Be sure to visit its own website at achievementsapp.com. I’ve included an introductory video into the below post, so you can learn about the plugin and see it in action.

Consider this a private beta period. If you want your hands on Achievements now, and know how to use SVN and how to obtain the BuddyPress 1.2 branch (this will become the 1.2.6 release), leave a reply here and I’ll send you the details.

I apologise for any inconvenience this delay will cause your projects, but I’ll be using this extra time to continue improving Achievements.

When you create an event Achievement, there is a drop-down list of actions to choose from. Currently there are twenty eight core WordPress and core BuddyPress actions integrated. The full list is after the fold, and I’ve love to know if you can think of any that I’ve missed.

Site

• The user writes a comment on a post or page.
• The user publishes a post or page.
• The user trashes a post or page.
• The user creates a new site.

Groups

• The user invites someone to join a group.
• The user joins a group.
• The user promotes a group member to a moderator or administrator.

Profile

• The user updates their profile.
• A new user activates their account.
• The user changes their profile’s avatar.
• The user writes a message in their activity stream.

Members

• The user sends a friendship request to someone.
• The user accepts a friendship request from someone.
• The user rejects a friendship request from someone.
• The user cancels a friendship.
• The user replies to any item in any activity stream.

Messaging

• The user deletes a private message.
• The user sends or replies to a private message.

Groups

• The user creates a group.
• The user leaves a group.
• The user deletes a group.
• The user creates a new group forum topic.
• The user replies to a group forum topic.
• The user deletes a group forum post.
• The user deletes a group forum topic.
• The user modifies a group forum post.
• The user modifies a group forum topic.
• The user writes a message in a group’s activity stream.

Enough pitch! As with any software that is still in development, certain sections of it are more finalised and robust than others. I’m excited to share with you the following screenshots of these more finished sections, and I look forward to reading your comments here, by email, or on Twitter.

Achievement creation

Achievements 2.0 Create/Edit pages

Once the plugin is installed and activated, it will integrate itself fully into the default BuddyPress theme. All of Achievement’s pages and settings are controlled in the user-facing parts of the site, and each has a separate WordPress capability. This lets you use a plugin like Role Scoper to give certain users to access to specific pages. For example, you could let certain users edit Achievements, but not add or delete them.

WordPress comes with a sample blog post and comment to give new users something to view and edit, to teach them how to use the dashboard. The first version of the Achievements plugin took a similar approach and came with ~20 Achievements. Unlike WordPress, to add more, you had to know how to code, read the documentation and be a master of voodoo. Not awesome.

To encourage creativity and to allow true customisation, Achievements will come with easy to use Create and Edit screens. You don’t need to know how to code, or read the documentation, or know voodoo. Awesome!

Detail page

"Detail" page

Achievements has been built to appear visually similar to BuddyPress Groups. In the same way that each Group has its own set of pages, an Achievement has its own set of pages.

Common to each Achievement page, there is a universal header consisting of the Achievement’s name, type, points value and assorted meta information; i.e. if the current user has “unlocked” this Achievement and how many people in total have unlocked it.

The details tab displays the Achievement’s description which can contain any HTML or rich-text formatting that you can use in a regular WordPress post. It also supports shortcodes and oEmbed.

Change Picture page

"Change Picture" page

After creating an Achievement, you’ll want to customise its picture. You can choose any image in your WordPress Media Library. If you’re considering using Achievements on your site, I suggest that you plan ahead and design your pictures now, as the visual branding is critical. Get those crayons out!

Achievements makes use of the Media Library as it’s built in to every WordPress install, and it removes a lot of potential code duplication and handling of file uploads. It also enables you to keep taking advantage of plugins that enhance the Media Library; for example, W3 Total Cache‘s CDN support and WP Smush.it, which automatically strips unnecessary information from each image, resulting in smaller file sizes.

Directory page

My Unlocked Achievements / Directory

The Directory page matches BuddyPress’ Members and Groups list, with filters to show all Achievements and only those which the user has unlocked. A recent usability enhancement for admins, invoked by moving your mouse over each item, are quick links to that Achievement’s edit, change picture and delete pages. It’s made my day-to-day development much easier.

Widgets

Achievements 2.0 widgets

Everyone likes widgets, and so far, Achievements has three; a leaderboard, recent Achievements and all available Achievements.

The leaderboard is a very common concept, and is a great way of ranking the users who participate most on your site.

The recent Achievements widget displays the pictures of the user’s most recently unlocked Achievement. The idea is to bring your Achievements’ branding into the rest of your site.

The available Achievements widget lists all of the active Achievements on your site, just like the Directory. Why? Built with WordPress multisite in mind, you can configure certain Achievements to trigger only from actions on specific sites. You can drop this widget into your sites so that your users can discover what’s available; a great way to encourage people to visit all of your sites.

The most frequently asked question: what’s the release date?

Soon.™

Current version of the Create Achievements screen.