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.

As to your questions about sytles and functions, yes you can either combine them together or use include statements to include separate files for bbpress if you wish.

I'm getting quite far and have overcome a few problems myself which has been fun, but I am stuck with the style issue.

My theme and test is here: http://www.coffeesocial.co.uk/forums/forum/coffee-social-forum/

I am running a theme called Continuum, with a child theme that adds a few extra bits to the main theme.

I got as far as installing the files from the settings folder into my child theme folder (actually functions.php and style.css were overwritten because Filezilla did not warn me!!!)

Was that supposed to happen? Because it messed up the theme (although bbPress page style looked miles better) it still did not look much better than what it currently is: http://www.coffeesocial.co.uk/forums/forum/coffee-social-forum/

That aside, I went back and replaced the functions and style files with the correct ones from the original child theme to make my website look and function right.

Can I merge the two files style and functions to then include both necesarry code elements to let my theme and bbPress look correct?

It would be stupid to let the bbPress style and funcions overwrite becasue then it would mess up everyones themes. What did you guys do to get it working on a custom theme (i.e. not the one that comes with bbPress).

Cheers :)

Right now there is just the one theme available which I see is running correctly on your site. I'm sure more themes are in the pipeline.

I have installed BBPress into my wordpress site - http://www.3hreedee.com

However at the moment it looks pretty blank, is there anyway of installing a theme to bbpress even though it is within a wordpress site? I have tried uploading themes into the FTP themes folder however cannot find anywhere within bbadmin that would allow me to install these?

My test link is here:http://www.3hreedee.com/forums/

Thanks for your help.

Regards
Dan

http://bbpress.org/forums/topic/bbpress-20-shortcodes

but even easier, if you are ok with the default layout, is to just use the template, "bbPress - Forums (Index)" for the blank forum page you've created (under page attributes on the edit page).

It seems ridiculus that I'd have to create a separate page, with hyperlinks to each of the seperate forums. Can anyone help? Sorry for being slow at this but I have been wasting time, searching forums and watching horrible YouTube.com videos just to get my users access to your Forum. I heard it was the "best ever" and "simple" so I'm worried maybe that something didn't install right.

Would love help! Thanks in advance!!

Point taken. I've been a bit harsh on the Dev guys which I shouldn't have been. The system obviously does work fine as plenty of people use it. I'm just not very technically minded.

Good luck with the project, I'm sure it will be a success.

I'm not bashing SMF, the point is bbPress is brand new. The devs are creating a new product from scratch. You get a product, or documentation. It all takes time. Resources are finite.

It takes time to grow everything out. If more people don't volunteer their time, it is what it is. Do you have any idea how many people have worked on something like SMF? Or how long it's been around?

I'm not knocking anyone here, it's just good to have realistic expectations.

Suspect that for every user that manages finally to find the solution, have half a dozen that just think - Sod it, doesn't work, waste of time, delete.

Maybe it's some kind of elitist coder thing? If you can't fill in the missing technical details you can't join the club?

I've gone over to SMF, Simple Machines Forum purely because they do indeed have clear documentation and installation instructions. I have confidence in the team behind the script because they are thinking of the end user and not just the code. I suggest that if you want this excellent addition to wordpres to be the roaring success it deserves to be, you do the same.

Good luck with the project.

A slug is part of a URL, so Ithen visited domain.com/forums and it worked.

So I added a link to my menu for that URL, and I was done.

Basically, whatever you set the forums slug to, yu add to the end of your URL, and there's your forums

== Installation ==

1. Place the 'bbpress' folder in your '/wp-content/plugins/' directory.
2. Activate bbPress.
3. Visit 'Settings > Forums' and adjust your configuration.
4. Create some forums.
5. View your site.
6. Adjust the CSS of your theme as needed, to make everything pretty.
7. Create a page and add one or more of these short codes into it to display your forum: http://bbpress.org/forums/topic/bbpress-20-shortcodes

All the best.

Bob

Here is the thread listing the shortcodes - http://bbpress.org/forums/topic/bbpress-20-shortcodes

Ahh thanks tgiokdi, getting closer to knowing how to get this working.

So you install it.
Then you make a wordpress page.
Then you add a shortcode tag to that page.

I'm guessing you add it into the HTML view of the page or a post and it would look something like:

[bbpress(testforum)]

Where the name of the forum is 'testforum'.

I haven't tried this but maybe its a step in the right direction. Can anyone tell me what the tag looks like to get the forum to show up... or is it a secret ;)

... yup, it looks exactly like it did before I installed bbPress...
no link to forums. The only way anyone can access the forums is if they;re an admin, and go into the forum settings and click "view forum"

You're obviously telling us theres a magic invisible link outside the Admin area??

are we supposed to make a page with something like [bbpress] inside? And dont bother trying [bbpress] it doesn't work.

Now I have a separate instance running, but integrated with my WP installation.

bbPress 2.0 is over a year in the making. Documentation will come next.

1. Place the 'bbpress' folder in your '/wp-content/plugins/' directory.
2. Activate bbPress.
3. Visit 'Settings > Forums' and adjust your configuration.
4. Create some forums.
5. View your site.
6. Adjust the CSS of your theme as needed, to make everything pretty.

You have to do plenty more than these steps if you want to install and have some forums up and running on your blog.

I think it's a bit of a cheat to suggest this is so easy to complete. Absolutely hellish in my experience. 2 days in and still nothing.

You make no mention of setting up pages with the shortcode tags, no mention about issues with sign up conflicts and documentation is non existent if you want to add it to wordpress.

Is this another case of tech people making a great system and then just forgetting that people have to use it?

Where are the wordpress installation instructions?

Please someone just tell me if any exist as I'll go for another system if not.

Bob

I got my forums to show after following the install steps again. I copied the files from the bbp-twentyten folder to my main theme folder and then added the line: add_theme_support( 'bbpress' );

to my functions.php file (inside this main theme folder, not the one in wp-includes...I'm assuming this is correct?)

The forum now shows, but the styling is all messed up. Is there any way to have the forum follow the formatting/style of my current theme without having to edit a bunch of CSS? The theme I'm using is a custom build which I did not create so it's been a struggle to figure out what's going on with it. Here's a link to my forum page:
http://foreverathletes.com/forums/forum/community-2/

If I merge the contents of the bbp-twentyten functions.php file with my own functions.php, some styling is brought in, but it's still a mess. I realize you're not here to help with design aspects, but is there any way to get the plugin to just work with my current styling?

I'll offer up some points on clarification in a few.

Thanks for the help.

I'm going back through the original theme compatibility topic. I've noticed some of the answers are in the comments section of that thread. I do know how to use child themes, I just believe the instructions for the custom install are worded in a confusing way. Thanks for the response.