[John James Jacoby]

I’ve logged into both sides with a test account and still run into this problem. It seems that integrating with WordPress interferes with some capabilities. Like, when viewing a topic logged in as Key Master, I can see the IP addresses of people that post, and I have the link to add that topic to my favorites, but I cannot post a reply, I cannot edit the tags, and I cannot see any other admin functions; all of their capabilities return no value.

I haven’t given up yet! hah!

[John James Jacoby]

It looks like this has been addressed in the trac, but has yet to be repaired. So there is a ticket open for it, it’s on the radar, but still only a blip.

[John James Jacoby]

Depending on what version of phpMyAdmin you’re host is running, I find this ability currently under…

“Operations > Table Options > auto_increment”

There you can change that value back down to what it should be and cross your fingers!

[John James Jacoby]

This does appear indeed to be an integration issue. When I remove the inclusion of the wp-blog-header.php in the bb-config.php, everything comes back just fine and I am able to edit/reorder/delete forums.

This seems to be the same issue causing most of my grief, somehow my capabilities and roles are totally out of alignment, or rather they may have never really been in total alignment in the first place.

[John James Jacoby]

Screen readers and modified browsers might love lists, but they also love properly coded tables, of which most people really seem to do.

Google “everything you know about css is wrong” and check out how to style lists and div’s as tables, it’s an interesting read also. I don’t agree with it, but it is interesting.

The idea of a DIV is not to nest them, but to use them to DIVIDE content. The idea of a table is to compare data in a relational way. I think if you were going to use lists for forums, you would HAVE TO use DL’s and use dt’s for the headers at the very least, to provide a definition to the content being displayed.

I mean, I see how the argument goes both ways. (Off topic: If you’re really into accessibility, check out my WordPress section 508 theme at http://www.wp508.com? It’s not completely full of content yet, seems I have about 5 half finished projects right now ugh.)

[John James Jacoby]

Wow…

It looks darn near perfect…

If your concern is catering to screen readers, then you know that phpBB is hardly the place to start, as reading the screen outloud to yourself makes no sense at all. Imagine if you couldn’t see what you were listening to, it would be impossible. That’s why (properly coded) tables for forums make sense.

I noticed the topic view was buggered, didn’t want to load and show anything, so I assume that’s under construction… But, that’s pretty super awesome…

[John James Jacoby]

Well, you’d have to go poking around with phpMyAdmin, and change the users table and the usermeta table to match. This will prove difficult because the information is serialized in such a way as to make it difficult to read with the naked eye.

Will it cause a problem? In my OCD opinion, anything that isn’t meant to be that way can pose a problem later. How many users are affected by this issue? Can you delete them, reset the last ID in that table using phpMyAdmin, and ask them to re-register?

[John James Jacoby]

Hmm…

There should be a user-sync tool that does this without asking people to login twice, since the idea is to fully integrate them together seamlessly.

[John James Jacoby]

Well, I think that a theme designer and a theme developer are two different positions now, and to develop means to program, while to design means to mock the lay-out and intent.

And I’m okay with that.

Also, I think that tables are the most logical way to present forum data without mucking up the content with div’s and span’s. The theme files allow you to code your table rows, heads, bodys, and footers, so you can set your own distinction between cols and rows for accessibility sake.

WordPress suffers from this similarly, with forcing h2’s and ul’s all over the place when they should probably be h3’s or dl’s considering, and the alternative is tricking it into serving what you want, versus just ordering off the menu.

(I must be hungry with all these food analogies.)

Really, I think that you’re right, and that bbPress would benefit from some kind of WordPress-esque codex, because otherwise I’m forced to decompile the included themes and fit them to my needs, which is a good way to learn, but a bad way to be efficient.

[John James Jacoby]

ck, how exactly would the .htaccess be most safely accomplished. I am thinking of doing this as I would like try and get the current_page class within WordPress to still work when in the forums also.

Curious if you’ve ran into this yet?

[John James Jacoby]

lol I gotchya…

I have been working with bbPress for 2 days now, so I can openly admit that my knowledge on the inner workings of it (and maybe its limitations) is limited to those 2 days of study.

From my experience with forum software, the category vs forum debate and struggle basically exists in a similar way, at least I know it does for phpBB. A category is just a forum without the ability to post directly to it, and I think that’s really the only way to do it without joining or adding an additional query that isn’t really necessary.

I think what it sounds like you’re asking for is something more official like what WordPress has in terms of development cycle, acknowledgment, and respect from its developers. I also think that because almost everything for bbPress is a plug-in, that the opportunity for those plug-ins not to play nice with one another is greater.

So, the dilemma is to package these as features within the forum, or allow the community to create those features when they are needed. The big guys bloat their forums with tons of stuff and allow the admin to turn them off, and bbPress does the opposite.

I’m not sure bbPress really has a development plan anymore other than tweaking and steamlining the code to work better with WordPress, and maybe eventually import/export posts from other forum software. I personally think that better user management would be nice, but that brings up how WordPress doesn’t really care about users at all. Ha!

[John James Jacoby]

Check this topic…

https://bbpress.org/forums/topic/integrate-wp27-and-bbp10a2

Then, check it again for exactness…

Then, check it a third time…

It took me a little back-and forth, but I was able to make all of my logins and logouts work in every direction without any hacking of the core files or additional plug-ins.

[John James Jacoby]

It’s really almost impossible as the role data is serialized within the wp_usermeta table… I was poking around in there and figured it was best left alone, even if it’s not working, it ain’t quite totally broken yet.

I’ve found that when I have everything all hooked together, that the capabilities of my users seems off. Like as it sits right now, with WordPress and bbPress together, I can’t even make a topic or reply.

I think that the problem takes places in bb-includes/capabilities.php, somewhere around line 29

$retvalue = call_user_func_array(array(&$bb_current_user, 'has_cap'), $args);

For me, this function returns nothing when the value is indeed true or 1 in the $bb_current_user array… But it only messes up when WordPress is included in the bb-config.php file, otherwise it’s fine…

[John James Jacoby]

I find myself in the same boat. Actually, somehow my admin with user_id of 1 is marked as inactive, and when I try to edit his profile to change it back, I get all kinds of funkiness that spits out.

Seems the roles still need some TLC.

[John James Jacoby]

I think that the user experience ultimately should define itself as the audience grows.

I recently just witnessed a GIANT misstep on one of the larger forums I’ve been involved with. They moved from ZeroForums to vBulletin, and of the 1.2 million active members and COUNTLESS posts and topics, it managed to work pretty alright on ZeroForums. It was simple and people got used to using it the only way they could on such a large forum; they had a link to the topics you’ve posted in or are watching, and you can keep track of new posts there.

That’s it.

It was so simple but it worked so well. It let you peek your head out and scour some forums for new content if you wanted to, but it allowed you to stick inside the topics you were the most comfortable with and related the most to.

vBulletin totally removed that link, and because it handles searches differently, it’s taken 2 days so far and the search functionality still isn’t working because there is so much data to catalog.

Basically they had a forum that worked for what it’s users needed it to work as. The theme was so simple and stripped down but allowed for basic BB tags and had a good distinction between those tags. It had just the right balance of user profile customization (signature, avatar, etc) without making a social networking site.

I think what bbPress does, is it allows the administrator to decide how much of what type of emphasis can be placed on what areas of the discussion, and to add or remove those things via plug-ins without hurting the data.

I personally think that end users have no idea what they want, and regardless of what you serve them they won’t be happy. The idea is to provide them 1 option and force them to adapt to it without ever feeling like they are learning something totally from scratch.

How many times have you asked someone what they’re hungry for and they say “Oh I dunno, you?” If you said “Hey I want pizza, is that cool?” they will probably say “Sure.”

In the dinner choices of life, bbPress is a pizza crust and the plug-ins are the toppings.

[John James Jacoby]

You know, that WordPress is really an elaborate Forum clone, right?

Years ago, forums were threaded email responses back and forth that were documented hierarchically. Then, the idea of threads was cast away because it was thought to be too complicated to understand. Why would someone branch off to speak to a reply instead of replying to the original post/poster?

To me, it’s the nature of group discussion, and it is the difference between the intent of WordPress and bbPress, at least it was before WordPress 2.7 brought back threaded comments.

A forum is intended for multiple, typically registered commited users, and invokes group discussion that is often times allowed to skate off-topic as people reply to other people. Sometimes reply counts can escalate into the hundreds or thousands depending on the size of the forum.

A blog is intended to allow a few authors to create articles and attempts to cater to non-committed users that drop by, can leave a comment, and never look back if they don’t want to.

Since the emphasis of a blog is the initial post, comment replies typically tend to stay on topic.

Since the emphasis of a forum is to spark conversation, replies typically tend to drift off topic.

The funny thing is that both of these display methods use almost the exact same data storage and retrieval methods. Data is categorized and tagged as necessary, with a time-stamp, an excerpt, and other pertinent information.

The one major way that blogs differ from forums, is that forums restrict posts to one forum or category while blogs allow for one post to be in several. This ability inherently changes the emphasis away from categorization and towards the content of the post itself and how it relates to other possible posts.

I moved away from phpBB and towards WordPress for this specific attribute alone. Since posts can often times benefit from being in multiple categories, a blog style system makes a great deal of sense.

I think that the similarities between WordPress and bbPress exist only because they share a similar intent with data storage and categorization, and if you’ve ever read two books by the same author you’ll understand how both of them will read very similarly.

Overall I am happy that the authors of WordPress have made bbPress, as it shows a recognition of the distinct differences between the two of them.

I think as time passes, you will start to see more of how these two tools come from the same family but are different members all together. Think of them as fraternal twins.