0.0.9 will be a huge release, bringing about changes in the interface as well as the underlying plugin architecture. In this post I’m explaining both changes and how they will affect both users and developers.
Interface – ‘View Likes’
Currently, viewing who else likes an activity is accomplished by clicking ‘View Likes’ and seeing a drop-down full of names. This worked well enough with activities, but could become intrusive on the UI if we start adding this to forums, blog comments, photos etc. (more on this later).
Facebook has approached the UI differently, by showing a couple of names and providing a link to a popup if there are more than 3 likers. This is how 0.0.9 will behave, the screenshots below show the process.
An added benefit of this change is a greatly reduced number of text strings that need to be translated or customised. Also, for large BuddyPress sites, the number of likers could grow quite large and this handles this better.
Architecture – Introducing a Universal Like Button
0.0.8 introduced support for liking blog posts, and whilst achieving this wasn’t particularly difficult, it was cumbersome. I effectively copied the code for activities, but this doubled the code size; I obviously can’t do this for all the other types of content across a BuddyPress site.
0.0.9 will no longer store its data in the ‘metadata’ fields for activities or blog posts, but instead in a central database table. Because of this, any content which has a unique ID can be liked. And it’s as simple as including one line of code, which registers the content type, outputs the like button and the accompanying ‘view likes’ information.
Activities and blog posts will automatically be converted, but this means forum comments, blog comments, photos, events and more can be liked. Developers can have out-of-the-box support for BuddyPress Like by just including the like button.
Other Changes
Full translation support will finally come built in, with a pre-packaged .pot file and as many translations as I can get hold of ready to use. An option to disable the ‘Favourite’ feature in BuddyPress will also be created.
What do you think?
Let me know what you think about all of these upcoming changes! The first version of the UI revamp will be in trunk later today.
Thanks for this cool plugin and for keeping us updated Hempsworth. What I’d *really* like (and have hoped for since the first time I used BP Like) is:
* A way to sort activity stream items by number of likes.
* An RSS feed of the most liked items
0.1 will include stats of the most liked content, so that will now include RSS – good idea!
0.1.1 will allow the activity stream to be sorted by most liked content; this will be a bigger job but will be coming.
You can find more information and approximate dates on the roadmap.
Woah, missed the answer…
Thank you very much Alex!
Good call on switching out to a separate db table! It will be GREAT to enable other plugin owners to be able to leverage this model for various add-on’s…
Question: Any plans to have functions/widgets that will enable displaying the top liked items within a category or taxonomy (top liked photo’s, top blog post, etc).
Stats are in the roadmap already, and will be coming in 0.1 (late December) – in the form of a shortcode to embed them in your posts or pages, a widget for your sidebar and RSS feeds.
Check out the proposed roadmap and let me know if you have any other feature requests!
Is the roadmap still looking likely? Thanks
Wow, I return from vacations and all I find is good news.
Now, my only way of supporting your work is offering to translate to spanish. If this is useful for you, just let me know.
Would there be a way of using this plugin, and an algorithm that uses number of likes, number of comments, and time between posting of the article and the first comment, to create a “top news” section like on Facebook?
Just did a little research, and this is how they determine what is top news:
http://www.facebook.com/help/?faq=16162
Thanks for an amazing plugin! Looking forward to the next update
Just to reiterate the sentiments above. This is a truly gamechanging plugin and the potential is huge, I still feel that the priority should be the ‘most liked’ list and potentially reorder the activity stream using ‘likes’.
Keep doin what youre doing.
Ps. on my multisite, I can like only the core blog’s posts. Is this supposed to be sitewide yet?
Thanks
alright. i thought i had this working all good, but just noticed several strange behaviors. hopefully, these can be addressed in 0.0.9.
i’m running wp 3.0.3 multisite, bp 1.2.6
1. when a user likes a non-friend’s activity, then views the likes, they are greeted with:
Warning: in_array() [function.in-array]: Wrong datatype for second argument in /home/(yourhomedir)/public_html/wp-content/plugins/buddypress-like/bp-like.php on line 703
it appears that the error is repeated back-to-back depending on the number of likes (e.g., 2 likes = same error repeated 2x in a row)
when the likes are viewed by the author of the liked activity, it works fine with no errors.
2. when exactly 1 non-friend likes your activity, when viewing your likes for that activity, it shows “and 1 other person liked this.”
3. this is more of a wishlist item, but i posted in another post of yours that adding the template tag to multisite subblogs works, but the only thing i would add here is that “likes” do not “transfer” between subblog and buddypress site. for example, liking someone’s bp “blog post activity” does not add to the like count for that post in the subblog and vice-versa. i’m guessing this is difficult to implement, which is why i say it’s more of a wishlist item.
thanks.
thanks for plugin bplike, who finished the question and makes me confused is how to put pictures bplike like this picture:
http://bplike.files.wordpress.com/2010/12/screen-shot-2010-12-01-at-13-44-23.png
http://bplike.files.wordpress.com/2010/12/screen-shot-2010-12-01-at-13-44-10.png
http://bplike.files.wordpress.com/2010/12/screen-shot-2010-12-01-at-13-43-50.png
please help,the problem I put on my blog can not bring up images like the above, I can pluginya from here
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/buddypress-like/
Hi, I’m having a problem with this plugin. When I play I like to do redirects to the same page where I am but adds #
Can you help me?
Thanks & Regards
Pedro
Two things are urgently needed :
1) The “Like” button directly in the WP blog. Either below teaser or below the post in single post page or both. Thus the user can “like” either from the activity stream or from the blog. Many users read the blog directly and would like to “like”. They can use this same “Like” then which streamlines the things and makes it more useful.
This one is the actually most urgent thing needed.
2) How can I allow “Like” button from my site to be displayed in other sites along with the number of likes (yes, just like FB does) ?
I would love to see a ‘dislike’ button aswell as the ‘like’ button. That would be a great update!
Hi Alex,
We are using bp-like on our website and we have seen that does not work correctly in multisite.
We have corrected some bugs and I would send you the source code so you can take into account in future version of the plugin.
Can you give me your email?
Greetings,
Albert
The Like buttons shows up below the ‘xyz posted the blog abc’ statement in activity stream as well as in individual blog post. However, clicking the two is not synced creating confusion. If I click Like below activity stream statement it should update Like in the individual blog post and vice versa. Otherwise it adds to confusion and sort of loses meaning and the user has to actually like the blog separately in two places.
FYI, to make this work on WordPress 3.1 MultiSite, you need to change/add line 976
admin_menu becomes network_admin_menu
Great plugin! Just checking on the status of the new version. Are the dates on the roadmap going to be changing? I’ve experienced some issues myself and was looking into getting the top liked activities, but with a new db table coming up I thought I would wait and see what you come up with. Also, have some issue with the ajax in “View Likes” seems to not be getting a response and is stuck in the “loading” phase.
How to “Like” things ( new posts or comments) in the blog itself that shows up in the activity stream and vice versa? For example, a new blog post liked in the user blog does not add to the number of persons who have liked.
Moreover, if a blog or comment is being liked in the activity stream it means that the blog post or the comment itself is being liked **not the act of posting or commenting** – thus it should simultaneously show up below the blog post or comments in all themes.
hm… i’m sure i’m missing something but for the life of me cannot find the like buttons anywhere but in the activity stream…
would be awesome if this plug-in included a little more detailed instruction as to how to enable, and/or maybe a list of css styles we can edit…
(just for easy of use, i know i can look at the source and figure it out…)
Love the Plugin!! Wondering if it is possible to add Likes for parts of member profiles? For example if there is a field with favorite hobbies, foods, etc? Or for some free text description members write?
Also could you make a compilation for all the likes you have tagged from the site, under your profile?
Hi!
Thanks a lot for this amazing plugin!
Have you ever think about putting more than one button?
For example putting Like – Hate – Amazing.
It’s maybe a weird idea, but I would like it
Anyway thanks a lot and can’t wait for the new version to be released!
Cheers!
Hi, great plugin! thanks…
i found a “bug” in line 851 of file bp-like.php, error in translate… i replace with this:
echo ” . bp_like_get_text( ‘show_blogpost_likes’ ) . ”;
sorry, my english is poor..
Warning: in_array() [function.in-array]: Wrong datatype for second argument in /home/(yourhomedir)/public_html/wp-content/plugins/buddypress-like/bp-like.php on line 703
and, this happens when I choose Show names of friends, and the number of non-friends
…
I fixed it by changing this:
start here: /* Output the name of each friend who has liked it. */
stop here: /* If non-friends like it, say so. */
And replace with this code:
if ( $users_who_like < 1 ) { foreach( $users_who_like as $id ) : if ( in_array( $id, $friends_who_like ) ) { $output .= ' · ' . bp_core_get_user_displayname( $id ) . ' '; $liked_count = $liked_count-1; } endforeach; }Sebastian
Hi! In the new version you could add the notifications as does Facebook (popup in the lower right + notifications in admin bar) ? Thanks
I think this is a wider project, although I could consider adding support for this and then porting it over to BP core…
There’s already something similar, but for comments only:
http://buddydev.com/plugins/buddypress-live-notification/
It would be wonderful to have BPLike support too
Is there any chance to have Facebook support added? So far I haven’t been successful at getting a Facebook like feature into the Activity page. If this could be all handled with one button that would be superb.
I will explore Facebook integration in the release after this next one!
Looking forward to the upcoming release!
I hope development hasn’t stopped on this?
Hello,
Just wondering on the progress of this plugin, looks like it has been a while since any news or updates. I also was wondering if there was a way to get the most liked posts and display them? if not would be a nice feature.
I created a custom plugin for this feature that Is working just got to port it to a plugin if any one els eis interested in how I did i, please feel free to ask me at pengume AT gmail DOT com
I need the translation.po files … where do i get them?
I just installed version 0.09 and noticed what on activity pages sql queries was increased from 57 sql queries to 175! You need to do work on optimization of this plugin.
I like this plugin, but looks like I am unable to use it because of it. Hope in new versions you will look into mysql queries optimization and will fix it.
I would love to be part of testing 0.09 beta. Can you share where I can download it?
Thanks!