bbPress user interface icons

That’s right, bbPress 1.0 finally hits the tubes!

After many months in alpha, beta and release candidate status, bbPress 1.0 final is now available for download.

Thanks to the many testers who contributed so much important feedback during the pre-release period, going way back to 1.0 alpha 1.

This release offers many usability improvements, based on making bbPress more approachable for adopters who are accustomed to WordPress. To that end bbPress 1.0 now has a similar administration interface to WordPress and uses similar descriptions and names where appropriate. bbPress also behaves more like WordPress when it comes to things like automatically generating your .htaccess file when setting up permalinks.

Here are a few of the improvements over the 0.9 series:

  • “Voices” count on topics reports the number of individuals participating in a conversation
  • Native support for cookie integration (single sign-on) with WordPress 2.7 and 2.8
  • Optional support for memcached object caching
  • Time-zone and Daylight Savings time support
  • A complete XML-RPC publishing API
  • Pingback support – each topic can receive pingbacks, just like a blog post
  • All javascript has been moved to jQuery
  • Optionally allow login via email address as well as username
  • New meta API allows arbitrary meta data to be stored for posts, topics, forums, options, tags or even meta (that’s right, meta-meta – first legitimate use wins a prize)!
  • Display names used primarily for user identification display, which allows special characters to be used
  • Themes can now have a “functions.php” file, which is automatically loaded
  • Accessibility improvements on forms and in the default theme, including WAI-ARIA roles
  • Major overhaul of the admin interface
  • Optional Akismet statistics page
  • Cute new icons from Ben Dunkle (pictured above)
  • Improved use of posts admin to manage spam
  • Prettier Kakumei (default) theme
  • Hello Louie! Plugin

If you are upgrading from any earlier release to 1.0 then you absolutely should backup all you files and database before doing so. You also may need to make minor adjustments to your templates. Before upgrading, disable all plugins.

Dedication

bbPress 1.0 is named “Bechet” (pronounced beh-shay) after the pioneering jazz saxophonist Sidney Bechet.