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  • Paul Gibbs 11:07 pm on December 19, 2011 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , BuddyPress   

    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 5:14 pm on October 2, 2010 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , BuddyPress   

    Achievements 2.0 October update 

    The first version of Achievements is almost ready for release. However, BuddyPress 1.2.6, which Achievements requires, isn’t. I will not be releasing Achievements until BuddyPress 1.2.6 has been.

    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.

     

    • Dawn 7:11 pm on October 2, 2010 Permalink | Reply

      Yes please!!

      • Paul Gibbs 10:52 pm on October 2, 2010 Permalink | Reply

        Email en route!

    • donnacha | WordSkill 7:18 pm on October 2, 2010 Permalink | Reply

      Great, keep up the good work!

    • mike 9:35 pm on October 2, 2010 Permalink | Reply

      Yes, por favor! =)

      • Paul Gibbs 10:52 pm on October 2, 2010 Permalink | Reply

        Email sent!

    • Rafel 11:52 am on October 3, 2010 Permalink | Reply

      Yes, please! btw Great work!

      • Paul Gibbs 12:09 pm on October 3, 2010 Permalink | Reply

        I’ve sent you an email, thanks

    • James 7:07 pm on October 3, 2010 Permalink | Reply

      Please. :)

      • Paul Gibbs 7:21 pm on October 3, 2010 Permalink | Reply

        James — I think I’ve sent the details to you previously; those same details still apply. Let me know if you never got it previously (a few weeks ago), and I’ll re-send. Cheers.

        • ironicbond 2:38 am on October 4, 2010 Permalink

          D’oh. I did get it but missed it in my inbox. Thanks. Looking forward to trying it out. :)

    • Linus F 3:31 pm on October 4, 2010 Permalink | Reply

      Yes please!

      • Paul Gibbs 10:40 pm on October 4, 2010 Permalink | Reply

        Hi Linus
        I’ve just emailed you the details, thanks.

    • mrdink 2:03 pm on October 5, 2010 Permalink | Reply

      I would love to try this out. Looks like exactly what I need. Great work!

    • Dave M 7:31 am on October 6, 2010 Permalink | Reply

      Sounds great! May I try it out?!

      • Paul Gibbs 5:55 pm on October 6, 2010 Permalink | Reply

        I’ve sent an email to you

    • Armin 10:44 pm on October 6, 2010 Permalink | Reply

      Sure why not, send me a copy.

      • Paul Gibbs 7:40 am on October 7, 2010 Permalink | Reply

        Hi – I think you were already on my mailing list. If you haven’t received my previous emails, let me know and I’ll resend. Thanks.

        • Armin 10:25 pm on October 8, 2010 Permalink

          I checked my email. There wasn’t any previous email.

        • Paul Gibbs 10:31 pm on October 8, 2010 Permalink

          I’ve just sent the details to the email address which you left on your comment.

        • Armin 10:44 pm on October 8, 2010 Permalink

          Thanks received it.

    • Isis 5:55 pm on October 7, 2010 Permalink | Reply

      Why is it you are unable to create new achievements in Version 1.23, but you are able to create additional categories? This seems to be a bug- maybe it didn’t install correctly on my wordpress install? Doesn’t look like there’s a support forum for this plugin version that’s active to ask others if they’ve run into the same problem, which is why I’m posting here.

      As for Achievements 2.0 – can one create their own achievements? Example: I have a founder’s club for the first 1,000 users on my site, along with other special achievements and awards related to polls and quizzes. I would also like to create custom badges/award achievements for special posts/forum topics that are really outstanding. There should be a way for the website owner to add custom achievements. Thank you.

      • Isis 5:57 pm on October 7, 2010 Permalink | Reply

        oh, never mind. I see it’s going to happen in 2.0. :-)

        • Paul Gibbs 7:30 pm on October 7, 2010 Permalink

          ;)

    • Eliotto 9:52 pm on October 17, 2010 Permalink | Reply

      I would very much love to try this, thank you.

    • Mark 4:13 pm on October 18, 2010 Permalink | Reply

      Please send me details when you can!

    • Arthur 10:55 pm on October 20, 2010 Permalink | Reply

      I’d love to try it.

    • Vikram Jhaveri 6:41 am on October 21, 2010 Permalink | Reply

      Just a feature request. Can we have external triggers? I plan to use this in my wordpress flash arcade. I would like to trigger an achievement from the flash game. I can run any php, database code through it. So any ways to have custom triggers for achievements?

      • Paul Gibbs 4:30 pm on October 31, 2010 Permalink | Reply

        All you need to do would be to build a function in WordPress that intercepts an appropriate AJAX request generated by your external app, and it’d work. Email me if you need a pointer how to do this.

  • Paul Gibbs 7:19 am on May 20, 2010 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: BuddyPress,   

    Welcome Pack and BuddyPress 1.2.4 

    For those people using Welcome Pack, please be aware there is a new release of BuddyPress, version 1.2.4, out at the end of this week. The email feature of Welcome Pack might stop working until I get an update out, which I shall endeavour to do as soon as possible; might not be until after the first weekend.

     

  • Paul Gibbs 12:46 pm on April 23, 2010 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: BuddyPress,   

    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.

     

    • Mate 12:05 pm on May 6, 2010 Permalink | Reply

      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)

    • Paul Gibbs 12:39 pm on May 6, 2010 Permalink | Reply

      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.

  • Paul Gibbs 8:27 pm on April 8, 2010 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: BuddyPress,   

    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.

    (More …)

     

    • Ray 6:18 am on May 14, 2010 Permalink | Reply

      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?

      • Paul Gibbs 7:18 am on May 14, 2010 Permalink | Reply

        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.

    • Ray 8:10 am on May 14, 2010 Permalink | Reply

      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 7:04 pm on January 11, 2010 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , BuddyPress   

    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.

     

    • anders 8:10 pm on January 12, 2010 Permalink | Reply

      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!

    • DJPaul 12:55 pm on January 17, 2010 Permalink | Reply

      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 2:57 am on January 27, 2010 Permalink | Reply

      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!

      • DJPaul 10:51 pm on January 31, 2010 Permalink | Reply

        Thanks for writing. Yes, it doesn’t work fully with BP 1.2 and WP 2.9. Will update as soon as possible.

    • GaryC 3:12 am on February 2, 2010 Permalink | Reply

      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.

      • DJPaul 3:30 pm on February 7, 2010 Permalink | Reply

        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.

    • Sam 5:52 am on March 1, 2010 Permalink | Reply

      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.

      • DJPaul 7:16 am on March 1, 2010 Permalink | Reply

        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 2:44 pm on March 2, 2010 Permalink

          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).

  • Paul Gibbs 3:33 pm on December 18, 2009 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: BuddyPress   

    BuddyPress in 2009 & nitpicks to improve in 2010 

    2009 has been a very important year for BuddyPress, from its 1.0 release in April, reaching a critical mass of contributing users, helpers and developers on the forums, third-party plugin and theme development, professional use and acceptance of BuddyPress and appearances at many WordCamp events throughout the world. BuddyPress 1.2 is on course to be released early next year – you can test-drive it at http://testbp.org/.

    Between my knowledge of BuddyPress, my contributions on the forums and my plugins, I have perhaps five or six plugin ideas or concepts at some stage of development. Some of these may see the light of day at some point and some will not.

    As it nears Christmas and a new year full of promise and opportunity, I wanted to share my ideas for future improvements.
    (More …)

     

    • 1stAngel 5:41 pm on January 7, 2010 Permalink | Reply

      Completely agree with nearly all your comments about what is needed. The help file especially would be fantastic.

      I would love to allow Facebook members join the blog but its just not really possible at present. Apart from the fact there is nothing to allow it, I have to use a stupid invitation code on the site to stop sploggers. As soon as I remove it and open registration I am inundated with them. If anyone could help there it would be something I am sure most of us would pay a small amount for. I know I would!

      • DJPaul 12:59 pm on January 17, 2010 Permalink | Reply

        Thanks for leaving a comment 1stAngel, I agree about WPMU having problems with spammers signing up. It’s a tricky problem.

  • Paul Gibbs 9:42 am on September 3, 2009 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: BuddyPress,   

    SVN is now public 

    I made my SVN repository public which I use for my BuddyPress plugins (Welcome Pack and Achievements). It is at http://svn.dangerous-minds.com/djpaul/.

    For example, to get the latest trunk (development) version of Achievements  — which requires BuddyPress trunk/1.1 — use http://svn.dangerous-minds.com/djpaul/achievements/trunk/.

     

  • Paul Gibbs 10:53 am on July 25, 2009 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: BuddyPress, , Component, WPMU   

    Improving custom component installation 

    When implementing a custom component in BuddyPress, you will often have additions for the member theme. Member themes live in their own folder, /wp-content/bp-themes/.

    To render a member theme template, your component will call dpa_load_template() which takes an argument of the name of the template to load. The path is hardcoded to the /wp-content/bp-themes/ folder.

    The problem with this is that after installation of a custom component, the site administrator will need to move the relevant member theme files (bundled with your component) into /wp-content/bp-themes/. This is an annoyance to site administrator, and it may end up being a frequent support request (“why is X not working?”).  This very first hurdle may even stop people trying out your component.

    Something else I’ve seen is that when installing future updates, people may forget that they need to move the updated member theme files into place; this can cause incompatibility issues between versions of your software, something we’ve seen with recent versions of BuddyPress.

    For my upcoming “Achievements” plugin (think a cross between forum points and Xbox Live), I decided all that I wanted the site administrator to do would be to download it from the Plugins admin panel – no moving files into the member theme.

    So, I present to you my code: (06/01/10 – updated for BP 1.1.3+)

    bp_core_load_template( 'yourcomponent_theme_filename' );  // loads /plugins/your_plugin/filename.php

function yourcomponent_screen_filter_template( $located_template, $template_name ) {
	if ( !empty( $located_template ) )
		return $located_template;

	if ( $bp->current_component != $bp->your_component->slug )
		return false;

	if ( false !== strpos( $template_name[0], 'yourcomponent_theme_' ) ) {
		$prefix = strlen( 'yourcomponent_theme_' );
		$template_name = substr( $template_name[0], $prefix, strlen( $template_name[0] ) - $prefix );
		$template_path = WP_PLUGIN_DIR . "/your_plugin/$template_name";

		if ( file_exists( $template_path ) )
			return $template_path;
	}

	return false;
}
add_filter( 'bp_located_template', 'yourcomponent_screen_filter_template', 10, 2 );

     

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