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imath 8:55 pm on September 28, 2021
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BP Dev Chat Summary : september 22, 2021

10.0.0 Progress

  • We started by congratulating @oztaser for the great contribution he brought about SQL performance improvements to the BP Notifications API (See #8426).
  • @dcavins will actively (👈 adding some pressure here 😁) progress about the site membership requests feature. He will also take in charge the issue about the inconsistent behavior of Groups Invites when the friends component is not active inside the Legacy template pack (see #8550)
  • @vapvarun is exploring BuddyPress statistic widgets from a plugin, @im4th challenged him to build Widget Blocks about it in 10.0.0 as well as exploring the mutual friends/mutual groups which are other Widget Block nice candidates (see #8559).
  • Then we had a long discussion about raising the BuddyPress required WordPress version to 5.4 (see #8571). It’s true it’s quite a jump from 4.9 but “Tipton” was released almost 4 years ago, it’s the last WP version before the Block Editor which is probably making it a bit special. WP 5.0 to 5.3 are under 5% of total WordPress installs which makes 5.4 a good candidate for our next required version.

If a WordPress version became obsolete over a year ago, it’s a candidate for removal.
If a WordPress version’s use slips below 5% of all WP installations, it’s a strong candidate for removal.

The BP Codex

Please, share your opinion about the BP 10.0.0 required WordPress version using the comments area 🙏

10.0.0 schedule

  • 10.0.0-beta 1: ~ november 20, 2021,
  • 10.0.0 stable: ~ december 24, 2021 🎄

BP Rewrites feature as a plugin

It’s now possible to enjoy BP Directories as the site’s homepage using the BP Rewrites URL parser.

@sbrajesh shared his first thoughts after testing the plugin. He was a bit surprised not to find the BP Directories into the WordPress pages. In BP Rewrites, BP Directories are using a Custom Post Type without using the corresponding WordPress generated UI. Instead there’s a new URL settings page to customize almost every possible slugs. The last improvement to add about slugs is to support customizable slugs for the Member’s secondary navigation. It’s true the UI used for this settings page should be improved (a lot!).

@im4th informed about the plan for this plugin : it’s not to merge it into BP Core during 10.0.0 (or even 11.0.0) but to release it as a plugin so that a lot more people can easily test it. There’s a ticket about easing hosted on WP.org features as a plugin installation from one of the BuddyPress Admin screens to also simplify this part for users (see #8148). Switching from our Legacy URL Parser to the WP Rewrite API will need a lot more testing to make sure BP plugins and themes are behaving almost like there was no switch!

@im4th strongly encourages all BP Plugin/theme developers to give a test to this feature as a plugin to contribute to the next way BuddyPress will parse URLs.

Open floor

@im4th @dcavins & @vapvarun are going to participate to a Q&A hosted by Birgit Pauli-Haack from the Gutenberg Times on October 28 at 16:00 UTC. If you want to know more about our experience migrating the BP Legacy widgets to Block Widgets during the BuddyPress 9.0.0 “express” release, please join us! More info available there inside the Upcoming Live Q&As section.

Next Dev-Chat

It will happen on October 6 at 19:30 UTC and of course in #BuddyPress. If you have ideas or questions, feel free (and we are strongly encouraging you) to comment this summary to share them!

#10-0-0, #dev-chat, #summary

imath 8:16 am on September 4, 2021
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BP Dev Chat Summary : september 1st, 2021

10.0.0 Progress

  • Shortly before the dev chat started @dcavins shared his progress about the Site Membership Requests feature: he did preparative work needed for the feature by improving the BP Signup Class and fixed 2 tickets (#8540, #7938).
  • Thanks to a discussion between @vapvarun & @im4th about 2 BP plugins @vapvarun will soon make available on the WP plugins directory (about global BP Search and using the big G reCaptcha service to secure some parts of BuddyPress), @im4th will explore the possibility to add 2 new BP Blocks: 1 to perform global search, the other to display a member’s community statistics.
  • To help @sbrajesh organize the BP Relationships API, @johnjamesjacoby created the corresponding repository on BuddyPress’s GH.
  • @espellcaste asked for a dev review about his approach on adding pagination to message threads (#8508) and thanked @im4th for the one he provided about #7614.
  • @espellcaste also introduced some very interesting functions to get a Group object, making it possible to use template functions outside of the Groups loop. You should have a look to this commit.

10.0.0 first schedule

  • 10.0.0-beta 1: ~ november 20, 2021,
  • 10.0.0 stable: ~ december 24, 2021 🎄

BP Rewrites feature as a plugin

Although @im4th only said he was making good progress about the feature during the dev chat, let’s warmly thank the first contributors who joined the adventure of using the WP Rewrite API to replace our legacy URL parser: @shanebp @boonebgorges & @rayisme 🥰.

@im4th strongly encourages all BP Plugin/theme developers to give a test to this feature as a plugin to contribute to the next way BuddyPress will parse URLs.

Next Dev-Chat

It will happen on September 15 at 19:30 UTC and of course in #BuddyPress. If you have ideas or questions, feel free (and we are strongly encouraging you) to comment this summary to share them!

#10-0-0, #dev-chat, #summary

imath 4:59 pm on September 1, 2021
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August 18 Dev-Chat summary & September 1st Dev-Chat agenda

Hi everyone, sorry, once again, this summary is published quite late.

August 18 Dev-Chat summary

9.1.1 Security release

@im4th explained the work @dcavins, @johnjamesjacoby and him did about the security fix that was ported back to previous BuddyPress branches (from 9.0 to 2.9): 8 released were packaged in a night. Many thanks to David & John for their help during this amazing night!

10.0.0

  • @sbrajesh informed us he needed some more time to finish the first version of the BP relationships API.
  • We’ve been talking about the Group hierarchy as a possible feature for 10.0.0 @dcavins informed he had previously worked into this area from a custom plugin.
  • The first beta of 10.0.0 should happen on November 20. Target date for the final release is December ~24 🎅🏼

Open floor

  • We’ve been talking about the opportunity to move the dev-chat time but we will finally keep on meeting every other Wednesday at 19:30 UTC. Although it’s very late for @vapvarun & @sbrajesh, they are young enough 👶🏽👶🏾👶🏻 to handle it. Many thanks to them 🤝

September 1st Dev-Chat Agenda

  • Progress about 10.0.0 features.
  • News about the BP Rewrites feature as a plugin.

It will happen later today at 19:30 UTC and of course in #BuddyPress.

If you have specific/additional points you need to discuss about, please share them into the comments area of this post.

#10-0-0, #9-1-1, #agenda, #dev-chat, #summary

imath 6:22 pm on August 16, 2021
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August 4 Dev-Chat summary & August 18 Dev-Chat agenda

Hi everyone, sorry this summary is published quite late.

August 4 Dev-Chat summary

10.0.0 confirmed top features

  • We confirmed the BP Media component as one of the top features for 10.0.0. As there are many plugins playing into this area, we think packaging it into a separate plugin and make it easy to install from our BP Components Administration screen is the best way to go. Users will be able to choose whether they need these extra lines of code or not 😉.
  • The site membership requests feature to compliment the site membership invites was also confirmed. @dcavins already started working on it suggesting improvements to our BP Signup API (see #8450).

Open floor

  • We also talked about adding the Block based activity post form we’ve been working on from the BP Blocks plugin.
  • @im4th thinks he had progressed enough about the BP Rewrites plugin to completely open it to any contributors. He has published a post about it on this blog a few days after the dev chat.

August 18 Dev-Chat Agenda

  • During last meeting some of us couldn’t attend, so let’s take some more time to talk about other possible top features to confirm for 10.0.0.
  • Let’s move the time of our every other Wednesday meeting so that it’s not happening so late for Asia/Pacific timezones.

It will happen on August 18 at 19:30 UTC and of course in #BuddyPress.

If you have specific/additional points you need to discuss about, please share them into the comments area of this post.

#10-0-0, #agenda, #dev-chat, #summary

imath 6:12 pm on August 3, 2021
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July 21 Dev-Chat summary & August 4 Dev-Chat agenda

Hi everyone, sorry this summary is published very late (the day before we’re having another development meeting).

July 21 Dev-Chat summary

9.0.0 early results and feedbacks

  • 9.0.0 “Mico” was released on July 19.
  • Download spike for it happened on July 20 and reached ~33.400 downloads 📈 🎈.
  • Nothing major about it into Support forums, so @imath was able to quote @vapvarun saying: “We did not break anything big” 😅.
  • This BP Blocks focused (& short time framed) release was an interesting experience, thanks to a discussion launched by @johnjamesjacoby a bit before the dev chat, we were able to discuss about the benefits of working from a “feature as a plugin” GitHub repository. In short: it can save us some time ⏱, but bringing back code into our Trac is making us feel safer from being completely GitHub dependent.

10.0.0 is a magic number!

  • 10 is after 9, and we all feel we need to make this release a bit specific.
  • @sbrajesh has been working on the BP Relationship API and is confident he’ll be able to share a first alpha around August 18. 💪
  • Below are our first thoughts about 10.0.0:
    • A “regular” development cycle, Christmas🎄 as a release date could be a good idea!
    • It’s time BuddyPress has a Media Component, Releasing 10.0.0 once it’s ready was suggested 😇
    • Using rewrites to parse BP URLs might be a bit too early but we’ll have a “feature as a plugin” really soon to check what it means in terms of back compatibility with Plugins using the BP Legacy URL parser.
    • Carry on improving the BP REST API by using it more frequently into BP features (like we did for BP Blocks in 9.0.0)
    • A new great BP Theme seems difficult to achieve, unless we have a lot of interested contributors jumping in!
    • A site membership requests feature to compliment the site membership invites.

Nothing’s set in stone yet! Don’t hesitate to show your support for one (or more) of the above points to help us decide. And if you have great ideas, be there to share them with us during our next development meeting 👇

August 4 Dev-Chat Agenda

We had 2 weeks to think about possible features for 10.0.0, let’s decide about the ones we’ll work on during this magically numbered release cycle 🪄.

It will happen on August 4 (tomorrow) at 19:30 UTC and of course in #BuddyPress.

If you have specific/additional points you need to discuss about, please share them into the comments area of this post.

#10-0-0, #9-0-0, #agenda, #dev-chat, #summary

imath 12:26 pm on July 11, 2021
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BP Dev-Chat Summary: June 30/July 7, 2021

June 30 improvised dev-chat

Following the discussion we had during June 23 meeting about the frequently requested Follow feature, and a very interesting discussion between @sbrajesh, @espellcastewe and @johnjamesjacoby, we decided to improvise a new Dev Chat about a possible larger scope about it. We shared our views about building a wider vision for “relationship types” in BuddyPress. A new API that would firstly be used for the Follow feature, but could also be used for potential other needs: user likes, improved user favorites, blocking users, what may come to our mind in the future!

@sbrajesh will lead this new project using the “feature as a plugin” model like WordPress does from a BuddyPress GitHub repository. If you’re interested in contributing to this project, please “raise your hand” commenting this summary.

July 7 regular dev-chat

@im4th starts with an apology: unlike what was scheduled (July 8), we were not able to release the 9.0.0 first beta so far. Sorry about it.

9.0.0 🎯

We’ve migrated 90% of Widgets as Block Widgets from the GitHub repository we use to build BuddyPress blocks. We also improved some BP REST API endpoints and we’re on our way to include a new endpoint to deal with Sitewide Notices. BP Block Widgets have been built on 2 principles: use the BP REST API every time it’s possible and use Modern JavaScript on front-end and the Widget/Post Block Editor’s APIs (mainly built on top of React.JS) on back-end.

@dcavins has made great progress about the Sitewide Notices Block Widget (👉 the last one to reach 100%) and about the corresponding REST API Endpoints. @espellcaste gave great advices about the BP REST API to speed up the process.

We also talked about directly packaging a Release Candidate without doing a Beta release. As the 9.0.0 development cycle is focused on migrating Widgets as Blocks, we have a very limited risk of messing with other parts of BuddyPress. @im4th said he’ll work on merging the BP Blocks code into BuddyPress core and will try to find the time to quickly build a Beta Release and some time after the Release Candidate (he hates when he doesn’t do what he has written he would do).

We finally talked about the great work @vapvarun has done building a test drive to host the BuddyPress code reference. The goal is to make it available asap and before the end of the year here. The main difficulty is to generate the documentation using the WP CLI parser command directly from the server (10 minutes). @im4th wondered if this could be achieved using the WP import/export tool (the documentation plugin is using custom post types). This is an approach we’ll try to test to avoid possible downtimes of the BuddyPress.org network.

9.0.0 schedule

  • Beta: July ? 🤔
  • RC: July 12 to 14.
  • Final: July 16 to 19.

Next Dev-Chat

It will happen on July 21 at 19:30 UTC and of course in #BuddyPress. If you have ideas or questions, feel free (and we are strongly encouraging you) to comment this summary to share them!

Additional note about meetings during 9.0.0 development cycle

As we are running a short development cycle, @im4th will be available every Wednesday at 19:30 UTC in #BuddyPress for an hour or more time if needed. Don’t hesitate to ping him (@imath) for help or inputs about contributing to this version of BuddyPress.

#9-0-0, #dev-chat, #relationship-api, #summary

imath 6:17 pm on June 24, 2021
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BP Dev-Chat Summary: june 23, 2021

9.0.0 🎯

During yesterday’s development meeting we’ve discussed about @im4th‘s proposal to run the 9.0.0 development cycle very shortly targeting a release date before WordPress 5.8 final release is made available to the planet (~ July 20, 2021)!

@im4th was a bit worried about being too much directive and/or too ambitious, so he specified it was ok to disagree with this proposal. We quickly agreed, but here are some opinions we shared about this idea:

  • “Sounds great.” @sbrajesh
  • “I’m OK with your short cycle just for blocks to support the WP release” @dcavins
  • “I like the idea of very targeted releases” @dcavins
  • “the short release cycle is fine. The reason is good and makes total sense to me” @espellcaste

So we are going to try to do it!

9.0.0 Focus

Blocks!

As WordPress 5.8 is introducing the Widgets Block Editor, we are going to start migrating our legacy widgets. We actually already started the process from the GitHub plugin we use to develop BuddyPress Blocks. The first step is building a block for every BP Widgets and making it possible to transform existing BP Widgets to their corresponding BP Block. BP Widgets won’t disappear in 9.0.0 yet (no worries), but they’ll get a well deserved retirement progressively 😁. You can expect (at least) 10 new BuddyPress Blocks to be introduced in BuddyPress core.

A new follow component (if it’s ready for 9.0.0 release date)

@sbrajesh volunteered to satisfy a frequent request about this feature and he’s very welcome to contribute and lead this effort to make it happen! We talked about the “Followers” plugin @rayisme built which can be a source of inspiration. We’ll organize it from another specific GitHub repository. After the dev-chat, we had a complementary discussion about it, you can have a look at it for more information about early directions about the feature.

And of course, we’ll fix issues related to our latest major release (8.0.0) that may be found.

9.0.0 schedule

  • Beta: July 8.
  • RC: July 12.
  • Final: July 16.

8.0.0 issue “monitoring”

During the dev-chat, we also discussed about the feedbacks we got from the support forums about 8.0.0. We shared our surprise that plugins that appear to rely on BP aren’t tested in the beta window. This is something we need to carry on trying to improve. Working on documentation could be a way. On this topic, @vapvarun informed us he would prepare a list about which documentation resources need updates & then update them one by one 😍. Many thanks to him: it’s a very important work that will benefit to us all.

Next Dev-Chat

It will happen on July 7 at 19:30 UTC and of course in #BuddyPress. If you have ideas or questions, feel free (and we are strongly encouraging you) to comment this summary to share them!

Additional note about meetings during 9.0.0 development cycle

As we are running a short development cycle, @im4th will be available every Wednesday at 19:30 UTC in #BuddyPress for an hour or more time if needed. Don’t hesitate to ping him (@imath) for help or inputs about contributing to this version of BuddyPress.

#9-0-0, #dev-chat, #summary

imath 9:52 am on June 22, 2021
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June 9 Dev-Chat summary & June 23 Dev-Chat agenda

Hi everyone, sorry this summary is published very late (the day before we’re having another development meeting).

June 9 Dev-Chat summary

  • 8.0.0 was released on June 7.
  • Download spike for it happened on June 8 and reached ~27.000 downloads, but I believe we can include the 12.000 packages that were downloaded on release day. The total amount of downloads just after release is 39373.
  • As @vapvarun said: “We did not break anything big” 😅.
  • First issues are about the brand new Members Invitations feature:
    • It looks like some BuddyPress plugins are running some code before BuddyPress is fully ready.
    • It looks like some template overrides made by plugins or themes forgot to update their template pack to include this feature new templates.
    • The 2 above points could have been avoided if their plugin/theme authors had tested our beta/RC releases… That’s why we always ask you for help during our pre-release periods. The more we all test, the best will be the final release.
    • Thanks for @dcavins investigations about these first issues.
  • There will be a 8.1.0 release soon, unless we do a short 9.0.0 release cycle. @im4th would like us to try to have our legacy Widgets migrated as blocks as soon as WordPress 5.8 is released (it is slated to July 20). He’s been working on these 8 new blocks form our BP Blocks GH repository. So far 4 legacy widgets have their corresponding blocks, you can follow his progress (and of course help him) from this GH issue.
  • @vapvarun & @im4th discussed about the BP Attachments Plugin: the goal is to include the User Attachments feature or build a new plugin by the end of the year. The new plugin path is an option considering the various plugins playing into this area.
  • @im4th would also like to progress on migrating BP’s custom URI parser to use WP’s Rewrite API (#4954) from a plugin: if you’re interested about it, let’s team up! Let him know you want to join this project pinging him on WordPress Slack (@imath).

June 23 Dev-Chat Agenda

So here’s the question we need to reply to during tomorrow’s development meeting:

So here’s my plan: July 16 is my birthday and WP 5.8 is slated to July 20. What about releasing BP 9.0 on July 16 with only blocks (and some other fixes of course) ?

@im4th on June 9

It will happen on June 23 at 19:30 UTC and of course in #BuddyPress.

If you have specific/additional points you need to discuss about, please share them into the comments area of this post.

#8-0-0, #9-0-0, #agenda, #dev-chat, #summary

imath 10:38 am on June 1, 2021
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BP Dev-Chat summary: May 26, 2021

8.0.0-beta2 feedbacks

@im4th noticed the only feedback we got from this beta release was about the BP Beta Tester plugin. The issue about this testing tool was fixed in 1.2.0. Does it mean everything’s fine with 8.0.0? We’ll see with the release candidate that was published 4 days ago: if you haven’t tested it yet, please do so 🙏.

BuddyPress 8.0.0 Release Candidate

8.0.0 remaining tasks

  • @vapvarun has been working on the 8.0.0 changelog. He found a bug with the script we’re using to generate it. He shared a fix during the chat. @im4th suggested to build a PR out of it on @rayisme‘s GH repository.
  • @johnjamesjacoby and especially @dcavins copy reviewed the Hello BuddyPress screen text on (#8468). Thanks to them we were able to clean the open tickets about the 8.0.0 milestone.
  • We agreed it was time to package RC and decided to leave less than 2 weeks of string freeze to polyglots. The goal was to avoid postponing too much the 8.0.0 final release date. As you can see above, the RC was released on May 27.

8.0.0 final schedule

  • ✅ 8.0.0-beta1: April 29,
  • ✅ 8.0.0-beta2: May 20,
  • ✅ 8.0.0-RC1: May 27,
  • 8.0.0 stable release: June 7 👀

Open floor

We’ve been talking about the BuddyPress code reference. It’s still under construction and we really need to make it available asap. @vapvarun had the opportunity to test the parser tool and the only thing we need to make sure is to avoid parsing the BP REST API controllers to avoid some kind of duplicate information with the BP REST API documentation. As it was getting late @im4th suggested to have a specific dev-chat about it.

@dcavins shared a proof-of-purpose plugin that adds some limitations on who can send site membership invites.

Screenshot of the Proof of purpose plugin @dcavins built.

If anyone has ideas for limits to add, please let @dcavins know adding issues to this GitHub repository.

Next Dev-Chat

It will happen on June 9 at 19:30 UTC and of course in #BuddyPress. We’ll probably talk about the first results/feedbacks about the 8.0.0 stable release but If you have ideas or questions, feel free (and we are strongly encouraging you) to comment this summary to share them!

PS: we count on you to test the 8.0.0 release candidate!

#8-0-0, #dev-chat, #release-candidate, #summary

imath 7:19 am on May 15, 2021
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BP Dev-Chat summary: May 12, 2021

8.0.0-beta1 feedbacks

@vapvarun checked our support forum and hasn’t found concerning feedbacks relative to this release.

@im4th replied to one of the comments that was posted on the announcement post about the next WordPress Full Site Editing (FSE) & Widgets Block Editor features. He tested the first one before our meeting and told us about his concerns during the chat. In short it’s a breaking change for the BuddyPress Theme Compat API. A pretty long discussion took place between @johnjamesjacoby @im4th and @vapvarun about it. We finally decided to open a very important ticket on our Trac to decide whether it’s on BuddyPress or FSE to adapt. If you have an opinion about it, please take a few minutes to share it with us.

8.0.0 tickets needing attention

  • About the bp_core_new_nav_default()function ticket (#8471), we decided we were too close to release date to do the necessary tests to be sure the patch doesn’t introduce some regression
  • About the BP Directory pages ticket (#8470), we think it’s best to split the ticket in 2 and deal with admin information on the Registration/Activation page during 8.0.0
  • @im4th wants to finish his audit regarding #8459 before packaging a new beta release.
  • @espellcaste reminded us about the GitHub Actions ticket (#8421). He agreed with @im4th about only committing the PHP Unit tests part.
  • We also punted the ticket about including PHPCS to our build tools (#7228) to leave us the time to discuss more about it as we don’t agree all about when to check WP PHP code standards (before committing or as soon as patching). The latter could possibly discourage people to submit patches in @im4th‘s opinion. Feel free to give us your opinion about it, commenting on the ticket.
  • Finally about the remaining release tasks (#8468). @vapvarun will take care of the changelog and @im4th will prepare the credits update.

8.0.0 updated schedule

We agreed to build a new beta release before our release candidate. @im4th will take care of it next week.

  • ✅ 8.0.0-beta1: April 29,
  • 8.0.0-beta2: ~ May 19,
  • 8.0.0 stable release: June 2.

Next Dev-Chat

It will happen on May 26 at 19:30 UTC and of course in #BuddyPress. If you have ideas or questions, feel free (and we are strongly encouraging you) to comment this summary to share them!

PS: we count on you to test the 8.0.0 beta release!

#8-0-0, #dev-chat, #summary