Use BadgeOS? Try This
If you’re a BadgeOS user, you’ve probably noticed that the plugin hasn’t been updated for almost a year. Conflicts with the latest version of WooCommerce and other plugins have made it virtually impossible to use BadgeOS on many sites, and as we have a lot of LearnDash sites relying on BadgeOS, the situation became rather difficult for us.
As future support of BadgeOS is unknown, we decided to implement some fixes ourselves for our clients. We know a lot of people are affected by these issues though, so we thought it would be helpful to release our patched plugin to the wider community. Having said that, there are some caveats:
- This is not a plugin we will be maintaining or supporting. If you want to use this code, it’s at your own risk. This is purely to address some common issues that we know site owners are struggling to address themselves with BadgeOS version 1.4.8.2.
- We currently have no plans to keep this updated. Right now it’s a short term fix.
- This plugin may or may not work with third-party integrations. We fixed some common issues that affected our clients and plugins.
- We have no relationship with the BadgeOS developers. We’re just filling a gap temporarily that was affecting a lot of our users.
If you are running into BadgeOS problems, we invite you to download the plugin below and see if it fixes your issues. It is a drop-in replacement for BadgeOS, so make sure you remove your current BadgeOS plugin first.
I haven’t tested to see if this works or not, but regardless… THANK YOU for releasing this to the public. I’m still confused as to why Credly pushes BadgeOS so hard, it’s linked to so many projects (like learndash), it hasn’t been updated in a year, and NO ONE IS SAYING ANYTHING ABOUT IT. Its ridiculous. I’m a bit confused how it went on this long without someone taking over the project or just straight up forking it and creating their own called BadgerOS or BOS or BadGeos or something clever. Lol.
I will install this now and see what happens.
Hi Matthew,
Trust me, people are definitely saying things about it. 🙂 As for someone taking over the project, keep in mind that there’s a huge ecosystem to support, it’s a big plugin, there’s negative sentiment around the situation… it’s a lot for a company to take on.
There is negative sentiment, I’ll give you that. But as with any company, it’s not that difficult to fix. A successful re-branding strategy with a new launch and an apology/promise works wonders. For someone new to take it over is even easier. You basically say that you realize everyone has been suffering and you’re here to make it better. It will take some time to fix everything and please be patient. Make it clear that you have nothing to do with the old developer and are sorry for whatever transgressions have occurred in the past. Empathize with them (if it’s true) in saying that you too were affected.
The only major issue here is going to be the paid for plugins that people are irate about forking over money and then having no support. I realize it would probably take a team to clean everything up especially regarding integrations, but this thing was backed by Credly. That’s what’s confusing to me. I would have thought that they would be actively looking for someone to fix/replace this as it directly affects a HUGE market for them.
I guess what I was suggesting is that someone forks the project and create’s their own version so as not to have to deal with the people who were screwed by the last developer. You could even give all those people a huge discount for the new plugin/addons amd charge a very small fee ($5) for the plugin itself instead of free. Then give lifetime access to plugin for free to anyone who has proof of purchase for old plugin.
I’m just surprised that it’s gone on this long and there isn’t a feasible replacement yet, even if it was touted as it’s own plugin having nothing to do with badgeos. What I mean by replacement is a badging system that integrates with most of the things badgeos integrated with.
Context: I’m BRAND NEW to LearnDash and BadgeOS.
I stumbled across this post while looking at some uncanny owl stuff. Anyway, reading it got me worried, since I am/was planning to use BadgeOS on my site. Hasn’t been updated in a year? Compatibility issues? Oh boy!
Then I decided to poke around about BadgeOS. On the wordpress plugin page, it says it was updated 3 weeks ago (which would have been about one week after this post went live.
Does this new BadgeOS update address the issues your patched version does? Are things cool now?
Thanks from the newbie.
Great questions! We should really update the article with information about the update BadgeOS released. We think it’s great they released an update and hope it’s a sign that support will be returning.
We did review their updates though and they didn’t include some things we did, like additional PHP7 support, some admin.css updates and some ajax calls that had issues. For now we’re continuing to use our version on client sites, but that may change in future.
Thanks for clearing that up. I will continue to use your version until it breaks or you say not to. 😉
Well.. it appears that they are back to their old shenanigans… saying they will support people moving forward and release updates to fix stuff and then not doing anything. No updates since one almost 3 months ago that apparently didn’t fix some of the major issues. Most people still getting no response or help in support (even though they committed to responding to every single support request within a weeks time).
Having said that, I did notice where they said this:
“All plugins remain open-source, and available on Github. We will review and acknowledge any pull requests provided for official inclusion.”
Any chance you’d consider submitting these fixes as a pull request?
Lastly, if they ever do get their act together and we need to switch back to the main plugin, will all our stuff disappear since it’s technically a different plugin or will it magically carry over to the main app from your hacked version?
Hi Matthew,
That’s unfortunate to hear about the plugin. I checked the repo and it doesn’t look there’s been any movement by the new owners over the last 2 months. We did talk to them several weeks ago and gave them public access to our repo so that they could compare versions and use our code however they saw fit.
We just don’t have the spare development time right now to go through their plugin and identify for them what needs to change. We may or may not in future; we’re also keeping an eye on other options.
Understandable. I’ll keep watch here, if you find something better or for any news. 🙂 Thanks for the quick replies.
Any updates on this situation? Have you found something else. I saw they updated 3 months ago but I’m scared to go back. Comments/reviews are the same “bugs, broken, no support” etc.
Hi Matthew,
We have no updates–but I can tell you we haven’t done much with gamification in the last few months either. The recent MyCred acquisition is also adding to uncertainty about the right choice of gamification solutions going forward. For the time being we’re just not using gamification solutions in new projects.
Thanks for the reply. It’s sad there is such a demand for this and no one filling it properly especially in regard to LearnDash. MyCred + WooNinja Learndash integration seemed like it could be ok… but there’s no badges. And now MyCred has been acquired which could be good or bad.
I guess we’ll wait and see. Thanks again.