I’m happy to present episode number two of the WPCandy Roundtable Podcast, this time with the BuddyPress Core Team of John James Jacoby, Boone Gorges, and Paul Gibbs. They spoke for just over an hour about issues of interest to them within the BuddyPress community, and where things are going in the near future.

This episode is sponsored by the upcoming WordPress service Raft.io and the Typecase plugin by UpThemes.

• MP3 file (41.8 MB)
• Subscribe on iTunes (coming soon!)
• Audio RSS Feed

The gentleman also wanted me to say that if there were further questions you had about BuddyPress after listening, you’re welcome to leave them here and they will stop by and have a look at them.

This week’s WPCandy Roundtable will be filled with BuddyPress Core developers: John James Jacoby, Boone Gorges, and Paul Gibbs will be sitting down to chat. If you caught last week’s show with the marketplace theme developers, you’ll know a thing or two about what to expect tomorrow afternoon.

We’ll be streaming the Roundtable on the WPCandy Stream at 2pm EDT (18 UTC) with the chatroom buzzing if you’d like to swing by and get your question answered by the group.

Speaking of questions, if you have one (or a few) that you’d like to see posed to these BuddyPress pros leave it in the comments below. Make ‘em good ones!

On the BuddyPress blog this week Boone Gorges pointed out that the BuddyPress plugin has crossed the million download mark on the WordPress.org plugin directory (1,004,479 at the time of this writing). BuddyPress’s first stable release was in May of 2009, just under three years ago this month.

BuddyPress can now boast what few plugins can, and joins the short list of plugin titans like Jetpack, Contact Form 7, and All in One SEO Pack. Okay, so it needs a few more downloads to truly rival those numbers, but it’s getting closer.

In any case, I’ll happily echo Boone’s sentiment:

Here’s to the next million!

For the fans of BuddyPress out there (of which there are, it seems, a few) how long ago did you first start messing with BuddyPress? Were you an early adopter? Or, put another way, how many of those million downloads are you responsible for?

Believe it or not, I have never — ever — properly interview John James Jacoby, also know as JJJ or J-trip. John is the lead developer on the BuddyPress and bbPress projects, and has been working for Automattic since November 2010. In this interview we talk about the futures of both BuddyPress and bbPress, or “the bbs”, his slew of old jobs, and something called a Faquith.

You’ve been warned.

See the various listening options below, or have a listen straight away (The interview is approximately one hour long.):

I don’t have time codes for you this week, but I can tell you we discussed:

• BuddyPress 1.6
• The new BuddyPress (and bbPress) Codex
• When/if BuddyPress could go 100% to custom post types
• The Automattic Social Team
• BuddyPress on WordPress.org and BuddyPress.org
• John’s choice plugins for BuddyPress (mentioned BP-Media and Privacy)
• John’s choice bbPress plugins, included attachments and threaded replies and Javascript quotes
• John’s old jobs, which included a shoe store and DJ at a roller rink
• Right near the end, I mentioned he looks like Mike Krahulik, and we discussed Faquiths (like this one, sort of)

You can subscribe to WPCandy Interviews on iTunes, or directly via the RSS feed. Or you can download the MP3 file directly.

Last weekend, when everyone else was taking a break, John James Jacoby took the time out to refresh the BuddyPress Codex along with creating the new bbPress Codex too. Both are running on WordPress.

In the announcement made on the BuddyPress.org blog Jacoby said:

You may not know it but we’ve had a codex here at BuddyPress.org since the early days. It’s mostly made life really difficult and forced everyone into the forums or to other sites for help. Today, I’m really happy to report that the core team has spent some time this weekend to finally refresh the BuddyPress Codex.

No official announcement was posted on the bbPress blog, but it was mentioned on Twitter.

To get yourself started contributing to the codexes, it’s simply a matter of going to the respective /wp-admin/ like you would on your own WordPress site, and start writing and tweaking because users are editors by default. All you need are your WordPress.org login details.

All of the activity is logged using the BuddyPress Activity component, allowing you to show the community what you have contributed. For example:

Currently it’s only active on the BuddyPress Codex, but John James Jacoby informs me it will also be made active on the bbPress Codex within the next few days.

So what do you think? I like them, even more that they’re both run with WordPress. What if the WordPress Codex used the same setup?

BuddyPress 1.5.3 is now available as a fix for those running WordPress 3.3+—which should be all of you, you silly goofs. The list of changes in this version is relatively small. To name a few: an unused forum template was removed from the BuddyPress default theme, deprecated function warnings and PHP notices were cleared, and a toolbar-specific avatar issue was fixed as well. For the full list of changes, see the full 1.5.3 changelog. Glance at that if you need to, but really you should just go get yourself updated.

And in case you’re wondering, the confetti behind the logo above is there to celebrate compatibility. You have to enjoy the small victories, right?

Update: Not long after 1.5.3 was released came 1.5.3.1 that fixed a more serious bug with the way settings are saved. So, go update for that too.

Achievements, a BuddyPress plugin authored by Paul Gibbs, takes user loyalty to the next level. Gibbs announced he is rewriting the entire Achievement plugin from the ground up, and as part of that process he’s taking this opportunity to switch from his SVN version management over to GitHub. Achievements is currently in version 2.0 and Gibbs is focusing on version 3.0 in 2012.

The Achievements plugin already has a number of great user loyalty features such as a user logging in, writing a message to the activity stream, and a user creating a forum topic—all of which are rewardable actions.

Why are this plugin and Gibbs’ development efforts important to both the WordPress and BuddyPress communities? Because it’s bringing the core of WordPress and the social layer of BuddyPress to the next competitive level, making able to compete with big sites like Facebook and Friendster.

One feature I could see being added is the ability to reward users for playing a game, just like the big guys do. With a user loyalty plugin added on top of this WordPress social layer, what do you think you might be able to achieve with this kind of power?

Yesterday web developer Modemlooper announced on Twitter that he will stop working on his BuddyChimp project which was aimed towards bringing a social WordPress / BuddyPress to a mobile audience.

In a statement displayed on buddychimp.com, he said:

My concern is developing a business around another developers software that may not meet my goals down the road. I’m already seeing a road block/offramp in the horizon. Not to mention that BuddyPress wasn’t developed with a mobile first approach.

Even though BuddyPress is open source it’s future roadmap is controlled by someone else and like I stated they may decide to do something that won’t mesh with my goal; bringing a social WordPress to mobile that can be innumerably customized. Sure you can suggest things to be added or changed to core BuddyPress but it’s ultimately somebody else’s decision to allow it or not and if so could take longer than I or you’d like to accomplish a goal.

While I’m not sure what exactly happened, I do think it’s a shame to see another BuddyPress developer decide to calls it quits. Personally I always get a little sad when a plugin developer comes to a point where he no longer want to expand or even continue his current plugins.

What is your take on this? Do you think developers quitting projects is just something that is inevitable when dealing with open source community projects, or do you think Modemlooper‘s decision is too extreme?

For Modemlooper’s full message, see the text just after the jump.

View full message from Modemlooper

First, activity updates have been turned off. The decision to disable this form of contact was made to clear up the confusion of how to best get the support one needs. Now all support requests should be made via the Support Forums. Groups and member directories have also been hidden. The directories still exist but now links to them have been hidden. Since there’s no reason to visit them, they felt it was best to remove the links.

BuddyPress.org has been updated to the latest versions of WordPress and BuddyPress as well, to incorporate the new toolbar that was introduced in WordPress 3.3. Profile, plugins, themes, and showcase page styles have all been updated as well.

While this isn’t everything that has been done, or will be done in the near future, it seems to capture what most people will be excited to see.

If you haven’t checked the redesign out yet, you should really head over there. What other changes have you noticed around BuddyPress.org?

This episode of the WPCandy Podcast sees Ryan, Brian, and Daniel discuss the most interesting news items of the WordPress community this holiday week. Grab a cup of coffee, maybe cocoa or eggnog, and enjoy the Christmas (Christmas, and Christmas) edition of the podcast.

This week’s podcast was a bit longer than normal (approximately 90 minutes) so the breakdown of topics discussed below also include approximate time codes, just in case you want to jump to a specific discussion that you care about.

Jump straight into the podcast audio here:

This is a bit of a long podcast, so to make things easier on you I’ve broken down what we talked about minute by minute. It’s just because we love you all so much:

• 1:45 What’s everyone building this week?
• 12:00 WPCandy Awards discussion
• 18:00 Quarterly update
• 20:30 Custom plugin header images (funny one)
• 29:00 BuddyPress activity admin screens and BuddyPress general discussion
• 36:00 WordPress for Android, mobile WordPress apps
• 45:45 WooThemes infographic
• 1:07:00 Theme Foundry post
• 1:14:15 Infographic again
• 1:17:00 Post formats and UI
• 1:21:15 Editor’s picks (see below)

This week Brian’s pick was the very recently released Gravity Forms add-on for the WooCommerce plugin (demonstrated), which he picked up yesterday. Ryan’s pick was the User Switching plugin, and Daniel opted out of picks this week.

Subscribe to the show on iTunes, or directly to the RSS feed. As always you can send any emails you would like to have included on the show to podcast@wpcandy.com. The Download link is just after the jump.

If you would like to download the podcast in MP3 format directly, you can do so here.