Features
BuddyPress Friend & Follow Suggestion turns the profile data your members already fill in into meaningful “People you may know” recommendations. Everything below is driven by one scoring engine and surfaced through widgets, a block, shortcodes, and the member profile header.
Profile match scoring
Section titled “Profile match scoring”The plugin scores every pair of members from 0 to 100 based on the values they entered in BuddyPress Extended Profile (xProfile) fields. You choose which fields count and how much weight each one carries, plus a universal baseline score that every pair starts from. The engine adds field weights on top of the baseline, normalizes weights that exceed 100%, and caps the result at 100.
You can also mark a field as Required, which turns it into a hard gate: two members who do not share a value on that field score 0 and never appear as suggestions to each other.
Friend and follow suggestions
Section titled “Friend and follow suggestions”- Friend suggestions exclude members the viewer is already friends with. They need the BuddyPress Friends component.
- Follow suggestions exclude members the viewer already follows. They need either the BuddyPress Follow plugin or the BuddyBoss Platform activity-follow feature. When neither is present, follow-specific UI is hidden and the pool falls back to friend suggestions.
Each suggestion card can show an Add Friend button, a Follow button, and a dismiss control, depending on which components are active and your settings.
Where suggestions appear
Section titled “Where suggestions appear”| Surface | What it shows | Where to place it |
|---|---|---|
| Profile header badge | Match percentage between the viewer and the viewed member | Automatic on BuddyPress member profiles |
| Members directory | Match score and a high-match highlight on member cards | Automatic when directory integration is on |
| BuddyPress Friend & Follow Suggestion widget | A list or grid of matched members | Appearance > Widgets |
| (Swiper) BuddyPress Friend Suggestion widget | A swipe-card deck of matched members | Appearance > Widgets |
| Friend & Follow Suggestions block | Suggestion cards in the block editor | Any page or post |
| Shortcodes (8) | Suggestion lists and match data | Any page, post, or text widget |
See Usage for widget and block placement, and the Shortcode Reference for all eight shortcodes.
Swipe cards
Section titled “Swipe cards”The Swiper widget presents suggestions as a swipe deck. Swiping left dismisses or permanently rejects a member; swiping right sends a friend request or follows them. Swipe actions, animation speed, and the left/right behavior are configurable, and the controls are keyboard reachable and screen-reader labelled.
Member controls
Section titled “Member controls”Members can dismiss suggestions they are not interested in, refresh their list on demand, and reset all dismissals to start fresh. Dismissed members are hidden for a configurable number of days (default 30) and are consistently excluded across the widgets, the block, the shortcodes, and the digest emails.
Email notifications
Section titled “Email notifications”The plugin sends its emails through the BuddyPress email system, so they inherit your BuddyPress email styling and are editable under Emails > All Emails. Available emails:
- New member welcome with initial suggestions, sent a configurable number of minutes after registration.
- Hot match alerts when a new member joins with a high compatibility score against an existing member.
- Daily and weekly digests of new matches.
Each member can pick their own frequency (Instant, Daily, Weekly, or Never) on their BuddyPress notification settings page when you allow it. See Notifications and Member Email Preferences.
Built for large communities
Section titled “Built for large communities”Scoring is cached (via transients or a persistent object cache when one is available), the candidate pool is fetched in batches with a per-run time budget, and a background cron pre-generates suggestion lists. These controls live on the Advanced tab.
Compatibility
Section titled “Compatibility”Works with standard BuddyPress and with BuddyBoss Platform (free or paid), and with most BuddyPress-compatible themes including BuddyX, BuddyX Pro, and Reign. See Requirements for exact versions.