This is not an official BuddyPress community statement just something to think about when choosing a name for your themes and plugins…
There is a bit of a war going on with two great Media plugins for BuddyPress. BuddyPress Media and BuddyPress Media. Confused? So are the users.
It even gets more confusing because the BP-Media team originally had uploaded a plugin called BP Album+ to the .org repo and then started coding a separate media plugin not officially released and under development for a few years.
rtCamp are claiming they uploaded their plugin to the .org repo first so they should get to retain the name “BuddyPress Media”. First come sounds fair, right? I never even heard of rtCamp’s plugin until months after the BP-Media’s plugin was in development. This is probably because of the name rtCamp chose, “BuddyPress Media”. I assumed it was the same plugin as BP-Media’s.
How to fix this mass confusion is very simple; DO NOT use BuddyPress in your theme and plugin titles.
rtCamp states that if naming was an issue then it would not have been allowed in the .org repo. Just because something can be done doesn’t mean it should be done. I’ll explain why this argument is false….
BuddyPress is the brand name for the BuddyPress plugin, not add-ons. By using “BuddyPress ****” in the title it is misleading. Only officially endorsed projects should use “BuddyPress ***”.
Months back BuddyPress project lead John Jacoby asked me to remove the word BuddyPress from all my plugin titles. John didn’t want people to confuse 3rd party plugins for officially sanctioned BuddyPress projects. He said that even though people have been allowed to use the BuddyPress name in plugins, it may not be the case in the future. I challenged this stating the very arguments that rtCamp is issuing now.
At first I was offended, how could John tell me this without announcing it to the whole community? Where’s the official statement that BuddyPress should not be used in plugin names? There isn’t one, but I’m here to suggest you not use BuddyPress in your plugin title.
A few reason why:
- It creates confusion (BuddyPress Media as an example)
- Creating your own branded plugins keeps you in control (less confusion + future proof naming)
- You can trademark a name that doesn’t include BuddyPress
In the WordPress Codex the only thing it says about plugin naming: “think about what the Plugin will do, and make a (hopefully unique) name for your Plugin. Check out Plugins and the other repositories it refers to, to verify that your name is unique; you might also do a Google search on your proposed name. Most Plugin developers choose to use names that somewhat describe what the Plugin does”.
Using “BuddyPress Media” is not unique. Someone else could just as easily create a plugin with the same name and further instigate confusion.
What is acceptable?
When John had contacted me about changing the names of my plugins, I asked what would be acceptable. He didn’t officially say either way but we tossed a few thoughts back and forth. I suggested allowing the **** for BuddyPress title to be used. The WordPress repo is searchable but it’s difficult to find a real BuddyPress plugin because non BuddyPress plugin developers tag non BuddyPress plugins with “buddypress”. John said the main reason plugins are allowed to be uploaded with BuddyPress in the title is that it was better to just get plugins uploaded then worry about policing. The community needed exposure. Agreed.
Apple even with their strict rules allows the use of iOS when you use “**** for iOS”. It’s a clear statement that **** IS for [whatever service].
My suggestions for naming:
**** for BuddyPress
Media Pro for BuddyPress
Another Related Posts for BuddyPress
Even better is to use something unique. I have chosen to use Buddy+ a word to describe what the plugin does, BuddyMobile. The media teams could choose something like, BuddyMedia or Media Buddy.
Just think about these things when naming your plugin. Make it unique. People appreciate originality + good functionality.
I’d quite happily see a stop to the use of BP / bp also. Just makes me think of a certain company
Buddy whatever is okish but I’m a sucker for truly unique names that use the description to say what they do or are ‘for BuddyPress’.
Yup, BP in the name has run it’s course as well.
Interesting topic it’s definitely a double sided coin as long as BP is using the same repository for plugins. perhaps the fact that buddypress is becoming more and more integrated with wordpress is helping with this (e.g. the way achievements has been changed to be both a WP and a BP plugin) maybe the solution is have a separate repo list which is just a subset based on the main repo’s listings since there will probably always be some plugins which are only extending BP functionality. granted i have no idea hw hard it would be to make such a thing.
Why is it “a double sided coin as long as BP is using the same repository”? It shouldn’t matter if it’s in the same one what it’s named as there are tags to say ‘works with BuddyPress’. Adding into the title is by the by as that’s just the title.
See tags at the bottom of the description section being used here: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/buddypress/ – do that and no need to have in title.
well as modemlooper said in the article people are attaching buddypress tags to all kinds of plugins apparently but aside from that i’m not sure how you search for plugins but the way i often will is through the admin interface itself tags are not displayed and the title is first thing I’m looking at. If i am say looking to extend BP functionality with my search i am not going to read the description of every single thing I’m going to look for things which stand out as being at least related to what i think looking to do if the title is interesting enough then i will read the description. Having the BP or BuddyPress label definitely helps separate the wheat from the chaff in that situation.
So if that’s the one side of the coin, the concerns raised by jjj would be the other. Slapping the BuddyPress moniker on top of your plugin title encourages laziness in titling as you suggest Karma, but it also can make it hard to discern one plugin from the next and confuse people into thinking it is official especially if the group decides to start releasing “official” plugins in the future.
So that’s why i figure if there was a way to filter just buddypress plugins from the repo (in other words a different view of the same repo) it might be might be a sorta best of both worlds scenario. Again i’m not saying such a thing is even feasible or wouldn’t have it’s own down side just thought the post was thought provoking.
Plugins tagged buddypress that are not should have the tagged removed. I’m going to create a quick plugin that adds a BuddyPress filter to the admin plugins listing similar to the favorites to show a curated list that will block non bp plugins that are tagged buddypress
that sounds awesome.
I’m from rtCamp, the company that has developed the BuddyPress Media.
I whole heartedly agree with @modemlooper’s argument. I also believe that sooner or later, like he was asked to remove BuddyPress form the plugin’s name, we’ll be asked too.
Who knows, we might be asked to do that, as a result of the discussions linked to, in this post or due to this post, itself.
However, whenever this happens, we’ll comply. Till then we’ll just focus on development!