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!
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?
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.
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?
Yep, it would. It’s built with that in mind, though that isn’t done (yet — it’s surprisingly tricky).
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.
Great ideas. Thanks for sharing.
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! 
I’d love to work with you or, indeed, anyone on this, or any other cool Experiments that they’ve had.
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
During development of BuddyPress 1.7, I’ll be revisiting the Like in BP Labs.
Amazing Paul! It just amazing! 
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?
Not right now. It was only a proof-of-concept. I’ll build on it in future.
Cool!! I found another plugin that you might want to look into:
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/gravatar-like/
Available now at http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/welcome-pack/. Fixes:
I’m still tracking a known issue with internationalisation and hope to have that addressed in the next version.
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.
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
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.
Thanks a million! You may want to update the WordPress plugins page for this plugin, too – it still says for BP v1.3.
Thanks – I think wp.org is just lagging behind a bit. It looks okay in the repository so hopefully it will update itself, soon.
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.
Congratulations Paul, you’re really firing on all cylinders these days.
Awesome, can’t wait to install and use Has this been tested for bugs and stuff? Or is it stable?
Pfft, of course I’ve tested it. What are you saying? I can never guarantee it is bug free, however.
Well done Paul, your involvement in BP community is awsmoe
Thank you!
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:
That’s really cool, Paul!
Welcome Pack will give a lot more options to customize the community.
Whoop! Now turn that email stuff into a BP patch
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
BuddyPress 1.5 is really close to release now (really!). I’ve started on a much-needed update of Welcome Pack, to bring it up to date for the latest versions of WordPress and BuddyPress, and planned features which will enhance the email customisation options.
After that’s done, BP Labs will probably be next, as I want to continue building on the Akismet integration; I think that will be really popular once word gets around.
Then Achievements.
I’m looking very, very, forward to using Welcome Pack again! Can’t wait. May I kindly suggest that you do one upgrade to make it compatible with BP 1.5 so we could use that in the mean time, and then upgrade it again with the planned new features, so we can begin using it sooner
Oh, and does the BP Labs autosuggest use the same autosuggest as the one in Compose Message? Because it would make more sense to me if it did, because it does a great job at autosuggest as well, and it would cut down on code and whatnot since you could just reuse it. Just wondering, as I have absolutely no idea
Hi Mike,
I’ve actually had a mostly updated Welcome Pack ready for some time, but I hadn’t released it, so your suggestion is definitely possible. Someone also sent me a couple of patches for Achievements and Welcome Pack, to help bring them up to date, which was super helpful, too!
I’m going to start on the email changes and see how long that looks like taking; depending on when BP 1.5 hits, if I have to release the “make it work” version, I will.
RE: Labs autosuggest. No it doesn’t; partly because I wanted to learn how to build a jQuery plugin. I think mine does a better job of regex parsing input for user names, but my plan is to try to use the standard autocomplete script (which is what Compose Message, and the P2 theme, both use) and test how that works
Ah, Achievements … saving the best for last.
Most complex to last
Glad to hear from you! I am starting a site that is heavily dependent on BP and I am glad that a BP resource is available.
Excellent! Be sure to share your site on the BuddyPress.org gallery forum
Awesome! Thanks for your hard work.
how about…Achievements first!
I shouldn’t have cyborg’d Achievements and WP MU!
But I’m already half-done on Welcome Pack (To those interested, the time remaining is to build a new feature to Welcome Pack, not a compatibility fix)
Just to update: Welcome Pack coming along pretty well for BuddyPress 1.5 compatibility. If I can’t finish re-building the email customisation feature by next weekend, I’ll release a version with that feature disabled for the time being. I’ve done the front end stuff, I just need to figure out some clever plumbing on the backend
Paul Gibbs, your fast response on updating plugins for BuddyPress version 1.5… are very much appreciated
Today I’m starting my first site powered by BuddyPress, why now? mostly because… now I really believe in the success of BuddyPress, version 1.5 looks pretty major… this is like high school diploma for bp
Thank you for your contribution to the community!
Now when BuddyPress 1.5 has been released, hundreds of bug, enhancements, and all-new features are fixed. Thank you!!
BP Labs 1.2-beta-1 should be available on WordPress.org, soon. What’s new?
Activity Stream Spam requires BuddyPress 1.5; it won’t do anything on earlier versions of BuddyPress. 1.5 is due out soon, and is itself currently in beta (go test!). The admin backend for un-spamming (or “hamming”) activity items looks like this.
Please note you’ll need to have WordPress’ standard Akismet plugin set up, configured and working. In beta 1, there is no way of manually marking an activity item as spam; Akismet will use its best judgement.
I wanted to get this out as soon as possible so people can (hopefully) test the core functionality, in order for a final release a little while after BuddyPress 1.5 goes out. Let me know in comments any bugs or feedback.
Hi Paul, I dont know how your plugin work but I’ve a suggestion concerning “@mentions auto suggest”, I think that the list of suggestions must bu grabbed from the page that we are!!
I know!! it’s unclear, I’ll explain: for example I’m posting a reply in a forum topic the plugin will suggest only the persons who replied to this topic and the the writer of course (or group’s members).
when I would update my activity the plugin will suggest from friend list only, when I would post in my group wall it will suggest from group’s members and like that the plugin will be verry rapid
Hi hohodz,
Thanks for the feedback. I had thought about making it context-sensitive, as you are suggesting, but I haven’t looked at how to implement that just yet. Hopefully will be done in a future version.
Sounds a little unnecessary to me because you wouldn’t want autosuggest to limit who you could @mention. You just want it to make it easier to find the name you’re looking for, regardless of the context. What if you wanted to @mention someone in a group topic that was not yet apart of that group topic? You wouldn’t be able to.
Also, I’m using 1.2 (I’m pretty sure it’s Beta 1), and I notice a lag when you type “@” and at least one character: It says it’s loading, then it goes back up, then it goes back down to display the names. Also, it extends to the right too far, resulting in a horizontal scroll bar – http://oi56.tinypic.com/m79mj8.jpg. It happens with the Frisco theme, too, I think.
That’s a known issue with BP Default 1.5. It is proving very challenging to fix so far! It only affects those “what’s up” activity boxes. It should work fine with areas such as the private message compose window.
plz give me the default language file to translate it to french and arabic
Last week, the BuddyPress core team put out the first beta of BuddyPress 1.5; I’m extremely thrilled that it’s so close to release now. It’s set to be the best BuddyPress yet, and I’m looking forward to people enjoying all of the enhancements we’ve put into it. Once 1.5′s out, I plan to shift some of my time to back to working on new and old BuddyPress plugins.
I’ve had time this weekend to get my BP Labs plugin close to another release. The big feature, as previous mentioned, is integrating Akismet into the Activity Stream. It’s going to be a pretty rudimentary implementation in the first release, as I need to think about how the admin UI is best done, and how it should or shouldn’t match WordPress’ comment spam handling. Here’s a screenshot of the admin UI so far, which is what I’ve spent this afternoon on:
Activity Stream spam, admin UI
I’m excited about BP 1.5 too, it would have been even better if you’d skipped all the way to 2.0
Will the current Achievements work well with BP 1.5 or would it be better to wait until you’ve had time to release an update?
Thanks, as ever, for all your hard work Paul.
P.S. Most of your spam seems to be coming from this fellow “admin” and his sidekick “test”, you should think about banning them.
I’m not sure about Achievements; I’ve not had lots of time to test, and it seemed to work at a cursory glance when I checked a couple of weeks ago, but I didn’t test everything. It’s on the todo asap.
Towfiq I., 
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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!