The BuddyPress Inbox widget was made available over the holidays by David Carson. It’s a quick and simple way to allow your users to preview their private messages in the sidebar of their BuddyPress homepage. This widget currently requires the trunk version (2244+) of BuddyPress in order to install it. After you download the widget, install and activate it, you will be able to drop the “Inbox Widget” in your sidebar. It will be displayed only on the homepage of your BuddyPress site and will appear only to logged-in users. The widget includes CSS classes for read and unread messages, as shown in the screenshots, and can be easily matched to compliment your theme.
One reason I like this widget is because it puts something personal right in front of the user immediately upon logging in, so that they are reminded of their connections on your network. In the future, the developer plans to add options to the widget to specify its title and how many messages are shown. One thing I’d like to see is for the “View Message” button to load the message in a pop-up style modal window with inline reply capabilities. Maybe we’ll do a little tutorial on this after BuddyPress 1.2 is released, if there’s some interest. Many thanks to David Carson for this excellent little addition to the BuddyPress community. If you have any feedback or suggestions for the next version, I’m sure he’d appreciate your input in the related topic on the BuddyPress forums.
Download the widget here: http://davidtcarson.com/bp-inbox-widget.zip
More information can be found on the developer’s website: http://davidtcarson.com/inbox-widget-for-buddypress/
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The BuddyPress Inbox widget was made available over the holidays by David Carson. It’s a quick and simple way to allow your users to preview their private messages in the sidebar of their BuddyPress homepage. This widget currently requires the trunk version (2244+) of BuddyPress in order to install it. After you download the widget, install and activate it, you will be able to drop the “Inbox Widget” in your sidebar. It will be displayed only on the homepage of your BuddyPress site and will appear only to logged-in users. The widget includes CSS classes for read and unread messages, as shown in the screenshots, and can be easily matched to compliment your theme. 
One reason I like this widget is because it puts something personal right in front of the user immediately upon logging in, so that they are reminded of their connections on your network. In the future, the developer plans to add options to the widget to specify its title and how many messages are shown. One thing I’d like to see is for the “View Message” button to load the message in a pop-up style modal window with inline reply capabilities. Maybe we’ll do a little tutorial on this after BuddyPress 1.2 is released, if there’s some interest. Many thanks to David Carson for this excellent little addition to the BuddyPress community. If you have any feedback or suggestions for the next version, I’m sure he’d appreciate your input in the related topic on the BuddyPress forums. 
Thanks, Sarah. I like the pop-up view message idea a lot.
I don’t have any updates to report, but I did check-in the plugin so it can be installed directly from the dashboard.
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/inbox-widget/
I should also mention that if you are looking to “put something personal right in front of the user immediately upon logging in”, I’d recommend using DJPaul’s Welcome Pack plugin – http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/welcome-pack/ – this is one of the most useful plugins for BuddyPress I have seen.
The Welcome Pack plugin has an option to send a private message to a new user immediately upon signup. I send an automatic/private welcome message to all users on my site and, if used along with the Inbox Widget, you’ve got that welcome message right on the front page for new users.
Very cool! Thanks for sharing this, Sarah. Can’t wait to take it for a test drive.