Wbcom Designs – BuddyPress Member Reviews

3.8.1 – October 2026

Moderation and settings-screen fixes.

• New – The site administrator gets a BuddyPress notification when a review is reported, and the reviewer gets one when the member replies to their review.
• New – Reviews hidden by the report threshold now show an Auto-hidden badge with the hide date, an Auto-hidden filter in the Reviews list, and a count on the Overview screen.
• Improve – The single review page shows the owner’s reply, and the reviewed member can reply from it.
• Improve – Settings toggles render as switches again, and the criteria Add and Remove buttons match the rest of the settings screen.
• Improve – Email editors use the full row width, subject fields are wider, and settings rows no longer leave large gaps on phones.
• Improve – Member review counts in the admin bar and profile tab read the cached total instead of loading every review on each page view.
• Improve – Approval email fields show and hide as soon as Auto Approve is switched, without saving first.
• Improve – Members who already reported a review see Reported instead of a Report button that fails.
• Improve – The top members widget and shortcode skip members with no reviews and say 1 review instead of 1 reviews.
• Improve – The logged-out Add Review prompt is translatable and returns visitors to the review form after logging in.
• Improve – The Edit Review button uses the same readable style as Report in light and dark mode.
• Fix – A review hidden by the report threshold, unpublished or trashed is removed from the activity stream and the activity REST API.
• Fix – Re-approving or editing a review no longer posts a duplicate activity entry.
• Fix – Clearing the Auto-Hide Threshold field no longer switches auto-hide off; a blank or invalid value falls back to 5 reports.
• Fix – Several General settings rows were nested inside the Approval Email section, which broke their alignment.
• Fix – Turning Multiple Criteria off now hides the criteria builder.
• Fix – The Overview screen shows a Turn on link for every disabled feature.
• Fix – Criteria rows use the same Remove label whether they were saved or just added.
• Fix – The Member Review widget now picks up the Rating Color setting on pages outside BuddyPress.
• Fix – Review cards in Reign dark mode now use Reign’s own dark colors.
• Fix – Report, Edit Review and the report dialog close button stay readable on hover in dark mode.
• Fix – Unchecking Show Review Button is now saved explicitly.
• Fix – The WordPress Dark admin color scheme no longer makes the settings header text unreadable.
• Fix – Editing a review no longer publishes it; pending and report-hidden reviews stay hidden until approved.
• Fix – The Update Review setting is now enforced, not only by hiding the Edit button.
• Fix – A submitted review is stored with each rating on its own criterion, and an empty review is refused.
• Fix – A refused review submission keeps what the member typed, and the confirmation message stays on screen.
• Fix – Dismissed reports no longer count toward auto-hide, and dismissing the reports on a review they hid publishes it again.
• Fix – Deleting a review recalculates the member’s rating and removes its activity entry.
• Fix – Notification email formatting is kept when saved, so emails are no longer one run-on paragraph.
• Fix – The Anonymous flag is ignored in emails when Anonymous Reviews is off.
• Fix – Owner replies are only accepted on published reviews.
• Fix – Approving a review respects the Email Notifications and BuddyPress Notifications switches, and a review restored by dismissing its reports no longer re-sends the “new review” email.
• Fix – The bulk Dismiss Reports action restores a review hidden by reports, the same as dismissing a single review.
• Fix – The Member Rating widget respects Number of Ratings to Show, and shows the default avatar for anonymous reviews.
• Fix – The Add Review tab no longer shows on your own profile, where a review could never be submitted.
• Fix – Mark Resolved now stops the resolved reports counting toward auto-hide, the same as Dismiss Reports.
• Fix – The Add Review button, the Add Review tab and the review form’s member list accept a member with any allowed role, not only their first role.
• Fix – A custom plural review label shows as typed on the profile tab with BuddyPress Legacy templates.
• Fix – The Reviewer Roles, Reviewee Roles, Criteria and Display settings describe what they really do.
• Fix – The review form and dialogs no longer overflow the screen on themes without a box-sizing reset, such as Twenty Twenty-Five.
• Fix – Report dialog Submit and Cancel buttons keep their own styles inside BuddyPress pages.
• Fix – Removed BuddyPress 12 deprecation notices from profile links.
• Fix – Bulk-activating several plugins no longer stops after this one, and activating it from WP-CLI no longer exits early.
• Security – Approving a review from the Reviews list now requires the Editor capability; Contributors and Authors could previously approve any pending review.
• Security – The Reviewer Roles and Reviewee Roles settings are now enforced when a review is submitted, not only by hiding the Add Review button.
• Security – Pending and report-hidden reviews are no longer readable at their direct link, and a review only shows on the profile it belongs to.
• Security – Anonymous reviews no longer reveal the reviewer in the avatar text on the single review page.
• Security – Reviews no longer have public pages, archives, feeds or search results, which showed the author of an anonymous review; old review links redirect to the review on the member’s profile.
• Security – The top members list shows display names instead of login usernames.
• Security – Dismissing or resolving reports requires the Editor capability.
• Security – The review submit and approve actions no longer accept logged-out requests.

3.8.0 – July 2026

Admin redesign plus a full front-end UX, accessibility, and dark-mode pass.

• New – Added Spanish, Italian and Portuguese (Brazil) translations, and completed the existing German and French ones.
• New – Rebuilt the admin settings screen with the Wbcom card-panel UI: sidebar navigation, an overview dashboard, and a Discover tab. Same settings, clearer layout.
• Improve – Front-end review styles now run on one design-token system in both light and dark, so themes and site owners can recolor any surface from a single variable.
• Improve – Consolidated the review stylesheets into one file and removed the dead legacy modal system, duplicate rules, and unused selectors.
• Improve – Normalized responsive breakpoints and added disabled, active, and keyboard focus states to interactive controls.
• Improve – Star rating input is now a keyboard-operable ARIA radiogroup (arrow keys, Enter/Space) with accessible labels and higher-contrast colors.
• Improve – Dark mode is keyed only off the theme’s explicit dark signal (BuddyX/Reign), never the OS setting, and the modal close button now follows the theme color instead of a hardcoded black icon.
• Improve – Converted directional CSS to logical properties for correct right-to-left rendering.
• Improve – Replaced native browser alerts on the review front end with accessible toast notifications.
• Fix – JavaScript translations could never load in production: the translation file lookup used the minified script path, which never matches the file the build produces.
• Fix – The review count and average-rating tooltip were assembled from separate fragments, which cannot be translated correctly in every language. Each is now a single translatable phrase, and a stray bracket in the zero-review case is gone.
• Fix – Several admin and front-end strings had no translatable source, including the criteria row builder and the reply and report messages.
• Fix – Localized the admin review-approval progress label (“Approving…”) so it translates on non-English sites.
• Fix – The review-recalculation cron is scheduled once on a single daily interval (removed a conflicting double registration).
• Security – The review update endpoint now enforces an ownership/capability check, so members can only edit their own reviews.

3.7.1

• Fixed: WordPress Coding Standards compliance across all PHP files
• Fixed: Removed deprecated load_plugin_textdomain call
• Fixed: Plugin Check compatibility improvements

3.7.0

• New: Owner Replies – profile owners can respond to reviews once
• New: Report System – users can report inappropriate reviews
• New: Auto-hide reviews after configurable report threshold
• New: Admin settings for owner replies, reporting, and auto-hide
• Improved: Changed “Flag” to “Report” terminology
• Improved: Admin UI with clearer labels
• Improved: Security hardening
• Fixed: PHP Warning for undefined array key
• Fixed: Template consistency across all modes

3.6.0

• New: UI improvements for member reviews on directory page
• New: Filter hook for review tab extensibility
• Improved: Script optimization
• Improved: BuddyBoss Theme compatibility
• Fixed: Rating stars visibility with BuddyBoss
• Fixed: Star rating reset on review edit
• Fixed: Email subject and message editing
• Fixed: Text domain loading for translations

3.5.0

• Added: German (DE) and French (FR) translations
• Updated: Backend labels and strings
• Fixed: Fatal error with BuddyPress Classic
• Fixed: PHPCS compliance issues
• Removed: Unused files for lighter footprint