Description
Adopt a small virtual companion that lives in your WordPress admin. Right now Buddy just exists — they bob, they blink, they show their mood. As the plugin grows, their stats will come to reflect how well you take care of your WordPress site itself: published posts feed them, outdated plugins make them sick, clearing spam makes them happy.
Gamifies WordPress maintenance with a bit of charm.
What it does today
- Dashboard widget shows your Buddy with name, mood, and four stat bars (hunger, happiness, health, energy).
- Dedicated Buddy admin page for the bigger view, with the same character and stats.
- Settings page where you can rename your Buddy.
- Each WP admin user gets their own Buddy stored per-user in
user_meta. Nothing leaves your site database. - About page explaining the plugin and the roadmap.
What it does not do yet
- No interactions — feed, play, clean, sleep are coming in Phase B.
- No time-based stat decay yet — that is Phase C.
- Only one species available right now — Phase D will add a dog, dragon, sprite, and more.
- The headline feature — having Buddy stats reflect your actual WP site health (post counts, outdated plugins, spam queue) — is Phase E.
Privacy
RangerHQ Buddy stores its data per-user in the WordPress user_meta table on your own site. No data is sent anywhere. No telemetry. No third-party JavaScript. No external services are contacted except the update checker, which queries the public Gitea release endpoint at git.davidtkeane.com to see if a new version is available.
About the RangerHQ family
RangerHQ Buddy is part of the RangerHQ plugin family by David Keane. Sister plugins include RangerHQ Radio (an admin-only internet radio player) and the upcoming RangerHQ Logbook.
Installation
- WordPress admin Plugins Add New search for “RangerHQ Buddy” Install Now Activate.
- Look for the paw-print icon in the admin sidebar (between Comments and your plugin entries).
- Click Buddy My Buddy to meet your new companion.
- Visit Buddy Settings to rename them.
That is it. There is no configuration required.
FAQ
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Is each user’s Buddy private?
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Yes. Buddy is stored per-user in
user_meta. Other admins on the same site cannot see your Buddy, and you cannot see theirs. -
Does Buddy send any data off my site?
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No. The plugin stores everything in your own WordPress database. The only outbound network call is the update checker which queries the public Gitea release endpoint at git.davidtkeane.com to check for new versions. No personal data is sent.
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Will Buddy slow down my site?
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No. The plugin only loads on admin pages, never on the public front end. It uses inline SVG (no image files) and a small CSS file. There is no JavaScript framework involved.
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Can I have more than one Buddy?
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Not yet. Phase D will add a species picker (dog, dragon, sprite, etc.) but each user will still have one Buddy at a time.
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When will Buddy react to my site’s actual health?
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That is Phase E on the roadmap. For now Buddy’s stats just persist. Time-based decay is Phase C, interactions are Phase B.
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Is the source code open?
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Yes. The plugin is GPL v2 or later and the full source is published on Gitea at git.davidtkeane.com/ranger/rangerhq-buddy. You can inspect every line.
Reviews
There are no reviews for this plugin.
Contributors & Developers
“RangerHQ Buddy” is open source software. The following people have contributed to this plugin.
Contributors
Translate “RangerHQ Buddy” into your language.
Interested in development?
Browse the code, check out the SVN repository, or subscribe to the development log by RSS.
Changelog
0.1.5
- Moved the About page inline
<style>block into the enqueuedbuddy.cssstylesheet per WordPress.org reviewer feedback. - Replaced inline
style="..."attributes on the Settings form, Settings name heading, and main admin page description with proper CSS classes. The only remaining inline style is the dynamic stat-barwidth:%d%%value in the Dashboard widget, which is runtime data.
0.1.4
- Renamed to RangerHQ Buddy as part of the RangerHQ plugin family naming convention.
- Updated Plugin URI and Author URI to davidtkeane.com.
- Added LICENSE file with full GPL v2 text.
- Added WordPress.org format readme.txt.
- Removed the self-hosted Gitea updater. WordPress.org-hosted plugins use the core update system instead.
- Cleaned up Plugin Check (PCP) findings — text domain alignment, output escaping, translator comments, replaced mt_rand with wp_rand for better randomness.
0.1.3
- Wink animation rebuilt as a real CSS animation, no longer sticks.
0.1.2
- Early development release.
0.1.1
- Early development release.
0.1.0
- First release — per-user state, dashboard widget, dedicated admin page, settings page with rename support, about page.