bbPress

bbPress 0.9.0.2 is available for immediate download. This release includes some small changes and fixes a few bugs, but is first and foremost a security release. The vulnerability is not yet publicly known, but will be soon.

Many thanks go out to Steven J. Murdoch for identifying the issue (CVE-2008-1930) and working with us and WordPress to resolve it.

Note: Those of you with integrated WordPress/bbPress installs should upgrade WordPress first and then will probably have to update the “WordPress database secret” setting in your Settings -> WordPress Integration: Cookies admin panel after upgrading bbPress.

The bbPress team is happy to release bbPress 0.9 for download. This release is important for anyone who integrates bbPress with WordPress and wishes to update to WordPress 2.5.

Primarily this is a compatibility release so that we can continue to provide the same integration levels with WordPress as in the past, however quite a few other improvements have made their way into this version.

Improvements and changes include:

• New installer: 
  • Creates your bb-config.php file for you when possible.
  • Allows for setting up integration with WordPress at install time.
  • Supports languages other than English when language translations are available.
  • Looks pretty.
• Additional RSS feeds for views.
• A “new topics” RSS feed, available on the front-page and on each forum. This feed only returns the first post from each new topic as it is created, instead of all posts.
• More configurable <title> tag available to themes.
• More secure authentication cookies which are compatible with WordPress 2.5
• Passwords now stored using “phpass” hashing library instead of md5. If you still want to store your passwords as md5 for any reason, there is a plugin here which will do that for you.
• A second core theme called “Kakumei Blue”. This theme demonstrates just how little you need to do to start creating a new theme.
• “General” and “WordPress Integration” options configurable via admin interface.
• Built-in support for Gravatars, implemented in a way that makes 3rd-party avatar plugins much easier to author.
• New “Date and time format” and “Date format” options.
• Akismet and Bozo functionalities have been moved to plugins. Akismet key now enterable via an admin interface.
• Removed “replies” querystring argument (?replies=#) from topic links. If you still want that functionality, there is a plugin here which should emulate it.
• Fixes to use of PHP “glob()” function to avoid errors on hosts that don’t support it.
• Moderators can now manage tags by default.
• Fixes to slug incrementing.
• The old “admin_email” setting is now called “from_email”. This is now the email address that emails from your installation appear to come from.
• “No replies” view is now technically “no replies and greater than 2 hours old”.
• Improvements to the export script towards the integration of an upcoming import script.
• RSS feeds now sent as UTF-8
• Full support for slug-based feeds on forum and topic feeds.
• Keymasters can no longer be demoted by non-keymasters.
• Many other smaller bug and typo fixes.

Installation

We have provided updated and more detailed installation and integration instructions in the documentation.

Upgrading

Upgrade instructions are available in the documentation here.

Dedication

bbPress 0.9 is named “Brubeck” after American Jazz pianist Dave Brubeck. In his early career he often performed with saxophonist Paul Desmond, after whom bbPress 0.8 was named. Brubeck has composed a number of jazz standards many of which employ complex rhythms and unusual time signatures.

There are a few changes in 0.9 which plugin developers need to be aware of. So here are some notes to help you get your plugins running under the new release.

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Most of those who follow the tech-blog-o-sphere* will be aware of the recent financial news regarding Automattic, the company that more or less stewards bbPress’ production.

For the rest of you here are some links that cover the story.

Some people may be wondering what this news means for bbPress. Well, for a start this funding has already impacted on the project as it made my full-time employment with Automattic possible three months ago when the arrangement was in it’s early stages. But more importantly it now allows Automattic to have the financial security to back bbPress into the foreseeable future.

We have some awesome things in the pipe including improvements to the bbPress core, the bbpress.org website and, in the not too distant future, the launch of a hosted community service by Automattic based on bbPress.

In the meantime, we will be ramping up the pace of development and attempting to bring out some of the new features that have been on the “to-do” list for far too long. Features which we hope will help to differentiate bbPress from the crowd and make it a truly useful tool for building online communities.

* NB: Not an actual word

Due to popular demand we have bundled a bug-fix release for bbPress. 0.8.3.1 (still called “Desmond” I believe) and it is now available for download.

This version is not the latest development release so as to remain as compatible as possible with the current version of WordPress.

The primary reason for the release is to fix some bugs in the MySQLi implementation. We anticipate that MySQLi support will be dropped in the future and to this end we have made MySQL the default extension instead of MySQLi.

A few other fixes and enhancements have also snuck in:

• Deep forum breadcrumbs with thanks to baptiste
• More consistent topic labeling methods - users of the support forum plugin will probably need to upgrade to version 2.3.3
• Some fixes to stop orphaned sub-forums from disappearing from all view
• There is now one of those fancy checkboxes to mark a user as a bozo

A couple of those changes will affect existing themes. If you have questions about adapting your theme to be compatible with the new topic labeling and forum breadcrumb features, then ask over on this forum topic.

I’ll be at WordCamp Melbourne this weekend to reprasent bbPress. It’s a good opportunity for both seasoned bbPress users and newbs to find out more about our favourite forum software. As the crowd will be mainly WordPressers, I’ll be focusing the discussion on integration with WordPress and a few of the more WordPress-centric plugins.

Automattic developer Alex Shiels will be there as well as other local blogging luminaries. Check out the full program here (pdf), and RSVP on Upcoming soon, it’s almost full.

A new version is finally here, and ready for download! The biggest news is better search and compatibility with WordPress 2.3, but it also fixes a lot of bugs.

read on…

With the introduction of the new BB_Query_Class in bbPress 0.8.3, the old method of adding custom “views” to bbPress has been removed. You should no longer directly manipulate the $bb_views array, nor does the bb_views hook work.

To add a view, you should instead use a new function: bb_register_view(). Also available is bb_deregister_view() for removing the default views or views added by other plugins.

function my_plugin_views() {
/*
  bb_register_view(
            $view_slug,
            $view_title,
            $bb_query_argument_array
  );
*/

  bb_register_view(
            'more-than-5',
            'Topics with more than five posts',
            array( 'post_count' => '>5' )
  );

  bb_register_view(
            'old-timers',
            'Topics started before 2005',
            array( 'started' => '<2005' )
  );

  // Remove default 'Topics with no tags' view
  bb_deregister_view( 'untagged' );
}

add_action( 'bb_init', 'my_plugin_views' );

If you really need more complicated queries, you have the following filters at your disposal, just by registering your view in the above fashion (assuming the $view_slug is “my-view”).

• bb_view_my-view_distinct
• bb_view_my-view_fields
• bb_view_my-view_join
• bb_view_my-view_where
• bb_view_my-view_group_by
• bb_view_my-view_having
• bb_view_my-view_order_by
• bb_view_my-view_limit

If that sounds complicated, it probably is Most plugin developers will never have to do much besides filter a join or where here and there.

WordPress 2.3 is now available.

I mention that because the current version of bbPress (version 0.8.2) is not compatible with WordPress 2.3 if you are loading both scripts at the same time. If you’re not loading both scripts at the same time, everything is fine.

A new version of bbPress will be coming out in a day or two as soon as we get done testing it, and that version will fully compatible with the latest version of WordPress once again.

bbPress has twenty or so functions that select groups of topics or posts from the database. Some of them do very specific things, and some of them do something only slightly different from another such function.

Maintaining this large group of functions and keeping them all consistent was beginning to become a nuisance. Additionally, it was annoying to have either to write a whole new function or to hack filters into and onto an existing function every time a new database query was needed.

To help alleviate both of these problems, the next version of bbPress will come with a BB_Query class, which all of the above referenced functions will use.

Details and Cool new user features