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?

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.

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.

Here’s how. Be warned that this will overwrite any translation loaded by a .mo file, but that’s exactly what I needed to do.

To add a new string into the localisation table:

function example() {
global $l10n;

$mo = new MO();
$mo->add_entry( array( 'singular' => 'Spongebob', 'translations' => array( 'Squarepants' ) ) );
if ( isset( $l10n['buddypress'] ) )  //buddypress is the textdomain
$mo->merge_with( $l10n['buddypress'] );

$l10n['buddypress'] = &$mo;
}

_e( 'Spongebob', 'buddypress' );  // This will return "Squarepants".

To change an existing string:

function example() {
global $l10n;

if ( isset( $l10n['buddypress'] ) && isset( $l10n['buddypress']->entries['%s posted an update:'] ) )
$l10n['buddypress']->entries['%s posted an update:']->translations[0] = '%s posted a monkey:';
}

Post a comment if you use this technique for anything interesting

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.

• Search is currently special-cased for each of the built-in components. There isn’t a central search page (like Google), though each component has its own appropriate search areas. BuddyPress needs a central, extensible search page to show matches on all content on a site; you shouldn’t have to go to a specific page or use a drop-down box to find matches across the entire site.
• BuddyPress needs OpenID like toast needs butter. I was lucky enough to meet Will Norris in the BuddyPress IRC chatroom last night and chat a little about this with him. Be sure to look at his OpenID on WordPress webpage.
• BuddyPress likewise needs to embrace the Social Web; I’m working on FOAF and SIOC profiles for BuddyPress; happy to work with someone(s) on this.
• BuddyPress needs better end-user documentation; by end-user, I mean site administrators. I feel there is an expertise barrier at the moment, and it’s too high. Screencasts would be a great way to “sell” the product to site administrators as well as showing how to use it.
• Following on from the last point, I’d like the admin backend and the default theme to have a little help button. When selected, you would get a modal window drop down over the page and it would concise instruction and guidance on how to use the current page; you could even tie in the screencasts so after you’ve read about it, you could watch it.
• A fortnightly podcast discussion recent developments and recapping/reviewing forum discussion would rock. Someone should do it. I’m not entirely sure my awesome singing voice (cough) would carry it off, but maybe I’d be happy to give it a try with someone?
• The BuddyPress homepage needs to make better use of BuddyPress Groups. At the minute, unless you go looking for the groups, they are invisible. Refreshing the theme on the homepage would do this.

Merry Christmas!

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/.

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 );