Achievements 2.0 Feature Listing

Posted on Categories BuddyPress, Plugins

I have had a few questions recently about what exactly will be in the next release of my Achievements plugin for BuddyPress, so thought I’d post the list here.

  • Allow site admins to create custom Achievements via front-end – this includes specifying name/description/points and avatar (via WordPress media gallery). And, of course, what site event to hook it into (i.e. to fire on new user registration, etc).
  • Achievements can also be granted to a specific user, to mimic a “badge” – i.e. “this month’s top contributor” or “competition winner.”
  • Groups Directory, like regular BuddyPress Members/Groups Directory. Lists each of the Achievements, and by going into each, you can see who has “unlocked” that Achievement.
  • A new area on a user’s profile page to show which Achievements they have unlocked.

Are there any features you’d like to see in sequential releases?

Published by Paul Wong-Gibbs

Engineering Director at Indigo Tree, with the responsibility to define and delivery the technical roadmap, product vision, and strategy for scalability. With 12+ years experience as a Senior WordPress Engineer and - more recently - Engineering Director, I've specialised leading WordPress development projects and REST APIs for enterprise clients, such as international banks, newspapers, magazine publishers, charities, and all kinds of SMEs. I have a keen interest in understanding projects holistically, improving processes by how things are built, and helping colleagues achieve success. https://www.linkedin.com/in/paul-gibbs-wordpress/

21 thoughts on “Achievements 2.0 Feature Listing”

  1. OH EM GEEZ I’m really excited for this plugin. Custom achievements?! You’ve made my wildest dreams come true (well… almost 🙂

    Any timeline you can share with us, Paul?

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  3. This is very exciting! One feature that I know some people have been asking about is an avatar overlay that would put a tiny little badge on the corner of their avatar (kind of like the BuddyPress twitter ribbon) …would this be difficult? Also, since users would be racking up lots of achievements, would it be possible to show on the user’s page the achievement avatars of the last 5 that they’ve earned right under their BP avatar? Just another idea. When is the next version coming? Sometime this month maybe? 🙂

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    1. No, not too hard re: avatar overlay 😉 http://trac.buddypress.org/ticket/612. I’m going to ensure I get the core of the plugin out in the next release, and extra bits will follow in sequential release; once I get 2.0 out, I’ll probably do a poll and ask for community feedback on things that people want to see.

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  4. Hi all, thanks for writing.

    Might be a beta out this month. I’m mentally targeting this for BuddyPress 1.3, which AFAIK will be in little over a month’s time. Trying to fit this in between Real Life, Work (x2) and contributing to BuddyPress, but Achievements definitely has full focus now.

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  6. This sound exactly like what I Googled for. 🙂 BuddyPress badge plugin ala Foursquare. 😛 Looking forward to it.

    Does your plugin use a table to track achievements/badges? I’m curious if I could trigger the adding/removal of badges when certain custom database events occur after I run a cron job. So instead of manually selecting a “competition winner”, for example, it would be set via a query. Do you think that would be possible?

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    1. Hi balebond
      Yes it does/will use a table. Yes you could add records via a cron job; the only problem I immediately see is that people won’t get the notification email/link in the “buddybar” alerting them that they have an Achievement. To solve, you’ll just have to add an entry into the BuddyPress activity database tables. Maybe once Achievements is out, we can have a look at figuring out how to do this?

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  7. Sounds like a plan. Having earned badges listed in the activity stream would actually be sufficient for my needs in most cases. But having the choice to have those trigger the emails would be cool too.

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  8. I see that you did a search for all the BP actions for this plugin. Will what you’re building also grab the actions that are added by plugin authors so that you users can provide Achievements based on the plugin’s actions? Or I guess you could let plugin authors hook into something in Achievements so they can define what’s worth having listed in your list of actions.

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    1. Not all BP actions are suitable for Achievements. I will be going through the major BuddyPress actions and implementing those if possible. Will try to let other plugins register their own Achievements but I’m not sure if that will get into the 2.0 release.

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  9. my blogs use the same account list, meaning if you sign up for one, you sign up for all of them. can you please make some way for me to share the points through all the different blogs?

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    1. Hi Chris, thanks for writing.

      I certainly will try to do handle this. Assume you’re using the network features in WordPress 3 (aka WPMU). Do you know if your wp_usermeta table is shared between all sites?

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    1. I have not considered any integration with CubePoints, as the softwares compete with each other in some key areas. What exactly do you have in mind? A user’s points total, or? Thanks for the idea.

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  11. Would be cool to carry your badges Sitewide in to an individual blog by way of a widget. Example, My Badges Widget with thumb versions of the badges in a grid with see more link to go “new area on profile” (I’m opting for this type of display instead of traditional since I’m out of room in the profile nav for any more components – so moving forward it would be great for new components to start out with a At-a-Glance widget for the profile page sidebar with “View All” link that will open the component page instead of the nav link)

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  12. Thanks for the consideration. Had another idea but didn’t want to get ahead of even the first release, but then I saw Membership levels come thru from wpmudev (http://premium.wpmudev.org/project/membership) and was thinking that would compliment achievements very well, that by acheivement you could unlock access to subblogs or any special content as defined by the membership level plugin. maybe something to keep in mind as well.

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  13. Hi,
    this sounds like THE plugin i’m looking for for about one year. ….sadly it’s for BuddyPress, and i’m using WP.
    Is there a way to use it anyway ? I guess not. Do you know if the same kind of stuff exists for WP ?

    thanks for this great job, anyway !

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    1. CubePoints has a slightly different focus, but it works with WordPress. Check it out

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      1. Thanks for your answer. I know Cube point but it’s not made in the same way. I want just something for people commenting my blog : Cubepoints is just working for registered users. Sad for me.

        regards, and sorry for my frenchy english

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