[Ipstenu (Mika Epstein)]

There’s also an accountability aspect to all this.

In my opinion, a goodly portion of the reason you run your OWN forum, rather than pay some other site to host, code etc one for you, is that YOU remain responsible and accountable for YOUR code and your visitors. Any SLA/Terms of Use you come up with are yours, and you can make the final decisions on what is and isn’t okay.

Why would you remove that, just for FaceBook?

OpenID is … a little different, though I’m still not sold on the efficacy of it. I have LJ, WordPress and a myriad of other sites I can choose to log in through. I’m still relying on them… I don’t know how I feel a out that in the long run.

[Ipstenu (Mika Epstein)]

ipstenu, what do you think about hosting ga.js locally and keeping it up to date?

Eh. I think unless it’s causing your site to be REALLY slow, it’s not needed. I’d take some metrics and compare to having ga loaded, not loaded and loaded locally and see how much speed we’re talking about.

[Ipstenu (Mika Epstein)]

That’s … almost funny that GOOGLE is telling you THEIR script is slow.

You’re using the ga.js, which is actually faster than urchin.js (the old script). I wouldn’t really worry about it, so long as Google Analytics is in the footer of your page. It could just be a bad load day for Google.

[Ipstenu (Mika Epstein)]

I had this longer post and a computer crash but … this stands out as something I’ve advocated for years with … everything.

I don’t want to debunk your list, but given what you and timskii have said that we should redefine the categories we’re placing things into:

1) Features that are essential to administer a forum.

2) Features that are essential for users to use a forum.

3) Features that you’d like to see available to your forum.

4) Features that could be kind of cool.

5) Features that are useless.

IMO, features should also be added in that order, since if you can’t admin a forum, it doesn’t matter bugger all if people like to use it.

[Ipstenu (Mika Epstein)]

Documentation needs:

1) Definitive integration directions.

1a) Integrate a new WP and BB install

1b) Integrate existing WP with new BB

1c) Integrate new WP with existing BB

2) Better Theme directions

Unlike WP, BB by default uses ‘child’ themes, so unless your first step in CSS is to wipe out all settings, you’re going to have weird legacy going on there, which throws people off.

3) Upgrading

The upgrade used to leave out things like ‘save your .htaccess’ but it looks like that’s finally be addressed so never mind

Everything could use some screenshots. Like the upgrade says the upgrade button is really obvious, well, show us WHAT it is. A picture speaks 100 words.

[Ipstenu (Mika Epstein)]

I voted for integration because, damn it, it COULD be so much easier and looking at all those posts about how it doesn’t work, and all the different solutions.

After that it would be Facebook (which I want for WP in general – Never got it working right…) and that’s it. The rest I don’t have much of an opinion on.

[Ipstenu (Mika Epstein)]

You can only vote for one thing (Facebook was my second if I coulda)

[Ipstenu (Mika Epstein)]

I’m assuming (based on Matt’s leanings) that he would like it to be a plugin and accepting that as probably the way it’ll go. A gross assumption, but the chat sounded rather pro-plugin to me. Could be wrong!

There’s no need for deep integration either : you just make bbPress work with the WordPress stylesheet .

Which is what I did, but it begs the question: Why?

If BuddyPress can make it work with one (two) clicks to integrate login and theme, why can’t WordPress and bbPress? Integration means I don’t have to edit two places if I want to modify my theme which, with a superficially ‘integrated’ WP, BB, Wiki and gallery, is much nicer! One less thing to do!

Some people also invested a lot in bbPress ( energy or money ), and trusted the bbPress team, so why make this big and unexpected change to bbPress ?

… I don’t see what that has to do with the price of rice. We’ve all invested time and money in bbPress, WordPress and a hundred other free, open-source applications. If bbPress ‘belongs’ to Akismet, then it’s their right to make the changes they feel would make the software more supportable and usable. They don’t have to ask us anything, but there they are, being good peoples, asking our feelings on the matter. They’re well within their rights to say we’re all fools and do what they want.

And bbPress is GPL open source, so unless I’m mistaken, you can port it to your own forum app. As long as you stay in the GPL too.

[Ipstenu (Mika Epstein)]

Use Simon’s plugin: https://bbpress.org/forums/topic/howto-disable-registration

I also edited my theme to not show register pages.

[Ipstenu (Mika Epstein)]

Can people now use these plugins created and improve upon them so that they are now available in the latest version of BBpress?

Yes, that’s called GPL Just credit her original plugin in your spin-offs and make sure to release them under GPL.

[Ipstenu (Mika Epstein)]

Also, with deep integration, the theme works instantly, except that it seems to be discouraged in the installation instructions because of the heavier load. But if bbPress turns into a plugin, wouldn’t the end result (and load) be the same as in deep integration?

Yes and no. As it is now, deep integration with standalone bbPress duplicates many functions included in WordPress. The load gets larger becuase you’re doing the same thing multiple ways, multiple times.

If bbPress was a plugin, one would presume that instead of duplicating WP functions, it would instead utilize them.

Mind you, I’m neither pro-nor-anti plugin, I’m just accepting that was the decision, and wanting to make the move the easiest Same as the whole WP -> WPMU eventuality. It’ll happen, regardless of my opinion, it can be made to work, so let’s make it work! (tm Tim Gunn).

[Ipstenu (Mika Epstein)]

You could just make the WP install part the ‘about this site’ page, or use it for a FAQ. Most forums I’ve seen end up using some plugin to force that anyway, so the loss is a little negligible.

What about having WP bothers you so? I mean that sincerely, since I suspect a good, logical argument would be beneficial to the development. You say you can’t afford a WP install, but I don’t know why (security risks? just don’t like it…)

Speaking as a coder/programmer/developer/whatever, I think that BB is most often used in concert with WP, and the integration is superficial right now. You can easily get user integration, but login can have issues and themes are often separate. While I had only minimal issues setting it all up, the difference between setting up WP and BB versus WPMU+BuddyPress+BB is obscene! It’s all of a click and done for the later, and there’s really no reason it can’t be that easy for WP. That kind of integration would really help BB get out there and be used.

This is a 5 year old app, it’s barely in V1, and it needs an injection to get it back on track. If the developers feel it’s easier, better and work on and support, well, I trust them. As far as forums go, there are other, better, stand-alones out there. If the dev team don’t want to complete against those, and want to make a niche app, that’s not a bad idea.

The forums at wordpress.org and mu.wordpress.org and wordpress.com are all using bbPress, which I suspect might be the driving force there.

[Ipstenu (Mika Epstein)]

OpenID (and facebook login) is a great idea, though I feel most of the things we ‘hate’ (using the stronger term because it’s more than ‘dislike’ and ‘want fixed’ but less than ‘OMG this sux!’) about logins etc would be corrected with proper WP/BB integration.

Course that brings in a whole nother kettle of fish for coding, but given what BuddyPress has done (and I was hugely impressed by that, just waiting for 1.2 or 3 to roll out and fix things that are ‘critical’ for me) that all seems very possible.

[Ipstenu (Mika Epstein)]

My post/reply to that vanished. Huh. Must be moderated.

Ah well, I would say this: I’m okay with bbPress becoming a plugin. Why reinvent the wheel? If you can set up a WP install to just run as a forum with the bbPress plugin and hide the WP blog stuff (or make it look like a forum with a blog/news page separate) then why not? It sounds logical for how bbPress is perceived.

It’s never going to win against the big boys and most people seem to like it as a WP+ tool.

And frankly the WP admin side is better.

Death to lightbox (PLEASE make it optional!) and keep tinyMCE as optional as well.

[Ipstenu (Mika Epstein)]

I just realized that i miss a “quote” button in bbPress

There’s <blockquote> actually bbPress uses regular HTML syntax, not bbCode.

The future? Optional integration, but DEEP integration. If I didn’t have to re-theme my forums every time I make a change to my blog, I’d be happy. Honestly, it works as much as I need it to right now, but the reason I picked bbPress has jack to do with integration and all to do with simplicity.

I came from the Invision/phpBB/SMF world and I was always turning off options I didn’t use or want. Much like WordPress, the best thing about bbPress is that it’s little and you can add on if you want.

That said, much like how people can (and do) port Akismet to other platforms, bbPress has to decide if that’s it’s future too. To whit:

Is bbPress going to be a sibling to WordPress (intended to be used with it, but available as stand alone) or a cousin (available to be used with or without WordPress)?

Right now it’s a kissing cousin (legal only in the backwoods), trying to be both. If we keep along the currently available integration path, it will become the cousin. That said, if it moves on to the sibling, being tied in like … Akismet (available from the get-go, but optional), then you’d probably get a lot more pick up from WordPress users.

Integration with WordPress, knowing that WP and WPMU are in route to becoming the same thing (unless the rumors are a lie, it’s just what I heard), would really make things like BuddyPress be a home run.

Of course, if we get better integration, we need better user management. A way to flag users as bozo is nice, but banning people would be even better.

I’m going to get more coffee and think more about this. Mostly, I’m happy we’re not forgotten.

[Ipstenu (Mika Epstein)]

SimonDorfman – I have that same setup with no issues. You shuold be logging in with http not https, but I doubt that matters.

What happens if you go back to /forums ? Are you logged in?

(also mods, can you delete vannartih’s spam?)

[Ipstenu (Mika Epstein)]

IIRC, there are a few topics about this issue with XAMP. Did you search the forums?

[Ipstenu (Mika Epstein)]

WP, but not by a whole lot.

[Ipstenu (Mika Epstein)]

Slap /bb-admin to the end of your forum URL.

So if your forum is at https://bbpress.org/forums then your admin’s at https://bbpress.org/forums/bb-admin/

[Ipstenu (Mika Epstein)]

It depends on your theme design.

In mine, I have four main divs: header, content, sidebar and footer

So on my footer.php, at the top, I put in this: <?php require('/home/domain/www/forums/my-templates/themename/sidebar.php'); ?> and then built the sidebar as I wanted it.

[Ipstenu (Mika Epstein)]

So it works similar to WP but just that you cannot do it through Editor in WP, rather do it directly in the files on the server, correct?

Correct. There’s no theme editor built in to BB at this time, so you have to edit the template file.

And you can use the same GA code from WP to BB without changing anything, but as it’s a different page, you have to edit the bbPress and WordPress templates separately.

[Ipstenu (Mika Epstein)]

That’s for support tickets, IIRC.

[Ipstenu (Mika Epstein)]

Have you edited the theme at all?

[Ipstenu (Mika Epstein)]

Is your theme installed correctly?

For example:

/bbpress/my-templates/themename/style.css

/bbpress/my-templates/themename/screenshot.png

Etc etc…

[Ipstenu (Mika Epstein)]

Interesting. There actually IS an RSS built into your user ID: https://bbpress.org/forums/rss/profile/otto42

But it’s used for your favorites so not so much. You can see all your posts in your profile (recent posts) so in theory this should be ‘exportable’ to RSS.

The rss.php file has this:

// Get latest posts by default

case 'all-posts':

default:

if ( !$posts = bb_get_latest_posts( 35 ) )

die();

$title = esc_html( sprintf( __( '%1$s » Recent Posts' ), bb_get_option( 'name' ) ) );

$link = bb_get_uri();

$link_self = bb_get_posts_rss_link();

break;

Which I think you could toss an extra if if ( $user->ID == bb_get_current_user_info( 'id' ) ) but that would only punt out a list of the current user’s posts, and not be a way to see anyones. The structure is there, though.