Buzzakoo Post Boost

Lets users boost (bump) an item so it jumps back to the top of the public feeds — like the bump function on a classic forum.

Built for Buzzakoo.com (WordPress + SocialV/Iqonic + BuddyPress + bbPress).

The important thing to know first

Buzzakoo's main feed — the one on the homepage and on /activity/ — is the BuddyPress activity stream, not the WordPress blog loop.

BuddyPress does not build that feed with WP_Query. It has its own table (wp_bp_activity) and its own hand-written SQL. A boost plugin that only reorders WordPress posts will install cleanly, look correct, and do nothing at all to the main feed.

This plugin therefore hooks all three surfaces the site actually has:

Each integration switches itself off cleanly if its host plugin isn't active.

How it works

Storage

Two tables. Boost state is in the database, so it survives page refreshes, cache flushes and server restarts.

• wp_bzk_boosts — current state, one row per boosted item. Primary key (object_type, object_id), so an item is either boosted or it isn't; it can never be double-inserted.
• wp_bzk_boost_log — append-only history of every boost event. Drives cooldowns and the per-item lifetime cap.

boosted_at is datetime(6) — microseconds, not seconds. On a busy feed two people can easily boost inside the same second; at one-second resolution those boosts tie and "most recently boosted wins" quietly stops being true.

All timestamps are UTC and are compared against MySQL's UTC_TIMESTAMP(), so boost expiry doesn't drift with the site's timezone setting.

Ordering

Ordering happens in SQL, not by shuffling the array of results afterwards. That's what keeps pagination honest: a boosted item on page 1 is genuinely first in the result set, rather than being moved to the top of a page that was already fetched (which would duplicate items across pages).

The boost ranking is prepended to whatever ordering the query already had, so the site's existing logic — date, sticky, menu_order, bbPress's last-active-time meta — still applies underneath. When a boost expires the item silently drops back to its natural position; nothing needs to be cleaned up for ordering to be correct.

Two subtleties that will bite anyone who modifies this

1. SELECT DISTINCT + ORDER BY on a joined column. BuddyPress's activity query and WordPress's taxonomy archives both use SELECT DISTINCT. MySQL refuses to ORDER BY an expression that isn't in the select list when DISTINCT is used (error 3065). So the boost column is added to the SELECT list and the sort runs on that. This is why the ordering is a plain bzk.boosted_at DESC and not (bzk.boosted_at IS NOT NULL) DESC, ... — the latter is an expression and would fatal on exactly the category pages this feature is for. (DESC already sorts NULLs last in MySQL, which is precisely the behaviour we want.)

2. Cache invalidation is not optional. Both WordPress and BuddyPress cache the list of IDs a query returns:

• WordPress keys cached WP_Query results on the query args plus the posts group's last_changed stamp.
• BuddyPress keys cached activity IDs on the SQL string itself.

A boost writes only to our own table — it never touches wp_posts or wp_bp_activity, and it doesn't change the SQL text. So neither cache would notice, and the feed would keep serving the old order. This is invisible on a dev box with no object cache and extremely visible on a live site with Redis.

BZK_Cache::purge() therefore bumps wp_cache_set_last_changed('posts') and resets BuddyPress's activity incrementors on every boost. If you change how boosts are stored, keep that call.

Caching / the button

The button is rendered server-side in a neutral, disabled state, and its real state (boosted? on cooldown? how many boosts?) is fetched over REST on page load.

That's deliberate: it means a full-page cache can never serve a stale "Boosted" label to the wrong visitor. It also means the REST nonce baked into a cached page (which goes stale) is never used for a write — /state returns a fresh nonce, and the button writes with that one.

Settings

WP Admin → Post Boost

• Where boosting applies — activity stream / WP posts / bbPress topics, and which post types.
• Who may boost — by role; optionally "the item's own author always may"; optionally logged-out guests (rate-limited by IP).
• Boost lasts for — hours; 0 = never expires (stays until something else is boosted above it).
• Cooldown per item — minimum gap between two boosts of the same item.
• Cooldown per user — minimum gap between any two boosts by the same person.
• Maximum boosts per item — lifetime cap; 0 = unlimited.
• Maximum boosted items at once — keeps only the newest N pinned. Set to 1 for a single "top slot".
• Button label / extra CSS classes / position, show boost count.
• Sticky posts — whether a boost outranks a WordPress sticky post (off by default).
• Caching — flush page caches after a boost.

WP Admin → Post Boost → Currently boosted lists everything pinned right now, with a one-click Un-boost. Posts and topics also get Boost / Un-boost row actions in the normal list tables.

Placing the button

It appears automatically in the BuddyPress activity action bar (next to Comment / Favourite) and in post content.

To place it yourself:

<?php if ( function_exists( 'bzk_boost_button' ) ) { bzk_boost_button( 'post', get_the_ID() ); } ?>

or the shortcode:

[buzzakoo_boost]
[buzzakoo_boost type="activity" id="3229"]

Set Button position on posts → "Do not add automatically" if you're placing it manually.

To make it match the theme's buttons, put the theme's own button classes into Extra CSS classes (e.g. SocialV's btn btn-primary). The button inherits font and colour from its surroundings by default rather than imposing its own.

For developers

// Boost programmatically.
bzk_boost( 'activity', 3229 );          // returns true or WP_Error

// React to a boost.
add_action( 'bzk_boosted', function ( $type, $id, $user_id ) { /* … */ }, 10, 3 );

// Have the last word on who may boost.
add_filter( 'bzk_can_boost', function ( $allowed, $type, $id, $user_id ) {
    return $allowed;
}, 10, 4 );

// Exclude a specific query from boost ordering.
add_filter( 'bzk_apply_to_activity_query', '__return_false' );
add_filter( 'bzk_apply_to_post_query', '__return_false' );

// Restyle the button completely.
add_filter( 'bzk_boost_button_html', function ( $html, $type, $id ) { return $html; }, 10, 3 );

REST API:

GET  /wp-json/buzzakoo-boost/v1/state?items=activity:12,post:34
POST /wp-json/buzzakoo-boost/v1/boost     { "type": "activity", "id": 12 }
POST /wp-json/buzzakoo-boost/v1/unboost   { "type": "activity", "id": 12 }   (admins)

Install

1. Upload buzzakoo-boost to wp-content/plugins/ (or install the ZIP via Plugins → Add New → Upload).
2. Activate. Tables are created automatically.
3. Go to Post Boost and set the rules.

Nothing in the theme or in WordPress core is modified, so theme and core updates cannot overwrite any of this.

Requires: WordPress 6.0+, PHP 7.4+. Optional: BuddyPress, bbPress.

Verified against

WordPress 7.0.1, BuddyPress 14.5.0, bbPress 2.6.14, PHP 8.3, MySQL 8.0 — the same WordPress version Buzzakoo.com runs.

19 automated checks, all passing: boosted item renders first in the activity stream / blog loop / category archive / search; remaining items keep their date order; expiry restores natural order; pagination has no duplicates or gaps; sticky interaction both ways; cooldowns, lifetime caps, role rules and guest blocking; single-top-slot mode; un-boost. Plus an end-to-end browser test that clicks the real button and confirms the item moves from last to first and stays there after a reload.