I’d like to introduce you to a fun new plugin for BuddyPress that will spark up another dimension of user activity on your social network. The BuddyPress Like plugin has arrived on the scene. This plugin will add a “Like” button, similar to what you’ve seen on Facebook, for logged in users to like activity items in the stream. It will also display how many people have liked a certain item and update the user’s activity stream to show who liked that item. A “view likes” button will appear next to an item that has been liked and clicking on it will display the users who have liked it. One great thing about this Like button is that you won’t receive tons of notifications of people having commented on something that you liked. No chance of notification overload.

People relish the opportunity to express their preferences on any number of topics, especially on the activities of their friends in a social network context. I’m going to show you how to use this plugin as well as customize it to suit the needs of your community.

Download the BuddyPress Like plugin. Install it. Activiate it.

There are currently no options for this plugin. It simply works right away.

How to Change the Color of the Button

You may like it how it is, but I wanted to draw more attention to the like button. I changed it to green, because I think it’s more clickable that way. If you’re interested to change the color, this is how you do it:

Add this bit of CSS to your child theme’s CSS file located at: yourtheme/_inc/css/default.css

.like {
background:#55C940 none repeat scroll 0 0!important;
border-bottom:1px solid #48A838!important;
border-right:1px solid #48A838!important;
color: #ffffff!important;
}

How to Change the Word ‘Like’ to Something Else

There are any number of ways that you can use this plugin. Right now the plugin allows you to like things in the activity stream, but in the future the developer plans to add ‘liking’ of other social elements of BuddyPress. I would also be interested to see a “Dislike” button as well as dashboard options to change the word ‘like’ to something else. However, for now you can change it by modifying the bp-like.php file. In this example we will change ‘like’ to ‘recommend’ :

Search for this:

if ( !bp_like_get_activity_is_liked() ) : ?>
		<a href="" class="like" id="like-activity-<?php bp_activity_id(); ?>" title="<?php _e( 'Like this item', 'buddypress' ) ?>"><?php _e( 'Like', 'buddypress' ); if ($liked_count) echo ' (' . $liked_count . ')'; ?></a>

Replace ‘Like’ with ‘Recommend’ as well as ‘Like this item’ with ‘Recommend this item’

Beneath that in the next few lines you will see ‘Unlike’ and ‘Unlike this item’ as well as ‘View likes’. Substitute ‘Un-recommend and ‘View Recommendations’, etc., or whatever words you choose.

Using the word ‘recommend’ would be especially useful in the case of a business directory or professional networking site. You can modify it to say ‘Vote Yes’ or ‘Attending’ or any custom words for your site. I’m excited to see how the developer will improve the plugin in the future. Experiment with it and have fun!