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Shane,

Thank you for your response. However, speaking of a “bad approach”, IMHO, I think giving the user an edit profile panel in a discussion forum plugin is a bad approach. At least give the site designer an option to turn it off in the settings.

[gswaim]

I kept digging around. I edited out the profile link in user-details.php template file. Seems to be working.

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@ricardouk

I share many of your concerns. I too have stumbled onto the Mingle Forum plug-in.

I have it installed along with the Mingle plug-in. This turns a WordPress site into a BuddyPress-like site with an extremely short learning curve. I had both installed, tweaked on the code to remove a couple of links that I didn’t want, modified the CSS to make a near perfect style match to my theme, and understood how to configure administrate the forum in about 3 hours.

I am not a code monkey and cannot compare the pros and cons of how Mingle Forums stacks up against the bbPress plug-in or any other solutions. The security vulnerability has also been resoled to my satisfaction.

Before I implement a solution I am more concerned with its support and sustainability. Both plug-ins have have over 50,000 downloads and the Mingle Forum plug-in was last updated 20 days ago. I had one problem/question with the installation and it was answered by the plug-in’s author within hours. Within the last 5 days the Mingle Forum’s author has posted 5 videos instructional videos on YouTube (http://www.youtube.com/user/cartpauj). All indications are that this project is alive and well.

I am going to go live with it this week and plan to use it until another plug-in solution, which is better, becomes available.

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@ricardouk

I share many of your concerns. I too have stumbled onto the Mingle Forum plug-in.

I have it installed along with the Mingle plug-in. This turns a WordPress site into a BuddyPress-like site with an extremely short learning curve. I had both installed, tweaked on the code to remove a couple of links that I didn’t want, modified the CSS to make a near perfect style match to my theme, and understood how to configure administrate the forum in about 3 hours.

I am not a code monkey and cannot compare the pros and cons of how Mingle Forums stacks up against the bbPress plug-in or any other solutions. The security vulnerability has also been resoled to my satisfaction.

Before I implement a solution I am more concerned with its support and sustainability. Both plug-ins have have over 50,000 downloads and the Mingle Forum plug-in was last updated 20 days ago. I had one problem/question with the installation and it was answered by the plug-in’s author within hours. Within the last 5 days the Mingle Forum’s author has posted 5 videos instructional videos on YouTube (http://www.youtube.com/user/cartpauj). All indications are that this project is alive and well.

I am going to go live with it this week and plan to use it until another plug-in solution, which is better, becomes available.

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At the Raleigh 2009 WordCamp, when given the chance to present a question to Matt, I asked:

“What is the status of bbPress?”

His response was that bbPress was alive and well and he wanted to develop it as a plug-in so the masses could easily implement it.

I asked this question then because I really needed a forum and I wanted to stick with a WP solution. Two years have passed and adding a forum to my site has become my “Ground Hog Day.” I work hard at it, but somehow every morning when I wake up my site still doesn’t have a forum.

Over the last two years I have installed about every forum solution on the market (I think I installed SimplePress at least 3 times). They all looked like an add-on, so they got pulled.

Then Justin Tadlock was going to knock one out and that also fizzled. He had a pretty decent looking forum in a matter of weeks, but it was never finished. Or at least it was never released.

I have to admit when I saw this reply from JJJ,

With the holidays coming up and starting my new job at Automattic, progress on the plugin is going to slow down for a week or two.”

it seemed like another Ground Hog Day to me. I would have thought that having the lead developer of the bbPress plug-in working for Matt (who adamantly supports the bbPress plug-in),the project would have gone faster, not slower.

I am not trying to be critical. I just wanted to put some historical perspective on this project. In my humble opinion, for WP to be considered a CMS, it needs to have a forum core plug-in. I am sure I am not alone in wanting to see this major missing piece fall into place.

I am not a coder and I can only sit back and keep my fingers crossed that one morning I wake up and my WP-powered site is truly a CMS with a WP supported forum.

Thanks for the hard work. Let’s push on. I can smell the end zone!

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@JJJ

I have been waiting for a WP forum plug-in for so long, I don’t mind working with page templates to be one of the early adopters. If short code support comes later, then that would be icing on the cake.

I do hope, at some point, detailed information is available on how to build the bbPress pages for other themes. As long as this documentation is avaialble, I don’t think this should be a deal breaker for anybody.

Thanks!

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Rich,

Thanks. I registered with the site a while back, but didn’t realize I had so much ability on the back end. I didn’t see how to start a new forum but I see how you basically control what is presented with page templates.

Since there is a “single-bbp_forum” file in the theme’s directory, I assume I can assign a single forum to a specific page. This is what I need.

Looks promising.

Thanks!

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JJJ and Crew,

I have been waiting a long time for this plug-in. I can hang on, as long as I know it can do what I need. I am not sharp enough to look at the current files and understand how it gets implemented; therefore, I have one basic question.

I am using my WP install to deliver the equivalent of an online course. I want to provide a forum for each module within the course. So, with the bbPress plugin, will I be able to put a given forum on one page and another forum on another page?

It appears that most of the presentation is controlled by code on a page template. I could create multiple page templates, as needed. I just don’t know if your solution will allow me to display a specific forum on a specific page.

Thanks for your work on this!

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Anyone has a demo of the plugin running in a website…

It would be great if JJJ and team could start a test site where the latest plug-in version was installed. It would make it easier for this group to pound on it and help bug test the code.

Thanks!

[gswaim]

How about a little wisdom about now… somebody please close this post.

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At the end of the day it’s free, open source software. Polarized or not, bbPress has a team now. If this can just be summed up as a years worth of pent up frustration coming out, I can understand that, but we’ve all been going at this for almost 3 days now, and I’d rather write code and fix stuff and make progress than rehash bbPress’s tumultuous existence.

Exactly. There comes a time when it is time to move on. IMHO that time is very near.

JJJ has patiently articulated, to this group, the mission he was commissioned to handle and IMHO it is time to code. As I watched this thread, I feared that he would get bogged down and burnt out trying to make everybody happy. However, he seems to be keenly aware of this and has done a good job of keeping his eye on the prize.

I am a WordPress user that has been waiting for a core forum plug-in for well over a year. As soon as it is available I am installing it, and I suspect I will not be alone.

If only 10% of the WordPress.org-powered websites install this plug-in, the bbPress plug-in user base would dwarf the stand alone bbPress user base. Making bbPress available to a much larger audience cannot be a bad thing, in the long run.

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silent1643,

You can’t just drop bbPress onto a blog page. bbPress is a totally separate installation and you have to link to it from your blog. You have to modify the bbPress templates to make it look like your blog. If this is done well, the user doesn’t realize they are jumping between two different programs.