BuddyPress 12.0 to Introduce Community Visibility Feature that Restricts Access to Members Only

BuddyPress 12.0 is set to introduce a new Community Visibility feature that gives site administrators the option to restrict access to the community sections of the site. Sites set to “members only” will show an access error message and a login form when a non-logged-in user tries to view a page generated by BuddyPress. The Community Visibility setting makes it …

BuddyPress to Host Virtual Contributor Day on April 20

Representatives of the BuddyPress core team will be hosting a contributor day alongside the French WordPress Community Contributor Day in Paris on April 20, 2023. This in-person event has filled up its registration and posted its schedule already, but BuddyPress core developer Mathieu Viet is inviting people to join online to contribute to BuddyPress. “As we’re currently working on a very …

BuddyPress Plugin Usage Declining, Remaining Contributors Discuss Path Forward

In the most recent BuddyPress developers’ chat, contributors discussed progress on the upcoming 11.0.0 release, which is expected on December 14, 2022. Mathieu Viet, one of BuddyPress’ lead developers who spearheaded the effort to get the BP Attachments API into BuddyPress 2.3 in 2015, has been working on templating to display single media items on the front-end. He made it …

BP Rewrites Feature Plugin Now in Beta

The ball is moving on a nine-year-old effort to migrate BuddyPress’ custom URI parser to use WordPress’ Rewrite API. BuddyPress currently requires sites to use pretty permalinks in order to be compatible with its URL parser. The plugin analyzes the URL for whatever component you are viewing and performs internal checks to decide what to display there and determine the …

BuddyPress 10.0.0 Released, Introduces Site Membership Requests and Visual Improvements to Activity Logs

BuddyPress 10.0.0 “La Pino’z” was released today, named for a popular pizza chain in India with more than 350 restaurants. This major release introduces a Site Membership Requests feature, which can be enabled in the Options screen of the BuddyPress settings menu in the admin. When active, it changes the registration process so that visitors can submit a membership request, …

BuddyPress 10.0.0 Beta 1 Delayed, Stable Release Rescheduled for December 24

The upcoming BuddyPress 10.0.0 beta 1 release was scheduled for November 20, but contributors have decided to postpone the beta by two weeks, due to lack of time for adequately testing recent improvements to the planned features. The stable release has been rescheduled for December 24. This version will require WordPress >= 5.4. The delayed beta gives BuddyPress plugin developers more …

BuddyPress 9.0 Scheduled for Short Development Cycle to Ship Block-Based Widgets Ahead of WordPress 5.8

BuddyPress 8.0 was just released earlier this month on June 6, but the core development team is gearing up for a short development cycle for 9.0. The release will be specifically targeted at getting BuddyPress core widgets ready for WordPress 5.8’s new block widgets experience. Contributors are aiming to hit the following timeline to ship 9.0 before the next major …

BuddyPress 7.0.0 Adds 3 New Blocks and Admin Screens for Member and Group Type Management

BuddyPress 7.0.0 “Filippi” was released this week, following WordPress 5.6 to ensure compatibility. This version was named for Filippi’s Pizza Grotto in California. It requires WordPress 4.9+, but sites that are not using the block editor will miss out on many of the new features that make BuddyPress websites easier to customize. The first set of community blocks was introduced earlier this …