New BuddyPress 9.0 Features: Best Tool to Manage Your Community

It’s widely known that BuddyPress is the most popular one among the membership plugins since it is packed with a series of tools and functions. With all recent updates, BuddyPress 9.0 brings new features to help you easier to manage your community at the next level.

The most noticeable updates from BuddyPress 9.0 are the Sitewide Notices endpoint, the ability to convert Legacy Widgets into Block Widgets, and new Widget Blocks. But before you are going into the deep of every BuddyPress feature, let’s find out the basics first.

What is BuddyPress?

Every website owner needs to build a community for many reasons, especially for a brand-new website. Once they are built, you have more additional tasks to manage the community. This is where the BuddyPress feature helps you to simplify the building and managing process.

BuddyPress allows you to convert your website into a social network in a convenient way. It’s user-friendly, super flexible, and of course, a free plugin that contains many features.

BuddyPress is widely used by many entities for various goals. A website owner and school or university have a chance to develop a unique social site to share their ideas and passions about a particular subject in their circle. What’s more, this plugin can be installed without any charge.

Just like other social sites, your member will register and make a user profile first before they get in touch with another member. Never worry about the code or other setups, BuddyPress is an all-in-one plugin that will ease you in managing the community.

How Can BuddyPress Help?

In simple words, BuddyPress will help you to manage your community through various attributes. As a result, your website is not only friendly to navigate but also makes each page looks excellent.

Even more for BuddyPress 9.0. Here you can set up the post and page according to your taste, also applying a distinguished style to create more intact. For a WordPress user, you will feel no difference when using BuddyPress 9.0, especially when picking a theme.

You can find various templates to suit your community, even you have an option to custom your theme. For the brand new BuddyPress feature, you can combine it with other WordPress plugins.

Once the setup is finished, you need to mock content before launching it to the public. For BuddyPress 9.0, there is a specific tool called BuddyPress Default Data. Using this feature, you can test your dummy content on the screen. You will then see the mockup content according to your configuration inside your website. You can either keep it or change it.

Another advantage of BuddyPress 9.0 compared to other membership plugins is that you can create a backup for your website as easily by putting it into maintenance mode.

What Is New Feature on BuddyPress 9.0?

It’s already mentioned that BuddyPress 9.0 contains some new features from the recent update. These features will increase the functionality along with the capability to handle a huge community. You can have the latest update by accessing from the WordPress plugins repository, or directly from your WordPress dashboard if you are already familiar with the BuddyPress feature.

1. Sitewide Notices Endpoint

Especially for developers or admin of a community, REST API is the most vital component to manage the social website. The recent update on BuddyPress 9.0 is focused on API improvement which is crucial to handle many tasks as easily.

In other words, a REST API is more like a program that allows the server and the client to communicate using the same resource. This new API is complemented with a Sitewide Notices Endpoint. It’s useful for admin to manage any notices inside the website such as creating, editing, or even deleting.

By using the API, you are eligible to use the Sitewide Notices Endpoint and take advantage of it. To utilize this new feature, you need to get the BP REST API first.

2. Convert Legacy Widgets into Block Widgets

In the previous version, the BuddyPress feature is already equipped with Legacy Widgets which you can display only on the sidebar and footer. As the result, it can distract your visitors when they navigate through your website.

It’s entirely different from BuddyPress 9.0 since it featured a massive upgrade. Here, you can convert the Legacy Widgets into Block Widgets. By that, you have a chance to put some elements inside your posts, pages, or anywhere you want.

Never be worried about the previous setting in your Legacy Widgets because this conversion didn’t change anything. By that, you won’t lose any configuration that you applied before.

3. New Widget Blocks

One noticeable upgrade in the BuddyPress feature compared to the previous version is the Widget Blocks. In fact, everything will be in Widget Blocks with the same function as WordPress blocks. Though, Widget Blocks in BuddyPress 9.0 offers many functions in terms of handling community. In opposite, WordPress block is only limited to build a post and page.

The interesting thing about the Widget Blocks in BuddyPress 9.0 is that you can place them everywhere on your page or post, even in the widget section. Plus, you have a chance to add a different function according to your goal.

For instance, you can add the Login Form feature to enable your member to access their account. Other options, you can add the Online Member feature to display all active members and allowing them to see their friends, or the Latest Activity feature that showing you the most recent activity for a certain member. All these features are located in the widget section of your WordPress admin.

BuddyPress Is Necessity!

Especially with the new upgrade, BuddyPress is a powerful plugin to create a social website. It’s user-friendly that provides various functionalities to manage your member once for all.

With a smart and customizable BuddyPress feature, you have the best plugin for managing your community through many excellent tools with ongoing development. Though, all of the features that are already mentioned offering different functions that you need the most.

Widget Blocks are a must, and the ability to convert Legacy Widgets into Block Widgets, as well as with the newest Sitewide Notices Endpoint. All of this, you can get by installing or upgrading into a new version of BuddyPress 9.0.