[michael3185]

“Weigh in”? Geez, putting your own opinion forward doesn’t turn life into a wrestling match.

I could have explained better. The woman in question doesn’t understand the concept of the Gravatar being in one place and therefore easy to change. As far as she’s aware, sites you give your email to have access to that email, and things virtually attached to it. As an example, I have people who think you can’t use the same name with a different email service provider because once used they think their name is ‘taken’ on the entire Internet. They see ‘Bob Jones’ refused in Hotmail, and are offered ‘Bob Jones482’ and take it, then think ‘Bob Jones482’ can’t be used elsewhere.

We all have varying opinions on the Gravatar/Core issue and others, but it’s no big deal in the end, is it? After all, if it comes to the point where 0.9 doesn’t do what somebody wants me to do for them, then there are many other options. We’re all very happy with 0.9 right now though, so all’s smiles.

[michael3185]

Many thanks. I’ll give it a try.

[michael3185]

@grassrootspa; So are you suggesting that just because Automattic run the Gravatar service, and decided to put it into the core of 1.0, that we should all be forced to use Gravatars?

If I upgrade to 1.0 I’d still have to use a plugin to allow my users – who don’t know or care about Gravatars and their ‘web presence’ – to have a profile image? Or does 1.0 allow users to select and upload an image like the excellent avatar-upload plugin I use on 0.9?

Come to that, if bbPress is advertised (and rightly so) as being so flexible and powerful, why can’t I upload a profile image on these forums? I personally, along with my forum users, don’t care if next year you can have your Gravatar beamed into deep space. Like many users, I prefer the quickest and simplest functionality, and functionality I control in any place on the web I visit, not having to be set in some central place and then appearing anywhere I add my email address, etc.

I don’t like this, “You’ll never have to upload your image again” idea. It takes control away from individuals, who should never be asked or required to identify themselves in a central image bank (even if it is with only an icon). I speak with some experience, as one of the female staff on a forum I built was stalked for some time by a very nasty guy. He didn’t see her Gravatar because she didn’t have one, but her worries would have continued for some time if she did have one. She’d have been desperately trying to remember every single site she’d put her email on to see whether her picture appeared there, in fear that the same thing could happen again with another head case.

0.9 makes a lot of sense in so many ways, but the more I hear about 1.0 and where it’s heading, the more I see, “Simple, fast, elegant” turning into, “Not so simple, not quite as fast, and elegant is debatable”.

[michael3185]

Just my tuppence worth, but as I said elsewhere, I’ve taken _ck_’s advice and stuck with 0.9. My forum needs aren’t very demanding, I have all the plugins I need and they work fine, and I don’t use WordPress so integration isn’t an issue. I have enquiries from others who want sites and forums building, but static sites rather than blogs. I can use my DTP package and bbPress 0.9 to do everything very quickly, and have excellent stability from both.

I also agree with _ck_’s points about core vs. plugins. From what I can gather, the original idea was to have a fast, secure, and plugin extensible system. Even as a user rather than a developer that makes a lot of sense to me. It means the core quickly becomes more and more stable, and anyone is free to develop whatever they want to hook into it. Brilliant. But putting various functions into the core means that any changes have to be redone by Sam et. al. and re-uploaded, hacked in the core by users, or redeveloped by hooking in a plugin to change the functionality. As everyone has differing needs and opinions, plugins for anything but basic core functions leave open far more options. Anything which is not essential to all users is not a core function. Gravatars, for example, are not required or even wanted by many users.

As to people remembering old versions with fondness, but having moved on with each bleeding edge version, I’d suggest that it’s only those who keep moving on who voice their opinions most in these forums. There are huge numbers of users who’ve built forums with very old packages of all kinds, and when they build new ones they use the old software too. I think it’s important that those who love bleeding edge, along with the challenges and time consuming re-uploading and fiddling around, don’t forget that many people are perfectly happy with what works and see no need to keep reinventing the wheel. After all, how much better really, do all these new ideas and functions appearing all over the web make life? This is probably a point for a philosophical forum, but worth mentioning I think. We seem to spend so much time redoing and redoing, that often purpose is lost in the background noise of being so busy changing everything. We live in a, “Yippee, it’s new!” culture, where anything which doesn’t titillate the mind is ditched for whatever’s next.

New functionality is great if it’s genuinely useful, but I’m glad 0.9.0.5 exists and works so well, and the occasional security update will do fine. Incidentally, I’d quite like to see a separate 0.9 forum. It would save 0.9 users having to wade through all the 1.0 questions and allow us to quickly see what’s relevant.

[michael3185]

@nuprn1; Could you show exactly what you did please? I’m on 0.9.0.5, and would prefer a password reset and notification if someone changes their email. As well as security, it’s because some of the users on one forum I built have no idea what they’re doing on a PC. They’ve given me wrong emails for Admin registrations, and done all sorts of things which make me realise that they may break their email at some later stage too.

A plugin for this would be good, if it can be done fairly easily, though I don’t mind hacking my core files as 0.9 upgrades will probably be few and far between in the future.

[edit]

Just had another thought. The forum in question will only have around 60 – 70 members once fully used, as it’s for a small service provider who restrict access. I could just disable the email field in the profile I guess, and let them email or PM me to change it if they want to. Any ideas on this folks..?

[michael3185]

For what it’s worth, I’m taking your advice _ck_, and sticking with 0.9 for the foreseeable future. I don’t want to loose all the functionality the current plugins give.

I have to agree about the version names too. Renumbering 0.9 to 1.0, then making the new version 2.0 may have given people a bit more pause for thought before gleefully installing the new version. The numbering gives the appearance of being a minor upgrade, when obviously it isn’t. Not that it’s an issue for experienced users, but the sudden flood of “Why doesn’t this plugin work now?” questions wasn’t hard to see coming, was it?

[michael3185]

Ah – OMG! – I know nothing about WordPress except the name. (Exit me!)

[michael3185]

Sounds easy enough even to me Marcomail, though what exactly do you mean by ‘comments’?

[michael3185]

@ovizii; I have the same problem with another bbPress forum I set up, which is off a sub-domain and in a folder called /forum/. Pretty permalinks don’t work no matter what I do with the .htaccess rewrites (I get 404 errors). I tried removing the /forum/ from RewriteBase and putting the .htaccess file in the forum folder – no go. Also tried leaving it in, and putting the .htaccess file in the ‘root’ of the sub-domain – no go.

I don’t know enough about rewrite rules and what they do to fix it. The ‘standard’ .htaccess people have posted elsewhere works fine in another forum which is in the ‘root’ folder of a sub-domain, by the way. This maybe should be in another thread as it’s not 1.0 related (I’m on 0.9.0.5), but any help would be appreciated.

[michael3185]

@Marcomail; Thanks for raising this point about a sidebar forum list. I was curious and tested out the code I posted above, and it works very well (without the table definition). I just put the forum loop into the hottags div section and it looks fine. The site link is in my previous post if you want a look, and the code I used is;

<div id="hottags">

<h2><?php _e('Forums'); ?></h2>

<?php if ( bb_forums() ) : ?>

<?php while ( bb_forum() ) : ?>

<a href="<?php forum_link(); ?>"><?php forum_name(); ?></a><br />

<?php endwhile; ?>

<?php endif; // bb_forums() ?>

<br />



<h2><?php _e('Tags'); ?></h2>

<p class="frontpageheatmap"><?php bb_tag_heat_map( 9, 13, 'pt', 50 ); ?></p>

</div>

It tidies up the front page a lot, and there’s less need to scroll down to see the recent posts. Cheers!

[michael3185]

@ashfame; In the example I gave, I’d just pulled some stuff out of my front-page.php, which is a modified version of Kakumei. It has tables because it came that way – here’s the fist code section;

<div id="discussions">

<?php if ( bb_forums() ) : ?>

<h2><?php _e('Forums'); ?></h2>

<table id="forumlist">

<?php while ( bb_forum() ) : ?>

<tr<?php bb_forum_class(); ?>>

<td><?php bb_forum_pad( '<div class="nest">' ); ?><a href="<?php forum_link(); ?>"><?php forum_name(); ?></a><br /><div class="hints"><?php forum_description(); ?>&nbsp;&nbsp;(<?php bb_forum_pad( '</div>' ); ?><?php forum_topics(); ?> topics, <?php forum_posts(); ?> posts)</div></td>

</tr>

<?php endwhile; ?>

</table>

<?php endif; // bb_forums() ?>

I read somewhere that using lists is not good (can’t remember why). I removed all the alternative line colourings to give a very simple layout, which you can see at http://mbforum.letsdoo.org.

How would I use a list to get the same layout? I once removed the remaining table stuff, but the page turned into a mess. A list will add bullets or numbering, won’t it?

[michael3185]

It seems to me that what we have here, albeit with lots of talented helpers, is a ‘marriage in code’ between Sam and _ck_. He built the house, she makes it pretty. Almost all of the useful plugins are _ck_ home grown or have contributions from her. I can’t contribute in any hugely useful way, but love your baby nonetheless.

Seems to me like it’s essentially up to the two of you, when it comes down to it.

[michael3185]

Hi Marco. I’m no expert at this (one or two will be along shortly…) but I’ve found that in playing around with PHP and CSS I’ve been able to do a lot more than I thought I would.

The code you’ve posted would display not just the forum names, but most of your front-page info. I’m wondering if putting the forum names in a < div > with a class name you’ve defined in the stylesheet to format the fornt, placing, width, etc., would do it. This is a rough ide from my front-page;

<div id="my_side_bar">

<?php if ( bb_forums() ) : ?>

<table id="forumlist">

<?php while ( bb_forum() ) : ?>

<tr<?php bb_forum_class(); ?>>

<td><a href="<?php forum_link(); ?>"><?php forum_name(); ?></a><br />

</td></tr>

<?php endwhile; ?>

</table>

<?php endif; // bb_forums() ?>

The table definition could probably be removed too, and it should(?) give a list of links with just forum names. Blind leading the blind here, but it might give you some ideas.

[michael3185]

I’ve ‘unresolved’ this thread again, as I’d like to get it working in 0.9.0.5

By Display Name, am I right in assuming you guys mean the ‘Custom Title’ in a member’s profile? If I set this, then the link under the avatar changes (obviously), but also, bbPM in creating its ‘PM this user’ link replaces the Display Name with what it should be. Changing the link ‘manually’ by altering the template causes bbPM to make a mess of the link, or not replace it at all, thereby creating 3 links; my hard-coded on, the expected profile link, and the ‘PM this user’ link.

[michael3185]

Plugins – blimey…

admin-add-user

allow-images

approve-user-registration

auto-add-favorites

avatar-upload

bb-chunk

bb-tweaks

bb-code-lite

bbPM

block-long-requests

enhanced-tag-heat-map

header-meta

human-test

move-it

my-views

new-favorite-notification

no-follow-on-reg

private-forums

profile-fields

related-topics

show-error-page

terms-of-service

year-long-cookies

Some are simple things taken from code in forum discussions, and the error-page one is my own.

I just tried one to notify mods of new posts, but it failed with a DB field/table missing, so I assume it was written or upgraded for 1.0, and of course a lot of plugins will be upgraded now. Still thinking, but I can always test drive it on an empty forum.

[michael3185]

After reading the discussion about whether to upgrade or not, I’m thinking (as _ck_ says) that there’s no point as 0.9.0.5 is working fine for us. Two forums aren’t ready yet, and the one which is active has only 30 members, with 30 more to be added once everyone’s enjoyed their summer holidays.

I have all the plugins I want working fine, have created my own super-simple theme, and can’t think of anything else I need it to do. Apart from the user roles and DB changes for larger forums, is there anything 1.0 does that might prove useful, but which I don’t know about..?

[michael3185]

I don’t use Gravatars, but the avatar-upload plugin works superbly and is very easy to follow in the profile page. (https://bbpress.org/plugins/topic/avatar-upload/#post-219) The image size and maximum upload file size can be pre-set, and it’s just a matter of the user selecting an image to upload and clicking Go. The image is resized if it’s large.

Saves people having to go and set up a Gravatar too – nobody in our technophobic group would bother, frankly. Come to that, most haven’t even uploaded an image, and seem happy with the auto-generated Identicon.

Edit: I should have said that I personally don’t use a Gravatar, but the option is switched on in Admin, so Gravatars will be used, or the user can choose to upload an image, or have an Identicon created. It all works very easily and looks great too.

[michael3185]

Cheers Ipstenu. I changed the post image so text wraps, and left the avatar as it was;

img { float: left; border: 1px solid #ddd; border-width: 3px; border-style: double; margin-right: 8px; }

img.avatar { float: none; display: block; border: 1px solid #ddd; border-width: 3px; border-style: double; }

Amazing how a simple change makes everything look so different.

[michael3185]

Cheers Ipstenu – speedy reply! I realised that possibly the img, if defined in the stylesheet, would then be set when rendered. And it was.

[michael3185]

I think there’s a missing check for the count..? I put a counter in my frontpage.php to limit the number of recent posts which are displayed;

<?php $recent_count = 0; ?>

<?php if ( $topics || $super_stickies ) : ?>

<h4><?php _e('Recent Posts'); ?></h4>

<table id="latest">

<?php if ( $stickies ) : foreach ( $stickies as $topic ) : ?>

<?php if ($recent_count >= 10) { break; } ?>

<?php $recent_count++; ?>

<tr<?php topic_class(); ?>>

<td><a href="<?php topic_link(); ?>"><?php topic_title(); ?></a><br /><div class="hints"><?php topic_posts(); ?> posts. <?php topic_last_poster(); ?> posted <a href="<?php topic_last_post_link(); ?>"><?php topic_time(); ?></a> ago.</div></td>

</tr>

<?php endforeach; endif; ?>

the $recent_count variable is incremented for each post link, and the loop is jumped out of if it hits 10. No doubt there’s a neater way of doing it, but it works fine. Checking for 1 instead of 10 would do it for you.

[michael3185]

Yeah. Erm, what she said.

The neat thing is, you get lots of help and it all works in the end.

[michael3185]

Hiya feast. I like the look of your forum, though something’s not straight – can’t figure out what it is..!

I’m not a bbPress expert, but an idea occurred to me. As you might not find someone to do everything you want, why not offer a price for each individual piece of work? There’s a post about it at https://bbpress.org/forums/topic/s-amp-s-for-your-help#post-37270

[michael3185]

Neat idea xtint – I like it. I’m not a bbPress hotshot by any means, and am also busy with my own forum set-up, but I’ll keep tabs on this one. There are some superb coders in the forum, and I’m sure you’ll get some pointers soon enough.

[michael3185]

I don’t know about image sizing, but there might be a plugin. Go to the Extend tab and do a search.

You should be able to move your layout around by changing the theme’s style.css file. I learned to create my theme by drastically changing one css setting at a time so it was obvious what the setting did, then getting it how I wanted. Learning what your theme’s stylesheet does is essential if you’re going to modify it in future.

Personally, I think there’s nothing wrong with white space on a forum. It can give a much cleaner look.

[michael3185]

.threadpost {

font-size: 11.5pt;			/* Post content */

padding: 16px 10px;

margin-left: 140px;

}