bbPress

Available immediately is bbPress 2.0.2.

This maintenance release adds proper template redirects for logged-in users, and fixes a few bugs with the freshness recounter and closing topics.

If you already have bbPress 2.0.1 installed, updating to 2.0.2 is a cinch via the WordPress dashboard. If you’re still thinking of moving from a bbPress 1.x powered site, the method noted in our 2.0 post still applies. If you integrate bbPress 2.0.1 with BuddyPress, nothing additional needs to be done; it will still just work.

In hot pursuit of BuddyPress 1.5 follows bbPress 2.0!

No longer are the days of elaborate xml-rpc connections or impossible to figure-out cookie configurations! No more are the integration woes, complex theme arrangements, or separate dashboards! bbPress 2.0 represents a complete rethink of how to fit forums inside WordPress in the simplest, most elegant way possible.

Simply by activating bbPress 2.0, any standard WordPress theme is suddenly capable of having support forums, user profiles, topic tags, and custom topic views. Your users are able to mark topics as favorites to read them later, and can subscribe to be notified via email to topic replies, so they never miss out on the conversation.

bbPress 2.0 comes with Akismet and BuddyPress functionalities baked-in, so if you’re already using either plugin, no additional configuration is required.

If you already have a previous version installed, updating to 2.0 is easy with the bbPress Importer. Move your bbPress 1.0 powered content into your new WordPress/bbPress installation and you’re ready to go. (There is already a migration plugin in the works for other forum software that promises to be pretty amazing, too!)

If you’d like to see bbPress 2.0 in action, a few brave developers have been using it on their live sites already:

• BuddyPress Test Drive
• WPCandy Forums
• DevPress Forums
• Jigoshop Support
• GetShopped Support

In the coming weeks we’ll be moving our own forums onto bbPress 2.0, adding a codex to improve the documentation, and doing some general housekeeping here at bbpress.org. We’ve put a lot of work into rebuilding the software, now it’s time to rebuild the site to properly support it!

Props for 2.0 go out to: andy, anointed, boonebgorges, christopher-jon, Coolkevman, cnorris23, dimadin, DJPaul, duck_, dudd, Fartlek, GautamGupta, greenshady, jaredatch, jghazally, Jason K, Kaspace, markmcwilliams, mouratidis, nacin, Nightgunner5, petemall, ryangannon, ryanimel, ramiy, scribu, schrepel, sorich87, vanillalounge, Viper007Bond, westi, and wonderboymusic.

Download bbPress 2.0

Available immediately is bbPress 2.0 RC 5 “Can we have a pool, dad?” edition. Thanks to a few last minute contributions we were able to fix some theme compatibility issues, BuddyPress Activity stream issues, and Email subscription issues. We’re pretty confident this is the final release-candidate before launch, so please update your existing installations and let us know how it’s going in the support forums.

We’re confident you can use RC 5 on a live site without sinking the ship, but please let us know if it springs any leaks in your installation. If you’re a developer or site administrator, report any oddities over at our trac.

Here are some of the changes in RC 5:

• Improved theme compatibility
• Improved BuddyPress Activity stream behavior
• Improved Subscription email sending
• API tweaks for plugin authors

Download bbPress 2.0 RC 5

Available immediately is bbPress 2.0 Beta 3, chock full of fixes and enhancements to help smooth out the integration of bbPress into your existing WordPress.org powered site. Your feedback has been super helpful, and there’s been so much testing we think a sarcastic cake-promising robot may be involved somewhere.

You know the drill; this is still beta software, so don’t use it on your production sites. If you’re a plugin or theme developer, or a site administrator, run this only on test environments and report any bugs you find. If you’re a loyal bbPress user who’s anxious to see what the future of bbPress looks like, create a secondary WordPress test site and let us know what you think about it in the support forums. Extra points if you’re testing with WordPress Multisite.

So far we’re right on schedule for this to be the final beta before we start packaging release candidates, with bbPress 2.0 by the end of June (in tandem with WordPress 3.2.) The more you kick the tires and the more miles you put on Beta 3 means a more dependable, longer lasting bbPress 2.0, so put your testing gloves on and take it for a spin!

Here are some of the important changes since Beta 2:

• Akismet integration
• Fixes replies within wp-admin
• Fixes reply notification links
• Fixes inconsistent breadcrumb behavior
• Fixes theme compatibility issues
• Fixes archive and page conflicts
• Improvements to unpretty permalink support
• Improvements to importer
• Improvements to multisite support
• Normalize theme, shortcodes, and template parts
• Add humans.txt
• Add empty index.php files to prevent snooping
• Add max length to topic titles (default 80 chars)
• Add shortcodes for login, register, and lost password forms
• Add proper redirect handling to topics and replies, allowing them to live almost anywhere
• Add permalink collision warnings if custom slugs conflict

Download bbPress 2.0 Beta 3

Surprise! The development of bbPress 2.0 is progressing faster than expected! We released Beta 1 only six days ago, and today we’re releasing Beta 2. Huge props go out to everyone that’s already test driving Beta 1. The rapid pre-release cycle is due entirely to you, and sour cream and onion potato chips.

Remember that this is still very much beta software, so don’t go using it on your production sites. If you’re a plugin or theme developer, or a site administrator, you should be running this on test environments and reporting any bugs you find. If you’re a loyal bbPress user who is anxious to see what the future of bbPress looks like, create a secondary WordPress test site and let us know what you think about it in the support forums.

The plan is to keep releasing Beta’s as changes go in, put out release candidates in the next few weeks, and release bbPress 2.0 by the end of June (in tandem with WordPress 3.2.) The more you help us polish the new paint during the beta period means a shinier and longer lasting 2.0, and the more likely we are to stay on schedule and hit our release goals.

Here are some of the important changes since Beta 1:

• GlotPress integration
• Fixes Forum archive bug on some installations
• Fixes and improvements to importer
• Adds home link support to breadcrumb
• Adds missing breadcrumbs to various template files
• Adds filters for future anti-spam support
• Improvements to templates and CSS
• Improvements to Theme Compatibility
• Improved RTL support
• Improved multisite support
• Topic/reply trash fixes

Download bbPress 2.0 Beta 2

If you haven’t been keeping up with our progress over the past few months, you’re in for a treat. bbPress 1.0.3 is due out any day, as is 1.1 Release Candidate 1 which includes new features like email notification on follow-up posts and anonymous posting. There’s also a lot going on under the hood of the new WordPress plugin version of bbPress, and in an effort to get more people involved we’re bringing back the bi-weekly development chats in #bbpress on the freenode network on IRC.

In the past we’ve had a range of involvement, from developers to designers (to a totally empty channel.) This time around I’d like to openly invite anyone that’s interested in getting in on the ground floor of development, testing, and theming the up-and-coming bbPress plugin to join us, and be part of building something crazy-super awesome.

We’re going to try to have them every other Wednesday at 4pm EST (UTC - 5) starting on February 23, 2011. If this time absolutely does not work for you and you really want to be there, post an alternative time in the comments and let’s figure something out that works for everyone.

Hope to see you then, and many fortnights to follow!

After the release of 1.0-RC-2 there was a lot of great feedback both in the support forums and on Trac. Some new issues came up around WordPress integration, caching and SQL query performance which were simply too important to leave out of the final 1.0 release.

After taking careful aim at these issues I’ve decided to make one last release candidate available. There is still a little cosmetic work to do in the admin area, but you will find a few new improvements there too, like better handling of .htaccess auto-generation and full timezone support, including automatic daylight savings switching.

1.0-RC-3 is available now from the download page.

Yesterday we pushed the first release candidate for bbPress 1.0 out the door. You can grab it from the download page.

Over the next few weeks there will be a (relatively) rapid progression of “RC” releases as we move towards a final release of 1.0

bbPress is almost stable enough to use on a live website, but I can’t recommend that yet. If you want to try it out on your existing data, then I suggest you make a complete copy of your site and then upgrade. If you just want to take a look and see what’s changed then try a fresh install (some independent testing of the installer is always useful).

If you find a problem please report it in Trac so I can get onto it as soon as possible.

Many people have already noticed that Automattic has soft launched TalkPress. TalkPress was mentioned and explained some time ago in the bbPress forums, but there is no harm in restating our intentions here.

It has been public for a while that Automattic was going to launch a hosted forum service based on bbPress and the decision was made early on to not call it bbPress.com for three reasons.

1. It avoids the sort of confusion users experience trying to distinguish between WordPress.org and WordPress.com
2. bbPress is not a particularly good product name for that service
3. The bbPress.com domain name is already registered to someone else

The last reason is fairly conclusive.

So the name TalkPress was chosen. As a joke we put up a phpBB forum at TalkPress.com for a while, which we all found quite amusing until it got heavily spammed, so down that came!

In the meantime we have been preparing bbPress to accommodate many of the needs that this new service would require, specific functionality has included preparing bbPress to handle the huge user tables of WordPress.com – some of this work is already available to bbPress users (even if it’s only really useful if you have millions of users).

The architecture behind WordPress.com demanded that we make bbPress play nice with the HyperDB extension for WordPress. This neat database load-balancing and redundancy tool is now fully compatible with bbPress. So if you want to run your bbPress site with redundant MySQL databases in multiple datacenters then that’s possible now too. bbPress now has a pretty enviable set of advanced options for MySQL connectivity.

Finally, the secret sauce of TalkPress.com is an extension called “bbPress Channels”. bbPress Channels does for bbPress what WordPress MU does for WordPress, except that it is a single file that is simply included in a standard bbPress install rather than being a complete fork of bbPress.

I call it an extension, because strictly speaking it isn’t a plugin. Some of you may have noticed the “BB_CHANNELS_INCLUDE” constant floating around in bb-settings.php, this is where that file gets included. The bbPress Channels code is not ready for release yet, but it will be released as open source code at a later date.

TalkPress itself is not open for public signup at this stage. Currently we are bringing on a few “VIP” partners so that we can run-in the platform in a more controlled way. The pioneers on the service are Time Inc. who are incorporating a TalkPress forum into their Health.com website. I’m happy to report back to the bbPress community that TalkPress (and thus bbPress) withstood their rigorous security testing with flying colours. This testing incorporated, amongst other things, comprehensive XSS and SQL injection tests.

As for bbPress, some movement has occurred in the priorities leading up to a final 1.0 release. Some of the more fundamental changes that were planned are being put on the back-burner so that these aims can be achieved:

1. Full compatability with both WordPress 2.7 and 2.8
2. Easier integration steps for WordPress MU
3. Retaining compatibility with the existing catalogue of current plugins

This means that some things, like the planned re-factoring of the rewrite methods, are being postponed until some future version or even removed from the radar completely.

The next Alpha version of bbPress is imminent and will likely be the last bbPress 1.0 Alpha version. From there we will move into Beta and hopefully quite quickly through to Release Candidates for 1.0 in the next couple of months.

Today we are releasing a new version of both bbPress 0.9 and bbPress 1.0-alpha.

The 0.9.0.4 stable release includes a security fix to stop a potential XSS attack on login pages with Internet Explorer 6, so it is highly recommended for all users.

Additionally, the 0.9.0.4 release includes a significant MySQL speed-up fix for front pages and forum pages that was discussed in the forums. Thanks to anotherdan and _ck_ for their efforts on that one.

The 1.0-alpha-5 release also includes the above fixes as well as an important fix to WordPress integration. Namely, automatic synchronisation of user roles should now work as expected.

You can get them both from the download page.