bbPress.org

I ask that you excuse the general tone of this post as I’m dealing with a next-door-neighbors dog that has been barking for 3 months straight morning, noon, and night, but at the risk of sounding like a snot, I think I’ll become a fan of bbPress once integration works correctly.

My opinion on this matter is that maybe your efforts could have been better focused elsewhere.

I know that we all need a break from the grind, but if one of my clients had an integral operation issue with my product, even if it was free, there’s an obligation to resolve it. Just because it’s the best thing out there doesn’t exactly make the lack of response or attention to the broken integration acceptable.

I’ve checked the trac and scoured the forums flailing my arms all the way, and so far no one seems to have figured it out or given a time-line to a resolution. I would settle for a quick and dirty fix or even someone that could point me in a more obvious direction on how to resolve it myself.

That this is what the bbPress development team feels is the most important thing to do just seems like bad timing on someones part. In a time where world economies are suffering, I think it’s probably more important now than ever before to stay focused on the task at hand, because there’s always someone waiting to do a better job at your job for less pay.

And lets face facts, everyone that is a fan of bbPress, is already here. I personally don’t think we don’t need another place to go quite yet. I don’t disagree that it’s a good idea, but maybe get a working 1.0 version out there first?

Well, I’m not missing the point of final products, but WordPress is at version 2.7 and isn’t quite a final product either. The result of the community driven open source product is that pre 1.0 alpha/beta software isn’t really any more or less stable than the next “stable” version, because even if development stops for a moment to celebrate the next milestone, there is still more to do.

I also get how bbPress was introduced and how the developers have chosen to support it. I just disagree with promoting a product before it’s even usable. I guess I take more pride in my product than that. I run the trunk version of both WP and BBP on a relatively small website. I update them nightly. It’s really the best way for me to stay involved and report back problems. I just feel this integration issue is way more important than the attention it gets. It just seems to me like it’s never really worked right ever.

And I also choose personally to not believe that just because a product is graciously delivered to someone for free, that there aren’t certain expectations placed on the quality of that product. I could give someone a cookie, but if it’s stale or poisoned doesn’t really make me a good friend.

Also, the last thing I want to do is bite the hand that feeds me. I really love bbPress and WordPress, promise. I just find the development cycle frustrating some days.

(Off topic: We’ve called animal control, the police, and the condo association. The police say they can’t give her a ticket if she isn’t home, and when she’s home the dog doesn’t bark so they can’t ticket her then either. They’re useless. Animal control told me that if I do not have proof of cruelty in terms of the dog not having adequate food and water, they will not pursue the owner. The condo association is writing her their third letter asking her to correct the issue. Writing a letter is less effective than posting on a forum. )

I will chime in with my thoughts.

1. Most people who find bbPress do so because of its integration capabilities with WordPress. I would say that is the most common non-problem question on these forums. How do you integrate the logins so you can log in at either bbPress or WordPress and the login carries across to the other side. Integrated; seemless.

2. The other common thing people want to be able to do is make their bbPress install look like their WordPress install. Loading WordPress inside bbPress is not recommended, but it’s the easiest way to accomplish including the header, sidebar, footer, etc. But, that seems to break other things. Regardless, I would say that’s the second most requested feature, how do I get my bbPress installation to look like a WordPress page. I know it’s not a WordPress plugin, but, this is what people want.

So, 1) integrated logins and 2) making bbPress look like WordPress. If it can’t do those things easily, then it’s just forum software. Maybe it’s better in the things it does and doesn’t do, compared to other forum software, but we should stop saying you can integrate bbPress and WordPress because it just doesn’t happen easily. So, it’s forum software from the people who make WordPress.

Also, WordPress 2.5 is recommended by bbPress for integrated logins. 2.5 came out around April 2008 IIRC.

You know, I thought the same thing as johnjamesjacoby when I saw this post: how about fixing what’s broken and leave Facebook alone. Then I thought Facebook doesn’t take much time to set up and it might be a good diversion. So, it’s harmless in and of itself, but, really, I would prefer to fix these two issues and then see the volume of support requests here drop off a cliff.

Just my $.02.

I actually had the same reaction the JJJ had, and i feel that Chris Hajer did a really nice job in summing it up. My initial thoughts were, so Sam is posted missing for 2 months and when he reappears he’s made a facebook page??? (it’s hard to think that automattic got $29million in January to pay for sucj development but i digress).

Sam, i think that maybe you cant see the wood for the trees here mate.

I know, you know, JJJ and CK knows that Matt wanted XML-RPC controls in BBpress. Which is ofc all and well as he pays the bills. But as i’ve said before, there is NOT ONE post about it (request, bug, questions, comment) on this forum or on _CK_’s showcase forum, because it’s frankly of little or not use to any of us. That is not to say developers cant see it’s value in the long run, it’s just that when you say that WordPress is a “moving target” we kind of think… Yeah, but you’ve had 8 months to hit that target and instead you’ve developed a feature that no-one wants or uses. Heck you folks at WP dont use it (it’s THAT bloody useful).

I, and everyone else, understand the way in which this software came about. We also understand that it’s officially ‘beta’ though lets be honest you guys call 0.9 stable. But that’s not to say that maybe, just maybe, if you want this software community to thrive then listening in some part to the concerns of the community who are doing our best to help is a step in the right direction.

“Integration of user tables and cookies is a priority on the other hand, as is creating a full XML-RPC interface for those who want to pull data into a WordPress install”

So what you’re saying is that you have two priorities. One which has a forum full of people pulling their heads out and screaming over. And one that no-one is needing straight away. Why, oh WHY, is the later being worked upon first?

Surely, and i’m worried this might cause personal offence where none is intended, ANY IDIOT can see that logging in and registration is, i dunno, VITAL to a forum?!?!?

So why is it not the TOP priority?

And if it is the top priority, and its so unbelievably complex that making BBpress integrate with WP 2.6 or 2.7 in the 248 days since the cookie processing change was announced, is it likely that we’re going to have it fixed any time soon?

Could not have said it any better… If Matt was paying my bills, I would be the first to step up and commit myself to making bbPress exactly what the audience of WordPress wants it to be and still make Matt happy…

Matt, are you listening?

Hi Ipstenu,

I’m going to disagree with you a little mate, and try not to take it off topic too much.

Yes, each adjective is subjective to ones perspective. “easy” and “alot” etc. can mean different things to different people. That said, lets look at them a sec.

“extensive plugins?”

There are just under 120 plugins for BBPress.

Over 1/3rd haven’t been updated in a year. I’d wager a good few of them don’t work anymore.

And the ones with latest comments 6-12 months ago, usually don’t work either.

Also from what i’ve seen about 1/4 of them are redundant or useless in 0.9 / 1.0alpha.

So we’re looking at maybe 40-50 plugins.

Does anyone think that’s “extensive”?

I know it’s subjective, but, um, well you can make up your own mind.

“You CAN redesign the hell out of a bbPress site”

To a certain extent i’ll agree and disagree with it. To redesign a bbpress forum so that it doesn’t look like this theme actually takes a bucket load of work. I’ve done it for 3 websites, and every time it’s involved me writing full on plugins just to output the right code, or W3C acceptable code, or overwrite the damned code thats stored outwith the templates (why is that btw?).

Can i stop and ask that? WHY does a theme designer NEED to write alot of non basic php code as a separate to their theme plugin, just to over write HARDCODED design output? Since when was hardcoding design output into the core of a theme-able piece of software a good idea?

What you can’t do with bbpress, is hand a Designer/ HTML coder your template files and expect to get anything back that’s not a flat output of a table. It’s a point I raised a while ago (and i’ll not bang on about it) but BBpress works at doing one thing. Outputting a flat list from a database.

In terms of your all forums kinda look the same , i have to agree in this instance. Most forums, ipb/vBulletin/phpBB etc do all look the same. but guess what. bbpress doesn’t look much like them. I’ve stated before BBpress’s horrific handling of parent/children with categories etc. is bloody woeful; but if you’re talking about usability, then bbpress starts to fall down a little.

What it outputs is simple, yes, to the user, but it’s not very perceptive. Finding a specific post or vital information (say that 0.9 = WP2.5 – you know , something you’d expect to be on the documentation or download page but is actually on page 3 of a topic started 1 year ago) , is a disaster. It’s reliant on the user

who posted the content using TAGS appropriotely and ofc it requires a better search function.

Lets not forget that ‘tags’ are fairly new, and really only web savvy people use/know about them. A huge chunk of this software’s cross-pollination and iteration is taken out of the developers hands and placed smack bang in teh hand of the end user (whom we know nothing about nor can reply on).

Just because something is simple/plain, does not make it inherently usable.

Think Boo.com.

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Anyway, there are a number of things we’d all like to see fixed in bbpress. Some more vital than others. we’ll all agree and disagree on many, but my over riding feeling is this:

Our Clients, customers, friends, colleagues, schools, own sites, will at some stage like to, nah need to, be updated to the latest version of WordPress. it will vary from person to person, but at some stage you know that a wordpress upgrade is probably in the pipes.

But if you’re using BBpress, then you’ve been forced to hold off upgrading for over half a year. We will be/are a whole version behind, and surely someone can see that it’s got to be an issue.

I suppose what i dont understand is, and maybe i’m the only one, so please 100% feel free to explain it to me like an idiot.

if The most requested topic on this website is “wordpress integration”, and the singular fail point of the software is “wordpress integration”, and teh company that owns this software also own wordpress, and it happens to be your singular initial selling point of the software, um, well, WHY THE HELL HAS IT NOT BEEN THE ONLY PRIORITY AND FIXED IN THE 3 MONTHS SINCE 1.0ALPHA CAME OUT?

We’ve had other fixes, new code, new features, a facebook page (see i hadn’t forgotten), but yet without even a hint of when this base level feature might appear, we’re told it’s a moving target.

Please, explain it to me like a 5 year old, that hasn’t read the blog posts linking to the $29 million dollars investment, that also lead to Sam being taken on as a full time developer on bbpress (i.e. dont say no time/resources).

I don’t think the Facebook page setup stole any time away from bbPress development.

I’m a big fan (and now a Facebook fan) of bbPress and don’t want to come off as ungrateful. But I’m definitely concerned about how long it’s taking to get WordPress integration going. Am I wrong in assuming it would be one of the highest priorities?

I recognize WordPress has been in a state of flux regarding logins and I likely don’t know all the deep developer details, but it’s getting difficult to maintain confidence in the project. Will the 2.7 release make things any easier?

I’m not sure how many more times I can repeat that bbPress is pre-release software.

Automattic isn’t making a dime off it, it’s not being promoted, there’s no guaranteed support, all assistance, plugin development is completely voluntary. Every part of bbPress is subject to completely change and break overnight. There is no timetable, there are no feature or bug priorities. Assume you will be on your own.

If that bothers anyone, or they feel the need to rant about it, please stop using it asap and go get SMF – I am completely serious about that. I’ve sent several people about here to vbulletin where money was no object and they could afford it and all the extra hardware it requires when they grow. It has every feature you could possibly want after 10 years of development and all the bloat and price tag to prove it.

If you want forums directly integrated with WordPress and don’t like bbPress, you can go use one of the several discontinued single-developer plugins available for WordPress. They are all slow and buggy and break with every wordpress upgrade, but there you go.

Integration is tricky because it was not a priority for bbPress in the first year or two and there is no such thing as a “standard” wordpress install, everyone has their own weird configuration. The radical changes to WordPress security in the past year have not helped at all with integration ease. Sam is going to try to make integration easier in a future version by creating a plugin for WordPress that assists with the process (in fact a WP integration plugin has now become a requirement because of some recent changes with WordPress).

I suspect bbPress will become much more of a priority for Automattic in 2009 but there’s no guarantee about that of course. So weigh your options and either stick with it or move on but please don’t rant against the very people trying to help the project.

How is repeating that you’re not happy with integration, that it doesn’t work, that it fails, over and over again helping?

Ticket #1007 has been opened, by SAM and that means developers agree. It is highest priority and flagged as critical. So look, they know, they agree, and they’re working on it. Can they tell you how long it will take? No. And instead of doing what my office tries to make me do (make up an answer) they gave you the truth. It will take as long as it takes. If that doesn’t work for you, then you should move on to something else. Because those are your options, unless you want to write the code yourself and offer it up.

There are a lot of tickets (see https://trac.bbpress.org/report/1 ) and a small amount of coders. If you want to (and can) fix bugs, fix bugs. If you can only report on them, report. But once the report is there, badgering the techies to be smarter faster doesn’t help anyone. It pisses off the techs who are trying, but honestly, you can’t inspire creativity any faster than it naturally comes

So thank you for reporting that integration sucks, and that the website implies something that isn’t exactly true – bbPress .9 works with WP 2.6, but it’s not full integration. That should probably be modified to say ‘shared login’ or such. There’s a ticket up for fixing real integration, so that is something that the dev team is aware of.

@Ipstenu: that ticket was opened two days ago. This topic was started three days ago. I’d say people bringing integration up here brought attention to the issue. This thread has been good for that reason alone.

@chrishajer, I know it was a recent ticket. I posted about it above. And yet the folks who are complaining about it never say thanks for agreeing it’s an issue. Which yeah, pisses me off, I admit it and I probably was a bit more bitchy than I should be. For that I apologize. I was grousing, in general, of the fact that people expect miracles. This isn’t an excuse for my attitude, and I’m not gonna delve into how I’m on Sam’s end of this at work right now. It’s a case of feeling the pain and wanting to defend my fellow techie sorts.

To anyone who felt I was attacking you personally, I didn’t mean to, and please accept my apology. Like you, I feel strongly about things, and disagreements come when people feel strongly.

To the developers: Thank you for raising a ticket on integration.

may I ask what the beta part of bbpress actuall is? is the “beta” thingy core related or more 3rd party related?