BuddyPress 1.5 Beta 3 was released yesterday with many bugs squashed in Beta 2 and is now 99% complete. A full release is due out any day now and we’re here to help you get up to speed with all of the new features.

What’s New in BuddyPress 1.5

This is an excellent video from John James Jacoby’s presentation at WordCamp San Francisco. He reviews the development process for BuddyPress throughout the past year and a half and offers an introduction to what’s coming with the 1.5 release.

BuddyPress Overview from Boone Gorges

This is a BuddyPress 1.Kickass video series from Boone Gorges at WordPressNYC. The first video is posted below so that you can get an idea of the presentation and click through to watch the other videos.

BuddyPress 1.5 Menus and Components Will Be Better Than Ever

BuddyPress 1.5 has a completely new component API. Components can now be placed on regular WordPress pages and structuring your site’s menus is easier than it ever has been. You can actually use the built-in WordPress menus and map the root components to regular WordPress pages.

For more information check out the codex article I wrote for a complete walkthrough of how to set up your main site navigation for BuddyPress 1.5:

How to Set up Your Main Site Navigation Using the Built-in WordPress Menus

Goodbye BuddyBar!

The BuddyBar is now integrated with the WordPress admin bar. It’s being phased out and they won’t be two separate menu bars in the future.

Documentation is Greatly Improved

With all the things that have been rewritten for Buddypress 1.5, the development team has made certain to comment all of the code that they’ve worked with so that you can get in there and find out how it works.

BuddyPress Plugin and Theme Compatibility Information

The BuddyPress codex has an awesome resource for finding out if the plugins you’re using having been updated for BuddyPress 1.5. Check out the full list to find out which plugins will need to be updated before you’ll be able to upgrade your community to 1.5 when it is released.

There’s also a list starting to form for theme compatibility with BuddyPress 1.5, but it’s still very much in progress. Check back at the 1.5 Theme Compatibility codex page to look up your site’s theme.

BuddyPress 1.5 Developer and Designer Information

This section of the codex has links to some more technical information that will be helpful to those of you who are developing themes and plugins. It’s organized into relevant links to the BuddyPress Development blog.

There are just a few tickets currently active for BuddyPress 1.5. If you want to test it out ahead of time, download BuddyPress 1.5 Beta 3, available at the bottom of the Trac page. PS. This beta is only suitable for use on a test site. Make sure you review some of these resources to get familiar with what you’ll be jumping into when you upgrade in the coming days.