[kevinjohngallagher]

I can shed some light on that.

Matt, I apologise in advance for this; but the constant slog in using this website in the months since the “bbpress2.0” theme release has been very tough. Did you know the homepage was a 404 for almost a week? And text was under 8px if you weren’t on a Mac or Linux. Patches and Changes were uploaded, changes not tested. We’ve a 6 page thread on it somewhere (it was sticked in the last 48 hours).

Anyway, the worst of those bugs meant that all HTML was parsed without exceptions (it wasn’t added to BackPress), so for just under 8 weeks, every single line of code we type into this forum has been converted to lots of & lts; and & gts; etc. It’s made giving solutions… difficult. Especially when copy/pasting. Especially for non PHP people.

Someone fixed the bug and added the fix to BackPress, but no-one picks up on the BackPress trac / forums (was bumped for 5 weeks) and no mails in the mailing list by a developer for almost 16 weeks. Eventually I reached out to Westi, who was awesome (no surprise really), and he stepped up and applied the patch (actually a few patches for us). It took another 13 days for it to be applied to this website. (I am also confident he’s now v easily contactable for everyone about backPress)

I ain’t intending on dredching up the past man, just… I know there’s some “ill will” around right now. Its not about “5 years of pent up anger” or anything like you said in the other post, it’s about last week, last month, the month before that etc.

With no intention of starting a long debate, would you have let the WordPress.org homepage be a 404 page for almost a week?

If no-one could give code exmaples on the WP.org support forums, would that have lasted from May to July?

We all drop the ball dude, its life, but if you wanted bbPress to help itself, it did. Ok, so not brilliantly or specacularly but it’s the dependancies placed upon us let us down, and the people we depended on were too busy making publicly disparaging comments at their WordCamp KeyNote speeches.

I often wonder if objectively you’d look at this post and think how you’ve done with bbPress: http://ma.tt/2009/08/kill-your-community/

I’m really glad you’re here and I’m thankful for your tone. I’m thankful for the information you’re giving. I, and I’m sure many others, are ok with us disagreeing on things, it’s the uncertainty coupled with the lack of respect (WordCamp comment + this website constantly breaking) thats stoked the flames of discontent.

In honesty bro, fair crack of the whip + information to make up our own mind = happy + repsectful community.

P.S. Sorry for the WTFmatt person. and haha, someone will be along to apologise for me in a minute

[kevinjohngallagher]

This is an excellent point Matt, and actually one of the strong selling points of bbPress in the past 18months has been how little is in the core.

I, like i’m sure others out there, have had wrangles with moulding bbPress to work in the way I’d like (e.g. between 4-7 clicks to delete a user, and having to leave the admin area to do it, and not be able to do it in bulk = eek). But other than some core hacks (like adding actions / filters all over the shop), it can be modified quite nicely. I often describe bbPress as “90% there”. In part, down to the excellent base, and in large part to _ck_’s plugins.

That said, I feel that one of the issues with the current development line “we” kick started in December time is that we took 2 feautres which worked brialliantly as plugins and added them to the core; without any real need for that to happen.

Why? because they were features for the end-end user. Not the person running the forum. It’s like the people who say that people won’t post on their forums without a WYSIWYG editor or Smilies, we could add them to the core, loads of folks would be happy, but we’d still not be able to moderate all those nicely styled posts with loads of ” ZoMg >.<” etc

If you look at the features you’ve added to the core of WordPress, they rarely have been for the sole benfit of the person reading the blog. They’ve mostly been to benefit the person running the blog, in the theory that that enables the end-user too.

So reguardless of what version of bbPress/WordPress/other-software we’re talking about, even if somethings in the 80/20 split, please think who it benefits and who it causes issues for. We all know there’s good and bad to every decision, but let me assure you, i’m losing sleep over moderating a bbpress forum with anonymouse posting!

WP3.0 was effectively a “developer release”, or at least not end-end-user focussed. Not sure about you, but I think it’s the smoothest, least-buggy, most impressive release in a long long time. Maybe thats what bbPress needed instead of adding core features we already had as plugins.

Of course, hindsight, pretty wonderful thing.

[kevinjohngallagher]

Dammit,

_ck_ I updated my plugin 2 weeks ago.

I’ll post it here in 20 when I’m home. I thought I’d put a download link on my website, but i must have bumped it with all the talking over the last week.

[kevinjohngallagher]

Hi Johnny,

You need to pass the user id into the avatar function.

I’m not near my code righ tnow, but you’re looking at something like this:

get_avatar(poster->id);

[kevinjohngallagher]

It’s a combo of SEO and HCI.

Having a different title for each page makes life easier for humans, as well as not being bad for SEO.

In the strictest sense, Google (et al) state that every page should have it’s own and unique title, and if relative should be linked with a canonical link.

(though, there is no doubt that they’re clever enough to work it out).

[kevinjohngallagher]

Yutt,

Like everyone else, you’re entitled to your opinion; and i am truly sorry if i’ve left you with an overly negative one – though I apprecaite I am a tad less forgiving of people who can’t even get my name right

[kevinjohngallagher]

Pete’s status, isn’t any different than the way you all feel about things. If you can vent your frustrations, so can he.

I’d never like to step on Pete’s rights or freedoms. He can say what he wants when he wants. But it’s just shame he didn’t have the common decency or manners to tell us… before bitching to the world.

If Pete’s not happy about some of the things in this thread, and we’re the people he’s going to have to (or wants to) live with as we move forward “together”, then he should have commented here.

JJJ your comments and Q/A attempts have helped a great deal. Of course there is still some polorisation and discontent, this is heavy (and for some peole horrible) news; people aren’t going ot be ok with it as soon as somone says “everything’s going to be A-okay”. Even if thats true, and I think it is and eventually things will be ok, there’s still loads that needs to be talked out before people can make an informed decision.

But y’know, talk it out, address the issues here, and win people over. Making snidey remarks on Twitter in the hope that no-one from bbpress will see it is just… poor/childish/cowardly. Feel free to pick one, I pick all 3.

I’m vocal, and according to Sam Bauers I use “combative” wording (which is rarely my intention). I’ve agreed and disagreed with the same people here over the years; and I’m sure to many they hate to see my name appear in that last poster column But on the left hand side here where it says my name it links to my website, where my email/phone is listed. Many people here use it, and I am more than happy for them and others to do so – even if they disagree/like/dislike with me. If i have something to say about bbPress, i say it here. I say it to the people that are giving up their time for bbPress, and earned my respect by doing so, and JJJ that includes you

I suppose it comes down to this:

• When, in life, are people ok about being talked about behind their backs, instead of to their face?
• How on earth do you think this would help pull the community together?

1. bbPress 1.1 (standalone) – Still in active development

2. bbPress 1.2 (plugin) – Months before anyone should consider it stable, but you’re welcome to jump on the bandwagon early and help make it exactly the way you want it, side by side with Pete and myself, and anyone else that’s along for the ride.

1. But you’ve told us that, with 1 trac ticket to go, this would be the last to be supported and or maintained. You also told us that it wont be supported once the plugin comes out. Thats freaking people out.

I can understand your entusiasm at the newst version, but surely you can at least see this viewpoint (even if you odn’t agree with it).

2. Here’s the scenario: http://www.dilbert.com/fast/2003-10-12/

You’re the manager, we’re dilbert, our clients/users are the client.

Even if that wasn’t the intention, thats where we are bro.

[kevinjohngallagher]

Gautam,

You’re words are astute as always.

1.1 is stable, and looking good

I doubt there’s one person involved with bbPress that isn’t looking forward to it’s alpha release so we can get some bug fixes, and then truly thank you and everyone else who added code to it.

Even the people still using 0.9 know and apprecaite how much works goes into it

And about making a living, it can also be done with bbPress as a WP plugin

Yes mate, no doubt.

But we’ve hit this scenario: http://www.dilbert.com/fast/2003-10-12/

The forum topic is this one and the announcement is here (I know no one told any of us about this blog).

You nailed the issue mate.

You and I, and those of us interested in WP development picked up on it. Those who use bbP as standalone, who are those most affected, won’t have. Hence, some of the backlash.

This could all be really positive, in an odd way I think the underlying desire for info is positive JJJ being here is positive Seeing old names and faces pop up is positive I’m confident if 10 of us were in a room right now, this would all be sorted and we’d be coding up a storm It just needs a controlled conversation, some community interfacing and ofcourse, no-one bitching about bbPress on twitter.

[kevinjohngallagher]

The one change I made to Zaerl Editor was snipping out the part of the code that put that needless “Code” button on the top.

If you’re on a non-US (or i suppose non English/qwerty) keyboard, the backtick key is a total git to hit. there’s quite a large difference between North American keybaords and the rest of the world.

The only disappointment is that it doesn’t seem to understand strikethrough fonts. I tried both “strike” and “del”

bbPress doesn’t process them as standard.

*sorry Zaerl mate, just seen your answer*

[kevinjohngallagher]

Tom,

I totally agree with the premise.

Focussing on the positives is the way forward.

For those of us who make a living with bbPress, unilateral decisions made without visability and with no re-course for questioning nor appeal are scary. really scary.

I for one, am totally and 100% behind the separate forum plugin for WordPress. But I think it’s ok that we ask some questions about it, and while the thread’s not in the most positive tone, I don’t think anyone has asked anything from left field, nor said anything antagonistic or derogatory.

It’s not like we’re asking for info that won’t have already been discussed when making the decision about plugin vs. standalone.

There would have been bench tests, user experiences, requirement gather – y’know numbers and paperwork. I know we’re never going to see the full documentation, but I think it’s ok to ask for an overview. Not to pick holes in it, but to feel positive that the decision is a good one, and one that we can get behind/support/make better

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

Andrew, Pete and JJJ and I have had a wee email conversation earlier in the week, before (and during) this thread started. There was some truly great info in that thread. Information that would appease some of the issues brought up here, quell some of the language & tone being used. It confirmed to me that these are the people to take bbPress forward. But that doesn’t mean I am going to put my own and my children’s livelyhood on the line and follow blindly.

everything is going to be A-okay

is alot like

Relax. We’ve done this before.

And man, that didn’t work out too well

I think people are allowed to be a little shellshocked at this bombshell; especially as it didn’t even warrant it’s own forum post, sticky or blog post. It just comes across as a footnote and unimportant. It comes across as “shit, you folks found out? um…” Now of course that ain’t true, but thats the base perception.

Apparently the scrapping of all current bbPress code and new of it’s replacement isn’t even important enough for someone to hit that “sticky” button at the bottom.

Because of this, some emotions will run high, but we’ve both been around the block enough to know that as long as people keep the conversation in house and try to resolve things then we’ll get there

Not everyone will agree with everything, but we’ll get there as long as no-one makes any derogatory comments about the software or community in a KeyNote speech or on an influential Twitter feed we’ll be grand at resolving this, and bringing folks tegether in a positive sense

The dudes who are now running the show just need to give out enough info to get control of the conversation. Once that happens, even more of life will be positive.

[kevinjohngallagher]

Hi Pastor Bob,

Apologies you were getting my quick/little-explanation replies this morning.

The Line Numbers aren’t important at all, its jsut to give you a quick indication of where things were.

Here’s the crux of the issue, this CSS command white-space:nowrap; overwrites any Styling you specify in the stylesheets by the HTML conent.

Its something I would remove compeltely from your stylesheets if possible.

[kevinjohngallagher]

line 703 mate

.num, #forumlist small {

font:11px Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;

text-align:center;

white-space:nowrap;

}

[kevinjohngallagher]

Thats a leap mate.

The joy of bbPress is that if you want something, you can use a plugin. It keeps things nice and light for those that don’t want it

2. Less (code) is more

3. Simplicity is a feature

https://bbpress.org/about/

That said, _ck_, congratulations!!

Its wonderful for it to be so obvious as to how much you’ve contributed.

[kevinjohngallagher]

Hi Pedagog,

You’re not wrong. ther are more options for login/registration in WordPress. The simple solution is to physically point the links for login and registration to the WordPress ones.

Anywhere you output a link to bb-login, just change that to wp-login. You will have to edit your theme to make this happen, but its well worth it

[kevinjohngallagher]

Morning Peter,

It’s cool if you disagree. I’m confident we could all pick something in WordPress in the core that we think should still be a plug-in; and of course there is no right answer. What I’m not sure you’re aware of though, and you might be, is just how different the “overhead” between bbPress and WordPress is.

bbPress0.9 loads and runs at 10 or under SQL queries per page. Including the front page. Thanks to certain DB/query tweaks, and some wonderful _CK_ code, I have that at 8 SQL queries on one of my smallest intranet forums.

This is in comparison to the same 8 queries generated by the new wp_nav_menu in WP3.0. In fact the wp_nav_menu calls a not totally-in-expensive INNER JOIN for each post-type reference in the menu. It’s not a set 8 calls, without judging anything based on what it will become, if wp_nav_menu starts to accept custom post types natively, that’s going to shoot way up.

In a flat comparison, the default theme of WP3.0 with no plug-ins running, generates 19 SQL queries. Twice as much as bbPress0.9.

As someone mentioned earlier, the new bbPress plug-in would be lighter or sleeker. If it takes more SQL calls to generate the header and footer of WP than it does to load an entire bbPress forum – how does that work?

(I do realise that not all SQL queries are equal, but I do think it’s quite a good initial benchmark. Especially if you look at SAVEQUERIES output and see what sort of query each is, and its execution time.)

Additionally, as someone with your background with WP, I would love to hear your take on the caching issue. For two of my websites that have relatively ok traffic, caching is essential on WP. There are plug-ins that do this brilliantly, so thats no worries. But thats very much a “1 to n” nature. Forums are an “n to n” nature; and really don’t lean well with caching, especially in the flat-file constant-updated format.

How would one percieve that to affect WP based websites with a forum plugin of this nature attatched?

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

I think there is a viewpoint that is being missed here.

People are falling into 3 groups:

1. Need a forum that works with WordPress
2. Need a standalone forum, but some WordPress integration is ideal (sign in/users)
3. Needs a standalone forum.

There appears to be a presumption is that we’re all in Group 1 and that we’re fighting change. That’s not the case at all.

I’m actually in favour of there being a WordPress forum plug-in. I think loads of people here will be. I also think that with JJJ working on it, and Justin Tadlock’s second attempt out there in the wild that it will go really well. I wish it the best of luck, and if we can offer advice or war stories or anything to help out – we’re here. We’re here because we support FOSS

The issue arises here is if you’re in Group 2, you have a decision whether to “upgrade” to running everything through WordPress or not. It’s just been presumed that’s your actual goal. At this point in time, we’d like some information (positives/negatives at a minimum) and info on how this decision has came about. People in Group 2 could move into Group 1 easily if given more information than:

“everything is going to be A-okay”

“Like it or not, this is the hand we’ve been dealt…”

But the users in Group3, the people who chose this as standalone forum software and didn’t make that decision based on WordPress – they’re being thrown out on their ear. With no warning. JJJ has stated, and I think we all appreciate that he’s taken the time to sit and answer some questions, that bbPress1.1 will be it’s last. Well, thats announced as bbPress1.1 is 1 trac ticket away from being released. How much warning is that??

If you’re in Group3, and large chunk of our support questions come from people who are, you will now be ‘forced’ to run WordPress if you want to stick with bbPress.

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

I suppose what I’m saying is this. Changes in Life and in FOSS happen. Some we like, some we don’t. But there has to be a carrot with every stick, or people start to feel publicly flogged.

I want JJJ and Pete and anyone who helps them to succeed in achieving their goals. But I’ve scanned this forum page, and the emails they were kind enough to send me, and right now, if you didn’t come here specifically to use a forum inside WordPress… I can’t see the carrot.

There are people here alot cleverer than me, and alot better at wording than myself, so if i’m missing the carrot, please do a Denzel “explain it to me like a 3 year old”.

[kevinjohngallagher]

style.css line 697

.num, #forumlist small {

font:11px Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;

text-align:center;

white-space:nowrap;

}

You need to remove the line in bold

[kevinjohngallagher]

Excellent work !

[kevinjohngallagher]

Good Morning Dan,

It definately sounds like a conversion issue. It’s not one i’ve heard of before, but it shouldn’t be too hard to fix (though there is no existing pluign that I know of).

Baiscally you’re going to need a Title to Slug function, then iterate through every forum & topic and update the database accordingly

Basically, something like this:

$sql = "SELECT * from $bbdb->topics WHERE topic_slug ='' LIMIT 100";

$rows = $bbdb->get_rows($sql);



foreach($rows as $row)

{

$topic_slug = bb_sanitize_with_dashes($row['topic_title'],200);

$sql = "UPDATE $bbdb->topics SET topic_slug='". $topic_slug ."' WHERE topic_id=". $row['topic_id'] ." LIMIT 1; ";

}

So i’ve not tested this code at all, just guessing at it really.

It should update 100 topics at one page load.

(I do this incase i made a horrible mistake)

Then do the same for bb_forum table.

Kev

[kevinjohngallagher]

It’s definately not from bbPress mate, and doesn’t sound good at all.

I’d delete or quarentine it asap, and maybe contact your host too.

Kev

[kevinjohngallagher]

Peter,

I sincerely apologise for the paraphrasing.

I didn’t mean to misrepresent what you’d said in anyway.

[kevinjohngallagher]

Great!

Nice one, and a thanks to everyone involved

[kevinjohngallagher]

Homepage is broken again.

Says everyone is Anonymous.

[kevinjohngallagher]

Indeed mate,

this is what I use, and it really is awesome.

I’ve managed to get my whole JS down to about 1-2% of what TinyMCE is.

A well written post too!

[kevinjohngallagher]

OFC!

Thats daft of me.

if (! bb_is_user_logged_in() && basename($_SERVER['PHP_SELF'] != "bb-login.php")

{

header( 'Location: bb-login.php' );

}

Pagal, please mate, i beg of you.

Google for 5 minutes before posting these requests and telling everyone they don’t understand what you want, and never saying please or thank you.

We want to help bro, help us by using Google first

[kevinjohngallagher]

if (! bb_is_user_logged_in() )

{

header( 'Location: bb-login.php' );

}

Ok, so i’m guessing here, but whouldn’t those 2 lines of code work?

btw, i used google and that solution was the first one, i’m just copy and pasting