Writing an importer is a *lot* of work. Right off the bat a forum importer is going to be at least twice as much work as, say, a MovableType -> WordPress importer.

Now you have to take into account how many, ultimately, separate importers you would have to write. Let's see here... vBulletin, phpBB, Vanilla, punBB, SMF, IPB... and those are just some of the popular ones. So 6 importers *might* cover most off people's needs.

Then you have to keep in mind that the importers are constantly breaking because of software updates to the original forums packages. I'd say ever 2-4 months you can expect breakage due to an update.

Bottom line? You are looking at 6 importers (at least) to cover the popular forum suites, that not only would take a huge time investment to get off the ground, but would have to be constantly maintained and updated so they don't break or get out of date.

Is it do-able? Sure. However, if you want @jjj to tackle this don't expect to ever see another bbPress update or feature again - it's just a matter of time.

This is really where contributors need to step in and help out. This would ideally be written and maintained by different contributors.

Consequently, most of the people who would want to use bbPress probably are already using another forum script and need help migrating. It is collossal mistake to leave this for community plugins.

If I have a forum software in a production environment, then one of the major factors influencing my decision regarding migration is whether or not there is a robust, stable, tried and tested and reliable migration path to the target software. This is extremely important for me. In fact, I would suffer a somewhat inferior software willingly rather than move to a better software if there is no clear migration path or there is a high degree of risk in migration.

It is a mistake on part of bbPress to leave migration to community plugin developers. Even if there were some plugins out there that did the job, it would be much less reassuring to prospective users compared to a migration/import path created by the bbPress team. As it happens there are only 2 import plugins ( http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/forumconverter/ and http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/bbconverter/) out there and both of them are broken and not supported.

WordPress does it right in building an importer directly into the core.

Over the next 18-24 months, I expect to see a mass exodus from phpBB as they rewrite the software from ground up ( http://area51.phpbb.com/phpBB/viewtopic.php?f=75&t=41583). If bbPress provide a good migration path, it stands the chance to capture some of fleeing population.

Task

I think it would be greatly beneficial to the project if the bbPress team build a bbPress importer that supports the top 4 forum software: phpBB, Invision, SMF and vBulletin.

Such a migration tool, importer or converter will:

i) import topics and forum hierarchies into bbpress

including the relations between forums, topics and replies
and slugs for forums, topics and replies
ii) generate an .htaccess to place in the old forum directory so that old URLs are 301 redirected to new ones.

iii) import users including profiles, passwords, signatures and roles

@jjj You have mentioned at http://bbpress.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/1740 that this is more appropriate for a plugin and that bundling that code in the core of bbPress seems needless for many users that are starting off fresh.

I believe that this function is too important to be left to the mercy of others. There is a huge trust issue...if I have to entrust my data to someone, I want to make sure that they are reliable, trustworthy, good enough, and understand the software well.

I take your point about not bundling the function in the core. How about a migration plugin by the bbPress team?

if you have problem installing wordpress plugin then read detailed instructions here:

http://codex.wordpress.org/Managing_Plugins#Installing_Plugins

The only thing I think I had to do was set up rewrites in .htaccess from all other subsites and the main site to view user profile pages.

For the main page:

RewriteRule ^users/(.*)$ /forums/users/$1 [L,R=301]

For subsites:

RewriteRule ^[subsite]/users/(.*)$ /forums/users/$1 [L,R=301]

Also, I am using the "Move Privacy Options" plugin to make the subsite private, and I noticed that the bbpess rss feeds are not private. I am currently woking on fixing this and so far this is what I have got, which is by no means perfect.

You will need to find the functions bbp_display_topics_feed_rss2 and bbp_display_replies_feed_rss2 in bbp-topic-functions.php and bbp-reply-functions.php respectively, and add this code to the beginning of each fuction

if (!isset($_SERVER['PHP_AUTH_USER'])) {
          header('WWW-Authenticate: Basic realm="My Website"');
          header('HTTP/1.1 401 Authorization Required');
          exit;
        }
        $user = wp_authenticate($_SERVER['PHP_AUTH_USER'], $_SERVER['PHP_AUTH_PW']);

        if ( !$user || is_wp_error($user) ) {
          header('WWW-Authenticate: Basic realm="My Website"');
          header('HTTP/1.1 401 Authorization Required');
        }

Which should limit who can read the rss feeds to people who have a login to your wordpress site.

Any ideas would be really appreciated.

Where are the files for reg, log in, lost p/w etc.?

kangenguru: When I did it using your technique, I had issues :( the BBPress plugin did not have the bb-config.php, so I used the bb-config that is within the buddypress. Hence, I couldnt get the bb-press 2.0 to work. But again when I did it with what is built into buddypress itself, all the files and folders showed up like they were missing.

I am not saying that integrating buddyPress+BBPress is bad, but all I am saying is that I did not know how to work with this issue (could be the lack of knowledge). If anyone could help, that would be awesome.

PS: please do not ask me to google for the documents... I have googled for the past 3 weeks and found several solutions and most of them did not work in my situation. So any help would be greatly appreciated.

Which said: "There doesn't seem to be a bb-config.php file. This usually means that you want to install bbPress."

When I click on "Go to step 1", nothing happens - it just refreshes the page, and does not display the first step. There no error messages.

I am using PHP version 5.1.6
I don't have word press installed.

Any Ideas?

Install WP.
Enable Multisite, but you don't have to create the other sites yet.
Install and activate Buddypress without installing or activating forums through BuddyPress.
Install and activate bbPress.

You are going to get that warning for the time being because BuddyPress 1.5 and bbPress 2.0 aren't fully integrated yet. Better/Full integration is being worked on for BuddyPress 1.6 which is supposed to come out around the same time as WP 3.3, which just hit beta 1 and is scheduled for release at the end of November

I am trying to make my dream-setup:

One multi-site with six sites.
The main site has bussypress1.5 with bbPress2.0.

I can;t get this to work... Is there already a tutorial on how to do this?
At first I tried installing BuddyP. and then activating fora and installing bbPress in the process; enebling it network-wide. But then the bbPress-fora show up on the dashboard of every site.

Now I tried to enable bbPress only on the site I want to use it, but it generates conflicts with the Buddypress installation. I get this error:

"The forums component has not been set up yet."

(also, on a side-note; BuddyPress can only be configured on the dashboard of the Network, not only on the site I actually want to have it running on, but that seems to fit maybe more on the BuddyPress forum).

I'd be gratefull for any help or step-by-step guidance here!

The solution I posted worked and I don't know what to tell you... Maybe you can put a pop-up link instead of using thickbox/prettyphoto/any other overlay plugin.

1. In single-user-edit.php, Before

<?php bbp_get_template_part( 'bbpress/content', 'single-user-edit' ); ?>

add: http://pastebin.com/rfLFaRvq

2. In style.css add:

.bbp-single-user-edit { position:relative; }
#user-avatar-display { position:absolute; top:160px; right:20px; text-align:center; width:155px; }
#user-avatar-display a { color:#000; text-decoration:none; text-align:center; };

3. In functions.php add: http://pastebin.com/YfbiN65x

That's it.
Original solution: http://wordpress.org/support/topic/plugin-user-photo-front-end-upload?replies=17#post-2186636
It works great for me. Cheers.

should edit avatar-upload.php
changing line 7, the following

do bb_auth (); / / logged in?

with

bb_auth ('logged_in'); / / logged in?

Please let me know, if this work for you, thanks

I remember 2 years ago as I suffered to do this on another site, they were separate systems. Now, as they are plugins, is extremely easy.

Congratulations to all team WordPress.

I did exactly this (installed in separate plugins) and it worked fine.

The only thing that is kept turned on the option to create forums in groups, since they are different subjects of the forum site.

But both work very well (bbPress and BuddyPress).

Thanks!

I wish I had on my site/blog WordPress both: a social network and a forum.

<b>But what is the best option for integrating it with 100% quality?</b>

What I tried:
First installed BuddyPress and activate forum, then, within groups is possible to have discussion forums.

But the problem is that when accessing http://www.site.com/forums list just the latest topics and the group they belong to.

And I would need, beyond the scope of forum for each group, a global forum for the entire site, to divide the topics into categories ("forums" different).

What suggestions?
Should I install BuddyPress bbPress and WordPress as separate plugins? This does not affect integration?