BuddyPress Friends Suggestions Pro

A social network without suggestions ends up as closed little groups

Someone joining a new community sees a huge member directory and has no idea who to add. They sign up, look at a couple of profiles and leave without having made a single connection. A community lives on the connections between its members, and those connections rarely start from an alphabetical directory. BuddyPress Friends Suggestions Pro lets you show each logged-in user a list of people who share profile data with them, in the style of Facebook's "People you may know" block.

How BuddyPress Friends Suggestions Pro decides who to suggest

Everything revolves around rule sets. Each set contains one or more conditions based on profile fields, and the plugin compares the data of the user who is browsing with that of the other members.

• You can create as many rule sets as you want and use each one in a different place.
• Each rule supports several operators to define how the field is compared.
• You decide whether it is enough for one condition to match or whether all of them must match.
• Lists can be for friendship or for following.
• It works with BuddyPress (Legacy and Nouveau templates) and with BuddyBoss Platform and its theme.

Rules are created from the dashboard, under Users, and published as enabled. They are then displayed with a widget (you choose the title, the list type and the rule set) or with the [bp_friends_suggestions] shortcode, which accepts parameters such as the target user, the maximum number of suggestions, the rule and the type.

Which list to set up for your community

Professional or niche community

If the profile asks for industry, city or specialty, a rule that combines those fields brings together people who may genuinely have something to say to each other. With match-all conditions the list is more precise; with match-any, broader.

Large community with many newcomers

Put a visible widget in the sidebar with a simple rule (a couple of fields) so that newcomers see relevant faces at first glance. The widget can be hidden when there are no suggestions to show, so it doesn't leave an empty gap.

Network with both friendships and following

You need two widgets, one set to friends and another to followers, each with its own rule set. That way you can suggest friendship by affinity and following by a different criterion.

Suggestions are cached and don't change instantly

Searching by profile data is a heavy operation, so the plugin stores the result for one hour per user and per rule set. If you edit a rule, the user won't see the change until that cache expires. The list is rebuilt sooner if the user updates their profile, adds or cancels a friendship, or follows or unfollows someone. If you need to force the change for everyone, create a new rule set and replace the old one in the widget.

It's best not to go beyond about four conditions per set: more conditions slow down the query. For follow suggestions in BuddyPress you also need the BuddyPress Follow plugin; in BuddyBoss Platform it is enough to have the follow feature enabled. Without that, the type dropdown does not appear in the widget. Nor is it a smart recommendation engine: it only compares profile fields, so if your members leave their profiles empty, there will be few matches.

Frequently asked questions before installing

Can I have several suggestion lists?

Yes, as many as you want, each with its own rule set.

Does it work with BuddyBoss?

Yes, it works with BuddyBoss Platform and its theme.

Is there a limit on rules or conditions?

There is no technical limit, but it is wise not to exceed about four conditions per set.

I changed a rule and see no changes, why?

Because of the one-hour cache. It refreshes on its own when it expires or when the user changes their profile or relationships.

Which profile fields can I use?

BuddyPress or BuddyBoss profile fields, including multi-value ones such as checkboxes or multi-select.