[wp-hackers] [GSoC] profiles.wordpress.org

[Stas Sușcov]

În data de Ma, 29-03-2011 la 20:01 -0400, Jane Wells a scris:
> On 3/29/11 7:46 PM, Stas Sușcov wrote:
> > Profile fields should not be a problem (I recently wrote a plugin that
> > converts all the xProfile fields data to user metadata, with one click).
> >
> > What about groups... I think (I'm almost sure) I can use some custom
> > taxonomy to replace that. But I need more details, now I'm just
> > guessing.
> I guess my question is why would we get rid of the BuddyPress plugin 
> only to replace it with other plugins that don't have community 
> development tied to core?

Nice question, a hard one.

I can understand the concerns, but right now the BuddyPress plugin does
only a small part of the job, new code will still have to be written,
templates will still have to be updated and the only win here will be
that I don't start from scratch, which in my case is not helping me
anyhow.
I also understand the part where .org projects should and are mainly
written by core community members, but I'm ready and eager to be
reviewed by any of them before deploying a single piece of code, and I'm
also ready to face the failure If I will not meet their expectations.

Let's take a look at current profiles/.org, the updates are stored as
activity streams, and though every stream can be of different kind, it
can't be tied to a taxonomy, so let's say If I want to generate a page
that shows latest @props from trac, I will have to hack BuddyPress,
while using post types and custom taxonomy it will be a snap.

Or suppose I want to add StackOverflow alike badges to profiles, which
will basically be taxonomies tied to updates, I don't know how to do
that on BuddyPress (actually I can just write some hooks that will add a
new badge if a certain activity type is met, which is not cool).

Or the karma part, the data will still be stored as user metadatas.

I don't see why I should carry the whole BuddyPress package just to use
it's activity streams, functionality that can be easily replaced and
work just on WordPress.

Full disclosure, I love BuddyPress, I write plugins for BuddyPress and I
know cases where it does all the job, but I'm also realistic.