Today, with a little help from my friends, the first new component to BuddyPress in several years saw it’s first commit into trunk this morning.

BuddyPress’s new Notifications component is something I’ve had in my imagination since BuddyPress 1.0. It works identically to the previous core notifications functionality, and offers key features I’ve always wanted in our notifications:

• The notifications component can now be deactivated.
• Individual notifications can be marked as read/unread.
• A user interface for previously read notifications.
• A solid foundation for future notifications improvements (notification meta!).

For the curious, you can follow along with Notifications development on ticket #5148. This feature is slated for BuddyPress 1.9, coming near the end of November.