January 26, 2010 
In case you missed it, the big news this week is that the BuddyPress 1.2 Beta has been released! It’s fresh out of the oven and is compatible with WordPress 2.9.1 and WordPress MU 2.9.1 or higher. Here’s what you need to know about the beta:
BuddyPress 1.2 is Sporting a New Default Theme
You’re going to love it. If you haven’t seen it yet, check it out at: http://testbp.org/. The HTML, CSS and Javascript have been simplified, which should make your BuddyPress theming much easier going forward. The only orange theme will now be called “Classic” and is still available in case you’re attached to it.
BuddyPress 1.2 Now Works with WP Single User
Yes, this is perhaps the most exciting news of 2010 so far. I’ve been using the BuddyPress trunk with regular WordPress for a little while and have found it to be working more smoothly than I expected. As Andy Peatling requested, this beta is greatly in need of people to test it with single user WordPress to get it fully ready for the WP / WPMU merge in WordPress 3.0
BuddyPress 1.2 is Packed Full of New Features and it’s Worth Taking the Time to Upgrade
Upgrading can certainly be a challenge, but once you’ve tried the new features in 1.2, you won’t be able to live without them. Content posting has been completely streamlined; you can post directly to the site-wide stream, your profile stream, or a group activity stream from the same input box. The P2 style instant posting is reason enough to upgrade. Something you’re also bound to appreciate is threaded commenting, which is now in effect for updates and enables conversations to happen in the activity stream.
Don’t Fret – There’s Support For Backwards Compatibility!
If you missed out on some of the upgrades and are using an older version of BuddyPress, you may want to install the BuddyPress Backwards Compatibility Plugin before you do anything to your installation. It will help enable your site to still work if you’re using a theme that is not a child theme of bp-sn-parent. Play it safe and back up your database and your files and then upgrade your backup to see how it turns out before trying it on a production site.
Installation instructions are in the readme.txt file. Please check out the list of known issues before posting bugs. There’s no reason why you shouldn’t start playing around with the BuddyPress 1.2 beta today!
Sarah Gooding on Google+
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Thanks for spreading the word! :)
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Hi, i´ve installed WP 3.0 and BP 1.2, but i can’t see the wire section, and how works the forum? i can’t start topics cuz there are no wires . Can you help me? I dont have enabled network maybe is this the problem, i think network is only if you need it, i think is not obligatory. Any Help¿
Do you mean sitewide activity stream? What do you see instead of the wire? Blog posts? – If you are seeing the blog, you can go to Theme Options and change it to display activity instead of blogs on the front page. Let me know if that helps.
No, sorry but I don’t mean sitewide activity stream, I can’t start a new Topic, I´ve installed bbpress with Buddypress’s 1.3 tool, on WordPress 3.0.
When you install that, there is a new section called forums, well, there is a button that say ‘New Topic’. I click on it, and there is a Form: Title, content, and tags. And when im gonna post it in ‘Post In Group Forum:’, I click on ‘Post Topic’ but it returns me an error:
‘Sorry, there were no forum topics found.’
Any help?
*Buddypress 1.2 ^^
Hi, problem resolved! ;)
I was doing something bad. I created a group before install bbpress and I tried to start a topic in that group, created before bbpress installation.
I created a group after bbpress installation and all work fine. Thanks anyway!
So here’s a basic question. I’m planning a WordPress installation to overhaul an existing site. I bought a copy of Artisteer and created a WordPress theme that comes as close as possible to matching the existing site. Looking it over, it seems that BuddyPress functionality will help me solve some problems. But what’s worrying me is that from what I can figure out, BuddyPress functionality only works with BuddyPress themes and I really don’t want any pages on the site to have a different look compared to the rest of the site.
Artisteer allowed me to create a theme that I’m satisfied with but it does not allow editing of existing themes and I don’t have the PHP/CSS skills or knowledge to get into an existing BuddyPress theme to make it conform to my Artisteer theme. Is my only option finding a developer to tweak one of the standard BuddyPress themes? This site is for a non-profit group I belong to and serve as webmaster for so funding of a developer would be a challenge.
BTW, as I created this query, I noted that the tab sequence for the “Leave a Reply” section is off… goes from Name to the content field rather than going to the email field.
Thanks
Just a quick question I can’t seem to find the answer to. What exactly happens to the existing wire data if you upgrade to 1.2? Will it automatically show up in the activity stream?
Hi Sarah
As always, thanks for your informative post. I was wondering if you could clarify something for me please regarding the running of BuddyPress on a regular WordPress site as opposed to an WPMU. The key question I have please is what difference does it make? The ability to create additional blogs?
Would love to know the answer to this please as I’ve been lookin’ but can’t find the answer.
Many thanks.
Richard
Hi Sarah,
Your posts have been very helpful. Thank you.
Quick question:
Running single user 2.9.1 with 1.21 BP. I noticed BP members cannot make a post – there is no such option in the interface as far as I can see. I’d like them to be able to upload media and post only to a specific category on the site. Is this possible or will I need to run MU? If you have a solution, I’d be glad to hire you for a speedy resolve if you are interested. Thank you so much!
Kenny
Kenny, the default user role for new users is Subscriber which doesn’t allow them to write posts. However, you could change that to author or something else. It’s in the general WordPress settings. Not sure about how to place category restrictions on their posts, but somebody else might know about that. Hope that helps!
Wow. Thanks for the quick reply. FYI, I created a test user in BP. Signed into wordpress as admin and changed test user to contributor then signed back in as test user. This did not change the UI in BP to allow the test user to post from within the BP UI. My guess is that the UI for BP using a single user wordpress install is not set up to allow posting. Thanks again!
Kenny, we did a feature post on the BuddyPress QuickPress plugin that may be what you’re looking for. It’s been updated for BP 1.2 and it puts the ability to create posts directly within the BuddyPress UI. It may, however, be specific to WPMU. I’m not sure, so you’ll have to see if it works with single user. You can see screenshots and info at my post here: http://wpmu.org/simplify-user-blog-posting-with-the-buddypress-quickpress-plugin/
Changed default setting to Author as you mentioned, looks like members will have to post from the admin area, as the BP UI does not allow for this.