[Matoca]

I use anonymous posting for all visitors. Only the admins and moderators need to log in. As far as bbPress is concerned, an anonymous user is identified solely by a “name” and an email address. Once that combination is used, any time they visit again, they will be identified. If they change it to anything else, they are not recognized. It actually works quite well. However I have found that users who do a lot of social media get so confused about this and try to log in all the time, locking them out of the site after so many tries. I finally had to put up a pop up on the forum page that reminds them that they may post anonymously, only a name and email is required in the Create New Topic or Make New Reply.

However, this won’t work for a hidden forum that is accessible to only logged in users. I have several forums besides the public anonymous forum and those forums are for logged in users only. One is for the moderators and another is for users who have special needs for privacy and I make them a username and and password, which I email them.

You can set this under Settings>Forum. Look for this line and check it to set your forum to allow anonymous posting:
Anonymous posting: Allow guest users without accounts to create topics and replies

Make sure you have Akismet plugin installed and activated. I also run WordFence for extra coverage. Between the two, I never have any problems with anon posting. I’ve been using this like this for 7 years.

If you want your normally logged in users to be able to post anonymously to a public forum, you could have them use a different name and email combination, making sure the anonymous posting setting is set under Forum Settings. I have myself set as keymaster with one combination and I use another name and email so I can post anonymously for testing purposes.
my best
matoca

[Matoca]

One of my moderators has been having the same problem, can’t edit any topics or replies in the dashboard and then SAVE them. It refuses to save and warns her if she tries to leave the page that her work hasn’t been saved. In addition, I see, (though she can’t) that there is an autosave of the change, but that it is completely blank. I had her clear her cache, try a different browser. None of this worked. As far as the forum was concerned, she wasn’t making any changes. Sometimes, as moderators, we need to make subtle changes in a user’s post, so this is a critical need.

After doing a screen share for an hour with her I finally asked her to make a text change with the VISUAL TAB SELECTED AND THEN SWITCH TO TEXT MODE, THEN UPDATE. Wouldn’t you know? It worked, the new updated page was saved! I have no idea why this is, but I thought I would post this here for anyone in the future who is experiencing this bizarre behavior editing topics in the dashboard.
my best, Matoca

[Matoca]

I disabled Jetpack and have left it disabled since this happened.

However, something happened this Sunday that might be part of this problem, though I can’t be sure. Just posting it here so others can benefit.

Trying to view my forum on my phone last night, but not logged in. I get the message “oops nothing here.” No forum at all. That’s not right, the forum should be visible to everyone!

I try to log into my WP site on my phone. Instead of logging me in a form pops up that wants me to prove I am human by performing a simple math equation. This has happened before and I had no idea why, but usually only when I am trying to access the site via my phone. So now I am locked out of the dashboard by this form that is never satisfied by my answers and I can’t see the forum either. Great.

Searching the WP troubleshooting forum I discover this Prove You Are Human math form is a function of the Jetpack setting called Protect. Many people have been locked out of their dashboard for days at a time. In the forum topic three ways to defeat this are suggested. The simplest, if you can get into your dashboard, is to turn off this Protect setting. More complex is doing it via WordPress.com settings or changing a file in your server.

Today, Monday, I am able to log into my forum via my computer, and the forum is visible. Jetpack, for some strange reason, is no longer disabled. I have no explanation for that, I left it disabled.

The first thing I look at are all the Jetpack settings and I unchecked the Protect function. I noticed that the default settings for Jetpack includes many things I had no idea were part of it. Very powerful plugin.

Will this allow folks who have been blocked to post topic and replies in the forum? I don’t know yet. I would be curious if anyone has tangled with this Protect function prohibiting anonymous users from posting in the forum?

[Matoca]

FYI I had a problem a while ago when my notifications suddenly stopped. After many attempts to resolve this and nearly two weeks of struggling, I discovered the root problem was that my server host, Bluehost, was seeing my mail going to my other moderators (I have many different types of notifications by choice including the forum) as spam. They had blocked all outgoing mail, but had not informed me.

It took multiple tech support chats to find one guy who was sympathetic and found the issue. However he didn’t have the power to resolve it right then and there. All my mail was being blocked by Bluehost.

In the end, after weeks of struggling I got an email from Bluehost requesting that I submit all the names of the users that were approved to receive these notification emails and agreed that they really wanted to receive them. I had to sign a statement that said I was not engaged in sending spam via Bluehost servers and they warned me they would watch me like a hawk.

Hope this might help.
Matoca

[Matoca]

Create two forums. One requires users to register to create topics and replies. Create a second forum and allow anonymous user to create topics and replies. As long as both forums are visible to the public anyone could read the topics and replies. Be sure you have Akismet enabled or you might have some problems with spam etc.

I run an anonymous forum, but I also have registered moderators using the same forum. I also have two private forums, both require users to be registered, one is only for the moderators and the other is for users who need a private place to talk with moderators. I make those user accounts for them and give them just enough privileges to use a private forum.
my best
matoca

[Matoca]

I finally found the problem with this. In short, an email notification containing a topic that contained spam was sent to the administrators. This triggered Bluehost to lock down my emails and put them in a spam folder, that’s why we weren’t getting them.

It took over a week to actually get a ticket generated by a tech support person. Then Bluehost sent me a very terse email with their spam policy. I was in violation of their rules, sending out spam, and that if I did this again, I would lose my account. They unblocked my emails and they have been working again up until last week. The plugin that sends these forum notifications is called bbPress Notify.

About a week ago the notifications were being sent but the content was missing. After a lot of troubleshooting I discovered that the bbPress Notify plugin had not been attended to by the developer for a long time. I uninstalled it and installed a plugin called bbPress Notify (No Spam). It basically does the same thing but with the addition of not sending notifications of spam topics or replies.

This worked immediately. This plug is being kept up to date and the developer has a paid addon that will also allow users to discontinue the notification emails if they wish.

Problem solved.
thank you for your help!
Matoca

[Matoca]

I resolved this with some exploration. The plugin that was providing this notificatoin function is called bbPress Notify. When I went to its WordPress page I discovered that the developer had not updated this in quite a while and the forum had plenty of topics asking for help, but there had been no response.

Doing a quick plugin search I discovered the plugin bbPress (No Spam) was up to date. So I uninstalled bbPress Notify and installed bbPress Notify (No Spam). I sent a message through the forum and the notification sent had content in it!

I am not sure why bbPress Notify continued to work until just last week but clearly one of the other plugins was updated and prevented this one from inserting the content into the emails. This plugin also prevented the forum notification from attaching content.

If you need to use a notification plugin (by role), this would be the current one that works well. It is essentially the same plugin as bbPress Notify but with the addition of being able to set it to not send notification of spam via email. This is actually a great benefit. Recently a topic notification email that contained spam was sent out to the moderators from the dashboard via bbPress Notify and my hosting service locked my email down for over a week for sending unsolicited spam. They sent me a warning letter that they would close my account if I did it again. I was clueless what had happened until I found this plugin today.

https://wordpress.org/plugins/bbpress-notify-nospam/
my best
patrice

[Matoca]

I ran the forum tools last night, really for another problem with topic dates not shuffling properly in the forum. But this didn’t resolve the notification problems. They all still contain empty contents.

I went into the database on the server and I can find the notification db tables. I just have no idea how to evaluate what I am looking at. Isthere any documentation for evaluating the notification database that I could read?
my best
matoca

[Matoca]

I used the repair tools, one at a time and it didn’t resolve the issue. But the good thing is that this topic has dropped down due to the large traffic on the forum.

I guess the take-away is to be very careful when assigning super sticky to topics. This was a Welcome To Our New Forum topic, so I wanted it sticky at the time, now I realize that I don’t want it forever.

What topic settings does the bbPress main forum use to keep super sticky CLOSED topics (posting rules etc) at the top of the main forum?
my best
matoca

[Matoca]

@Robkk,
Both the normal notifications via the forum and the administrator notifications (set in Settings) are returning blank content. As owner, I get three different notification emails of each topic and reply. One is generated in the forum and comes to my email address, the second is generated by the administrator notification (where I input “send all notifications to administrators” and it hooks their email from the User account) and comes to my email address and the third goes to the website email address which I have set as an account in my home computer email inbox. I am the only one receiving this email.

So none of these have content.
matoca

[Matoca]

Robkk,
No it didn’t do move to the last date, when I un-stickied it and saved it, it moved right to the most recent topic. Fortunately it is slowly making it’s way out of sight considering all the new topics and replies we have. I sure would like it to stack at the date of the last reply (which was over a year ago) but not sure how to force it to do that. I have one more super sticky topic I would like to move down also, but I am waiting to see if anyone here knows how to accomplish this.
Thank you
Matoca

[Matoca]

@Robkk,
After a short support chat with Bluehost, the tech advised he ran a few basic fixes on the Bluehost side. This cleared an internal mail server cache. This apparently is not something I can do in my Bluehost account. He was very quick about this and knew exactly what to do once I described the problem. My notifications are now coming through ok.

Thank you for all the feedback and help. It never ceases to amaze me how gracious and helpful you folks can be here on bbPress.
my best
Matoca

[Matoca]

@Robkk,
Some very good information here. I appreciate the post.

I have not done any significant WP troubleshooting since I discovered this only today when my moderators emailed me to say they weren’t getting emails. My first stop usually is the forum to see what other users might be having the same problems. Surprised me to find someone else having the same identical problem and at the exact same time. Since then I have been methodically going through the website to ensure that everything else seems to be working fine. Most important, the forum is working properly!

I keep everything up to date and I have WP set to auto update. And bbPress is also up to date.

I did not try the plugin yet because I want to check things in a certain order rather than adding another new plugin to my site and another layer of complications.

Yes, the notifications have been in place this way for quite a while. I see in my inbox that I was experimenting with it by Fall 2013 and put into place for notifying the moderators shortly after that. Since notifications are part of the default settings I would have seen them immediately and gladly used them. I wanted to avoid having a lot of email forwarders on the Bluehost server and this has worked extremely well.

I don’t allow comments on the site and so that isn’t something I can check. The specific purpose of the notifications for topics and replies is to help the moderators monitor the forum around the clock.

I have Wordfence on my website and it set to notify me of all Admin logins and other security alerts. They all stopped coming to my email on 8/5/15, another indication that something is amiss with emails, not necessarily with bbPress.

And an interesting development tonight that I am trying to sort out is that I use Gravity Forms on my website so that dog owners with very sick dogs can get Urgent Advice around the clock. The forms they fill out go out by email to all administrators as they are generated.

Tonight we got an Urgent Advice form submission and the notification did not come to my administrator address (and that means no other administrator got it) but it did come to the website email address (a Bluehost box). That also comes, as I said, to my desktop client at home. Otherwise I would have had to look in the dashboard forms to know it had been generated. This tells me that something may be wrong, not with bbPress, but with Bluehost emails. I have checked the notifications for Urgent Advice and it is still set properly to go to all administrators.

So my next step should be to check with Bluehost support to see why these many different notifications from bbPress, Gravity Forms and Wordfence that are being generated are not being sent to any administrator emails. I’ll get back here when I find out more.
Matoca

[Matoca]

Robkk,
Administrators are not getting the notifications that are indicated in the Forum settings for Forum Email Notifications. Nor are getting the “Notify me of follow-up replies via email” in the forum.

Only I, the blog owner, is getting notifications because they are going to the website email address, not to specific User addresses, there is no user with this website email address. User addresses, I assume, are grabbed by bbPress from the user accounts. bbPress must be able to look at the User accounts, see which ones are Administrators and blog owner (which I have checked) and then sends notifications to those user email addresses.

The two methods to notify the administrators is on purpose, so that if one fails they still get notifications. However, both of the methods bbPress uses to send notifications have failed.

I want double notification for the moderators and I don’t mind getting triple notification.

We just want both the bbPress dashboard and the forum notifications to work and they are not.
my best
patrice

[Matoca]

Correction. I wrote this:
However in the dashboard topics, a new topic that was actually written August 6, 2015 at 4:04 pm is indicating that it was written “8 hours, 53 minutes ago.” Thus the dashboard is indicating this topic was not written 8-6-15 but rather would have been written around 5:30 EST this morning, 8-8-15. This is a huge difference of nearly two days!

This is not indicating when it was written, but instead is indicating “freshness” as replies have been made. My mistake.

[Matoca]

I just discovered that our site is having the exact same problem. All administrators are not getting notifications of new topics or new replies starting 8/5/15. I’ve checked the Forum Setting under Email Notifications and nothing has changed. I have not made any modifications to the site in weeks, other than the usual WP updates, which are automatic now. All plugins are current and there are no other issues. New forum topics and replies are showing up in the forum properly.

However in the dashboard topics, a new topic that was actually written August 6, 2015 at 4:04 pm is indicating that it was written “8 hours, 53 minutes ago.” Thus the dashboard is indicating this topic was not written 8-6-15 but rather would have been written around 5:30 EST this morning, 8-8-15. This is a huge difference of nearly two days! In the forum the topic details shows the correct date and time of August 6, 2015 at 4:04 pm. This was the first new topic after this hiccup. Neither any new topics or replies written since then are coming to our email notifications and all have this disparity of date and time in the dashboard.

In addition, all administrators check off “Notify me of follow-up replies via email” in the forum. Thus everyone usually gets two copies of notification of each new topic and reply. That is not working either. So all administrators are not getting either notification, the forum or the email notifications.

I have an email address for the website via a Bluehost mailbox and I have one email forwarder from that box to my home email client. This includes these notifications. These notifications are arriving in my inbox with the correct date and time! No other administrator gets this particular email. I did not include them in this forwarding email notification because that meant everyone would get 3 copies of each new topic or new reply.

Thus, administrators are not getting notifications, while I am only getting the email forwarded one via Bluehost. This indicates to me that there is now a problem with bbPress notifications, under Settings>Forums>Forum Settings>Email Notifications>Notifications about new topics are sent to. And there is also a problem with the date and time of topics and replies in the database that displays information in the dashboard.

Do I actually need to add another plugin to resolve this??? It’s been working for almost 2 years now without a hitch. In addition the dashboard should reflect the actual date the topic or reply is written, not 2 days after the fact.
Thank you for any help you can provide.
Matoca

[Matoca]

@robbk
Wow! This really works well! Thank you for taking the time to post this so quickly. I found a functionality plugin that is simple to use, installed it and within a few minutes I had succeeded in turning a link into just plain text.

At least now, if someone is really intent on posting a suspicious link, the users will have to go to some effort to copy and paste this elsewhere.

my best
matoca

[Matoca]

Update: Bluehost crashed all my domains this afternoon due to a server problem and when they finally brought it back up, everything is working fine. I’ll never know what it was that they disabled that caused the server so many forum problems for over 12 hours. I had all other kinds of issues too besides this.

Bluehost has mentioned on past occasions that a conflict due to PHP versions was causing problems with my sites (white screen of death for 24 hours in June). They are trying to drop support for PHP 5.2, I don’t use that but use PHP Fast 5.4. However, I wonder if bbPress requires 5.2 for some functions? It would be helpful for future reference.
Thank you, Matoca

[Matoca]

Robin,
Thank you for replying so quickly.

The forum index does show. But clicking on a forum, no topics are displayed, just the “Oh Bother” message. If I am not logged in, selecting a Recent Topic of Recent Reply in the sidebar will show a message that “It seems we can’t find what you’re looking for. Perhaps searching can help.”

However, when I am logged in and click on a Recent Topic or a Recent Reply, I will see the topic or reply! So I can navigate those recent items, but nothing else. I can see all in the dashboard.

But either logged in or not, if I try to view the forum directly by clicking on AIHA Dog, the Oh Bother message appears.
http://www.secondchanceaihadogs.com/forums/

AIHA Dog

my best
patrice

[Matoca]

Stephen,
Sorry for the poor explanation. On each topic post or reply, next to the author’s name is Details. Clicking that opens a menu of items, more for the moderators, less for non-registered users. This gives me options like the IP number, the post number, the date, Edit, Close, Split, Stick, Merge, Trash, Spam, Reply. I use this, and so do my moderators, to spam posts simply. I also use it to split topics off from the parent. Details would not open yesterday, I wanted to split a topic, but couldn’t.

Interestingly enough, I also simultaneously had a new problem with a NextGEN HTML5 slideshow playback on the forum pages not loading which I have also been trying to fix (following a NextGEN upgrade.) Today I changed the settings on the slideshow to Flash playback to see if that worked, it did, the slideshow plays.

And now, the Details are working again in the replies. So this is not a bbPress problem, at least I don’t think so. Something is funky with HTML5, whether it is just NextGEN or something on the server (PHP version?), well I can’t figure that out yet. But trying to load the HTML5 slideshow did mess with the Details display.

Bingo's latest blood test

Sorry to bother you,
my best, Matoca

[Matoca]

I finally decided to try a few more forum fix tools and after using “Recalculate the parent topic for each post” I was able to view All Replies. Very odd that I could get in via the forum (edit) to the replies but not directly access them via the dashboard.

I am so glad those tools are available!
my best
matoca

[Matoca]

Update. Monday I asked my iPad, iPhone moderator to see if she could get a keyboard to come up, see what she was typing and actually post to the forum. She reported that it was working perfectly! No kidding! So after the WordPress 3.9 upgrade, the tinyMCE 4 upgrade has improved interaction with iPads and iPhones.

See: http://www.tinymce.com/index.php
Also: tinyMCE 4 has a presentation that explains what is different.
http://www.tinymce.com/presentation/index.html#/

I did a little research about tinyMCE because honestly it sounds like the name of a toy. So once I found the name, Tiny Moxiecode Content Editor, it made more sense to me. Wikipedia describes it as “platform-independent web-based JavaScript/HTML WYSIWYG editor control.” So, in a sense, this is the core element of WordPress (and other CMS platforms), giving the user the ability to get content on the blog without having to necessarily understand anything about HTML.

After browsing some forums I better understand that this upgrade of WP and tinyMCE has rendered many previous plugins dead in the water. It means that users need to do some serious spring cleaning and get rid of any plugins that have not been specifically updated for use with WP 3.9.

A lot of plugins have necessarily cropped up over time to add back lost functionality in tinyMCE as functions were removed. So the bbPress plugin I was using in the past that added back the visual tab to the forum message field was just one of many. Luckily I did disable it prior to the release of 3.9 but it clearly was already unstable with 3.8.

I made a mistake when I posted earlier, enabling the tools in the dashboard does give them to everyone who is not registered or logged in, not just those logged in as moderators. So I have rethought having the text editor tools on the open forum. I don’t like the ability of non-registered posters to add images directly nor do I like them adding links. These people don’t register so I have removed all editing tools from the forum in forum>settings. I have asked moderators to use the tools in the dashboard for adding images and links. Perhaps there will be a plugin in the future that will allow moderators with administrator rights to have these tools directly in the forum, but not have them accessible to the general public?

So if you do want your moderators to have undo, redo, add link, remove link and insert/edit image in the forum then enable this in forum>settings, it standard with tinyMCE 4, and looks exactly as it does on this forum

I became interested in more functionality and I installed TinyMCE Advanced plugin this afternoon to play with. I realized the many things I could do just with tables! So it’s a versatile plugin and they claim has been tested with 3.9.
my best, matoca

[Matoca]

I was using a specific bbPress tinyMCE plugin, but I disabled that over a week ago when you mentioned that there may be some issues with it. Was it successful? I don’t know, you can read my moderator’s varied results above. When I had originally added the plugin it was specifically so moderators could edit photo size in the forum and not have to go into the dashboard to do that. I still ask my moderators to always be logged in when they are posting. If it is as simple as asking my moderator with the iphone issues to not log in when she needs to post replies or start topics, that is what we will do.

The latest upgrade WP 3.9 has ver 4.0 tinyMCS in it. See:

TinyMCE 4.0 is in core

So, rather than confuse my troubleshooting, I have no tinyMCE plugins installed. Whatever tinyMCE capabilities 3.9 has is what I now have.

When I am logged in, on the text tab there are the standards plus insert/edit link, url img, code and close tags, the same as we are seeing on this forum.

On the visual tab, logged in, in addition to the standards there is undo, redo, add link, remove link and insert/edit image. Perfect, exactly what I wanted for the moderators.

When I am not logged in there are only the standard fields for name, email and website and add message. There are no text or visual tabs. I have the Nextgen gallery plugin for Upload Photos so that solves the issue of users wanting to post photos. They go directly into a specific gallery and I get an email telling me that something has been uploaded and needs approving.

I have Post Formatting in the forum tools settings unchecked for “Add toolbar & buttons to text areas to help with HTML formatting.” So that is probably why they are not allowed to have visual or text tabs. I do not require registration for posting. If I have trouble with someone I can put their IP on a blacklist. Akismet works well.

But it’s only been a couple of days since I upgraded to 3.9. The developer of the theme I am using has notified me that he is also reworking his theme so that may change things as well.

Once my moderator gets back in touch with me I will post here. Perhaps this WP upgrade has solved the problems with iPhone and iPad?
my best, matoca

[Matoca]

Update. Last week as soon as I read that there had been trouble with tinyMCE, I disabled the bbPress Enable TinyMCE Visual Tab Version 1.0.1 plugin I had been using. I was using it mainly so moderators could do a bit more in the forum but it wasn’t critical.

The results were that, -perhaps-, this was part of the problem but it’s not that straightforward. The moderator tried to post using her iPhone and responded:

“I could put my name in and e-mail address AND it did show up as I typed. But, when I posted, the typing was transparent. I knew it was ‘typing’ because the auto word finish worked and came up. And then when I hit ‘submit’ the post did show up.”

So then I needed to know if she had tried this while she was logged in or not. I have the forum set for no registration so anyone can post, but I don’t allow them to input html. If she was not logged in then she wouldn’t be able to post in html. I thought perhaps her iPhone or iPad has text attributes set that wouldn’t be allowed.

So I quizzed her:
> So the keyboard came up for you this time, no problem? That was the important thing.
Yes, it came up.
>
> So then next, you could see what you were typing in the name and email fields?
Yes.
>
> But then when you were typing in the message window, the text was not visible?
Right, NOT visible.
>
> And finally when you hit submit you could see that you had posted.
Yes, it was then visible and posted.
>
> I can see what you posted and besides the fumbled spelling cause you couldn’t see, it works.
Right – my fingers on the tiny keyboard are not conducive to proper spelling, punctuation. 😜
>
> So I need to know, first are you logged in when you are adding your message?
No, I’m NOT logged in.

> Do you see a message that says “Your account has the ability to post unrestricted HTML content.”
No, i don’t see that.
>
> And then when you are at the message window, look at the tabs on the upper right. Were you on the visual tab or the text tab when you were writing?
Visual, couldn’t get into Text.
>
> Try typing another message with the other tab selected. I suspect you were in the visual tab so try the text tab this time.
Doesn’t work. 😣

Then a few days later we were back at it again. She tried this logged in.
“Logged in. Using iPad. This is what I got from ‘Text’

Hi. This is a test – now is the time for all AIHA/IMHA doggies to be well.

<strong>bold</strong>

<em>italics</em>

And this is what I got in ‘Visual’

Hi. This is a test.

Now is the time for all AIHA/IMHA doggies to be well.

Bold: </strong>

Italic: <em>

Then later that day she tried logging out and posting:
“I logged out and tried to post again to my Sadie:Weaning post. I seemed to have lost a word or two from the post, once I hit submit, but it WAS in sequence and I COULD type AND the typed showed as I typed. This was the first time in months that it’s worked. Yeah!!!!!”

And yesterday she reported (logged out):
“Okay – just posted to Joe. First, had to tap hard to get the keyboard to come up. It finally did and I could put in name, e-mail, showing what I wrote. But once I tried to actually post, again, after tapping hard anonymity (“on it?”)five times, the cursor would move with each letter I hit, but I could not see shat (see what?) I was writing.”

WP just updated to 3.8.3 (without my input…) so would that have some version of tinyMCE in it? I thought that they had removed it completely a while back and at that time I lost the text tab in the forum when posting as a moderator. So that is when I installed the tinyMCE plugin.

I wish I could say that this seems resolved, but it seems that she is still having erratic behavior from the keyboard when she is trying to enter text either logged in or not logged in. It is significant that she can get the keyboard to come up at all, that was not happening before.

I am trying to make sure my site is responsive and is usable by most phones and tablets. On my Google Nexus I have a bit of trouble scrolling down the page, it’s erratic and resistive. But that may have more to do with the page loading slower over wifi.

I hope this thread stays open so there can be further input?
thank you, matoca

[Matoca]

John,
This is significant. Are you logged in as administrator when you are posting?

If this is the case, then it may be a theme problem and not anything to do with bbPress.
thank you, Matoca