[ear1grey]

The words “tag” and “category” are merely different specifications of a generalised mechanism for grouping posts. In some implementations grouping is user editable, in others it’s purely an administrator task. The former is often described as tagging, the latter categorizing. It’s most common too for tags to be flat, but categories to be hierarchical, but again this is more of a result of the reason for the implementation.

My opinion is that both tagging and categorisation are the same thing – they’re just examples of grouping, with different control mechanisms.

Grouping facilitates what psychologists call chunking (the formation of memory structures for perception and meaning), so yes, there really is a definite measurable benefit to tags and categories. The interesting bit is how you measure the benefit and separate it from the other factors such as how page layout can make the tags more or less comprehensible.

Currently in bbPress “forums” provide a single level of grouping (akin to simple categories) and tags provide unstructured flat grouping, though I’ve suggested in another thread that there may be an alternative solution which combines both for increased flexibility/benefit.

[ear1grey]

I’ve cranked out a trac ticket for this, though it’s not clear if the Akismet code is part of the core or not.

[ear1grey]

This does make me think perhaps UserPress could be created as a separate user management project.

[ear1grey]

…and Analytics

…and Sitemaps

[ear1grey]

Indeed, though I’ve only seen once instance so far where the spammers have bothered to leave a comment. My guess is that it’s too difficult to write a robot that can leave intelligent spam, so they’re hedging their bets and hoping not to be spotted lurking in the profile pages – if you can achieve that on several thousand instances you’ve suddenly got a whole lot of pagerank coming your way.

Perhaps another useful tool would be to list the lurkers (similar to how bozos & blocked users can be listed in the Users admin tab) where a lurker is someone who’s registered but not commented.

[ear1grey]

I’d followed-up on this idea a while later with a sub-forums think-aloud which might also be of interest.

[ear1grey]

I’ve taken a look at their (just today) updated T’s and C’s and they seem to be groovier than before, thus the interesting section (5v) reads:

“Prohibited Uses. You shall not, and shall not authorize or encourage any third party to (v) display any Ad(s), Link(s), or Referral Button(s) on any error page, on any registration or “thank you” page (e.g., a page that thanks a user after he/she has registered with the applicable Web site), on any chat page, in any email, or on any Web page or any Web site that contains any pornographic, hate-related, violent, or illegal content;”

…so I think search results are ok, but avoid user admin pages.

[ear1grey]

FYI, the theme may break Google’s Adsense policy regarding ads on search pages and search result pages, you might want to look into that!

[ear1grey]

But it doesn’t seem to index the actual contents of the topics…at least not yet. I am guessing it will do this over time.

I think by this you’re saying that if you you were to search for “some text string” that you specifically have in one of your comments, Google would return no results, as opposed to returning lots of other results with yours somewhere on the nth page. If that’s the case it’s an interesting insight.

BTW You might want to submit your sitemap to Yahoo for extra traffic and comparison: https://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com/

[ear1grey]

So, is it a plugin, or a re-packaging?

[ear1grey]

Perhaps one for the FAQ: How does bbPortal differ from bbPress? (i.e. what does it add, who might be interested?)

[ear1grey]

Once you (not the plugin) register and submit the sitemap to Google their bot(s) will regularly re-visit it, re-validate it, and re-assess the contents. When this happens the sitemap is up to date because the plugin maintains it.

[ear1grey]

No single system can create a sitemap for a whole site that is built using different subsystems so Google, Yahoo & MSN expect there to be multiple sitemaps. You will need other sitemaps for the rest of your site.

Since you ask, yes, a partial sitemap is better than no sitemap.

See also What is a sitemap file and why should I have one?, and Can I have multiple sitemaps?

[ear1grey]

Ah, now you’ll be wanting to pay a visit to Google Sitemaps.

[ear1grey]

I’m telling teacher, you did a swear.

[ear1grey]

<li<?php

if ( is_front())

{

echo " id="current">";

?>

BTW the list item would be better described as being something like class="current" then add an appropriate .current {} to your css.

See also: https://bbpress.org/forums/topic/250

[ear1grey]

I think it’s a config problem…

[ear1grey]

Personally I just created a super-header (at $_SERVER["DOCUMENT_ROOT"]."/tabs.php") which is included as part of my wp and bb theme. It provides consistent tabs for blog, forum, etc.

[ear1grey]

Probably quotes:

$bb->wp_home = "http://canadanoise.com"; // WordPress - Options->General: Blog address (URL) // No trailing slash

[ear1grey]

Seealso: Combined Register + Post

[ear1grey]

If you’ve got your WP+BB sharing a DB, then you can sidestep the need for changes to the BB admin UI, in which case, “all” you need to do is add template hooks that cause that plugin to insert it’s adverts in the right place (example).

[ear1grey]

Hi Null, to do that you need to change your template a bit and create a new hook, which is dead easy, and a testament to the flexibility of the event model that underpins both WP&bb.

1. Copy topic.php from bb-templates into my-templates (you may need to create this folder).
2. Find the for loop near line 29 – it will read something like this: <?php foreach ($posts as $bb_post) : $del_class = post_del_class(); ?>
3. Immediately before it (outside the loop, but inside the <?php) add the line $need_to_show_ad=true;
4. Then change the line <?php bb_post_template(); ?> to read <?php bb_post_template(); if ($need_to_show_ad) { do_action('showadvert'); $need_to_show_ad=false; } ?>
5. Finally, change the action in the plugin so it fires on your newly created hook add_action('showadvert', array('bb_adsense','wide_advert'));

… and an admin page? Maybe when bbPress matures!

[ear1grey]

I’d advise against using header.php, because your header is also shown on non-content pages such as 404’s; something which is disallowed in the adsense T’s and C’s.

I did it by writing a small plugin, which you’re welcome to. Just create a my-plugins folder within your bbpress root folder, paste the text below into the file and save it as bbpress-adsense.php, upload it to your server and an advert will appear on every topic.

From there on you have the basics for changing the advert to whatever you prefer.

<?php

/*

Plugin Name: Simple bbPress Adsense

Plugin URI: http://boakes.org/talk/tags/bbpress-adsense

Description: An plugin that includes an adsense advert just above the content on the topic page.

Author: Rich Boakes

Version: 0.1

Author URI: http://boakes.org

License: GPL

*/

class bb_adsense {

function wide_advert() {

?>

<div class="bbpress-adsense" style="text-align:center;">

<!-- Paste your advert below this line -->

<script type="text/javascript"><!--

google_ad_client = "pub-9050338238897291";

google_ad_width = 728;

google_ad_height = 90;

google_ad_format = "728x90_as";

google_ad_type = "text_image";

google_ad_channel = "5984252204";

google_color_border = "FFFFFF";

google_color_bg = "EEEEEE";

google_color_link = "990000";

google_color_text = "333333";

google_color_url = "999999";

//--></script>

<script type="text/javascript"

src="http://pagead2.googlesyndication.com/pagead/show_ads.js">

</script>

<!-- Paste your advert above this line -->

</div>

<?php

} // function wide_advert

} // class bb_adsense

// adds the footer so the javascript is loaded

add_action('under_title', array('bb_adsense','wide_advert'));

?>

[ear1grey]

FYI There’s a sitemap article currently on the front page of Slashdot. Apparently Google, Yahoo & MS are going to cooperate on the promotion of the format.

See also: http://sitemaps.org/

[ear1grey]

Nice. That feels very 1984 disco, yet somehow soothing all at once.

May I suggest some alt tags for images, and perhaps use the title attribute for including the forum descriptions.

update: Ah, so that’s your theme… Karma fruit is nice too