9.0.0 is named after Mico’s Pizza in Sanary, a little town on the french riviera. The story of Mico starts in 1968 when Liliane and Jean-Louis bought a restaurant looking like a swiss chalet. “Mico” is the nickname customers gave to Liliane (Jean-Louis’s wife) because of the remarkable outfits and big colorful hats she used to wear. Their son Romuald, twelve years after following in his parents’ footsteps, continues the tradition and offers us a moment of happiness around a table that is always excellent, friendly and so uncommon, just like BuddyPress 9.0.0 
You can get it clicking on the above button, downloading it from the WordPress.org plugin directory, installing or updating it directly from your WordPress dashboard or checking it out from our Subversion repository.
If you’re upgrading from a previous version of BuddyPress, it’s always a good idea to back-up your WordPress database and files ahead of time.
You can review all of the changes in this 9.0.0 release in the release notes. Below are the key features we believe you are going to enjoy most!
It’s all about Widget Blocks!
WordPress 5.8 is right around the corner and debuts a brand new way to manage widgets: the Widget Block Editor. With BuddyPress 9.0.0, we have introduced 10 new BuddyPress Blocks, so you can continue to use your favorite BP Widgets with the new WP Block approach.
The new BP Widget Blocks are simply Legacy Widgets we’ve rebuilt as BP Blocks, which means you can also access them in the Block Editor for use in your posts or pages!
PS: Have you noticed that the icons for BuddyPress Blocks are now bright red?
Convert a Legacy Widget into a Block Widget in two clicks ![😎]()
As shown in the image above, it’s very easy to transform a Widget into a Block. Your existing Widget settings will automagically be imported into your shiny, new BP Block.
NB: Creating a BP Block for each existing BP Legacy Widget marks the first step toward the progressive retirement of these tiny pieces of BuddyPress content.
The BP REST API: Improved endpoints and a new one!
This BuddyPress release was built in a short time frame to be ready for the release of WordPress 5.8.
While doing the work on BP Widget Blocks, we’ve also manipulated many of our REST API endpoints and took this opportunity to improve several of them. We’re also introducing a new Sitewide Notices endpoint to allow site admins to create, edit, or delete notices and let all of your users fetch the active notice.
Under the hood
9.0.0 comes with fewer changes than most of our releases but includes fixes for issues which appeared in 8.0.0 and BP Nouveau Template Pack improvements.
Many thanks to the 24 contributors who helped us build & translate BuddyPress 9.0.0
Boone B Gorges (boonebgorges), Brajesh Singh (sbrajesh), David Cavins (dcavins), Dan Caragea (dancaragea), Ian Barnes (ianbarnes), Javier Esteban (nobnob), John James Jacoby (johnjamesjacoby), leahkoerper, marbaque, Mark Robson (markscottrobson), Mathieu Viet (imath), modemlooper, Nifty (niftythree), Paul Gibbs (DJPaul), Pieterjan Deneys (nekojonez), r-a-y, Renato Alves (espellcaste), shanebp, shawfactor, Slava Abakumov (slaffik), Stephen Edgar (netweb), tamarazambrana, TKServer, Varun Dubey (vapvarun).
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