[kevinjohngallagher]

Can you give us a screenshot or a link so we can see what’s happening?

[kevinjohngallagher]

The realism is, bbPress is not currently aimed at folks that are not technically minded. That’s not said to put you or anyne else down, it’s just the reality of where we are.

If you like the look of this software, or if you chose it for a particualr reason, then i’d spend some time searching the forums and seeing if any questions you have have already been asked; because documentation is non-existanct.

In terms of your Akismet problem:

• Go to your admin area
• click on the “plugins” link
• click on “activate” link under akismet
• now the step that they tell people about for wordpress but not bbpress
• click on the “settings” menu on the left hand side
• the bottom sub menu will say Akismet, click it.
• input your key
• click save
• spent time taking actual posts from users out of spam que because akismet is not optomized for forums

Take care…

[kevinjohngallagher]

No.

[kevinjohngallagher]

If your PHP knowledge is little, bbPress and specifically user created plugins with no admin section are not ever going to be a reliable solution. We’ve really only had a reliable admin section for 7 months, and very few plugins have been written since then.

In this instance, and for your own needs, the best way to do this is via JavaScript. Googling an example is easy, should only be really 5-6 lines of code, and you won’t need to know any PHP or bbPress commands.

It should, in theory, look like this:

$(‘form’).submit(function() {

if( $(‘input#post_content’).val().length < 20 )

{

alert(” Please write more than 20 letters “);

return false;

}

});

Of course you’ll have to check the code yourself and put it in your theme, but that *should* work.

[kevinjohngallagher]

Marius mate,

Testing these things on a local/development enviroment first is really going to help you. bbPress plugins sometimes require quite a bit of web-dev knowledge, and being able to work out all the hic-ups on your own machine before letting your users see it will make your life alot easier

By the looks of it, yourself and JohnHiller could be on different timezones, I’m on all day fixing the last few bugs in the bbProgress admin section, so shout if it goes back up and we’ll try and help.

[kevinjohngallagher]

Hi Tom,

Apprecaite the update mate, thanks

This is actually great info, as we had no idea that the documentation section was actually being edited, i personally haven’t looked through it in 6 months.

[kevinjohngallagher]

i read it, didn’t give any new info, didn’t mention the documentation or documentation team at all.

Is this one of those folk’s website (i’ve never heard of it before)?

kev

[kevinjohngallagher]

I dunno mate, i’m happy for the discussion (as there’s alot of discussion to be had from both sides of any point of view), but this “article” doesn’t really say anything we’ve not known already. Matt mentioned in a weekly IRC meeting in december that bbPress was going to be a WP plugin.

I don’t know if Binary Turf is actually a really well known and respected website (i’ve never heard of it before – but that might not mean much), but either way 2 paragraphs on bbPress from someone not involved in the project isn’t really going to bring us any new info.

[kevinjohngallagher]

Any webmaster that isn’t really tech savvy…

bbPress is not aimed at non-tech-savvy people. Infact the same with WordPress really. Editing of files and the ability to use FTP is a must or the thing won’t work (you have to edit and upload a config file).

Editing or changing anything involves some basic-PHP knowledge really, and this is pretty much always going to be the way of it – if you don’t got for a premium theme/framework/plugin.

It’s unbelievable actually in this day and age.

We hear this from time to time, and i can’t understand why it comes up. But it comes down to “basic” features and what is now considered “standard” features for forums. The difference is that “basic” features are things that forums need to do it’s job. “Standard” features are from a personal perception based on what other forum solutions have – that doesn’t make them any less valid as feature requests.

bbPress is always going to be feature-less in comparison to other forums out there, with the reliance on people writing plugins or editing the code to customize things for themselves – thats an aim, not a side effect. As much as the people on this forum try and help out those that are new or not quite sure, the realism is we’re years away from a free “out of the box” solution for 90% of the requests people make.

[kevinjohngallagher]

Could you tell us what words it refuses to search please?

[kevinjohngallagher]

In this instance, i would write a script that set a new password for them, and emailed them it. (can/should be done outwith bbPress).

In the email i’d tell them why they are getting it, and suggest that they log in and choose a new one.

It’s not ideal, but this isn’t really a common siutaiton so i doubt there’s a plugin for it.

[kevinjohngallagher]

Hi flowiesowieso,

Deprecated errors:

This is a common error with WAMP runing PHP 5.3.

You should go to the WAMP homepage > addons > PHP > 5.2.x (latest one)

Download, Install and then next time you start WAMP, you can click the menu-bar option (bottom right of the screen) and change the PHP version it’s running.

This issue has been fixed for the next release of bbPress, so it’s only a small issue.

Cannot determine:

This is an upgrade issue.

The easiest way is to head into phpmyadmin and look through your meta table and see if you see anything weird or blank. I know that’s kind of vague (sorry), but there’s a good chance you’ll see your URL slightly wrong in one of the fields (no http, or no localhost or something).

let us know what you find.

[kevinjohngallagher]

I suppose what I might not have put across well is that I don’t want bbPress to become the monster that some of the other boards out there are. I’m very cool with lightweight and fast, it’s more that… bbPress has never had a “fixit” release y’know.

• 0.8 added some new functionality while removing alot of the hardcoded stuff (remember when you HAD to set the time displayed to the time zone you server was physically located in?).
• 0.9 added loads of new functionality
• 1.0 added backPress and new admin section.
• 1.1 is adding Anon posting and Email notification.

For me, having things like https://trac.bbpress.org/changeset/2377 sitting in trac (for the 2nd time btw) for over 5 months is crazy. Why do we have to have a year between releases?

I guess the way i’d put it is that there’s a difference between “basic” features and “standard” features in terms of forums. Simleys, BBcode, private messaging are fairly standard these days. I can absolutely live with them being a plugin. But the ability to delete a user from the backend inside the ‘3 click rule’ is a “basic” feature (why isn’t it one click?).

There’s a whole lot of places, especially in the backend, where there is legacy code or integrated plugin code that’s just made to work with 1.0. Take editing your forums placement, it uses an old AJAX routine from 0.8 to send to a page that’s not actually part of the current admin set up, and has no hooks/actions/filters/triggers. No plugin can interact with it. (I’m not against AJAX or the use of javascript, but there’s only 1 place in the whole admin area where there’s no actual posting back of info, and it just so happens to also be the one place where there’s hooks/action/fiters).

In my opinion, at some stage someone more intelligent than myself (not difficult) needs to have a look at bbPress on the whole, not in terms of X bits of code, but more in terms of the coding philosophy behind it. Not to make radical changes, but to make sure that it’s all going in the same direction.

==========================================================

@johnhiler

Thanks, i’d be very keen to know how you got round that particular issue, i personally got round it by writing a plugin after abandoning _ck_’s approach in her plugin.

Finally,

That said, please don’t (even jokingly) refer to anyone as an idiot!

You’re right of course, apologises to anyone i did offend there. I write on these forums at about 3-4am my time as that’s the busiest time for the rest of [the board], and sometimes i forget to edit myself. I am sorry

[kevinjohngallagher]

So my wish to BBPress is to keep it simple, and make the hard things even simpler.

The hard things right now is adding new features, polls and many of the plugins requires alot of work to plug in.

Yes, thats what we’re talking about

Things are harder right now, and we’re trying to discuss them to make them easier.

Why not make these into widgets instead, as a sidebar?

I would love to have a dynamic sidebar I could add or remove things with ease. Have polls on the sidebar, not arrested in a topic, and maybe a chatbox instead of having an “Off Topic” category or thread.

Who had under 2 minutes in the “ZOMG i cant code so ignore data structurz & make me XXX feature” poll?

Yeah, i’m going to hell, i understand. Well i tried.

[kevinjohngallagher]

Kind of mate

In fact, I’m sure that a lot if not everything bbPress related could be done with plugins, but it comes to a point in time where a certain number of plugins are needed as standard for the forum to function properly.

I mean, “forum_is_category” and “topic_voices” are in the core now, but rather than being in the core tables, are still added and fiddled around with as meta data, so there’s always an INNER JOIN needed or additional SQL calls.

Call up a topic, in SQL, simple. How many Posts? there’s the data. How many tags? there’s the data. Heck, last poster’s name? sure! How many voices? oh hell no! I don’t keep that data here. It’s a secret!! Even though it’s a one to one relationship and it’s in the core, we keep that somewhere totally different, and you need to come up with a totally different method of getting that info. Ha, i mean, just cos it’s in the core, doesn’t mean it’s laid out prof… well we don’t use it on the WP support forums.

I’m not suggesting anything overtly Machiavellian at all, please don’t assume that and if I’ve given that impression I’m sorry (sometimes i jokes dont translate well), but if you give the data-structure to a DBA or heck, a basic developer they’ll scratch their heads. There is no really good reason for something like “forum_is_category” or “topic_views” to be held in a separate table as a data row, other than the one major forum where it’s not used. And that’s ok, he who pays the piper calls the tune, but that’s a core issue.

Realistically, thats not a coding issue, it’s a perspective issue. In order to get at the data, we need to call additional database information that we don’t need. Why do we need that overhead, even if it’s small.

Deep down, I can’t believe I need a plugin for my forum to be able to say it has posts underneath it though. That isn’t a bug and it isn’t intended, it just wasn’t thought of.

Same with Mass deleting of users / topics / posts. Or the ability to be able to add any form of ordering or filtering to any of them. Just wasn’t thought of.

I can understand a plugin with a specific purpose in this field (I’ve written one that marks any “.ru” and “.cn” user as bozo automatically), that’s cool. But I still think it’s daft that I have to manually search the user list every day for members with certain words in it – that stuff became bog standard on the internet a long time ago.

You know, once i search for (and find) a user, it then takes me 7 clicks and 4 different pages to delete the user. And there is no en-mass option. 7 clicks and 4 pages!!!! That’s not a ‘plugin or not plugin’ issue, that’s no PM/BA/IA/common-sense issue. I mean, really, having to leave the admin area to interact with a user? They got rid of that idea in wordpress almost 3 years ago.

I don’t want to flog a dead horse, but now that WordPress isn’t being ported to backPress (at least in the next version minimum), can you imagine the difference that rolling in a moderation suite or really any of _ck_’s non-fluff (smilies, bbcode) plugins into the core would have made in the 14 months between 0.9 and 1.0 being released? Hey has anyone used XML_RPC to post to their forums yet? it’s awesome…

=====================================================================

Is the concern that since the data design isn’t optimized for inherited forums, the query count will go up?

Yeah, kind of. It’s more that it’s already gone up, and as themes become more complex, it’ll go up again.

Let me give an example, and it’s a walkthrough – there could be code optimization.

To load the last forum poster/post (and btw this is for the singualar, not the child, which would multiply this by each child forum), you effectively are looking up the topic with the last date that’s attatched to that forum, and then look up the last post that’s attatched to that topic. Ok, so that’s 2 additional SQL calls for every forum thats displayed in the forum list.

(EDIT: actually, I’m confident it’s just 1 INNER JOIN SQL call now, but it’s still not needed really).

Now on a forum like this, or on WP support forums, thats only 6 forums. ok, so 6 additional calls total. Meh, not fussed.

But do you see how this doesn’t scale? On one of my forums, a football one, we’ve a “forum” for every football team in the UK. There’s no “latest” list, as we want people to talk in their own club’s section. Thing is that’s:

England

– Prem

– – 22 teams

– (Another 4 divisions of 24 teams)

Scotland

– SPL

– – 12 teams

– (Another 2 divisions of 16 teams)

It was facing meltdown every now and then, and I realised why, I’m placing an additional 150 SQL calls every time I want to display the list of forums, simply to find out the last post in a forum (and that’s NOT including the code needed if I was to respect genealogy).

Here’s the thing though, the TOPIC table has a column called: topic_last_post_id. Do you know why? Because it allows an inner join rather than an additional SQL call. Very sensible. Of course, it just wasn’t transposed to the bit that a certain support forums didn’t use.

If we applied the same logic to “forums” as to the topics, heck even put it in the meta data table, we’d add 1 SQL command in total when a new post was added, instead of 1 SQL per forum listed per pageload per user. Now, i could write a plugin to do that, but it’s not solving the issue, it’s just papering over the cracks in the datastructure.

I’m sure there will be some people reading this and they wont get that that i’m talking about data structure and optomization, and not specifically about “last forum poster”. I’m not advocaating category heavy forums or flat file forums, i’m saying that we’ve got some real data holes, and i think we should discuss them. How long until i’m told to leave bbPress because on some of my websites I use it differently to someone who has relatively few uesers and so isn’t hitting any of these issues? I bet not long.

I am not in any way having a go at any current/ Past developer/ development team/ Santa nor the Easter bunny. But the data is set up in a way in which it is ideally suited for 1 type of forum, and not for any of the others. Thats cool, but if bbPress is going to be a WPplugin, then this doesn’t matter. If there’s going to be a standalone version, then this sort of thing really needs to be looked at.

There’s countless examples of this; I’m just going with the one that people can replicate easily.

=========================================

I’d like to stress i’m not advocating a massive change to the core, honestly I’m just up for discussion. I’m really just wanting to know people’s feelings or thoughts on this. Far too much data is not readily/intrinsically/obviously available especially when said data is on a predefined 1-to-1 relationship.

Maybe if the data structure wasn’t so wishy-washy at points, there might be more plugin developers, or themes that looked a little more like the themes available on any of the other forums.

=========================================

John you’re also right that a “moderation suite” could be done via a plugin, my thoughts on that though would be “XML-RPC is a standard feature, but moderating my forum is a 3rd party plugin”?

I don’t think that making Forums read only on a selective basis is the work of a plugin, thats integral to how a forum works. Same with certain forums being visible to certain people.

The ability to move/sticky/resolved a topic/post from inside the admin area isn’t the job of a plugin, thats the job of the admin area. otherwise, what the point of the admin area

I’m sure there are things that I think should be standard that many other don’t; and vice versa. I don’t want bloatware, i’m not suggesting we copy phpBB or anything else, but i also think that just because we can have a plugin to do a job that we should always have a plugin to do a job. Also, just because something works with the current datastructure, doesn’t mean it’s even close to optimal.

=================================================================

Phew, longer than i wanted. Probably wrote many things which people will get annoyed at. Then again, i’m sure some idiot will be along in a minute demanding that we stop talking about this and include Facebook Connect, Polls, Smileys etc. I wonder how long that will take before my data structure conversation gets it’s first “ZOMG i cant code so ignore data structurz & make me XXX feature”.

[kevinjohngallagher]

Hi John,

I’m not proposing anything right now (maybe in the long term), but it’s not my purpose.

Its really jsut one of the topics i wanted to discuss at “Bob’s no show of an IRC meet” (it’s now official title until we hear from bob – who i hope is ok btw). I’m not a developer, i can code, but i’m very poor at it. I am though not bad at the bigger picture stuff, and this year i’ve had to move 2 forums away from bbPress (we’re only 7 weeks in), and i’m not sure that by the end of the year my “convertin to” will be more than my “moved away from”.

I’m totally cool if people dont agree, and i’m cool if people do. I’ve been wrong many times before, and will be again

But, um, please right more than “report it in trac”

Cheers

[kevinjohngallagher]

*life is too short *

[kevinjohngallagher]

You’ve hit the nail on the head Aaronski, any form of moderation on bbPress is poor.

The simplist way to do this, is to remove the “Add New” link from your theme (simply add HTML comments around it), or you could hide the “Add New” link via CSS (which should be quicker):

a.new-topic

{

display:none;

}

The realism is, if your forum needs actual configuarable moderation, this might not be the software for you. Hope it is though, Kev

[kevinjohngallagher]

Your error log is something you get form your hosting people. If your server has a Control Panel of any kind then there should be a link to it on there. If you can’t find it, ask your hosting provider

[kevinjohngallagher]

Hi there,

Can i ask what version of WordPress and what version of bbPress you’re using please?

Basically, the guide you followed was recorded at a time when we were on bbPress0.9 and WP2.7; we’re now on bbPress1.0 and WP2.9 so there’s been a large number of changes since then, and integration wasn’t something that Automattic had prioritized to make work.

Could you look at your error log to see exactly what is going wrong? until we know that we’ll struggle to help any more than guessing.

That said, your bbPress install uses “www” while your WordPress doesn’t. No idea if thats the issue or not, but given how difficult “deep integration” has become, it’s at least one thing to look at. Throw us your error log iff possible.

[kevinjohngallagher]

Yeah, have to say, kinda unhappy. I risked vengance and homelessness from the better half to get up and stay up til 4am.

[kevinjohngallagher]

Apologies Bob,

I can’t make it (valentine’s day – not a big deal to me, a big deal to the better half).

Hope it goes well, and i’ll read the transcripts on Tuesday.

Have a great weekend folks.

[kevinjohngallagher]

Bob,

As much as you may think this is me being difficult, can i strongly suggest that having an impromtu IRC chat with less than 2 days notice, on VALENTINE’S DAY, at (minimum of) 1am in Europe or 6am in India is… i’m trying hard to phrase this nicely… wishful.

As much as we all want the best for bbPress, rushing these things is never productive. Heck, not everyone you’d want involved checks the forums every 2 days!

Kev

[kevinjohngallagher]

EDIT: * threshold hit – going for ice cream *

[kevinjohngallagher]

Another voting thread, awesome, these are always productive and rarely descend into sycophantic rants or love ins.

That said, ChrisHajer should definitely NOT be the next project lead of BBpress. Chris is a great great moderator, and to remove him from this role would leave us with ZERO moderators.

Gautam and Nightgunner5 are both programmers, skilled to be sure, but that does not make a good project lead either.

Mentions of _ck_ are like mentions of Elvis working in a 7/11. You hear it every now and then from people who don’t want to accept that it’s in the past.

No, whoever leads BBpress will be from Automattic. It’s their project folks, they’re just letting us chat on their forums. At the end of the day, people will vote for people they agree with, and not in an objective manner, heck i’m confident that if I was to say that i think BBpress should not be a WP plugin and should have facebook connect then i could convince a least 2 people to vote for me, regardless of any actual facts.

oh look:

My meaningless vote goes to whoever dislikes bbPress becoming a WordPress plugin the most

These type of threads are so awesome!! and so helpful!!