bbPress

After a month of waiting, bbPress 0.74 is finally available for download. Even if it did take a while, we’ve fixed a several important things.

Aditya has a great overview of the changes, but here’s a few of the bigger ones.

1. init hook has been changed to bb_init for better compatibility with WordPress.
2. When users are deleted, they’re really deleted now.
3. Somewhat simpler installation procedure. When installing, you’ll also be informed if any of those little configuration variables are incorrectly set.
4. A place to store options in the database! Woo!

We’ve got some slick new features we’re working on for the next release (did someone say “themes”?), so stick around….

In the meantime, read on for some more technical details about this release.

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We’ve now gone around the site, swept up the corners and shined the mantel. If you visited when things first launched you’ll notice everything is tidier now. Please take a look around! The forums are already starting to buzz.

I’m really excited about getting bbPress out in the public with its first public release. Michael has been doing great work and I think today, just as two years ago when I first wrote bbPress, the forum arena is in dire need of some fresh air.

bbPress is also technically pretty fun if you’re a geek. It’s how I would’ve written WordPress if I could go back in time with everything I know now. The code is clean, fast, consistent, and extensible.

There have been several changes at bbpress.org over the last couple weeks.

First off, the content of this site has been updated substantially. There is now somewhat more thorough documentation, and a more fleshed out about page.

Second, bbPress’ code has been made just that much more pluggable and convenient by syncing several of its core functions with those of WordPress.

Third, Bryan Veloso has whipped up some stylin’ new style for the bbPress default theme. People expect great things from Bryan, and, amazingly, he just keeps raising their expectations. Tips on how to create your own themes can be found in our Customization Documentation.

Fourth, the bbPress Trac has been moved to http://trac.bbpress.org/. The tickets have all been cleaned up to make way for…

Lastly, the imminent release of bbPress 0.72. Expect an announcement and some forums (no!) here on bbpress.org within the next couple of days.

If you’re looking to integrate bbPress and WordPress, life just got a little easier.

Keep reading for the long of it.

There have been a few template changes recently.

1. post-form.php should no longer have <form> opening or closing tags. These tags are included by the post_form() template tag.
2. Same for tag-form.php and tag_form().
3. edit_form() no longer needs any parameters.
4. login-failed.php has been moved to login.php.

I’ve done a quick pass over the bbPress API to clean up the obvious API oddities. I’ll also soon be looking for redundant actions and filters. This may break some of your plugins, but will hopefully make things easier for everyone in the end.

There will likely be quite a few changes over the next weeks. Look ahead to a better bbPress!

1. bb_add_user_favorite: used to pass one serialized array. Now passes two parameters.
2. bb_remove_user_favorite: same.
3. Action resolve_topic moved to after DB update.
4. Same for close_topic, stick_topic, unstick_topic.
5. Action opentopic moved to after DB update and renamed to open_topic.
6. Filter topic_resolution added: filters resolved status. Passes topic_id as an extra parameter.
7. bb_already_tagged: used to pass one serialized array. Now passes three parameters.
8. Same for bb_tag_added.
9. bb_tag_created: used to pass one parameter. Naw passes two. Order has changed.
10. bb_tag_removed: used to pass one serialzed array. Now renamed to bb_pre_tag_removed and passes three parameters.
11. Same with bb_tag_merged. Renamed to bb_pre_merge_tags.
12. bb_tag_destroyed renamed to bb_pre_destroy_tag.

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. 

Thanks in part to the hard work of Juan Correa (PotterSys) and Ryan Boren, bbPress is now almost completely "gettexted" which means that all of the strings in the software can be translated and replaced on the fly. Some other code improvements have also come along the way.

All SVN changes are now being mailed to our mailing list and I've also fixed up the nightly builds so they're generating correctly now. 

We're making some big changes to the bbPress codebase over the next few days, as opposed to the more incremental changes over the past year. bbPress has been working so well we haven't really needed to touch much, but it still needs a good coat of paint before we consider taking it out of alpha, so that's what to watch for.

• Better user moderation. Admins can either deactivate a user or block the account entirely. Also, accounts are prevented now from “throttling” the forums; users can only post a maximum of every thirty seconds.
• A real administration interface. We had been doing most of the site administration from various profile pages. It was never the right approach and was becoming increasingly unmanageable. The current situation is a big improvement but is still “more informative than useful”.
• Caching. We’re working on some basic object caching to help speed up high traffic sites.
• Installation. The new capability based system of user permission management made it too difficult to initialize a new install of bbPress by directly poking the database, so we’ve written a simple install script.