The upcoming BuddyPress 10.0.0 beta 1 release was scheduled for November 20, but contributors have decided to postpone the beta by two weeks, due to lack of time for adequately testing recent improvements to the planned features. The stable release has been rescheduled for December 24. This version will require WordPress >= 5.4.

The delayed beta gives BuddyPress plugin developers more time to update the way they add custom tabs in admin screens, as version 10 will make changes to the layout of the Settings and Tools Administration screens. A short tutorial for how to update custom tabs was published in a recent BP dev note.

Version 10 will add a new site membership requests feature, which changes the registration process so that a site admin must manually approve requests. Approval sends an email to the user with a link to activate their account. Administrators can turn the feature on by disabling “Anyone can register” and enabling membership requests. Improvements to site membership requests are still under review and need more testing, which was one factor in the decision to postpone beta 1.

Contributors are also still working on extending no content activities with images and call of actions, a feature that needs some refinement to the initial approach.

Unrelated to the postponed beta schedule, BuddyPress contributors are now discussing a proposal regarding the core BP blocks.

“I was thinking we should probably stop adding blocks to BP Core and instead create standalone blocks into the WordPress plugins directory,” BuddyPress core developer Mathieu Viet said during the most recent dev chat.

One advantage of not packaging them with BuddyPress is that they can be updated independently of core updates, which happen less frequently. One contributor, Varun Dubey, noted that this will increase the number of active plugins on sites and suggested the team consider bundling them in a block collection plugin instead. Anyone with a strong opinion on the matter is encouraged to share it as a comment on the most recent BP Dev Chat summary post.