Hot on the heels of 1.0-alpha-3 comes 1.0-alpha-4.
I’d like to say that there are significant differences between the two releases, but this is basically a bug fix release, and more specifically a release to fix one major bug!
Download from the download page is now available.
Today bbPress 1.0-alpha-3 was made available via the download page.
A couple of major improvements include new re-added support for “deep” integration and a new notification system that will report fatal errors in plugins on activation. BackPress is now also up to scratch with the code it borrows from WordPress 2.7, meaning a lot of bug fixes in those files.
I need those that are interested in the “deep” integration with WordPress to do some pretty hefty testing to ensure that it is robust enough to remain as a supported option. Keep in mind that some of the existing login and cookie integration issues remain.
You can view the changes in bbPress between 1.0-alpha-2 and 1.0-alpha-3, as well as the changes that have been made to BackPress between revision 161 and 178.
Hackers out there should note that a lot of filenames have changed in the bb-includes directory.
It’s about time everyone was let in on the progress we have made towards version 1.0 of bbPress.
I expect the next alpha release to be made sometime in the next two weeks. This release will include our first implementation of Pingbacks both to and from your bbPress installation. The first draft implementation of this is now in trunk.
Also to be included in the next release is an implementation of the pseudo cron feature from WordPress. This will allow plugin developers to schedule jobs in the future or on a regular basis. It is 100% compatible with the WordPress implementation, so the existing documentation is all you need to get started with using it.
To enable cron I’ve included the very new WP_Http class in BackPress. This new class is a robust HTTP fetcher which is meant to replace the Snoopy class in WordPress. This will allow all sorts of RESTFUL services to be utilised within bbPress plugins, like fetching data from other pages, embedding search APIs and even pulling data from WordPress via RSS or XML-RPC.
On the drawing board is the beginnings of an XML-RPC publishing interface. This will make it easier to use bbPress as a data store for more exotic clients like custom flash applications and XML-RPC desktop clients. It also opens the door to creating an iPhone app for bbPress much like the existing WordPress iPhone app.
An alpha version of bbPress’ new export/import format and tools has also landed in trunk thanks to our Google Summer of Code student Dan Larkin. You can read a little more about that at the BBXF website.
There will also be several fixes for bugs found by our courageous alpha testers.
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.
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
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_distinctbb_view_my-view_fieldsbb_view_my-view_joinbb_view_my-view_wherebb_view_my-view_group_bybb_view_my-view_havingbb_view_my-view_order_bybb_view_my-view_limitIf 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.
bbPress 0.8.2 introduced a new way of counting how many pages worth of information there were to display (how many pages worth of content, for example, there are to display in a user’s profile): MySQL’s FOUND_ROWS() function. It works very well for most bbPress sites.
It cripples large sites.
Historically, bbPress has dealt with time in a… shall we say “interesting” manner. Without going into technical details, bbPress constrained you, the person installing bbPress, to set it’s internal timezone to match exactly that of the server it was running on.
That’s ridiculous.
What if you lived in Brisbane, but your servers were held captive in Cleveland and set to GMT? I’ll tell you what if: only after lots of trial and error were you able to get rid of that strange “-1 years ago” bug seen everywhere on your site. But then you were stuck at some arbitrary timezone.
With bbPress 0.8, all that has changed. You can set bbPress’ timezone to anything you like completely independent of where you are and where your server is.
But that’s not good enough, you cry! You want your users to be able to set their own timezones too! Well, bbPress doesn’t do that, and may never, but a plugin can and does! See the “proof-of-concept” User Timezones plugin.
Additionally, theme designing and tweaking is now much easier with respect to time template functions like bb_post_time(), topic_time(), and topic_start_time().
bb_post_time( 'F j, Y, h:i A' )-> “February 8, 2007, 10:57 PM”
bb_since( strtotime( bb_get_post_time() ) ) or something equally heinous. No longer. All the default templates now use the much more pleasant method described above. If you based any custom templates off of the old default templates, they will probably still work since the changes made were almost completely backward compatible. If you run into any problems, remove from your templates any mention of strtotime(), bb_since(), and bb_offset_time() as the bits you need from those functions should now work automagically.
bb_get_post_time( 'timestamp' ), and the MySQL date: bb_get_post_time( 'mysql' ).Much more pleasant