[Matoca]

Robin,
Yes, I understand. The description “can’t post” is very vague and certainly was not meant to confuse you. In her email copy posted above she finally described that the keyboard is not coming up. This happened to her twice, once after upgrading her ios on her iPhone and then again when she upgraded the ios on her iPad. So I am assuming this is a conflict with the ios release 7.0.4.

None of the other moderator are having trouble posting so I felt sure it must be something directly related to ios 7.0.4, bbPress and how bbPress signals the device to fill in the topic or reply form correctly. She can navigate the website and read the forum fine.

I use a google nexus tablet and I sometimes notice idiosyncrasies with scrolling down a forum page. But I am able to get a keyboard when I want to write a reply.

I have posted to the theme developer as well. Perhaps they will have a better idea of how this conflict is happening.

Thank you for your help!
matoca

[Matoca]

Robin,
I am not exactly sure what you mean here. I do know what the permalink for the forum is and /forums/ is part of it, but it doesn’t end the permalink. This is the permalink, with the website and forum name made generic for posting purposes:
http://www.mywebsite.com/forums/forum/ourgroup/

Is the second “/forum/” the issue? If I change this now, after many months, won’t this mess things up like bookmarks, menu links within the site and google records? There are three forums under /forums/ with different names.

The topic that the person would like to reply to is this (a topic she started on a desktop):
http://www.mywebsite.com/forums/topic/needadvice/#post-3735

To repeat, she was able to start topics and reply to topics in the text field prior to the ios upgrade. I guess I don’t understand how the permalink is conflicting with the display of the keyboard when she wants to enter text in the form on the page.

I do understand that js probably plays a role in how taps and drags operate on tablets and phones. In this case these are not triggering the code to display a keyboard but I wouldn’t know where to look for that code and determine what the issue is. Is it a general theme function or is specific to bbPress forms?
my best, matoca

[Matoca]

Linda is still unable to post anything from her iPad or iPhone on the forum. I am wondering if anyone has any suggestions on how to work this out so she can post?
Thank you, Matoca

[Matoca]

Stephen,
Thank you! You truly have an encyclopedic brain. This worked exactly the way it is described. I am going to read up on the options so I have a better idea of what each one does.

Robin, I neglected to add that I do empty the spam each time I check that folder. I collect the IP addresses and make sure the text of each suspect is truly spam. Then I select them all and Empty Spam.
my best, matoca

[Matoca]

Robin,
Thank you for the suggestions. I tried this and found that the conflict comes from the option on the bottom of the forum pages that allows users to “Notify me of follow-up replies via email.” If this is checked it sends an email to the user. It sends the same content as the plugin, but the emails are formatted slightly different, enough that I was able to identify them:
You are receiving this email because you subscribed to a forum topic. Login and visit the topic to unsubscribe from these emails.”

The plugin formats the emails like this:
“Hello! A new reply has been posted by . Topic title: Reply To: Content:”

What complicates this is that once checked on the forum page, the “notify me of follow-ups” will continue to remain checked and the users would have to uncheck it each time they posted. I read about this on another support topic, the default is supposed to be not checked but once it is checked it stays checked.

I think this also means that if it is checked, even if you have never posted to the topic, you still get the email. I will have to follow this carefully to see what the behavior is for others.

So without being able to control the “notify me of follow-ups” checkbox, I must rely on the moderators to take care of this themselves.
Thank you so much for your help, it was invaluable!
Matoca

[Matoca]

Well, it was kind of a disaster today. I set all the moderators to get the topics and replies. Suddenly everyone was getting multiple emails for one topic or reply. I had to change the settings back to just the owner (me) getting the notifications for the meanwhile until I can figure out why these emails are being duplicated.

The problem is that I can’t figure out what email address(s) bbPress uses to send these emails and how it obtains it/them. (I do understand that the plugin uses the User’s email addresses in Users as the addressee) We are getting emails from the standard Bluehost box but also emails from the team@ourblog.com address as well.

So my inbox filled up with 3 copies of each post and then all the moderators started emailing me to tell me that they were receiving multiple emails too.

[Matoca]

Robin,
Super information. Thank you! That certainly sounds like the correct way to do this. I’ll give that a try now.
my best, Matoca

[Matoca]

I have been around with bluehost about this PHP version and a few problems for several months now. I went to install Quick Cache and discovered that I needed at least PHP 5.4 or 5.5. So after reading about the pluses and minuses of each version I went with PHP 5.4 (FastCGI) and eventually added gzip compression as recommended by QC. It was an amazing difference in performance. (Compression 70.4%)

Sometime after this I was trying to install a second installation of simplephpchat from MOJO, Simple Scripts. I was told that it requires 5.3, not 5.2, nor 5.4, but 5.3. Apparently I had installed it when php 5.3 was installed, but since it requires php 5.3 and that is no longer available, I couldn’t install another instance. Honestly, I just wanted a simple php chat room, nothing fancy, and so I was left with nothing to chose from. Apparently a number of the Simple Scripts WP plugins require 5.3. Eventually I tried X7chat and that works ok under PHP 5.5.

So this seemed like it was just one more problem to resolve between PHP versions, I didn’t question what he was telling me this morning. I have felt that if so many products were dependent on 5.3 maybe they should just leave it available a while longer? I understand the unique differences between HTML and HTML5 and CCS2 and CSS3, but I don’t know what the unique differences are between PHP versions. It seems like a pretty straightforward language to me?

[Matoca]

Once I get the server error, other pages after 10 also have problems. But if I bypass 10 at the start, I can seem to get to other higher numbered pages.

That is a great idea. I certainly can simply export it into another blog that is already installed without any trouble! Thanks for the suggestion!

I did a follow up post about the 500 Server Error, see the post “PHP 5.3 Error.” This is something I found out this morning. My webhost support went into the dashboard this morning to figure out the 500 server error. He told me bbPress is throwing this error because 5.3 was deprecated and removed from the server. He tried 5.2 and 5.4 but that bbPress is throwing the error under both versions.
my best
Matoca

[Matoca]

Depending on what is available in the theme you are using, you can change this in the dashboard Appearance> Customize > Appearance tab to full width. However, this setting also applies to posts. Pages can be set full width if you desire a website look. Some themes will give you more variable options.

I had to decide with my site that I really wanted the option to have sidebar material on some parts of the website so I was stuck using sidebars on the forum. I used some of the neat bbPress plugins like “recent topics” “recent replies” and “search forum” in my sidebar to fill the space.

[Matoca]

Stephen,
There is very little written in the way of instructions how to do this. The only caution I saw was that doing it in one chunk may overload shared servers and cause errors. So I exported each item separately, starting with forums, then topics and finally replies. I also imported in that order. The forums and topics went fine. The replies lost their associated forums and many also lost their topics. I had the old forum to use for reference and so I have been editing each reply in the dashboard, adding back the correct forum and topic number.

I am about 2/3 done, weeks later, but now I am getting a 500 Server error when I try to view page 10 of the replies. What is interesting is that I can see those replies in the forum and I can edit them there. I just can’t get into that one page of replies in the dashboard. I tried the forum repair tools with no luck. I am not sure if this is a big issue that I need to worry about? Any idea what this is? Do you think it is worthwhile to use the “kill all forums” and start again with the “all” export/import?

I am about to open the forum up to the users from the old forum and once done, I am committed. I had hoped this would go easier but I would not recommend this to anyone who is considering moving a forum to another WP installation.
my best
Matoca

[Matoca]

I decided not to try to change the name of the forum midstream so I started from scratch, removing any forum from the new site. Again, the 2 forums imported ok. The topics imported ok, up to a point. This has been a real disaster.

The replies imported but none of them are assigned to the proper forum, that box says “no parent”. I am having to go through over 500 replies in the dashboard and assign each one by hand to the forum it belongs to. That involves referring to the old forum continually to make sure that I am getting it correct.

But it gets worse. Other values for some of the replies are also messed up, such that I have to search the original forum to find these replies and fix the forum assignment, the topic number value, and if there is a reply to a reply, I have to find the reply number value that the reply is responding to. But I have a process and it is getting done.

My question, and what I need help with, is how to fix how the “replies to replies” are displayed. In the old forum that I exported these from, these replies to replies were offset to the right and colored a med gray so they stood out as different. The CSS is correctly set for the new forum to color them gray. But the color is not there and these replies to replies are not offset to the right.

So the end result is that these replies to replies are placed in between the wrong replies and are not near the correct reply. The content flow makes no sense. I do have the correct “reply to” number values set in the dashboard so it should know which reply it is associated with.

What controls how these replies to replies are colored and moved to the right under their parent replies? How did that get lost in the export/import? What can I do now to fix this?
Thank you,
Matoca

[Matoca]

Stephen,
There were a number of spam posts to the blog in a foreign language. One of the moderators did spam them but they hung around in the topics for some reason, creating havoc with the topic display in the dashboard.

I could only find them when I went to Dashboard>Home and viewed them in Right Now In The Forums under Users and Moderation> Hidden Topics. There they were. It was difficult to trash them, hanging the server a number of times. But eventually I got rid of them all and the Topics display returned to normal.

I am not sure why Akismet didn’t get block them. Perhaps it can only respond to certain language texts?
my best
Matoca

[Matoca]

John
Thank you. I did finally figure this out, sort of, though there are very few instructions about this anywhere. I had some problems with it, so I am only about a 1/3 done. I started with importing the forums and the users which went ok.

But when I imported the topics, every topic came in with the wrong field entered for the associated Forum Name, they were random words from the content. I had to go through and re-associate all the topics with the proper forum by hand which took hours.

I want to use a new name for the forum, so I associated each topic with the new forum name. The topics are now all in the new forum, without replies which I haven’t imported yet, I can see them when I view the forum. But inside the dashboard the topics all appear to be still under the old forum name, not the new one. I think perhaps this must be what the forum repair tool will fix?

But I am not sure whether I should import the replies first and then use the repair tools or just make sure the topics are fixed now before I move on to importing the replies, I don’t know how bbPress associates the topics and replies together, are the replies going to look for the old forum name? At some point I want to delete the forum with the old name, but I want to make sure that I am not mistakenly corrupting anything. I really really don’t want to spend several days fixing the replies by hand.

I found the “empty the forum and get rid of everything” choice. So that will be a good backup plan if I mess this up.
my best
Matoca

[Matoca]

Stephen,
Thank you. I have a basic understanding of what this means. I read about get_content and understand that the reply data needs to be “hooked” before it displays so the Tooltip can act on it.

But that is where my knowledge ends. What are the chances I can find someone to help make this happen for me? The CM ToolTip support is sympathetic but says it must happen on the bbPress side.

I can see the application of tooltip glossary information for many different forums, especially those involved in sciences, medicine and other technologies, where terminology is often part of the discussion. Are there other forums in bbPress where I might ask about this?

[Matoca]

Wow! Super information. I did find the right class with firebug couldn’t apply the attribute correctly. This works perfectly and it isn’t really too dark! I think it does need to be noticeable to users and this is just right.
Thank you, Matoca

[Matoca]

I too wanted to differentiate the reply to a reply and played around with firebug last night for an hour trying to find the right CSS style. I was only able to color the background and that added a color under the reply box that extended to the left, thus adding a colored tab on the left side of the reply box. I had only wanted to color the box a slightly darker gray but could not find the attribute. I didn’t change this.

If you look carefully you will notice that reply to reply is always floated right of the previous reply and that the “Reply and Details” moves to the bottom of the reply. In a reply to a topic, these are usually at the top left.

However the issue we are having is that actual replies to the topic are moved out of the correct posting order and continue to float at the very bottom. Current and new replies to topic post above these.

If I remake these replies to topic and backdate them and then delete the original posts will that solve the problem? Or is bbPress different than WP where you can backdate posts? Of course in this case the replies in question are already dated late November so they should not be at the bottom.

[Matoca]

I have a relatively new installation of bbPress and while the learning curve isn’t great, this particular problem is just causing me grief. If I could just somehow go into the dashboard and move these posts back into order I would do it, but I can’t seem to figure out how. Wishful thinking….

We have one topic that has gone on for 5 pages now. I know I should have limited the number of replies on topics. However, this forum is for owners with sick dogs and I didn’t want to stifle their conversations. When I move us to our permanent home, I will do this. This is a temporary place.

So in this particular situation I have this at the bottom of the replies:
reply 1150 12/5
reply 1016 11/27
reply 1017 11/27
reply 1025 11/27
reply 1064 11/28

I have explained the difference to them about replying to the topic (use the entry field at the bottom of the page) vs reply to another reply (click on “Reply” inside the reply you want to answer. We did have some confusion early on, but for the most part they are doing everything right.

So I took a look at reply 1016 to see what was up. I noticed that one of the new moderators had apparently mistakenly made a revision to this post about 2 hours later after it was originally posted. There was really nothing revised, but it does show up in the Post Revisions history. I tried to delete this revision but I got this error:
The AJAX request has Failed, Please try again;
The unexpected data was: [object XMLDocument]

If one of the keymasters would like to look at this particular topic and replies you can view it here.
http://www.cybergiants.com/GiantRescue/forums/topic/megan-sophie/#1064

I will do anything you need to figure this problem out. We just can’t have replies about a dog that is alive be sequentially after the date the dog has succumbed to the illness. If one of you needs to get inside the dashboard then so be it.
my best
matoca

[Matoca]

Thank you for you extreme patience with me.

So am I not supposed to be seeing the Visual Tab inside the forum Topic and Replies now that this recommended plugin is installed? This is from the read me file for bbPress Enable Tinymce-visual-tab:
“Enabling the full default TinyMCE editor mode will display all the buttons, similar to the editor inside the WordPress admin.” I guess I expected to see this.

Ok, this gets more complex doesn’t it… Another plug in, I will have to look and see what could be doing this. This function of editing user’s image dimensions in topics right in the forum pages was super for the moderators. They are leery of always using the dashboard to do everything and this made it a simple task. Isn’t it always hard to go backwards…

The Add Media button information came from the Read Me file for bbPress Enable Tinymce-visual-tab:
“Enabling the media upload button, “Add Media”, will only enable this button for users who have the ability to upload files. By default this is authors and greater. This means this button will _not_ show for normal forum users. This is simply to give administrators the ability to easily upload and insert images into bbPress.”

I am giving 4 moderators admin and keymaster privileges to add images to posts, delete spam etc. The forum is being run with no registration required, my choice. The topic and reply traffic has been considerable and this is only a hidden test site by invitation only at this point. I had many choices to pick from for forums, and we definitely agreed we did not want to be using FB or yahoo. So far bbPress has been perfect for this. But the plugin problems have been greater than normal this week.
Thank you for your help,
Patrice

[Matoca]

Thank you for writing back so quickly!

I don’t disbelieve you, but I can’t understand why the visual tab has been working since the installation of bbPress a month ago and suddenly failed this week?

I followed the link and loaded the updated version on the server then installed it in the plugin directory. There was no change, I still can’t select the visual tab, but I do see the Add Media button and it works.

Once I start getting some emails of posts I will be able to tell if the html has been removed from emailed posts.
Thank you

[Matoca]

Yes, I do. I have checked the Akismet page in my dashboard and it says “Valid” in green under the API key and “All Akismet servers are available” and “Akismet is working correctly. All servers are accessible.”

I checked the Akismet stats and since I added bbPress it is showing 166 incidents of Ham in this month, but no spam and nothing prior to that. Would it see the new forum posts as “ham?” I am not requiring users to register, but letting them post with just a user name and email.

I really want to keep it that way, but I also want Akismet to protect us to some extent.

[Matoca]

I should mention that this setting is properly checked in the bbPress settings and has been since it was installed, as it appears to be the default setting:
Akismet Integration
Forum settings for Akismet
Use Akismet: Allow Akismet to actively prevent forum spam.

In most cases if a plugin was acting like this I would just un-install and then re-install but with the forum very active I don’t think I should be doing that?