bbPress.org

There’s no way for me to contain either my excitement or anxiety when I say that bbPress 2.6.0 is available now! 🎉

This version of bbPress has been in development for just a bit under 6 years (yikes!) over which 420 tickets were resolved via 1737 individual code commits.

There are so many improvements that a changelog hardly seems fitting for this post, but the major features include per-forum moderation, a bunch of new platforms to import from, and an extensible engagements API that now powers the relationships between users, forums, topics, replies, subscriptions, and favorites.

At the time of this writing, bbPress is installed on approximately 336,000 WordPress installations, and is the most widely installed forum software in the world (according to BuiltWith.com and other sources.) Several of those are right here on bbPress.org, BuddyPress.org, and WordPress.org, the later of which includes a few dozen separate languages for non-English speaking communities of contributors all over the world.

The elephant in the room… the reason that 2.6.0 took so long, is pretty simple. bbPress has a small contributor pool, and none of us are 100% dedicated towards it. The project gets very little community feedback, which makes it hard to know if everything is working perfectly, or nobody is testing it at all.

So… 4 less-than part-time folks supporting over 300k sites, each with their own thousands of users, depending on us.

The pressure is high, and the chamber is echo’y, and as my own career has progressed these past 13 years, the numbers above make me increasingly nervous.

And the longer something takes to do is the higher the expectations are, and I personally locked up pretty hard multiple times on whether done was done enough to be trusted by so many having been tested by so few.

But… good things come to those who wait, and I’m sincerely sorry to have kept any of you waiting for too long.

bbPress 2.6.0 has been running smoothly on these forums since day 0. It’s stable, pretty, and a joy to use. We know you are gonna love it!

🐝💚

Today we are releasing bbPress 2.5.14, which fixes a few small bugs we’ve noticed since 2.5.13 was released, in particular we’ve fixed some incompatibilities when using PHP 7.1, an unexpected debug notice with the Topics & Replies widgets, and improved validation and sanitization of database properties with the forum converter.

Also, remember that since bbPress 2.5.12, the minimum WordPress version allowed is 4.7. If you need to use a previous version of WordPress, you will want to continue to use 2.5.11.

bbPress 2.6 is still in the release candidate phase while we tie up some loose ends across WordPress.org, but I’ll let you know when it’s ready to go!

Today we are releasing bbPress 2.5.13, which fixes a few small bugs we’ve noticed since 2.5.12 was released, and also adds some sanitization to anonymous user data that went missing from previous versions.

If your site allows anonymous users (users without registered accounts) to create topics & replies in your forums, you’ll want to upgrade to 2.5.13 right away. This feature is not very widely used on public forums because spammers very aggressively target these kinds of sites, but for communities that rely on this feature, please know you can safely upgrade to 2.5.13 without any issues.

Also, remember that since bbPress 2.5.12, the minimum WordPress version allowed is 4.7. If you need to use a previous version of WordPress, you will want to continue to use 2.5.11.

bbPress 2.6 is still in the release candidate phase while we tie up some loose ends across WordPress.org, but I’ll let you know when it’s ready to go!

Oh, bother! Out now is bbPress 2.5.12, which fixes a bug for WordPress 4.7 users who did the right thing and updated to bbPress 2.5.11. Some of you may have noticed your bbPress menu items disappear – this release fixes that stinger. 🐝

2.5.12 officially bumps the minimum WordPress version requirement to 4.7 for all releases going forward. If you are stuck on a previous version of WordPress, please continue to use 2.5.11.

This cut-off is in place because the improvements to user-roles in WordPress 4.7 are really that important, and all future bug-fix releases to 2.5 and major releases going forward will be taking advantage of them.

If you’ve updated to 4.7 and are one of the unlucky few to get stung by the missing-menu bug, please accept my sincere apologies along with an update to 2.5.12 to relieve the itching.

bbPress 2.5.11 is out, and is a maintenance release for all previous 2.x versions. 2.5.11 includes support for the soon to be released WordPress 4.7. If you’re planning on updating to WordPress 4.7 right away, you’ll want to update to bbPress 2.5.11 immediately.

If you’re using any version of bbPress 2.x and have not yet updated, please take a moment to update your bbPress installations to 2.5.11. If you’re using WordPress’s built-in updater, it should only take a click or two. If you need help, please reach out in our support forums and someone will be happy to assist you.

These fixes have also been ported over to 2.6, which we continue to run here at bbPress.org and BuddyPress.org.

Speaking of bbPress 2.6, per-forum moderators, favorites, and subscriptions are fully refactored and working pretty great. Our findings have also helped push performance improvements upstream to WordPress core, and are already employed across the forums on WordPress.org.

bbPress 2.5.10 is out, and is a security release for all previous 2.x versions. 2.5.10 includes additional escaping on user display names in places where names & avatars are commonly displayed together.

These changes are internal to bbPress and do not affect any third-party themes or modifications to bbPress template parts. If you are using a third-party theme or template parts, you will inherit these fixes automatically.

If you’re using any version of bbPress 2.x and have not yet updated, please take a moment to update your bbPress installations to 2.5.10. If you’re using WordPress’s built-in updater, it should only take a click or two. If you need help, please reach out in our support forums and someone will be happy to assist you.

These fixes have also been ported over to 2.6, which we continue to run here at bbPress.org and BuddyPress.org.

Thank you to HackerOne user psych0tr1a for identifying (and responsibly disclosing) these findings to the WordPress security team, who worked to get 2.5.10 out within a few hours from when the original report came in.

Speaking of bbPress 2.6, we’re working on refactoring per-forum moderators now, and we’ll have a beta ready for everyone to try shortly!

bbPress 2.5.9 is out, and is a security release for all previous 2.x versions.

bbPress versions 2.5.8 and earlier are susceptible to a form of cross-site-scripting, due to the way users are linked to their profiles when they are mentioned in topics and replies.

If you’re using any version of bbPress 2.x and have not yet updated, please take a moment to update your bbPress installations to 2.5.9. If you’re using WordPress’s built-in updater, it should only take a click or two. If you need help, please reach out in our support forums and someone will be happy to assist you.

Thank you to Marc-Alexandre Montpas for identifying (and responsibly disclosing) his findings to the WordPress security team. Everyone involved worked diligently to get 2.5.9 out as quickly as possible.

These fixes have also been ported over to bbPress 2.6, which we continue to run here at bbPress.org and BuddyPress.org.

Hi everyone!

The current major version of bbPress (2.5.x) has been going strong for about a year now, without any major blockages, problems, or breakage. If you helped make bbPress as great as it is, please pat yourself on the back… now.

Stephen and I have been steadily improving and readying the next major version (2.6) ever since releasing 2.5.0, and while many huge features and neat little improvements have already landed in the development version, there are 2 features that will likely get bumped to 2.7 so we can call 2.6 done:

• bbPress as Post Comments
• Forums as Taxonomies

These two features are fully architected and planned, but do not have enough progress in code for them to hold up the release of 2.6.

In the coming weeks, look forward to beta’s and RC’s of bbPress 2.6 without the two features mentioned above. For 2.7, we’ll likely focus *only* on those two features and nothing else.

Thanks for being patient, and passionate about bbPress. We love forums, and we love our users and fans! <3

This report presents the results of the 2015 bbPress Survey held from May 28 – July 10, 2014. Two hundred thirteen participants from forty-one countries completed the survey. Thank you all.

Read more →

bbPress 2.5.8 is out now, and it fixes several issues regarding user query parsing and hardening of ajax actions for logged out users for all previous bbPress 2.x installations. If you’re using any version of bbPress 2.x and have not yet updated, please do so right away. If you need help, please reach out in our support forums and someone will be happy to assist you.

These fixes have also been ported over to 2.6, which we continue to run here at bbPress.org and BuddyPress.org.