Introducing BuddyPress Reply By Email Beta!

As we’re ramping up to the release of version 1.4 of the CUNY Academic Commons, the team here is working feverishly on some exciting, new features.

One of those features we’ve been working on is a Reply By Email (RBE) plugin for BuddyPress.

If you’ve ever used a similar reply-by-email feature in Basecamp or in Facebook, then you’ll find yourself right at home with RBE and BuddyPress.

Today we’re pleased to announce that BuddyPress Reply By Email is available immediately for public beta testing. Read on to find out how you can try out RBE on your own BP site.

How it works

Usually, BuddyPress will send out an email notification to you when you’re @mentioned, when someone replies to one of your activity comments or when you receive a new private message.

What RBE does is hijack the email notification generated by WordPress to add a custom “Reply-To” email address as well as a reply marker in the body of the email.

Screenshot of RBE manipulating a BuddyPress email notification
RBE in action!

The “Reply-To” email address is an IMAP email address that supports address tags. An address tag basically allows a single email address to support various email addresses under one inbox. (eg. [email protected] can also support [email protected], [email protected].) In the screenshot, we used a GMail address since it both supports IMAP and address tags.

Once a reply is sent to this email address, the address tag allows RBE to distinguish what type of BuddyPress item the email is corresponding to such as an activity comment or a private message.

RBE, then, logs into the email address to check if any new replies were received. If replies are successfully parsed by RBE, they will be automatically posted to your BuddyPress site.

That’s not all!

For those BuddyPress sites that rely on the Groups component, we’ve also made it possible for group members to post new forum topics via email and when combined with another popular plugin, BuddyPress Group Email Subscription, subscribed group members can also reply to group forum posts as well.

That sounds dandy! Where can I download it?

You’re in luck! RBE is now available for testing.

Download BuddyPress Reply By Email Beta 1 here.

Beta means we’ve tested it locally and deemed it to be almost ready, but could use some real-world external testing and feedback from BuddyPress site owners before public release.

We recommend testing on BuddyPress 1.5.6 or higher.

A couple of useful links can be found below:

If you encounter a bug and you’ve read through the troubleshooting guide, please report it here.

This goes without saying, but, like any beta software, please test this locally and not on your live production site!

Members here on the CUNY Academic Commons can expect to see the feature in action in a few weeks, when we release version 1.4 of the Commons.

We’re really excited to bring one of the most-requested BuddyPress features to fruition under the awesomeness that is open-source. We also can’t wait to hear how you’re going to use the plugin and how it fares out in the wild! So let us know! 🙂

Commons 1.3.16

I’ve just released version 1.3.16 of the CUNY Academic Commons. 1.3.16 is a maintenance release, including the following:

  • Upgrade from WordPress 3.4 to 3.4.1
  • A fix (the final fix, I’m hopeful) for ongoing problems in the way the groupblog membership syncing works
  • Some rewriting of the way group digest emails are sent
  • New WP plugin: User Role Editor

For full details on the release, check out the 1.3.16 milestone.

Commons 1.3.15

I’ve just released version 1.3.15 of the CUNY Academic Commons. 1.3.15 is an important bugfix release, including the following fixes:

  • Upgraded WordPress to version 3.4
  • New WP plugin: Advanced Excerpt
  • Improved email notification formatting
  • Bugfixes on group activity subscription digests

For complete details on the release, visit the 1.3.15 milestone.

Commons 1.3.13

I’ve just released version 1.3.13 of the CUNY Academic Commons. 1.3.13 is a significant bugfix release, including the following fixes:

  • Upgraded to most recent WP security release
  • Memory issues involving large WP menus have been addressed
  • New WP plugins: WP Publication Repository, VéritéCo Timeline, jQuery Lightbox, TheThe Tabs and Accordions
  • Updates to WooThemes themes
  • Added cuny.tv email addresses to registration whitelist

See the 1.3.13 milestone for complete details on this release.

Welcoming Ray and Dom to the dev team

The CUNY Academic Commons is delighted to welcome two new members to its development team: Raymond Hoh and Dominic Giglio.

Raymond Hoh is one of the most respected members of the WordPress and BuddyPress community. Known around the WordPress community as r-a-y, Ray is a frequent contributor to the BuddyPress project, the developer of a number of popular plugins for WP, BP, and bbPress, and a longtime forum moderator at buddypress.org. Ray brings to our team a depth and breadth of BuddyPress experience that is practically unparalleled. Follow @ray_i_am on Twitter or r-a-y on Github.

In truth, Ray is not exactly a new member of our team – there was a period last year when Ray did a bit of BuddyPress-related work for the Commons. As we’ve begun to ramp up work on Commons In A Box, we’ve invited Ray back on board to play a major role in turning CBox into a powerful platform. Among other responsibilities, Ray will be playing a leading role in building: a reply-by-email feature for BuddyPress; a variety of improvements to BP forums and profiles as they appear in Commons In A Box; and an overhaul to upload handling in BuddyPress that will bring together into a simple API uploads associated with groups, forums, and BuddyPress Docs.

Dominic Giglio is the most recent addition to the Commons dev team. Dom is a student in Computer Science at BMCC. He’s known in the WordPress world for a popular blog post explaining the WP initialization process, as well as for his contributions to the WordPress section of Smashing Magazine. Dom’s experience doing development along the whole LAMP stack – from WP theme building to hardware work – promises to round out our team in an invaluable way. Dom is on Twitter on @human_shell and on Github as humanshell.

For the time being, Dom will be focusing on improving the CUNY Academic Commons experience, and he’ll be picking up more responsibility on Commons In A Box as development progresses.

Welcome to the team, guys!

Commons 1.3.11

I’ve just released version 1.3.11 of the CUNY Academic Commons. Version 1.3.11 is a bugfix release. Highlights include:

  • Fixed a bug that caused our non-CUNY signup code plugin to lose its metadata on autosave
  • Modified activity reply links so that they point toward the Doc in question in the case of BuddyPress Docs content
  • Adds a proper meebome widget
  • Makes some page titles more consistent in BuddyPress directories

For full details on the release, visit the 1.3.11 milestone.