0) Pre-clarification: [???] means some number, like twenty[???] means twentyten or twentyeleven

1) Downloaded most recent WordPress, setup database and installed it.

2) Installed bbpress:
go to http://yoursite.dom/wp-admin/ > Log in to admin > Plugins > Add New > search for "bbpress" > Install Now

3) Copied contents of bbpress theme folder to wordpress theme folder:
/wp-content/plugins/bbpress/bbp-themes/bbp-twenty[???] to /wp-content/themes
(this is done ONLY so that we can select the bbforums theme and it's handy templates: Please note that you should only make modifications in the /wp-content/plugins/bbpress/bbp-themes/bbp-twenty[???] folder NOT the /wp-content/themes/bbp-twenty[???] folder as the bbpress plugin will not read those)

4) Switched to the bbpress theme
Log in to admin > Appearance > Themes > under the "Available Themes" section I activated the "bbPress (Twenty [???])" Theme

5) Created my home page, login page, register page, and lost password page:
Log in to admin > Pages > Add New > set title to "Home" | right hand column > Page Attributes > set Templates to "bbPress - Forums (index)"
Log in to admin > Pages > Add New > set title to "Login" | right hand column > Page Attributes > set Templates to "bbPress - User Login"
Log in to admin > Pages > Add New > set title to "Register" | right hand column > Page Attributes > set Templates to "bbPress - User Register"
Log in to admin > Pages > Add New > set title to "Lost Password" | right hand column > Page Attributes > set Templates to "bbPress - User Lost Password"

6) Switched WordPress frontpage from the blog to my home/forums page:
Log in to admin > Settings > Reading > Front page displays > Clicked "a static page..." > set front page to "Home" (and left posts page blank)

7) Allowed New Users to Register
Log in to admin > Settings > General > Under Membership I checked "Anyone can register"

8) Created and Modified my header, footer, and sidebar files:
All theme modifications MUST be done within the wp-content/plugins/bbpress/bbp-themes/bbp-twenty[???] folder and not the folder you just copied to the wordpress theme folder as bbpress will only read files within in it's own local plugin (see #3).
The theme doesn't come with these files installed, so copy them from another theme like twenty[???]:
wp-content/themes/twenty[???]/header.php to wp-content/plugins/bbpress/bbp-themes/bbp-twenty[???]
wp-content/themes/twenty[???]/footer.php to wp-content/plugins/bbpress/bbp-themes/bbp-twenty[???]
wp-content/themes/twenty[???]/sidebar.php to wp-content/plugins/bbpress/bbp-themes/bbp-twenty[???]
I then stripped them to my satisfaction making sure to keep WordPress' header action hook, wp_head();, and then styled them accordingly.
One of the things I added to the header.php was my menu and such:

<?php
$text .= '<options>';
if(is_user_logged_in()) {
global $current_user;
get_currentuserinfo();
$text .= 'You are logged in as '.$current_user->display_name.'
Your Profile | Your Topics | Your Replies | Logout';
}
else $text .= 'Login | Register | Lost Password';
$text .= "
" . get_search_form(false);
$text .= '</options>';

?>

If a visitor is not logged in the above menu will show links to the pages I just created in #5, but make sure that the page_id matches the correct page. You can do this by checking the Permalink of that page:
Log in to admin > Pages > All Pages > select the page your interested in > notice the page_id in the permalink & make sure it matches in the header file.
If a visitor is logged in, it will show who you are logged in as, give you a link to:
your profile (/wp-admin/profile.php)
your profile (/wp-admin/edit.php?post_type=topic)
your posts (/wp-admin/edit.php?post_type=reply)
and a link to logout ( wp_logout_url() )
This menu will then print a search form.

9) Installed Search bbPress plugin:
Log in to admin > Plugins > Add New > search for "search bbpress" > Install Now
If you don't do this, wordpress' search form won't search your forums.

10)wordpress avatars & bbPress Avatars:
As of 2012-01-19, the latest version of WordPress (and therefore bbPress) has Gravitars support built in. So, if you sign up at https://en.gravatar.com/site/signup, you can associate an email address with your avatar. And if you also use that email address as the one you used for your wordpress/bbpress account then bbpress and wordpress will automatically show that avatar associated with the email address you supplied to gravitar.

Simple Local Avatars:
If you're like me, you don't want to force your visitors to sign up with gravitar, so the simplest avatar solution I found was to install the "Simple Local Avatars" Plugin:
Log in to admin > Plugins > Add New > search for "Simple Local Avatars" > Install Now
An avatar section will now display at the bottom of your profile page at /wp-admin/profile.php

11) Consolidating bbPress profile pages
bbPress gives you the choice of editing your profile in two places, but since avatars only show up at /wp-admin/profile.php and not index.php?bbp_user=[???]&edit=1 we will consolidate the profile editing to just /wp-admin/profile.php . To do this, we add the follwoing code to the end (but before the ?> ) of the wp-content/plugins/bbpress/bbp-themes/bbp-twenty[???]/functions.php file:

add_filter('bbp_get_user_edit_profile_url', 'my_bbp_get_user_edit_profile_url', 10, 0);
function my_bbp_get_user_edit_profile_url () {
return "/wp-admin/profile.php";
}

This basically overwrites the bbp_get_user_edit_profile_url function whereever it's used.

12) I'm done! For now at least. Hope that helps. Those were the things I cared about.

Looking good now !

To change the avatar size, create a new theme by copying the bbpress-twentyten theme to your WordPress themes directory and changing its name in style.css and then at line 53 of the file bbpress/loop-forums.php (can be the wrong file) look for bbp_author_link function. You will see the size as 14 there, change it to a bigger size.

But
This is changing the size of the grey squares containing the Gravatar ...
The size of the Gravatar remains the same, no matter which values I change here ...

I would like my image to fit the size of the grey Squares.

Any idea ?

img.avatar {
padding: 0px 10px 10px 0px;
float: left;
}

This padding is ruining it. Other than that size is ok, you can change it too though.

Can someone have a look here :
http://www.mjtutoriels.com/blog/qui-dit-quoi/

My Gravatars are all 1/4 of their expected size in the bbpress Forums ...

(But in the page footer, they all look great).

I don't know if it's a problem with the theme or with bbpress plugin ?

Thank you 4 help

Anyway, we'd need someone to actually take a look and submit those patches: I've already opened tickets about bbPress.org bugs in the past weeks but a lot of them are still there...

http://trac.bbpress.org/newticket

go to "component" and select "bbpress.org website"

feel free to still post them here but on TRAC is even better too

http://bbpress.org/forums/topic/all-member-names-anonymous-on-front-page-bbpressorg#post-70653

wysiwyg site:http://bbpress.org/plugins

I just noticed that download links at Download page should use a background image, but it cannot be found at the moment.

Full background attribute: url("images/button-grad.png") repeat-x scroll left top #333333

Wow, now background attribute is gone, so download links are nearly invisible... =P

I'm seeing him in Manchester in 3 weeks for the WordCamp, and was rather hoping my first sentance would be "thanks so much for the help" and not have him see a middle aged man crying the whole way through the weekend.

He didn't disappoint.

http://backpress.automattic.com/ticket/18 (the blocker for 1.0.3) and http://backpress.automattic.com/ticket/25 (the annoying -> bug) have both been fixed and closed.

If you're listening BackPress team, first drinks on me!

Thanks
Kev

http://backpress.automattic.com/ticket/18

All links to plugins from the plugin browser link to: http://bbpress.org/plugins/topic/#post-

Can be seen/reproduced here: http://bbpress.org/plugins/search.php?q=test

http://bbpress.org/forums/topic/whoa/page/5#post-70519

Full background attribute: url("images/button-grad.png") repeat-x scroll left top #333333

If we fix it here, then there's no pressure to fix it in BackPress.

Chris my friend,

We're less than 10 hours away from that bug being present for it's 3rd month.

Emails have been sent, Tweets have been sent, Trac reports have been filed, bug reports have been filed, patches have been submitted, Trac has been bumped (including by yourself), forum posts have been written, I've emailled Matt and Sam (though infairness it's neither of these guys fault) etc etc.

I've even emailled Westi, who I'm looking forward to meet in 3 weeks in Manchester.

Nothing, nil, nada, zilch, zero, tumbleweed.

I'm not sure if we have any leverage to apply any pressure, because if we do - it ain't working. At some stage, and that day might not be today of course, but at some stage we'll have to accept that maybe there is no pressure on anyone to fix it in BackPress.

I don't know if I can fix the < < thing locally (in an external?) but I would rather they just fix the BackPress bug properly. If we fix it here, then there's no pressure to fix it in BackPress.

The person who is doing these updates could even apply your patch to our own version of backPress on this site and it would be sorted.

And seriously, what is up with these >>> tags? It's about to span into it's 3rd month of not working. We can only help so much...

That is a BackPress bug, I think you know about it.. - http://backpress.automattic.com/ticket/25

All links to plugins from the plugin browser link to: http://bbpress.org/plugins/topic/#post-

Can be seen/reproduced here: http://bbpress.org/plugins/search.php?q=test

And seriously, what is up with these >>> tags? It's about to span into it's 3rd month of not working. We can only help so much...

I don't think Matt knows that we are changing the version manually. It would be nice to have that updated automatically, but I don't have enough access to make that happen with subversion, so I just change it manually.

I know, I know, I just thought it was funny that he did not even look at any last commit...