External DBs
I just checked in a new database layer that allows bbPress to connect to a completely separate database for its user information, in addition to just having custom table names. This is very useful if you want a bunch of blogs and forums running off the same user system, but don't want to stuff them in the same database, or if your user information is hosted on a different server or account than your forums are.
That’s incredible! Quick question: would this allow one to easily import the users from an old forum into a new one, or is this only for running two database applications side-by-side with the same users?
Comment by Mark — June 24, 2006 @ 5:24 pm
That is cool. But does Wordpress have the same ability?
Comment by Joe — June 25, 2006 @ 1:28 pm
Nope, WP doesn’t really need it as much. (More people run WP than bbPress.) However it is a near drop-in replacement to WP’s wpdb.php, everything is done at the database layer. You’d just need to rename the class put some defines in
wp-config.php.Comment by Matt — June 25, 2006 @ 2:41 pm
Could this be used to make WP use another user table? Like integrating WP into an existing forum for example?
Comment by Ricardo — June 27, 2006 @ 7:24 pm
Given that we cannow provide a value for
'CUSTOM_USER_TABLE'it would be really useful if we could also provide the names of the relevant fields in the other DB.For example, the other DB which I want to use is of the form
users(id, username, password, ...)and so I can’t use this method.Comment by jazzle — July 5, 2006 @ 9:31 am
Sorry jazzle, that’s not what this feature is intended for.
Comment by Matt — July 5, 2006 @ 5:48 pm
Hi Matt,
perhaps it’s not, but it make bbPress the ideal choice when integrating a forum into another web-app…
Comment by jazzle — July 6, 2006 @ 8:14 am
Yeah I’m going to try that…
Oh I also noticed there is a theme is bbpress!
Comment by Joe — July 8, 2006 @ 1:38 am
I have an idea: why don’t you develop an open source universal user registration system, easy to use and that could become an internet standard that all the best open source applications could use? Something as great as wordpress, easy to use and to implement by third party developers. Every software could hook up to this for user data. Forums, blogs, newsletters, galleries ecc…
Also wordpress an bbpress.
What do you think?
Simon
Comment by Simon — July 17, 2006 @ 2:09 pm
it could be called something like uPress where “u” stands for “universal” and also for “you” !
Comment by Simon — July 17, 2006 @ 2:11 pm
Matt, how do we make use of this??? Also, I can’t find any support forum for bbPress!!! Is there one? Else, would it be too much trouble to set one up? The way the forums work for Wordpress is awesome. So many people contributing… it could be contagious!!!
Cheek up… great work!!
Comment by MickeMus — July 22, 2006 @ 7:50 am
@ Simon
That’s what Google tries to do with their Google Account and Microsoft with Passport. When you know what people do online you can make big bucks. Who will trust an unknown open source organization that can see what you do online? Noone. Even when they swear they will never use this information to make money.
Comment by Tinus — July 26, 2006 @ 9:00 am
I have the trunk build updating over SVN and would like to try integrating BBpress a bit more… so is the db layer interface defined/described anywhere? Any pointers to rudimentary words or a hello db world example would be like golddust.
Comment by Rich Boakes — September 12, 2006 @ 10:41 am
[...] UPDATE: I should have mentioned Matt’s external user database update from a few months ago. It allows you to pull user and user meta information from a separate database. All you have to do is define USER_BBDB_NAME, USER_BBDB_USER, USER_BBDB_PASSWORD, and USER_BBDB_HOST. [...]
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