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imath 10:30 pm on September 14, 2022
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BP Dev-Chat summary : September 7, 2022

BP Attachments / Activity block editor update

  • @im4th has started working on templating to display single media on the front-end.
  • He also made it possible to share media using the Activity Block Editor when the BP Attachements plugin is active. This means block developers could soon enjoy a new playground to express themselves.
  • The BP Attachments Admin UI now includes an “Edit Item” view. See the screenshot below.

11.0.0 updates

  • @im4th shared he was hesitant about #8052. Now the blog post title is directly included into the corresponding activity type’s content, we don’t need to use a blog meta to retrieve it inside the activity action string anymore.
  • @dcavins suggested to request a feedback from @rayisme who worked on this part and should be the best of us to know whether it’s safe or not to make this move in 11.0.0.

11.0.0 schedule reminder

  • First beta: October 19, 2022.
  • Release: December 14, 2022.

Open floor

@im4th started discussing about the drop on the active installations stat we observed on the BuddyPress WP.org plugin’s page as it went down from 200k to 100k 😱. Thanks to @johnjamesjacoby we were able to get more precise numbers about this decrease and it turns out we’re around 190/195k active installs. But the trend since year 2017 is concerning as it’s 📉 not to mention the fact there are less and less contributors to the project 😭. We’ve discussed about the possible reasons for these bad results:

  • lack of cool front-end things added to the plugin recently,
  • hesitancy to install a big plugin like BuddyPress for a single feature,
  • lack of privacy tools, of a media component,
  • growth of the use of things like Teams and Slack,
  • BuddyBoss’s commercial aggressivity (eg: Google Adwords) or their slick-looking theme attractivity,
  • etc..

As the BP Attachments add-on should be available around the 11.0.0 release date, the first action we took was to open a ticket about including a basic private community feature into our next major release.

After some more discussions with @espellcaste we came to the conclusion we need more data from users. A new survey was suggested as well as asking the WordPress Marketing Team for help. We finally thought about posting into our support forum this simple question “what is the most important feature that BuddyPress is missing?“. We decided to test this last idea as soon as we have a text to explain why we are questionning ourselves about it. If you believe you have answers to share with us, don’t hesitate to comment this post 🙏.

Next Dev-Chat

It will happen on September 21 at 19:30 UTC in #BuddyPress. If you have specific points you want to discuss about, don’t hesitate to share them in comments.

#11-0-0, #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 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 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 2:20 pm on January 18, 2021
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BP Dev-Chat summary: January 6, 2021

BuddyPress 8.0.0’s kick off

Unfortunately, the meeting started 30 mins later than scheduled, so we were not able to talk about all the scheduled points. @johnjamesjacoby congratulated the great work the team has accomplished during the 7.0 development cycle and the recent updates we’ve published on the BuddyPress.org’s blog.

Features / bug fixes wishlist

The call for tickets is now closed (it ended on January 13), the least we can say is it didn’t gather much wishes 😬. @im4th seems to be motivated to progress on the BP Attachments’ front, 8.0.0 might be a good milestone to have some user media feature included into BuddyPress core.

@slaffik shared his concerns about introducing the Activity scheduling feature (#7953). He thinks it should be handled by a BuddyPress plugin rather than be included into Core.

He and @im4th agreed on the fact we should deprecate the BuddyBar into this development cycle (#7729). @rayisme ‘s patch was very close to make it during the 6.0.0 release, let’s have it done!

We then talked about continuous integration and build tools. The Travis CI (.org) shutting down announcement with no specific date is concerning. @im4th has tested the Travis CI (.com) migration with 2 of his free and open source plugins and is now requested to pay for the service after a bunch of builds done. The documentation about the migration seems to be a bit misleading about this subject. @slaffik is going to work on moving to GitHub Actions (#8421) 😍 . He also opened a ticket to modernize our composer.json file (#8420). He and @im4th are thinking we should start working on WP Code Standards (#7228).

Next Dev-Chat

Let’s carry on talking about 8.0.0 during our next dev-chat: it will happen on January 20 at 19:00 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!

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

imath 5:19 pm on May 9, 2020
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BP Dev-Chat Summary: May 6, 2020

Before discussing about the points on our agenda, @im4th explained why he quickly packaged a second Release Candidate on May 3rd. His goal was to early fix an issue about the BuddyPress build process regarding how JavaScript i18n strings can be identified by GlotPress on our WordPress.org plugin repository. The idea was to leave as much time as possible to Polyglots Contributors to help us make available our next major release in as much languages as possible.

BuddyPress 6.0.0 Hello & Credits Screens, & the 2020 survey

We’ve been discussing about an a11y issue @mercime raised into this comment. @im4th said he will look into it asap to try to fix it before 6.0.0 release. The improvements @dcavins (many thanks for your help) brought to the initial patch has been taken in account during the first commit about the Hello Screen. We will add the link to the 2020 survey at the last minute. @mercime already opened a ticket on Meta Trac to request for survey banners on our sites (BuddyPress.org, the Codex and the Developer Ressources site). @mercime (many thanks to you too!!) also committed to update the props of the Credits Screen for 6.0.0. The 2 last steps about props are to:

  • include the Polyglots contributors to the Props list.
  • introduce a new section “Noteworthy Contributors to 6.0.0” and do the required updates about the drop of the “Recent Rockstars” one.

About this new section @im4th suggested to add  @vapvarun @IAmTheWebb and @Passoniate to it and left “nomination” opened if other members of the team want to add other important contributors to 6.0.0.

Finally, we’ve listed the ultimate tasks to achieve before 6.0.0 release.

  1. Fix last PHP 7.4 issues. Many thanks to @rayisme for dealing with it and fixing it 💪.
  2. Update the 6.0.0 changelog.
  3. Write the 6.0.0 announcement post.
  4. Choose the Pizza name for this release (@im4th will reach out to team’s member privately in Slack to keep it secret until d-day!).

BP REST API Documentation updates

After @im4th‘s first pass about it less than 10 endpoints needed a review/update. He thinks it’s doable before the release date and since the dev-chat, it’s important to mention that @mercime has been doing an amazing job about it reviewing and updating 11 endpoints so far 👏🏆.

6.0.0 Final schedule

BuddyPress 6.0.0 is slated for release on May 14

@im4th is confident we will be able to release it for May 14th. No blockers were raised during the meeting, so let’s do it !

Next dev chat

It will happen on May 20 at 19:00 UTC (a week after release) 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!

#6-0-0, #dev-chat

imath 2:17 pm on April 29, 2020
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BP Dev Chat Summary: April 22, 2020

Hello screen & BuddyPress 2020 survey

The ticket for the Hello Screen has been created on Trac (#8270). @im4th started the meeting by asking feedbacks about it. @IAmTheWebb after a brain to html conversion of the patch thinks it looks good. A screenshot of the Hello Screen has been added to the ticket to ease this conversion 😅. @im4th also said there was a placeholder to insert the link to the BuddyPress Survey 2020.

@mercime volunteered to draft the 6.0.0 changelog 😍. She already prepared a first version of it using @rayisme‘s BP Changelog. Here’s the link to its preview if some of us wants to give a hand to fine tune it.

BP REST API documentation updates

@im4th shared the GH issue we can use to follow our progress about this task. He said he would take care of documenting the 6 new endpoints as the process to create new documentation pages using the BP REST API inline documentation is a pain to complete. He just finished adding these 6 new documentation page today (April 29). We still need to check all the other endpoints are up to date with latest BP REST API improvements.

Discussions about 6.0.0-RC1 & 6.0.0 schedule

At the time of the dev-chat there was 3 tickets in the milestone’s queue. As @IAmTheWebb noticed the ticket about the removal of the Legacy BuddyBar (#7729) was needing some extra time to be fixed during this release, so @im4th moved it to next major release. @im4th said he would take a deeper look to the ticket about the privacy data introduced in WP 5.4 (#8266). He did so 40 hours ago and decided to also move this ticket to next major release.

We agreed on a new schedule to leave 2 weeks between RC1 and final release so that translation contributors can help us making BuddyPress 6.0.0 available in as many language as possible. So here it is:

  • 6.0.0 RC1: April 29 (in a few hours 🏃‍♀️🏃‍♂️)
  • 6.0.0: May 14

Open floor

@im4th started by saying a big “TY” to @boonebgorges who packaged the 5.2 maintenance and security release the day before the dev-chat.

About #meta-5141 @mercime suggested to add a new page on BuddyPress.org to introduce our two documentation resources (The Codex & Developer site). @im4th agreed it was a great idea.

Next dev chat

It will happen on May 6 at 19:00 UTC (a week before final release) 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!

😷 Stay safe

#6-0-0, #dev-chat

imath 3:04 pm on April 10, 2020
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BP Dev Chat summary: April 8, 2020

BuddyPress Survey

@mercime has decided to wait for 6.0.0 final release to launch the survey. We will be able to add a link to it inside the “Hello BuddyPress 6.0.0” screen (See #8270). There will be 17 questions into the survey. If one of the team members wishes to request a new one, the deadline to make it happen is the day before the release date.

Progress about 6.0.0 release

6.0.0-beta1 was released on March 31 at 10:43 PM (WP Plugins directory’s time) : just before the end of march as announced 💪⏱. The WP Tavern wrote a great post about it and shared a very interesting feedback that has been converted to this ticket (#8271) since. The patch will soon be committed.

@johnjamesjacoby will try to find a way to get more information about future beta/RC downloads as we are always worrying to have very few feedbacks about them.

@rayisme is requesting your feedback about the 2 new exportable privacy data types, please do so adding your comment to this ticket: #8266.

He also fixed a very annoying error about a deprecated WP privacy function: it’s already available into the 5.0 branch and will be shipped during our next maintenance release. FYI: the problem is WP moved the deprecated function into a file that is only loaded into the /wp-admin context.

@im4th will package a new beta release (the second) on April 15.

BP REST API documentation update.

@im4th said he was sorry he couldn’t find the time to write some explanations about how to updated the documentation. He has since done using the Swagger UI tool. Here are the explanations (NB: in this Gist, there’s a file over the bp-custom.php one, you will also need).

Open floor

@espellcaste asked about the BP GraphQL documentation’s ticket on Meta Trac since it has not evolved for a while. 😬

@mercime has suggested to include a link to the developer.bp.org’s site inside the BuddyPress.org main menu. She wrote a ticket about it on Meta Trac. 💡👍

@im4th thanked Varun & IAmTheWebb for their very interesting contributions to the dev chat: everyone is welcome to do like them 🤝.

6.0.0 schedule & main features

  • Schedule:
    • Beta-2 April 15
    • Final release at the end of April.
  • Main Features:
    • BP REST API remaining endpoints ✅
    • BP Blocks ✅

Next dev chat

It will happen on April 22 at 19:00 UTC (a big week before final release ) 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!

🏡 Stay safe & Happy Easter 🥚

#6-0-0, #dev-chat

imath 6:18 am on March 20, 2020
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BP Dev Chat Summary: March 11th, 2020

BuddyPress Survey

We’ve been discussing about adding questions about 2 topics : BuddyPress integration with e-commerce plugins and BuddyPress alternatives. We found a compromise about the second topic and @mercime will add this question:

What other networking/membership plugin/software have you considered or used?

@espellcaste suggested to add a question about BP GraphQL consideration. @im4th suggested to add this feedback to the Google doc @mercime uses to work on the survey questions.

Progress about 6.0.0 release

@im4th asked about the BP REST API complete merge into BuddyPress core now all remaining endpoints are ready. @espellcaste prefers to keep maintaining it from its GitHub repository for now.

@im4th has decided to merge the BP Blocks plugin into BuddyPress core, following @johnjamesjacoby advice to reconsider his first idea about only merging “JavaScript built” blocks. A complete merge seems a better option to make sure to generate a pot file taking in account JavaScript translations. He recently added a patch on #8048 to make this happen, feedbacks welcome.

@dcavins was a bit worried he needed more than 2 weeks to end the Network invites work. If it’s the case, he will only include a portion of the code into 6.0.0.

Finally @im4th asked for help about #7729 @rayisme has been working on during. It’s about removing the legacy BuddyBar.

6.0.0 schedule & main features

  • Schedule:
    • First beta at the end of march.
    • Final release at the end of April.
  • Main Features:
    • BP REST API remaining endpoints ✅
    • BP Blocks ✅
    • Network invitation & Membership requests 😬
    • & maybe some surprises! 😬

Next dev chat

It will happen on March 25 at 19:00 UTC (a few days before first beta 🙄) 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!

#6-0-0

Mercime 6:08 pm on April 18, 2017
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Dev Chat Summaries for April 5 & 12, 2017

bp-nouveau template pack

@hnla reported on the bug and a11y fixes made on bp-nouveau to date. He has added a temporary Gruntfile.js, primarily for compiling and linting Sass files, as well as other project-specific configuration files. @mercime will be posting solutions in codepen for removing placeholders from form controls.

Many thanks to @boonebgorges for delving deeply into bp-nouveau and his post introducing the new template pack.

BP REST API

@rayisme has started work on the /members endpoint for the BP REST API locally. He raised a question at the Github repo re Members – GET – List Users Schema. @modemlooper has responded in ticket.

@rayisme noted, “We’ll definitely have the /members endpoint ready by the time BP 2.9 is done, but probably will not be merged into core. The BP REST API will stay as a plugin for at least the next few release cycles until things have been fleshed out, similar to how the WP REST API was a plugin for awhile.”

Trac Tickets

Allow bp_get_group_permalink() to produce HTML links (#7485) @dcavins has committed fix to trunk.

Update bp_group_description_excerpt() to accept a $length param (#7493) @hnla has patch. @dcavins has responded to keep the group as the first parameter.

Required xprofile fields are not validated (#7483) @hnla has confirmed issue reported in ticket. Needs patch.

groups_send_invites() should allow us to omit sending to users that have already received an invite (#7397) @rayisme will be refreshing the patch for BP 2.9.

Include BP Edit Group Slug into the core (#6014) @dcavins refreshed the patch including unit tests. New patch adds support for changing group slug via wp-admin. Dev feedback requested.

Take advantage of BP_Groups_Group magic methods in groups component setup (#7494) @dcavins has patch. Dev feedback requested.

Use JOIN rather than Subquery on user search (#7442) @brandonliles has patch. Dev feedback requested.

Harmful bp_activity indexes (#7500) @johnjamesjacoby in discussion with @brandonliles.

Deprecate the BuddyPress functions for bbPress 1.x forums (#6851) @johnjamesjacoby introduced a motion to “remove bp-forums pretty much completely, or relegate it to its own compatibility plugin like we did Wire and Status.”
@boonebgorges concurred with the compat plugin route and noted, “I’d like to stage it over maybe two releases, with large warnings in the interim release if you are running legacy forums. Maybe even block upgrade to the removing-version if we detect you are running it (like we did with the 5.3 requirement). How many of them will upgrade to BP 3.0 or 3.1, that’s another question. But it’s easy enough for us to create barriers to white screens, so we should do so.” @johnjamesjacoby: “Making this release ideal for the warning. I think the 3.0.0 release is a nice round number to cut the old legacy forum cord, too.” @boonebgorges: “So admin notices + upgrade-blocks for 2.9, and maybe some logic in 3.0 that prevents loading the full plugin if the compat plugin is not found. Someone will need to wrangle all of the necessary steps, including preparing and releasing the compat plugin.”
@johnjamesjacoby has volunteered for the tasks, “the pleasure of the pain will all be mine.”

Create administration sections for every component that’s currently lacking an interface

@johnjamesjacoby: Friends, Messages, and Notifications basically. “Preferably, I’d like to also stagger the work on those, so the expectation isn’t to have a 100% fully covered and integrated interface that covers all users and use-cases. Similar to Groups Admin (how you can’t create a new group from within wp-admin). I really also want a live-chat style Messages UI while you’re in wp-admin”
@boonebgorges: “Big +1 to more admin coverage, though we should think carefully about whether each of these BP components needs its own top-level item. (Friends may be properly a property of Users, rather than its own thing, or whatever).”
@johnjamesjacoby: “Right now, all of BuddyPress makes theme-side websites better, and that’s awesome, and it should, and always will. But once you enter wp-admin, BuddyPress doesn’t actually help WordPress itself be a better piece of software for managing users, community content, etc. We don’t need to talk about all of the detail-work right now, but I wanted to drop that vision in here now, so everyone has an idea of what I’m thinking, and we can maybe try to hit that vision hard in 3.0 and beyond. Hopefully 2.9 and Nouveau and everything else will keep the traditional BuddyPress installation type satisfied for a few years, enough time to work on REST API, wp-admin integration, maybe some GraphQL if we like that, etc.”

BP Theme Compatibility

A basic visualization of the BuddyPress Theme Compat is now available for bp-templates/bp-legacy. Use Ctl/Cmd +/- to zoom in/out, scroll up/down or click + drag right/left to navigate. Visualizations for bbPress Theme Compat and the upcoming bp-nouveau template pack are also in the works.

Slack logs:
https://wordpress.slack.com/archives/C02RQBYUG/p1491418861341587
https://wordpress.slack.com/archives/C02RQBYUG/p1492023677928317
(Slack account is required)

#dev-chat