Daniel Felice

I’m Baaaack!!

// September 8th, 2009 // 1 Comment » // General

Well I have returned from my holiday and have arrived back in Sydney for the first time in a few years. We saw a lot of Europe over the past month and it was a fantastic experience that everyone must do in their lifetime!

However all good things must come to an end and now it is time to get back to reality.

I have started looking for full time work this week. It doesn’t seem as bad out there as many have mentioned, but I’ll have to sit tight and wait for some interviews.

While I am off I will start to get back into blogging and working with WPMU and BP. I am planning on refocusing this blog and updating the design in the next week or so.

Explore With Me has done OK while we have been away. The 40 day tour blog got some good hits, however the main blog is still struggling and new members are few and far between. We’ll seriously have to look at that website and decide what to do with it in the near future. It may also be necessary to refocus the site and slim it down a bit. I think we are trying to do too many things with it at the moment.

Free BuddyPress Themes is the only blog of mine that has done well while I have been away. Traffic has been on the rise, even if no one is sending me new themes. Though the next version of BP is set to dramatically change the way themes are used so maybe people are holding off for that reason.

Expect some changes and annoucements over the next few weeks!

Integrating WPMU, BuddyPress and bbPress (updated)

// July 20th, 2009 // No Comments » // Buddypress

Chris at The Easy Button has updated her guide to integrating the latest versions of WordPress MU, BuddyPress and bbPress.

With the recent changes and updates to all three components over the past few weeks, the older guide that was created a few months ago was a little bit out of date and no longer worked.

You can get the guide here. Thanks Chris!

WordPress MU 2.8.1 & BuddyPress 1.0.2

// July 11th, 2009 // 3 Comments » // Buddypress, Wordpress

WordPress MU 2.8.1 was released the other day, however if you are running the latest version of BuddyPress you should hold off upgrading until we are given the green light from the guys at BuddyPress.

There does not seem to be any major issues currently known and the testing I have done with the two current versions doesn’t seem to break anything, but there are a few little things that will need to be looked at before BP 1.0.2 is WPMU 2.8.1 ready.

If you are running bbPress with deep intergration you will also need to change a few things in the config files in order to ensure it still works. Check out the forums for all the latest updates.

Vote for the Best BuddyPress Theme

// June 1st, 2009 // No Comments » // Buddypress, Contests

As of today, all submissions to the BuddyPress Theme Contest have been uploaded to Free BuddyPress Themes and voting as begun.

Voting will be open for the next 2 weeks which after the winners will be annouced.

Thanks for everyone who entered the theme contest – there weren’t as many entries as we had have hoped, which just proved that not everyone can design a BuddyPress Theme!

Get your votes in!

What Do You Want?

// May 29th, 2009 // No Comments » // Buddypress

Checking over my traffic stats for the past few months, I have noticed 95% of you come here looking for BuddyPress. BuddyPress and WordPress MU have been dominating my search engine referrals for a while now so I just want to ask you all, what exactly are you looking for when you come here?

Do you want BuddyPress themes? Plugins? Reviews? News? Thoughts? Comments? Complaints?

Tell me what you want, and I’ll try and give it to you!

BuddyPress Theme Contest

// May 10th, 2009 // No Comments » // Buddypress, Contests

Looking at my search engines stats, you are probably here becuase you searched for “BuddyPress Themes” or something similar, so I am taking this opportunity to remind you about the BuddyPress Theme Contest that is currently running.

Thanks to WPMU DEV Premium, we are offering you the chance win 12 months premium membership valued at US$250. All you have to do is submit your original theme and let our visitors decide which theme deserves this fantastic prize offered by the guys at WPMU DEV Premium.

Karaokefreezone.com have also offered to give 2 free t-shirts to the winner in each category!

Here is how the contest will be run:

• There are 2 categories in which you can submit a theme for; Home theme and Member theme
• Submissions will be open from April 30 – May 30, 2009
• All submitted themes will be uploaded to FreeBPThemes.com on June 1, 2009 for public voting
• Voting will commence June 1 – June 14, 2009
• The winners will be announced June 15, 2009
• 12 months FREE WPMU DEV Premium membership (valued at US$250) will be awarded to the theme with the most votes in each category.

How to Enter:

• Design an original Home or Member BuddyPress theme
• Submit your theme to FreeBPThemes.com using our online form by May 30, 2009

If you are thinking of designing a member theme, then check out the Skeleton Member Theme.

It is as simple as that!

Intergrating WPMU, BP & bbPress

// April 28th, 2009 // No Comments » // Buddypress, Wordpress

Last week I made another attempt at trying to make BuddyPress work with bbPress (WordPress forums) and after a late night I finally got it working. Due to the fast pace of the development of BuddyPress, as well as having to deal with a beta version of WordPress MU 2.7.1 and an alpha version of bbPress, most of the online tutorials were out of date which didn’t help the task of making all three applications work together.

I managed to get this working a few weeks earlier without any issues, but so much had changed within a sort period of time. Thanks to a few friends on Twitter I finally managed to make it work as it should.

Since then, Chris from “The Easy Button” has put together a fantastic online tutorial on intergrating WPMU, BP and bbPress. I ran through it in a matter of minutes, rather than hours and everything is very well documented and explained – and best of all it works!

If anyone is looking to setup forums with BuddyPress then this is THE guide for you!

BuddyPress Theme Contest on Hold

// April 27th, 2009 // No Comments » // Buddypress

The BuddyPress Free Contest being held at Free BuddyPress Themes has been put on hold until the release of BuddyPress version 1. I got a lot of concerns from people who were waiting for the v1 release just in case there were any changes that would render their theme useless.

This is a fair call and I think everyone will benefit from having the most up to date themes available to them once the contest has been run and won.

With BP v1 out this week, I will resume the contest on the weekend and leave a month or so until submissions are due.

Upgrades – BP & WPMU

// April 27th, 2009 // 1 Comment » // Buddypress, Wordpress

I spent the good part of Saturday upgrading Explore With Me to the latest version of WordPress MU and then BuddyPress RC2. To my surprise, everything worked in the end and there were no major issues considering the fact that I had to remove BuddyPress and re-install it.

As of BuddyPress RC2, it is only compatible with WPMU 2.7.1. This allows users to install BuddyPress (and any other plugin) via WPMU 2.7.1 which will make any future versions a lot easier to manage. All you should have to do now is click “Upgrade” in the plugin section of the dashboard, and everything will download to your server and it install itself automatically.

At the end of this month the eagerly awaiting BuddyPress version 1 will be out so that will mean another upgrade next weekend. Hopefully that is all for a while!

When Does a Project End?

// April 21st, 2009 // No Comments » // Projects

I am currently running 3 websites, all are WordPress based and all of them require effort and a few hours a week of work. I just finished v2 of Explore With Me and am very happy with it, but now it is time to give Free BuddyPress Themes a makeover.

I was already thinking about Free BuddyPress Themes while I was working on Explore With Me, and now I am already looking towards Explore With Me v3. Once Free BuddyPress Themes v2 is ready and rolled out, I also want to find some time to give this blog a makeover. I have been using this same theme for about 9 months now and need something fresh.

Once I finshed all these updates, I will probably go through the process again and again. I am never happy with my sites, there is always something I know needs doing, and with technology changing so fast, especially with WordPress MU and BuddyPress, I need to stay on top of things.

Once I get the idea in my head that I am going to make an upgrade, I need to do it sooner rather than later. I just cannot let things go – once I tell myself it is going to be done then I have to do it or the exisiting site will just drive me crazy.

But with 3 projects at the moment and possible another coming on soon – when does it end? Long gone are the days of having a website setup and letting it sit for 3 years before you upgrade it.