BuddyPress Follow is a plugin we use to enable you to follow rather than “friend” each other. Sadly, it is not PHP 8 ready. This was holding us back both in terms of security and speed.

Today, I fixed that.

It was a four-line fix, which I shared here.

Find line 133 in buddypress-followers/_inc/bp-follow-widgets.php

add_action( 'widgets_init', create_function( '', 'return register_widget("BP_Follow_Following_Widget");' ) );

Then write this instead:

function BP_Follow_Following_Widget_init_func(){
    register_widget("BP_Follow_Following_Widget");
}

add_action( 'widgets_init', 'BP_Follow_Following_Widget_init_func' );

The reason this works is that the function create_function() was removed in PHP 8 and was deprecated in 7.4 or thereabout.

Also, this post is the first to use the new Open Mention Tag Patterns. These are dead simple one-line paragraphs with hyperlink templates which can be used to tag your content in OpenMentions, which will ping via WebMention. Your post will then (eventually) be listed on OpenMentions.com.

By default, the writing patterns are enabled for all, but you can add dreamlogging templates if you admin a blog here and want to. You can find the code here. While, yes, you can just grab a link and use it, I think the Patterns are one step easier. Edit as you wish.

The next line was the Pattern:

This is a WordPress Development post.

In this morning’s dev notes, we have a patched potential security vulnerability and some CSS tweaks to do with sign up.

First, the scary-sounding one. I patched a possible security hole. Some core site functionality was being provided by a deprecated and retired plugin. A patched version exists, but it has a slightly different name (an extra “s” on the end). As a result, automatic updates had been failing. I moved us to the new version without any loss of functionality or fuss.

Now for the signup-related tweaks. I fixed two open issues.

The “register” button, shown when you are not logged in, did not look nice. It was big and had awful margins going on. (A known problem) I reduced its padding to half an em and added a margin of the same amount. I think it looks better now, but I am open to feedback.

The signup form was given a light dusting. There are a couple of fields in that form for spam bots, not humans. I changed the behaviour of the page so people are no longer shown the spammer traps when signing up.

All of those fixes were because I am working on an admin tool to help deal with bot-made spam user accounts. I’m almost ready to test the first iteration.

The Linux Foundation has announced the FAIR package manager for WordPress. This will be an independent and neutral plugin and theme package manager.

One of the features of FAIR is the ability to deactivate Gravatar avatars, which means a slightly reduced privacy leak (depending on how much you trust Gravatar).

As a result, I’m carefully considering making the switch for all sites with Author Buzz UK. Thoughts and opinions gladly received.

I’m currently tracking a few small bugs with the site.

1. The register button needs to go on a diet (not-logged in view).
2. Forum topics (but not replies) are MIA for no good reason.

I do not have an ETA on fixing all the bugs because I am yet to figure out what caused them.

The Online Safety Act 2023 comes into force Monday. This should be a good thing except that I now have to do a mountain of paperwork (correctly on the first try) to basically say, “yes, we moderate and no dangerous content is hosted here”.

Failure to do this could land a lot of fines in my direction. I hope this does not force me to shut down Author Buzz, but I do know that I will fight to keep us open and online.

Who knows what happens next?