etc rather than write directly to the arrays. I think I switched to doing that after I wrote the above post.
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Ray
Paul, thanks for the moment of clarity!
Of course it has to do with setting the priority for the init action! *slaps head*Thanks also for the add_entry() tidbit, I’ll look into that!
Paul Gibbs
How to get a list of BuddyPress' actions.
As part of research for a new version of my Achievements plugin for BuddyPress, I need a list of all the BuddyPress action names.
For non-developers, actions are the hooks that WordPress & BuddyPress launches at specific points during execution, or when specific events occur. This allows plugin developers to hook into these events and do whatever they want.
(More …)
Tom, and 1 other are discussing. -
Edward de Leau
When I activated your plugin none of the “javascript” option in the admin area worked anymore e.g. dragging of widgets, the “screen” button at the top and so on. I took me some to figure out what it exactly was. So I just wanted to share this with you.
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DJPaul
Hi Edward
Do you mean Welcome Pack? If so are you able to try version 1.63 and see if problem still exists?
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Tom
Will you update the Achievements plugin for Buddypress 1.2?
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DJPaul
Hi Tom
Yes, I am working a new version currently. I’m rewriting big chunks of functionality rather than just updating for BP 1.2, so it looks like it will be a few weeks until I have a beta ready.
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Tom
Appreciate the reply! Very good to hear it, can’t wait!
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AD7six
Hi Paul,
Is your achievements plugin source in a svn/git repo somewhere? I’ve been writing something very similar – well, almost identical – and I’ll probably merge the two. I’ve already been looking at fixing the reference to deprecated/removed buddy press functions.
Cheers,
AD
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Paul Gibbs
It is, but the current trunk is pretty much blank as I’m merging and re-writing parts locally, so not much use to you at the moment.
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AD7six
Paul,
Cool – do you have an eta or a todo list or whatever? I can lend a hand if I know what direction you’re going in.
AD
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Paul Gibbs
Sounds great — as soon as I finish up my current client projects, i’m going to dive in and focus only on Achievements, so I’ll do a post when that happens to update.
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Paul Gibbs
Visualisation of mouse activity over two hours
With thanks to the Calm Banana.
Paul Gibbs
Wpmu.org look at the Achievements plugin
Sarah Gooding at wpmu.org has taken a look at my Achievements plugin for BuddyPress. I think it’s a great writeup and certainly has inspired me to carry on improving it. Take a look.
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anders
I love the idea of Achievments! Thank you for your work. It does not seem to work on the latest 2.86 WPMU? Can you fix the bug?
Thank you!
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DJPaul
Hi anders, thanks for commenting.
As far as I know it works fine on BP 1.1.3 and WPMU 2.8.6. I haven’t tested against WPMU 2.9.* yet, though it should work. If you give me some more details I can investigate the problem? -
Nick
I have it running on 2.9 but it doesn’t seem to display in the settings, when you go to the settings : /members/[name]/achievements it just goes back to the main site and wont display the settings.
When you are at members/[name]/ is displays the Achievements link between “groups” and “settings ” links but again if you click it it takes you back to the root.
Thanks!
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DJPaul
Thanks for writing. Yes, it doesn’t work fully with BP 1.2 and WP 2.9. Will update as soon as possible.
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GaryC
I love Achievements, but have also found a specific bug. The latest version does not show the status bar graphs in Safari or Firefox, but does show them in IE. I’m using WpMU 2.91 and BP 1.2. Please try to update soon.
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DJPaul
Hi
It’s not tested and people have told me it doesn’t work on BP 1.2. I am going to be working on a new version soon.
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Sam
I had to deactivate Achievements because it was giving a fatal error (call to unidentified function bp_core_get_userurl() in dp-achievements.php line 676).
Maybe this is just for me because I am using Facebook Connect. I am using BP 1.2.1.
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DJPaul
Hi Sam
Achievements hasn’t been tested against BP 1.2, I am working on a new version. It looks like it uses an deprecated function (bp_core_get_userurl). In the interim you could choose to use the ‘BP Back Compat’ plugin to provide this function.-
Sam
Thanks for the info. As I don’t want to use the “back compat” plugin and my site is new anyway, I will just wait for the update…
(I noticed, even though I deactivated the plugin, there still are “Contribution” notices in the dashboards in my site).
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OH EM GEEZ I’m really excited for this plugin. Custom achievements?! You’ve made my wildest dreams come true (well… almost
Any timeline you can share with us, Paul?