This document discusses why BuddyPress was chosen as the social layer for LiveNinja. BuddyPress allows for extensibility through plugins and custom code, gives ownership and control over user data, and provides unlimited requests for free. LiveNinja extends BuddyPress by utilizing features like activity streams, profiles, and private messaging. Choosing BuddyPress provided LiveNinja with a large community for support and a fully extensible social platform while maintaining control over their own user data.

1. +
Adding the Social Layer
By Emilio R. Cueto
liveninja.com/emilio
@EmilioRCueto

2. What is LiveNinja?

6. Why Choose BuddyPress?

7. 1. Extensibility
Extend via:
•bp-custom.php
•BuddyPress Skeleton Component
•Custom Plugin (using BP functionality)

8. 2. Control Your Data!
• Store Data In-House
• Unrestricted/Unlimited Access
• Free!

9. Social Layer API Comparison
Yammer API AddinSocial API BuddyPress
Extensible ✖ ✖ ✔
Ownership ✔ ✔ ✔
Unlimited Requests ✖ ✔ ✔
Free ✔ ✖ ✔

10. How does LiveNinja extend
BuddyPress?

11. BuddyPress Features we utilize:
• Activity Streams
• Extended Profiles
• Private Messaging

12. Activity Stream code snippet:
foreach( $activities->activities as $key => $activity ) {
if ( ( !in_array($activity->type, $topics_following, true)
&& !in_array($activity->user_id, $users_following, true)
&& $activity->user_id != $current_user->ID)
|| in_array($activity->type, $hidden_activities, true) ) {
unset($activities->activities[$key]);
$activities->activity_count = $activities->activity_count - 1;
$activities->total_activity_count = $activities->total_activity_count - 1;
$activities->pag_num = $activities->pag_num - 1;
}
}
// Re-index the array keys
$activities_new = array_values( $activities->activities );

13. Added Benefit of BuddyPress:

14. Added Benefit of BuddyPress:
COMMUNITY!

15. BuddyPress Bug
resolved/committed in 2 Days!
(simply by reaching out to the community)

16. BP trac: http://buddypress.trac.wordpress.org/changeset/6752/

17. Because we chose BuddyPress:
We Now Have:
•Pseudo World Wide Dev Team
•Fully Extensible Social Layer
•Control Over Our Own Data
•Lots of Happy Users!

18. Thank You!
www.liveninja.com/emilio
emilio@liveninja.com
@EmilioRCueto