Forum Replies Created
-
All understandable points. BuddyPress has recently gone through something similar since Andy has been concentrating on rolling out awesome new stuff for WordPress.com and I’ve been busy with client work. Both of us were at points where we weren’t concentrating directly on pushing the project forward, and that took us away from the usual support/communication role and more towards heavy development and project management.
Community and communication are both important, and we’ve admittedly been lacking on both platforms leaving things feel like they’re in a little bit of a limbo state. For people already using either project, it doesn’t help you sleep at night; and it doesn’t exactly make for a happy welcome to newcomers either. It wasn’t intentional, but I think the worst is behind us now and we can concentrate on building some forward momentum.
For bbPress specifically, there is a little more history involved. It it touches so many individual pieces of the .org structure that have always been intricately balanced to work together; namely the individual plugin and theme repositories. They rely heavily on the svelteness of bbPress to function the way they do.
When the idea of making bbPress a plugin was first seriously considered (over a year ago?) I think I felt the same way as some of you do now. I felt bbPress needed to stand tall and be it’s own person and go out and make something of itself like a good young adult should. My involvement in BuddyPress and my experience with WordPress over the past few years has enlightened me to how simple of a plugin bbPress can really be, particularly now that BuddyPress can offer all of the other bits and pieces that someone might normally want or expect from forum software.
With that said, bbPress is going to be a plugin for WordPress going forward. The name is staying the same, as much as I know that pains some of you to hear. There are lots of reasons to keep it the way it is because we all love it and appreciate it, but there is more to gain by it being a plugin with where WordPress is today. (…no dagger to the heart intended…)
I think the most important thing that will come from an ‘official’ announcement (that I’ll include here briefly now) is that the top priority for this next chapter in bbPress is migrating/importing/exporting be 100% no-more-than-5-clicks simple to do. As a plugin author myself, the close second priority is having a clear resource for converting plugins.
I typically try to under promise and over deliver, so I’m approaching bbPress the same way. Am I super genius that knows the insides and outsides of bbPress and BackPress 100% and can recite lines of code like song lyrics or poetry? Nope. But I do know plugins, and extending WordPress safely and effectively, and refactoring, and bulletin board software, and how communicating with and through software works for both machines and people.
Most importantly, I know I really want bbPress to stay kickass.
I’ll be posting something all official sounding soon (as in tonight) but Kevin, can’t say I received an email from you; if I did it only went ignored because I didn’t see it. My apologies for lack of communication and I’ll do better going forward. Check my Gravatar for ten confirmed methods to track me down.
On the flip side, I’m excited that people still care about there being a plugin branch considering the ups and downs bbPress has gone through over the past year or two.
At the sake of sounding like a politician, I’m personally committed to making bbPress great in whatever form it takes, because it (along with WordPress and BuddyPress) put food on my table and keep a roof over my head. It’s been like that for the past two years, and I’d like to maintain that status for as far into the foreseeable future as I can. If I was self-employed or employed by Automattic, it wouldn’t change the way I intend to be involved and help shape bbPress’s future.
I know it’s been a rough and tumble life for bbPress, and thankfully all of us want to change that.
Be back in a bit to keep up this convo and look forward to more comments, feedback, gripes, general criticism, and cooking tips if you have any.
Hey Matt!
Without too much detail, I’ve been neck deep in theme development, bug patching, code re-factoring and clean-up since the Windows 3.11 and Visual Basic 3.0 days. I’ve been interested in making bbPress be better integrated with WordPress for probably a year or so now? I was a long time phpBB2.0 junkie, and moved to WordPress because I was frustrated at how forcibly linear typical forum software is. When I fell in love with the WordPress way, I quickly found bbPress, and expected it to include all of the features that BuddyPress now does, hence my shift in that direction.
I’d like to help restyle bbpress.org, maybe bring it a little more in line with the other Automattic websites. There’s no doubt that bbPress needs some TLC in the codex and source-code documentation areas too, and I have recent experience absorbing the WP Code Standards from working under Andy with BuddyPress.
Right now my focus is 100% BuddyPress, but since you asked… I’d love to be more involved in all of the WP projects and communities if there’s opportunity.
Love it. Similar but different. I also love the icons, as it is “bee bee Press” after all. Plus, if we’re going to over think this, Bee’s and hives represent a colony, and forums are basically the same thing; a colony of users.
Or, maybe you guys just love sweet, sweet honey… Just a bunch of Pooh Bear’s surrounded by empty glass jars hoping Matt will send another shipment this month to keep you motivated.
DennisH, it sounds to me like you want BuddyPress + bbPress + WordPress. If you’re not using all three, then you’re really not going to get what you want.
Also, if phpBB just has too MANY features, you could trim some of phpBB’s code out, no different than you can add code to any *Press product.
It also is a relatively new concept (Within 1 year) of having all of these platforms working in unison together. BuddyPress has taken giant strides towards providing a personality to the users on your site, to give your bbPress users profiles and information beyond the basics.
Regarding the “promise” of integration, it’s possible to do within a few minutes, with integrated logins, profile info, etc… The major difference is that you can’t expect it to look like a typical forum is going to look, at least not at its current stage of development.
When you consider that phpBB is 3.0.5, and it stayed in the 2.0 branch for over 7 years, apply that logic to bbPress that JUST turned 1.0 a month ago… There’s still LOTS that can be done, but for now bbPress is a stable and powerful product that is a developers dream platform for forum software to start with. You can mold and shape it to handle just about any task (wait until you see what BuddyPress is going to do with it
)Long story short, I’m sorry you’re disappointed at the moment, but I’m willing to bet you won’t always be. If you need something besides bbPress right now, no one’s feelings are hurt, but my suggestion to you would be to make friendly with it now so you can be better prepared to use it later, when it better meets your expectations.
With a name like grassrootspa, I figured this would make more sense.
I for one hope the core of bbPress never includes that kind of thing, as it works perfectly well as it is without needing to turn a thousand features off.
There are plugins available, and if they don’t suit your needs, newer betters ones will come in the future.
I think what you want, is BuddyPress + bbPress.
ITguy, are you using deep integration? If so, I think there’s something else that needs to be done before the group forum creation will work.
I ran into the same issue as you a few months back. Burt’s XMLRPC check would work, but forums wouldn’t get made. If memory serves me right, the XMLRPC was reincluding something that was mucking up the forum creation, but I don’t recall exactly what that is at the moment, but I banged my head against it for a week, and there’s a topic somewhere in the BuddyPress forums to prove it.
I’m packing for a week long vacation tonight, and am flying all day tomorrow. I’ll have my laptop and access to all my code by Wednesday night, and will be back to help support this again. In the meantime I invite you to scour buddypress.org/forums and see if you can find any of my past replies or recent topics. Check from about April or so. Getting this figured out is important to me too, as I’ve got a series of Integration screen casts I’m going to put together and give to the *Press sites to help answer all of the questions everyone has about integration, since it is a very popular topic and many of us spend many hours developing and supporting it.
Talk soon, and good luck until then.
