As many of you will notice, this weekend we released a major update to EasyOutsource. Below is a list of the most prominent feature updates and improvements.

1. Upgrade to WordPress 3.1 and BuddyPress 1.2.5.

We upgraded the site to the newest versions of WordPress and BuddyPress. It took a significant amount of work to get the site ready to upgrade to the new version of BuddyPress, but it’s well worth it. This new version has many improvements and we’re now on the upgrade path to future updates as they come out. Later in the year you should expect improvements to privacy, search and messaging as these updates are rolled out in the “BuddyPress core.”

2. Favorites list replaces the Friends list.

We used to have a reciprocal friends list, much like Facebook. We came to the conclusion that this isn’t the ideal way to manage user connections on a job site, and so we removed it. Instead you will now see an “Add to Favorites” link on all [...] Continue reading

Below is a list of social networking sites and the like that use BuddyPress as their platform.  These are pretty impressive sites and it would do you good to visit them and check them out for yourselves.

EasyOutsource – EasyOutsource is a place where Filipino online job seekers and international employers can connect. It’s 100% free.

Irrational Games – Irrational Games is an award-winning video game developer.  They use both wordpress and buddypress for their site.  They also have a community with a blog and a forum.

Bettercodes.org – This is a community of software developers.  Here, they can connect with other software developers from all over the world and share thoughts, ideas, and information.

Hello Eco Living – Hello Eco Living is a social networking site for people who is conscious about our environment.  They call themselves “the best  green network on the planet”.

Tasty Kitchen – This is Pioneer Woman – Ree’s community of kitchen enthusiasts.  Here, you can [...] Continue reading

As discussed in previous articles, EasyOutsource is built on a fantastic social networking platform for WordPress called BuddyPress. BuddyPress is updated by an active community of developers on a regular release cycle, and our site will be updated with new features as new versions of BuddyPress are rolled out.

Our site’s version number corresponds with the BuddyPress version number we are using. We are currently at EasyOutsource 1.1, built on BuddyPress 1.1.3. A major update to EasyOutsource (1.2) is right around the corner and will be using BuddyPress 1.2.5.

BuddyPress Roadmap: http://buddypress.org/about/roadmap

BuddyPress Development Updates: http://bpdevel.wordpress.com

Updates for EasyOutsource 1.2

Favorites List:

We are doing away with the Friends system entirely as it doesn’t make much sense on a job hiring site. We will be replacing it with the ability to add users to your Favorites list. It will work similarly to the existing Friends list, with the main difference being that Favorites are one-way (do not require a confirmation) and are private.

Sorting of search results:

You will be [...] Continue reading

EasyOutsource has a fully custom adminbar (buddybar) for logged in users. Most BuddyPress sites are stuck with the default adminbar, which is not as easy to navigate as ours in my opinion. This article is a purely technical explanation about how to create a custom adminbar like on our site.

When using the default adminbar, you can go into General Settings > Hide admin bar for logged out users, and click Yes. This will restrict the adminbar to only logged in users when using things the default way. Once you’re going the custom route however, this setting becomes irrelevant.

When I decided I wanted to change the links in the adminbar, my first instinct was to find the actual code for the adminbar and edit it. However, I found out that this code is all part of the BP-Core, meaning it’s a bad idea to make major edits to it. If you ever want to upgrade BuddyPress you’ll lose those edits, and who knows if they’ll work when you try to add [...] Continue reading

For those of you who have been on the site for a while, you may remember the old version of EasyOutsource. It was built on the Drupal platform. We had many challenges in getting that site configured the way we wanted it. Often small changes required expensive programming, and many of the features we thought would be easy to set up with Drupal turned out to be extremely difficult. We actually built the site twice with Drupal and it never really got us to the point that we had hoped for.

Enter BuddyPress, a social networking platform built specifically to integrate with WordPress. I had heard of it before but hadn’t given it much thought. I had no idea how incredible the platform was until one day I decided to download it and give it a test try.  I was blown away. I immediately recognized the potential of the system, and I stayed up until about 7am configuring my freshly installed BuddyPress site. By the next day we had what we knew would [...] Continue reading