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How long friends plugin is out ?

old version doesn’t working.

Mon, 17 Mar 2008 4:49:58
  • Andrew
    • Champion of Loops

    Hiya,

    We’ve been dancing around the idea of a new friends plugin for a while now and I still don’t have a definite answer yet. Basically we’re waiting too see what BuddyPress will offer. If there’s going to be an official ‘friends’ feature then there’s really not a need for another one :wink:

    Thanks,

    Andrew

  • drmike
    • DEV MAN’s Mascot

    Basically we’re waiting too see what BuddyPress will offer.

    I’m going to be a good boy but I soooooo much want to say something here.

    But I will question if they plan on releasing it to the mu community or just keeping it for wp.com. if you read what Matt has stated, he never comes out and says that it will be worked on for the mu community. Just that it will be worked on in house.

  • Luke
    • The Crimson Coder

    Honestly, with all the talk they have about it, I honestly see how they could keep it on wp.com without releasing it at all.

    It may not be “exactly” like wp.com, but they negativity that would be generated from keeping it only for wp.com would be a bad move. They know it.

    What “could” happen, could be that it works similar to akismet. You get a key, than the plugin interacts with the main core of their system through an api.

    I could see that, actually, with their talk of interaction between sites and such.

  • drmike
    • DEV MAN’s Mascot

    they negativity that would be generated from keeping it only for wp.com would be a bad move.

    I politely disagree with that statement as there’s quite a bit already that they haven’t released and they’ve really gotten little negativity from it.

  • Luke
    • The Crimson Coder

    I won’t disagree that there are things they haven’t released, but nothing really on this scale. Maybe Akismet, but to me that’s different. They built a service, then created and API to interact with it.

    This, however, started as open and public, and changing that would certainly cause a stir. Definitely a bad move. But, if they take it and make it better for wp.com, then that’s their right. At that point, wp.com is a “user”, no different than anyone else.

  • Andrew
    • Champion of Loops

    I’m going to have to go with Luke on this one. I think there would be at a minimum a few nasty posts (that would vanish) if they were to not release BuddyPress.

    However, if they did choose not to release it then that’s their right and it doesn’t necessarily make them “evil”. Automattic is a business just like Incsub. Our business models may be a bit different but we both develop features that we don’t release. I don’t think Incsub is an “evil” company so I can’t place the same label on Automattic.

    Thanks,

    Andrew

  • drmike
    • DEV MAN’s Mascot

    I think there would be at a minimum a few nasty posts (that would vanish) if they were to not release BuddyPress.

    Oh, I agree with that but who listens to wank and myself anymore?

    we both develop features that we don’t release.

    Yes, but you;’re at least willing to discuss those “special features.” The most we’ve ever gotten out of Automattic is Donncha dropped an occaional vague hint.

  • ZappoMan
    • Design Lord, Child of Thor

    Btw, What’s not working about the friends plugin? I just downloaded it and started playing with it… and although it’s not 100% what I want, it’s a really good starting point.

    At the risk of hijacking this thread (I’ll do it anyway)…. On a related note, Andrew, can you speak to how these plugins with with multi-db? I haven’t set up multi-db yet, but as I read the code, I guess I’m understanding it to try to detect which tables are blog specific and which tables are global, and connect to the correct db accordingly. So these plugins (friends, invites, user_activity, etc) that basically set up new global tables, I am assuming that those “just work” with multidb because multidb doesn’t think those tables are blog specific and so it points the requests to the global db. Am I getting it?

  • ZappoMan
    • Design Lord, Child of Thor

    Can you believe I paid for that reply? It’s not like I’m a complete noob… I was just up in a crazy blast of downloading everything and reading all the forums up all night kinda daze.

    Oh well, I don’t mind.

  • Andrew
    • Champion of Loops

    Oh just ignore them :wink:

    The problem is that over in the MU forums there are so many morons asking the same question over and over again that it’s just sort of worn us all out a bit.

      It’s not like I’m a complete noob…

    If you’re not a noob then you’re in the right place. This and over here are pretty much where most of the people familiar with wpmu have retreated to.

    Thanks,

    Andrew

  • ZappoMan
    • Design Lord, Child of Thor

    wrt noob-ness:

    Yes, I noticed that the mu forums had devolved even worse than last summer/fall when I spent more time on them.

    wrt friends plugin:

    I’m assuming based on this thread and the other threads here, that you don’t expect to do much more active development on this friends plugin. Which cool, it’s plenty enough to get me going. So, I plan to improve it (hack this thing up) to meet my needs.

    Some features I have added since last night:

    1) No longer need to change menu.php and put friends.php in the admin directory – this is not a complete plugin only on my system.

    2) Adding “time stamp” to messages instead of IDs since I don’t think my users want to try to understand “ID”s.

    3) Fixing some typos, adding some more log messages.

    Things I’ll be adding later today

    4) Adding “search” to the friends page to search for users, email, blogs to send friend requests from instead of having to visit the blogs.

    5) Fixing sorting to do asc/desc based on header click

    6) Add options to automatically make friends be “subscribers” to the blog so that things like private posts, pages, are easily managed through this friends feature.

    7) Add a APIs to do basic friend administrivia so that I can call these friends functions from other plugins more easily.

  • Luke
    • The Crimson Coder

    Wow. That’s 2 props in a day. I feel so special. :smiley:

    Andrew is right though. For serious discussions, that’s the place. We’ve been yakking it up since what, last summer or something?

    To not completely derail this thread, I’ve pretty much given in on the whole friends idea. Not because of this plugin, but I’m going to either see what happens with “something else”, and then probably end up writing my own thing that fits everything I want to do.

  • ZappoMan
    • Design Lord, Child of Thor

    If by “something else” you’re referring to buddyPress… my sense is that it will be a long wait… just my sense. And I need these features now… plus, honestly, I think a little bit can go a long way on this concept… Really, you’re just talking about a mechanism for people to manage a list of reciprocal blog relationships… this plugin seems to do that pretty cleanly… it will work for what my users are asking for.

  • andrea_r
    • The Incredible Code Injector

    Yeah, Z, join us on the “other” forum as well.

    I bet I have to bake the cookies too, huh?

    As for friends plugin, I’ve been testing out xiando’s one. Gotta do some work on it though and disentangle it from the rest of the stuff he bundled it with to see if I can get a stand-alone one.

    you know, right after I figure out how to squeeze in a 36 hour day.

  • Luke
    • The Crimson Coder

    Actually, I looked at Xiando’s plugin a while back and found it to be poorly coded.

    Initially I hacked the crap out of it, then switched to Andrew’s when it came out. I still have it loaded, but it isn’t something people are “in to” on any of the sites I’m doing.

    So, and I know this is what it will come down to, I’m going to end up writing it.

    When, I have no idea. Kid’s gotta eat first.

  • Luke
    • The Crimson Coder

    I’d throw in some barbecue, but we just finished it all off.

    Got a big Texas Sized Lounge party coming up in 2 weeks. Plenty of barbecue there. (And beer. :smiley:)

    I’m not quite sure that we should take over Andrew’s forum with that discussion Andrea, but I like the way you’re thinking.

  • Andrew
    • Champion of Loops
      I’m not quite sure that we should take over Andrew’s forum with that discussion Andrea

    No worries. It’s been a bit too slow over here for a month or so anyway.

    If you guys get serious about setting up a repository let me know and I’ll pick up a VPS account.

    Thanks,

    Andrew

  • ZappoMan
    • Design Lord, Child of Thor

    Andrew,

    Sorry if this question is answered somewhere on the site… but since you’re discussing setting up a version control account, I’ll go ahead and ask.

    1) Have you in the past taken contributions for mods to your premium plugins? As in bug fixes/feature improvements/etc.

    2) Do you offer something in return/exchange (as in subscription fee credits) for people who provide useful code improvements to your premium plugins?

    Hopefully I haven’t just opened up a can of worms for asking this question.

  • Andrew
    • Champion of Loops
      Hopefully I haven’t just opened up a can of worms for asking this question.

    Nah, not at all.

    We don’t really have an official policy on accepting contributions but I can say for sure that we’re not interested in anything that would involve revenue sharing at this time. It’s not because we’re greedy or anything, we’re just literally not setup for that. It would also be an added hassle for us.

    However, what I am willing to do (and have done so in the past) is extend the membership of anyone who submits a fix for a significant bug or contributes a feature. Membership extensions will be determined on a per case basis but anyone you ask will tell you we’re always generous.

    Again though, these would have to be a feature people would find useful or a fix for a significant bug. We won’t be handing out extensions for typo fixes, etc :wink:

      but since you’re discussing setting up a version control account, I’ll go ahead and ask.

    Oops, sorry for the confusion. That really isn’t related to this site. You see many (many) months ago there was only a very small (tiny in fact) group of people using WPMU and we chatted over on the mu forums. Over time the mu forums have degraded into what you see over there today. Most of the people from that original group are still around but we don’t usually chat on the mu forums anymore. Instead we have our conversations here on the premium site or over on the mu advanced forums. What’s happened here is that you’ve stumbled onto one of those conversations :wink:

    Thanks,

    Andrew

  • Luke
    • The Crimson Coder

    Heh, I’ll continue to impersonate Johnny Depp… Arrrrrrrhhh….

    Here’s a reference, Andrew. http://thunderlounge.com/photo-gallery/2007/texas-november-2007

    It’s funny, actually. Right now, we’ve got a group of 9 camping spots purchased in the Texas infield which we turn in to a little compound. We ring it with RV’s on 3 sides, and put “the lounge” trailer across the front. Filling in with temporary fencing where needed.

    Biggest crowd we’ve had was (as estimated by the Sheriff Deputies patrolling the infield) has been about 10,000 at one time.

    It gets plain nuts in there.

    I’ll pony up the information that not all the pictures taken make it to the web. If you get my drift.

    Steering the boat back on course, OK, not really, Andrew summed it up pretty well. The handful of “experts” that most MU people would recognize pretty much took the serious discussions elsewhere for reasons I won’t get back into.

  • ZappoMan
    • Design Lord, Child of Thor

    Back on topic of friends plugin.

    I’ve done made some major reworking of the plugin, and got it up and running on my system. Although we haven’t officially announced it to our user base a couple hundred users have discovered it and started friending each other.

    As per the list I published earlier, I added the following features:

    1) No longer need to change menu.php and put friends.php in the admin directory – this is not a complete plugin only on my system.

    2) Adding “time stamp” to messages instead of IDs since I don’t think my users want to try to understand “ID”s. All the lists now hide IDs and show more user friendly descriptions.

    3) Fixing some typos, adding some more log messages.

    4) Added “search” to the friends page to search for users, email, blogs to send friend requests from instead of having to visit the blogs.

    5) Added sorting to do asc/desc based on header click for all fields

    6) Added user option to automatically accept friend requests

    7) Added user option to automatically add new friends to your blog roll.

    8) Added user option to not send email notifications.

    9) Added Site Admin feature to modify the EMAIL text sent on friends requests

    10) Add a APIs to do basic friend administrivia so that I can call these friends functions from other plugins more easily.

    Note: The only reason I did major reworking was so that I could use a “table render” class that I’d implemented that handles drawing tables with sortable columns and pages… It’s not like the plugin needed major reworking.

    If anyone is interested in kibitzing with me about the virtue or lack-there-of of these features feel free to ping me.