January 21, 2010 This is an update on one of the most exciting new features of the BuddyPress links component. Sharing news and information on the BuddyPress platform has jumped to light speed. Marshall Sorenson updated me yesterday about his continuing work to improve the plugin. We took a peek at the links component last month when 0.2 (RC1) was still unstable, but now version 0.2.1 is available in the repository with support for YouTube, Flickr, and metacafe with more on the way. It is also completely integrated with Profiles, Directory, Activity Stream, Widgets, Notifications, Admin Bar, and Admin Dashboard. However, the newest, most exciting feature is called auto-embedding and this is what it does, as explained by the developer in his recent post:
… allows site admins and members alike to mash up content from external sites at blazing speed. It is possible, not in theory, but really possible, to mash up 50, 60, maybe even 100 external resources in under an hour. This can be done with a minimal amount of copy-and-pasting, and with no need to open up Photoshop.
Watch the plugin in action to see how quickly you can mash up content:
As you can see, in a matter of minutes your BuddyPress users can mash up several sources of rich media and handily scroll through thumbnails for each, all of which are available for their friends to interact with and comment on. The extensible API allows for the support of an unlimited number of rich media services. This component is truly a phenomenal addition to the BuddyPress community, especially for those sites which require the ability for users to aggregate rich media without weighing down your server.
Marshall Sorenson plans to provide BuddyPress 1.2 support and is working to include group and activity stream integration. He has a “Pro” version of the plugin in the works which will expand it to include:
- Remote “Digg” style social bookmarking widgets for driving traffic to your site
- Support for many more rich media services like Vimeo and Ustream.tv
- Integrated adsense support
- More directory layout options
- Inline video player and image viewer (lightbox)
You can get the latest version of the BuddyPress Links plugin here: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/buddypress-links/
Please direct all support requests and bugs to the appropriate place in the BuddyPress forums: http://buddypress.org/forums/topic/budypress-links-021-released
Sarah Gooding on Google+
This plugin is great! I’ve just written about it on my blog as well, and the author deserves some big donations in my opinion :D
Looks great. On BP networks that aren’t very big, most people’s wires will very rarely be seen, but typically the blog is. Would love ability to quickly add content using this functionality but have it show up as a blog post…. the thumbnail capability takes a step or two out which may not seem like much, but I could see myself posting a lot more about related articles of interest on our blog if I didn’t have to create a thumbnail, add text, etc….. this could be very useful….
May I ask which plugin drives the popover when I arrive at this site? Thank you in advance.
@Trace
The screen cast does not highlight it, but there is a very rich widget for displaying the links on the BP home page. You can see it on http://primehockey.com
Thanks Marshall, gave it a shot but the links page was 404 ing… then noticed there are some theme changes involved… we’ve already sunk so much time into rebuilding themes ( three times ) as BuddyPress has developed that I’m not touching anything now that it works! Maybe we’ll revisit in the future and see what’s going on with the plugin. I think user adoption will increase considerably if the theme part isn’t necessary…. :)
@Trace
With BP 1.2 the default theme is greatly simplified and the BP Links theme files will be much more simple as well. I think this will help more people to “really” skin BP like you have, instead of just changing a few colors here and there like most end up doing.