Plugin Review – BuddyPress Greeting Message

https://wordpress.org/plugins/bp-greeting-message/

Version Tested: V 1.0.3

BuddyPress Greeting Message is a small plugin which posts a greeting message based on the time of day, either over or under the posting form of the Activity page, both in the members profile and the main activity page for the site. For example in the morning it will display Good Morning Username!, followed by a message that you can customise, i.e. “Thanks for logging in, have a great day!”. To the right of the message there is also a picture that gets posted appropriate to the time of day (i.e. sunrise in the morning.

Installation is a little cumbersome, after installing and activating the plugin it seems it will not display anything until it’s settings are saved. It took me a few efforts to actually get it to display anything but once configured I could go to the Activity page and see my message.

The settings allow you to set when the message is to be displayed – morning, afternoon, evening and night. They also allow you to set the customer message and if the message is to be displayed before or after the Activity page posting form.

I found this application to be quirky, it can add a bit of fun to the activity page but it was odd that there was no option to change the picture. I believe the author intends to change this aspect in a future revision.

I think there is room to develop this plugin further, I think that you should be able to set the exact times that apply to morning, afternoon etc so that it can be localised to different cultures more effectively, possibly with a more flexible configuration. I also think that it could be expanded to have seasonal greetings which again should be customiseable, so for example it could be set to say Merry Christmas, Happy New Year etc.

I also think that since it’s current purpose is limited to the Activity page that there could be an accompanying widget and shortcode to display the greeting elsewhere on the site. Also, since it deals in greetings I think it should also allow you to customise the WordPress greeting (Howdy) next to your profile picture on the right hand side of the top bar. With these modifications this plugin could become an all round personalised greetings manager for your site and could therefore have a lot more use than it currently does.

I’d also like to see it work with BuddyDev’s BuddyPress Activity Shortcode So that it’s activity post feature also announced the greeting.

I realise these suggestions take the plugin quite a way beyond its current scope, but the general concept is a good one and its something that could be expanded to give sites some really good customisation and personalisation options.

Overall I give this application a 7 out of 10, it seems limited in use and is setup is quirky, it can add a bit of fun to a website but looks amateurish in that it lacks a professional design impact for the site.