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Release notes / BuddyPress Auto Friends
BuddyPress Add-on Plugin

BuddyPress Auto Friends

New members who join a BuddyPress site with no existing connections often feel like they are entering an empty room. BuddyPress Auto Friends automatically creates accepted friendships between new registrants and designated existing users, so every new member starts with a social network on day one. Compatible with BuddyBoss Platform member connections.

25 releases
v1.8.4 latest
May 25, 2026 shipped
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v1.8.4 Latest

May 25, 2026
New 1 Improve 3 Fix 4

New

  • Live progress for "Friend with existing members" on large communities. On sites where the action queues background work, the button updates in place with a running count (e.g. "120 / 500 befriending") so you can see the job moving instead of wondering if it stalled. A final toast confirms the count when it finishes.

Improve

  • Confirmation dialog before bulk befriending now explains exactly where the progress will appear, so admins know to watch the button on the same screen instead of refreshing or leaving the page.
  • Trimmed verbose settings descriptions across every tab to short, clear option-help lines. Less wall of text, same information.
  • 14 user-facing admin and frontend strings that were previously hard-coded English are now translatable. Three additional admin labels that translators previously could not reach are now wired up.

Fix

  • Auto-friending is now silent on every path. The previous "Send emails anyway" toggle in Advanced settings could still leak notification emails through the bulk welcome flow. Auto-friendships now never trigger friend-request or accept emails, no matter how they were created.
  • Turning off Friend Lists now actually hides the Friend Lists tab on member profiles. Previously the tab still appeared on every profile even with the feature disabled.
  • The "Friend with existing members" confirmation dialog on the Global Friends screen rendered with a see-through background and an invisible Continue button. The dialog is now solid, fully readable, and the Continue button is styled correctly.
  • The plugin now refuses to activate when BuddyPress (or BuddyBoss Platform) is missing, or when the Friends component is turned off. You see a clear red admin notice explaining the reason instead of a silently-broken active state and a misleading "Plugin activated" message.

v1.8.3

New 11 Improve 20 Fix 13 Security 3 Dev 1 Compat 1

New

  • Plug-and-play setup. Selecting at least one role, member type, or hand-picked person turns auto-friending on automatically the first time you save. No hidden master switch.
  • Welcome-group model. The roles or member types you select are now treated as the welcome group: every new signup is friended with every existing member in that group, regardless of the new member\'s own role. No notifications are sent. Friendships simply appear in the new member\'s standard BuddyPress friends list.
  • Brand-new admin UI. Every settings screen was rewritten as a clean card-panel layout with a sidebar, proper page header, and plain-English labels.
  • "WB Plugins" hub. All Wbcom plugins now share a single top-level menu with a card-grid dashboard, so the admin sidebar stays tidy even when a site runs the full community bundle. Legacy (un-migrated) Wbcom plugins coexist cleanly with the new hub.
  • Friendships are now created automatically when a user\'s role or member type changes, and cleaned up when a role or member type is removed or swapped.
  • Live progress indicator during manual processing shows total users, processed count, percentage, and any errors as they happen.
  • The manual processing screen now works with screen readers, announcing progress updates for better accessibility.
  • If BuddyPress or the Friends component is missing, the plugin now deactivates itself safely with a clear admin notice instead of causing errors.
  • License tab directly inside Auto Friends. Enter, activate, and check your license key without leaving the plugin\'s admin page.
  • Documentation link added to the plugin\'s admin header so the docs site is one click away from every settings tab.
  • When BuddyBoss is active and Activity Tabs is turned off, the Friend Lists settings tab now surfaces a warning explaining that per-list activity filter tabs are suppressed by that BuddyBoss setting, with a direct link to the BuddyBoss Activity settings page. Previously the feature appeared half-broken on default BuddyBoss installs.

Improve

  • Sidebar consolidated to four tabs (Overview, Auto-Friendship, Friend Lists, License). Global Friends, Cleanup, Advanced, and Processing now live as sections inside the tabs they belong to. Old bookmarks keep working via legacy URL aliases.
  • Plain-language labels across every settings screen. No more jargon or internal option names.
  • Overview screen shows live counts of global friends, auto-friended members, and members using friend lists, plus a snapshot of the current configuration at a glance.
  • Processing card re-designed around a single "back-fill existing members" action with clearer guidance on when you actually need it.
  • Cleanup section makes it obvious that manual friendships are never touched. Only friendships the plugin itself created can be undone.
  • Advanced section trimmed to just the bulk-notification toggle.
  • Admin assets now load only on our own screens and the shared hub.
  • Toast notifications and an accessible confirmation modal replace browser alerts and confirms across the admin.
  • Much faster friendship syncing on large communities thanks to a new caching layer and optimized database queries.
  • Safer bulk processing. The plugin monitors memory usage and pauses automatically before the server runs out of resources.
  • Hardened security across admin screens. All admin actions now verify the correct permissions, and every database query uses safe, prepared statements.
  • Polished "Suggested" members list with scroll shadows, better popup height, and cleaner styling across all themes.
  • Better BuddyBoss Platform compatibility. The Friend List tab appears correctly in timelines and irrelevant grid filters are hidden.
  • Improved Youzify theme compatibility for the friend-list popup and related UI.
  • Dropped the legacy BuddyPress 12.0 compatibility shim (no longer needed on modern BuddyPress).
  • Replaced outline removal on focus states with a visible keyboard-focus indicator to improve keyboard accessibility.
  • Manual-processing progress transient is explicitly cleaned up on uninstall.
  • Code quality sweep. Resolved 240+ WordPress Coding Standards style issues across the plugin.
  • Dropped the third-party Font Awesome CDN request from the admin. The single spinner icon that used it now uses WordPress core\'s built-in spinner, so the admin area no longer depends on an external network resource.
  • Plugin Check sweep. Added direct-file-access guards to every PHP file, translator comments to every placeholder string, and aligned the README header with the plugin-file header.

Fix

  • Bulk friendship creation now sends BuddyPress accept-request notifications for every recipient when "Enable Notifications" is on, including Global Friends whose user role does not match the configured welcome-group role. Previously these emails were silently suppressed.
  • "Clean up auto-friendships when a member loses the welcome-group role" now actually removes friendships on role removal. Previously the cache-clearing listener (registered against the same hook) silently scheduled a recreate cron that ran after cleanup and reinstated the just-removed friendships, leaving the setting non-functional.
  • Manual processing buttons (Run Role-Based Processing and Run Member-Type Processing) now fire reliably. The click handler has been wired back up, and the progress bar updates live with processed, total, succeeded, and failed counts as the job runs.
  • Manual processing summary now shows a distinct message ("No new friendships to create - all eligible users are already connected.") when a re-run finds 0 new pairs, instead of reporting "0 pair(s) created".
  • Friendships created by the plugin are now tracked precisely, so cleanup only removes friendships that this plugin actually created. Never your users\' manually added friends.
  • Friend List modal. Non-friends can no longer be added to a list when the list is restricted to existing connections.
  • Search in the "Suggested" tab of the Friend List modal now returns results reliably.
  • Dynamic processing settings now save and apply as expected.
  • Friendship count displayed after a sync is now accurate.
  • Friend List modal popup now closes reliably in all situations.
  • Resolved several PHP warnings, including ones on BuddyBoss Platform and on the General settings tab.
  • Improved friendship sync for users with unusual role or member-type combinations.
  • Fixed BuddyBoss admin notice display glitches.

Security

  • Friend Lists are now strictly friends-only. Members can only add people they are already friends with to one of their private lists. The legacy "any site member" option has been retired.
  • The "Update friends count" AJAX handler used by the Global Friends befriend-all flow now requires the `manage_options` capability in addition to the existing nonce check. Nonce alone is CSRF protection, not authorization; gating to admins prevents logged-in non-admins from probing friend counts for arbitrary user IDs.
  • License activation and deactivation handlers (EDD updater) now require the `manage_options` capability in addition to the existing nonce check. License key writes and remote EDD API calls are admin-only operations.

Dev

  • New filter `bautof_enable_notifications_for_user` for site owners that want custom rules around which recipients receive bulk-creation emails.

Compat

  • Tested with BuddyPress 14.x, the latest BuddyBoss Platform, and PHP 8.1 through 8.4.

v1.8.0

December 5, 2024
Note 7

Note

  • Fixed alignment of member and edit list buttons.
  • Resolved Youzify UI issue with "Add Friend," "Managed List," and "Edit Popup" sections.
  • Fixed PHPCS issues in multiple files
  • Fixed feedback form redirect issue.
  • Resolved "Plugin is ineffective" message display issue despite activation.
  • Managed UI fixes for the global friends table.
  • Improved responsive fixes for backend options.

v1.7.0

New 2 Improve 8 Fix 11

New

  • Checkbox for disabled
  • Confirmation message after sync finish

Improve

  • Disable activity tab/filter content
  • Edit friend list popup
  • Label options
  • Friend lists modal popup label
  • Message
  • Customize Suggested Members List Option
  • Checkbox for disabled activity UI and update label
  • Moved the Friend Lists option to a new tab

Fix

  • Fatal Error with BB Platform
  • Page should be reloaded after adding the member for the member count
  • Counter Missing
  • Friends list popup UI Issue
  • Sync Friendship progress issue
  • Member Type base friendship issue
  • BB Platform hide tab issue
  • Friend lists count issue
  • Hide the Sync Button when the count connection is 0
  • User role and member type-wise friend connect
  • Auto Friends set as per selected user role or member type wise for existing user.

v1.6.9

New 7 Improve 4 Fix 30

New

  • Backend option to enable/disable list
  • Manage members button in Friend Lists
  • User Roles Or Member Type wise auto friend for newly registered user.
  • settings for the suggested members list
  • User role-wise limit option
  • Friend Lists in Personal Activity Field
  • Create Lists Popup and Show the Created list

Improve

  • Popup default height and UI fixes
  • Search box width
  • Button UI with themes
  • Info spacing

Fix

  • Fatal error with BuddyPress
  • BuddyBoss-related friend lists issue
  • If not a friend then show the empty suggestion
  • Undefined array key "scope"
  • Show the friend Lists tab in the user timeline in the BuddyBoss Platform
  • User tab issue
  • Hide "Friend list" tab for logged out user
  • Do not show logged-in members in the suggested friend list
  • Customize the notice
  • The Global Maximum Friend List creation limit is not working
  • Member Types are not showing with BuddyBoss
  • Add option spacing
  • User role limit
  • Notice UI
  • Backend Setting: How many friend lists are users allowed to create
  • Remove the user issue in the popup
  • User Listing issue
  • If the user logged in then only show the tab
  • BuddyBoss platform - Display tab on Activity news feed page
  • User Activity issue
  • Show input type search icon
  • Issue with BuddyBoss
  • BuddyBoss Notification issue
  • # issue in the URL
  • PHP warning
  • Remove the user on click while removing
  • If my list has no users then the filter will display no activity.
  • Remove the Logged in user, add user and Administrator user from member suggestion lists.
  • Add/remove members from the lists and Show the added members in the member's tab.
  • Delete the created friend list

v1.6.8

Fix 6

Fix

  • Issue with license is not deactivated if response is failed
  • (#46) Error by Wordfence on creating a new user
  • Update notification description
  • (#45) Update description
  • (#44) Warning issue
  • Changed BP12 version compare function

v1.6.7

Fix 6

Fix

  • Text domain issue
  • BP v12 fixes
  • License issue fixes
  • Fatal error
  • PHPCS fixes
  • (#40) Issue with PHP 8.2

v1.6.6

Fix 2

Fix

  • Fixed text domain
  • Update now link issue

v1.6.5

Improve 1 Fix 3

Improve

  • Added support menu and updated author name

Fix

  • Admin Notice Error hide
  • (#32) Managed Back-end setting UI
  • Plugin redirect issue when multi plugin activate at the same time

v1.6.4

Fix 2

Fix

  • Remove admin notice
  • Fixed buddyboss admin notice issue

v1.6.3

Fix 1

Fix

  • Admin wrapper UI

v1.6.2

Fix 5

Fix

  • (#29,#30) Improved admin UI
  • Added phpcs ignore comments
  • Fixed nonce issue
  • Fixed redirect issue on bulk plugin activation
  • Removed install plugin button from wrapper

v1.6.1

Fix 5

Fix

  • (#18) - Fixed add random user if no one is selected in global friend list.
  • (#24) - Fixed add same user if no one is selected in global friend list.
  • (#23) - Fixed Plugin Activation Issue.
  • (#26) - Fixed Disable Notification Button Issue.
  • Fixed phpcs-errors.

v1.6.0

Fix 3

Fix

  • #20 - member types notification is not triggering
  • #21 - Shift notification section below the global friend section
  • #19 - Option for admin notification

v1.5.0

Fix 5

Fix

  • Update plugin backend UI
  • Removed css file error
  • added 5 sec cron time delay
  • Remove "auto friends" meta key on Remove friends function
  • German Translation

v1.4.5

Fix 1

Fix

  • #9 Fixed license issue

v1.4.4

Fix 2

Fix

  • Optimized Get missing friends id
  • Auto Friend issue if any user friend count is zero then Befriend All

v1.4.3

Fix 1

Fix

  • updated ajax call and kept outside framework

v1.4.2

Fix 1

Fix

  • Limiting JS call at admin plugin specific page.

v1.4.1

Fix 1

Fix

  • User selection process optimization from large list

v1.4.0

Improve 2 Fix 1

Improve

  • Remove friendship accepted notification and activity
  • Support for large communities with cron scheduler

Fix

  • Admin notice for required plugins

v1.3.0

Improve 1

Improve

  • Be Friends with existing members of website.

v1.2.0

Note 1

Note

  • Added German Translation language file contributed by Thorsten Wollenhoefer

v1.1.0

Improve 1 Fix 1

Improve

  • 4.3.0 compatibility.

Fix

  • added font awesome 4.7.0

v1.0.0

Note 1

Note

  • first version.

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