[btko]

Hi there,

What I’m looking for is to have a simple forum integrated with my WP installation. It seems like bbPress is the perfect choice but now I’m not so sure.

I’ve just this week came across and installed bbPress. I have nothing live yet, as I’m still working on a template but now as of yesterday I’ve heard of buddypress… and now I’m confused. It seems like the two products are made by the same people, are intended for similar purposes, but some people have both installed. On top of that it seems like support for bbPress is waning.

I’m not sure how much of the above is true, but that’s the impression I’ve been getting over the last couple days. So can anyone shed light on the situation for me?

Regards,

[Greg]

I am using WP+BBP+BP on a moderately sized site. 1000s of users, ~1M pageviews/month. Here’s my 2c…

What are your needs?

If what you need is a forum, use bbPress. Much less resource hungry and more flexible as a pure forum than the integrated forum in BuddyPress (itself also a fork of bbPress). You will be up and running a lot more quickly. But yes, the future is a little uncertain.

If you need to build a social network (friends, groups, private messaging, activity) then use BuddyPress. Be prepared for a much bigger load on your server and more theme complexity. The resulting site will be quite sophisticated though.

Note that you can start on bbPress and move to BuddyPress later. This will involve some work integrating databases later on, but it can be done quite easily if you know some SQL. This is what I would do in your situation – start out with the minimal subset of features to build your forum and take it from there.

[kevinjohngallagher]

What I’m looking for is to have a simple forum integrated with my WP installation. It seems like bbPress is the perfect choice but now I’m not so sure

If you want a “simple forum” then bbPress fits that need.

If you want single sign on with your WordPress install, then bbPress is probably the best out there.

as of yesterday I’ve heard of buddypress… and now I’m confused

Yeah, we have to explain this every day to someone.

Truly wish anyone with Documentation rights would maybe save this as a sticky or maybe in the documentation section or something…

BuddyPress and bbPress are not connected.

BuddyPress allows you to install a forked version of bbPress. It is not the same as this bbPress. We don’t know why they kept the name. We don’t know why they don’t publicise that they are different. If you use BuddyPress in any way, we can’t help you on this forum.

It seems like the two products are made by the same people, are intended for similar purposes, but some people have both installed

BuddyPress is ‘like’ a WordPress plugin, in the same vein of a fancy WooTheme or Thesis framework. Its like an additional layer onto which other plugins can be installed.

About a year ago the BuddyPress team, under the great coding skills and direction of Andy Peatling (http://apeatling.wordpress.com/) forked and ported a version of bbPress to be run as a BuddyPress plugin.

So bbPress and BuddyPress are two different products, with different aims and goals, and some people can have both installed – just not this version of bbPress.

On top of that it seems like support for bbPress is waning

Yes.

But it will not go away or die. It runs the Automattic support forums, so its not going anywhere. It will be ported to a WrodPress plugin at some stage. Other than that sentance, we have no information on that.

If what you need is a forum, use bbPress.

If you need to build a social network (friends, groups, private messaging, activity) then use BuddyPress.

Thats basically it

[btko]

Thanks Reboot and Kevin, for your answers. That really cleared it up for me; and yes, it would be great if this information was sticky’d or something. For my site it’s basically a blog with a forum for under 100 users so bbPress sounds like exactly my solution.

Thanks again for the answers. And I hope to be around and help this community as well.

Regards,