Using with BuddyPress

Hi. I tried adjusting it to BudyPress when I was dealing with BBPress issue. Unfortunately, it turned out not to be so easy to adjust it to BuddyPress as it was for BBPress. But I will take another look, maybe I’ll come up with something.

BuddyPress makes it extremely difficult to customize avatars for users, especially based on their usernames. I found a workaround, but it’s not very pretty. I think I will make a new plugin just for BuddyPress.

I created new plugin, BuddyPress First Letter Avatar. It is based on this plugin, but it is adjusted to work with BuddyPress as well. It is currently on GitHub, soon will be on WordPress plugin directory too. You can get it here – https://github.com/DanielAGW/buddypress-first-letter-avatar/archive/master.zip
Unzip it and manually send to plugin directory or wait couple of days until it is available on WordPress plugin directory.

We’re getting started with a site that is not currently using BuddyPress, but I think we may choose to start using it sometime in the future. If we start using BuddyPress, would we need to take this plugin down and replace it with the BuddyPress version, or would it be alright to have both plugins active on one site – one controlling blog comments and the other controlling the BP forum?

If we start using BuddyPress, would we need to take this plugin down and replace it with the BuddyPress version

Yes. Remove WP First Letter Avatar and install BuddyPress First Letter Avatar instead. BuddyPress First Letter Avatar will also replace avatars on your blog, as it works not only on social BuddyPress pages, but on a whole blog as well.

Just to be sure I’m understanding, are you saying that if we think we might someday use BuddyPress, it would be a good idea to start out using the BuddyPress version of this plugin from the beginning? (That way we could decrease some work for ourselves during the launch of this theoretical BuddyPress forum in the future.)

If so, I don’t understand why you made a new version of the plugin to work with BuddyPress. If the BuddyPress functionality doesn’t interfere with the normal WP comments, why wouldn’t you have simply added the BuddyPress fix to the original plugin?

– You don’t have BuddyPress installed – use only WP First Letter Avatar
– You have BuddyPress installed – use only BuddyPress First Letter Avatar

Just to be sure I’m understanding, are you saying that if we think we might someday use BuddyPress, it would be a good idea to start out using the BuddyPress version of this plugin from the beginning?

I never said that. I’m saying that if you have BuddyPress, use BuddyPress version. If you don’t – use non-BuddyPress version.

If so, I don’t understand why you made a new version of the plugin to work with BuddyPress.

BuddyPress does interfere with certain WordPress elements (not only social-related). While creating one plugin for everything is possible, it would be much more prone to errors. BuddyPress makes harder for developers to replace avatars, so what I am doing in BuddyPress First Letter Avatar is using a kind of workaround to allow the same functionality for users with BuddyPress as users with WP First Letter Avatar have. It’s not a clean solution and it’s much better for me to maintain when it is separated from its original, which is WP First Letter Avatar.

Really, it’s as simple as that:
– You don’t have BuddyPress installed – use only WP First Letter Avatar
– You have BuddyPress installed – use only BuddyPress First Letter Avatar