Tag Archives: David Cavins

BuddyPress Docs 1.9.0 and Folder support

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BuddyPress Docs is one of my more popular WordPress plugins. For years, one of the most popular feature requests has been the ability to sort Docs into folders. Docs 1.9.0, released earlier this week, finally introduced folder functionality.

The feature is pretty cool. When editing a Doc within the context of a group, you can select an existing folder, or create a new one, in which the Doc should appear. Folders can be nested arbitrarily. Breadcrumbs at the top of each Doc and each directory help to orient the reader. And a powerful, AJAX-powered directory interface makes it easy to drill down through the folder hierarchy. (Folders are currently limited to groups, which simplifies the question of where a given folder “lives”. An experimental plugin allows individual users to use folders to organize their personal Docs.)

docs-folders

I’ve got a couple reasons for drawing attention to this release. First, the Folders feature was developed as part of contract work I did for University of Florida Health. They use WordPress and BuddyPress for some of their internal workspaces, and the improvements to BuddyPress Docs have helped them to build a platform customized to their users’ specific needs. My partnership with UF Health is a great instance of a client commissioning a feature that then gets rolled into a publicly available tool – the type of patronage that demonstrates the best parts of free software development as well as IT in the public sector.

A bonus side note: UF Health Web Services is currently hiring a full-time web developer. If you know PHP, and want a chance to work with cool people on cool projects – including WordPress and BuddyPress – check out the job listing.

The other fun thing about this release is that it’s the first major release of Docs where I’ve worked closely with David Cavins, master luthier and BuddyPress maven. He’s a longtime contributor to Docs, and has done huge amounts of excellent work to bring 1.9.0 to fruition. Many thanks to David for his work on the release!

BuddyPress Docs 1.4 and attachment support

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I’ve just released version 1.4 of BuddyPress Docs, my collaborative editing plugin for BuddyPress. The big new feature is the one that users have been asking for since the plugin was first released: file attachments. I’m using a nifty trick (involving the autogeneration of .htaccess files) to ensure that Doc privacy levels are extended to their attachments. I think it’s going to be useful to a lot of people.

In the future, I plan to write a tool to migrate content created by the abandoned BP Group Documents to this new system. Stay tuned.

This round of development was generously sponsored by the Center for Applied Research and Environmental Systems at the University of Missouri. They are long-time users of BuddyPress, and they were pleased to support the development of this feature for the community. Special thanks to David Cavins, who set up the connection between me and CARES, and also contributed huge amounts of technical, conceptual, and design help to Docs 1.4. (He also builds beautiful guitars.) Thanks to CARES and to David!