bbPress.org

… might not be to use bbpress at all.

I have a standalone bbpress that I would love to import & integrate. I assumed that the “forum” would be a category on my wp install, and the topics subcategories, and the forum posts seen as wp posts and comments.

This would allow my wp site to act as neither blog nor forum but a truly integrated website, with everyone acting like an author, and a central way for me to control the content flow.

But from my explorations I discovered that it doesn’t work this way at all. Forum posts are not wp posts, there’s still 2 separate systems in this “integrated” model. So the comments on my wp install have a different codebase than the comments/replies in my forum, for example.

I’m considering totally tricking out one of the many form plugins (Gravity Forms, etc) to create “posts” in the “forum” category in my wp install. So the whole concept of the forum is nothing more than having logged in users create guest posts in a truly integrated wp install.

Just curious if anyone has done this — I can’t be the first guy to think of this idea. The biggest drawback so far is that i would need to find a way to import the posts in my old standalone forum to become posts in my new setup.