Bring Your Own Terms Of Service

New Plugin: Disable BuddyPress’ Activity Stream integration with Akismet

Paul Gibbs — Thu, 22 Dec 2011 19:58:25 +0000

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

BP Labs – You May Like This

Paul Gibbs — Mon, 19 Dec 2011 23:07:53 +0000

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?

Welcome Pack 3.2 available now

Paul Gibbs — Mon, 05 Dec 2011 07:16:57 +0000

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.

Welcome Pack 3.1

Paul Gibbs — Fri, 07 Oct 2011 23:39:56 +0000

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.

BP Labs 1.2.2 released

Paul Gibbs — Tue, 04 Oct 2011 16:40:01 +0000

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.

Welcome Pack 3.0 release

Paul Gibbs — Mon, 03 Oct 2011 19:31:32 +0000

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.

Welcome Pack 3.0 Preview

Paul Gibbs — Sat, 01 Oct 2011 22:14:34 +0000

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:

BuddyPress at WordPress London, 22/09/11

Paul Gibbs — Tue, 27 Sep 2011 12:17:17 +0000

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?

Introduction to BuddyPress 1.5 (audio)

Paul Gibbs — Wed, 21 Sep 2011 12:10:56 +0000

I’m super excited that we got BuddyPress 1.5 out; to mark the occasion, I’ve recorded an impromptu one-take audio to share some details of what’s new in BuddyPress 1.5, and a little bit about the development of the plugin. It’s about half an hour long, and you can download it right here: Introduction to BuddyPress 1.5 (audio)

p.s. I have difficulty pronouncing “features”, it comes out as “futures” — I try to avoid the word as much as possible but I walked right into it out several times, so go easy on me

BuddyPress 1.5 is now available!

Paul Gibbs — Wed, 21 Sep 2011 06:16:51 +0000

After an epic development cycle, BuddyPress 1.5 is available immediately! There are so many new features and fixes, be sure to read the changelog for details, and the official release post over on BuddyPress.org. If you need support getting started with BuddyPress 1.5, please start at the Support Forums.