BuddyPress 9.0 was released one day before WordPress 5.8. As all major BuddyPress releases are named for pizza joints, this one has been dubbed “Mico” in honor of Pizzéria Chez Mico, a small restaurant on the French riviera, where you just may find capers and anchovies on your pie.

This short release cycle was laser focused on getting all of the BP component widgets ready to be used as blocks to ensure that they work with WordPress 5.8’s new block widgets experience. BuddyPress 9.0 introduces 10 new BuddyPress blocks to be used in place of the legacy widgets.

This release also enables users to transform legacy widgets into a block with two clicks, while preserving all of their settings and automatically importing them. The availability of these new blocks is an important milestone that BP contributing developer David Cavins said is “the first step toward the progressive retirement” of BuddyPress widgets.

All this functionality that used to only be available in widgetized areas can now easily be used as blocks inside content areas. The blocks vastly expand BuddyPress’ flexibility, enabling site owners to do many things that used to require custom development. Designing unique landing pages for communities is now easier than it has ever been.

“My coworkers are pretty excited to have these new BP blocks,” Cavins said during a chat in the BuddyPress development channel on Slack. “For instance, with the login form block, you can pretty well replace login form customization plugins and put the form in your landing page with ease.”

The release also includes a new Sitewide Notices endpoint for the BP REST API that will enable site admins to create, edit, or delete notices and let users fetch the active notice. For a full list of the improvements and bug fixes included in 9.0.0, check out the release notes in the codex.