[Tecca]

That’s one of the downsides of taking the WordPress – bbPress – BuddyPress route. Either you’re gonna shell out a lot of cash for great plugins, or you add most of the functionality yourself and take a lot of time doing so. I’m going with a mixture of both time and money. When it comes to buying one plugin — cool. Then you start buying three or six, and your yearly costs skyrocket for just one site.

[Tecca]

@novakedward

Give this a shot: https://bbpress.org/forums/topic/forums-index-in-the-same-layout-as-other-bb-software/#post-141442

[Tecca]

Does the plugin not work as intended @utahman1971, or you haven’t tried it because it hasn’t been updated for a while? From what I see, it probably hasn’t been updated because bbPress hasn’t changed enough to warrant the plugin being updated (ie, it stills works with the current version).

If that’s not the case and it simply doesn’t work or has some sort of vulnerability, you could always ask which templates to paste your ad codes in. I prefer doing that over adding yet another plugin that might break during upgrades. With ad codes being touched so little, template edits seem appropriate enough for the job.

[Tecca]

Fiiiinally, I found exactly what I needed. I was honestly searching up and down as to why I could no longer view the posts (viewing a topic) in my custom theme, it seemingly broke out of nowhere on a site I hadn’t updated for a while. I’m glad this search has come to an end.

Thanks @robin-w! I was at a dead halt with my website until I could figure this out. Semi-old topic, I know, but I’m sure it’ll help others out.

EDIT: I’ve made a small donation through your website.

[Tecca]

Update WordPress to the latest version as well as bbPress? You should be fine, they’re compatible. It’s mostly other plugins you might have to worry about, but generally things should work. Make sure you take a backup of your data before proceeding.

[Tecca]

It’s likely inheriting the bullets from your WordPress style.css rather than something coming from the bbPress stylesheet. So what you can do is add something like the below CSS to your bbPress stylesheet.

#bbpress-forums li {
    list-style-type: none;
}

That will likely remove bullets from forum posts as well, but it’s hard to get specific without seeing the site itself.

Hopefully that takes you in the right direction.

[Tecca]

Most forum software have a draft button. A good way to use it would be if you wanted to make a topic but not post it until later (maybe when it becomes more relevant, such as after an event happened real-world), or if you get caught up with time and don’t want to lose your work.

I don’t see how it’d be that useful for replies, but the feature is perfect if it auto-saves a draft for you so you don’t lose your work, as some replies can be fairly lengthy. I know IPBoard and some of the other big boys have this feature.

Overall I think there are more advantages than disadvantages of having a draft button.

[Tecca]

Here in the Codex: https://codex.bbpress.org/import-forums/mingle/

Make sure to read the topic that’s linked at the bottom.

[Tecca]

Great stuff, @kaliceos! Thanks for posting this, it definitely saves me time having to fiddle around with it myself.

[Tecca]

Do you mean the margins between the post and the date of the post? Because it seems like the opposite actually fixes the problem (your first CSS bit in your post with 0 margin).

You also seem to have these two in your CSS:

#bbpress-forums .post-content p

and

.post-content p

Both are doing the same thing, so you could have a conflict with your CSS there. Remove one of them entirely and work with just the one you keep. Be sure to refresh your cache (ctrl+f5) after saving the change in your CSS file.

[Tecca]

Find this in your bbpress.css file:

#bbpress-forums ul.bbp-lead-topic, #bbpress-forums ul.bbp-topics, #bbpress-forums ul.bbp-forums, #bbpress-forums ul.bbp-replies, #bbpress-forums ul.bbp-search-results

Within that, there will be font-size: 12px. Change the pixel number to a higher value.

The bbPress.css will be located in your bbPress folder in your plugins. If you don’t have the bbPress.css in your theme, copy that file and put it into a folder called “css” directly with of your theme files.

[Tecca]

In your CSS file.

[Tecca]

Stick will pin it to the top of the forum it belongs to. Clicking on (to front) will pin it forum-wide.

[Tecca]

I’d easily go for IP Board or Xenforo before vBulletin. But since we’re using bbPress here and it seems silly to change software solely for private forums, we should probably stick with bbPress suggestions.

I’m sure there’s a way to implement this with some fiddling, but have you considered an alternative? I don’t find that forum software is the best method of communicating with staff members, so for my new project I’m going to use something similar to CollabPress (if not CP itself): https://wordpress.org/plugins/collabpress/

You can also load it on the front end, so your staff members can communicate without going to their WP Dashboard. I find solutions like this to be best, since you can manage all sorts of things and add milestones/accomplishments — which may motivate staff to work harder.

[Tecca]

In your bbpress.css file you’ll find something like this:

#bbpress-forums p.bbp-topic-meta img.avatar, #bbpress-forums ul.bbp-reply-revision-log img.avatar, #bbpress-forums ul.bbp-topic-revision-log img.avatar, #bbpress-forums div.bbp-template-notice img.avatar, #bbpress-forums .widget_display_topics img.avatar, #bbpress-forums .widget_display_replies img.avatar, #bbpress-forums p.bbp-topic-meta img.avatar {
    border: 3px double #DDDDDD;
    float: none;
    margin-bottom: -7px;
}

Add display: inline; to it, and that’ll fix it up for ya.

[Tecca]

This is the way that bbPress is; you’d need to make your own theme if you want it to have a forum hierarchy. This is a feature that is being added in the future, however.

https://bbpress.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/1958

[Tecca]

These are being taken from your site’s CSS (non-bbPress side):

ul ul li:before
ul li:before

Those are the culprits. Add this to your bbPress.css file:

ul ul li:before {
    display: none;
}

ul li:before {
    display: none;
}

Or remove them altogether from your site’s CSS if you don’t need them.

[Tecca]

That’s a good way of doing things. I simply did it this way, however:

#bbpress-forums .status-closed > li.bbp-topic-title > a.bbp-topic-permalink:before {
	content: "[Locked]";
	text-shadow: 1px 1px 0 #ffffff;
	color: #ff0000;
	margin-right: 5px;
}

Adds the [Locked] tag before the topic name, in red.

[Tecca]

That’s how you should change it — except copy that file and put it into your theme’s directory:

wp-content/themes/yourtheme/bbpress

[Tecca]

At the moment, the only way to get a hierarchy is to do it with template edits. I haven’t gotten there since I’m working on WordPress, bbPress and BuddyPress all at once, so I can’t help you out there. There is a trac about it here, though: https://bbpress.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/1958

Looks like it’s coming in bbPress 2.5, if there’s time.

How did you go about getting the title for the freshness link? I was actually going to do that last night, but I haven’t gotten around to it — so a quick heads up there would be awesome.

Oh, and a couple of examples of bbPress forums I’ve seen with a hierarchy (in case you’d like to see it live):

http://tamrielfoundry.com/forums/
http://www.dev4press.com/forums/

[Tecca]

You can change this through your bbpress.css file fairly easily. The IDs/classes you’re looking for will be similar to this:

#favorite-toggle, #subscription-toggle {
	text-decoration: none;
	padding: 0 6px;
	font-weight: bold;
	}
	#favorite-toggle a {
		color: #d7be4c;
	}
	#favorite-toggle a:hover {
		color: #dfca66;
	}
	#favorite-toggle span.is-favorite a, #subscription-toggle span.is-subscribed a {
		color: #888888;
		}
		#favorite-toggle span.is-favorite a:hover, #subscription-toggle span.is-subscribed a:hover {
			color: #555555;
		}

#subscription-toggle a {
	color: #39c696;
	}
	#subscription-toggle a:hover {
		color: #4cd4a5;
	}

That’s an older version of what I was using — in there you can see that these elements will change the color based on whatever you set them to:

#favorite-toggle span.is-favorite a, #subscription-toggle span.is-subscribed a

Take note of “span.is-favorite a” and “span.is-subscribed a”. Those are the important ones that will allow you to change the color and style.

If you’d like to add a check mark, you can do something like:

#favorite-toggle span.is-favorite a:before, #subscription-toggle span.is-subscribed a:before {
	content: "✓";
		}

In the above, I added the “:before” pseudo elements to indicate that “before the word, add this content.” The content is the checkmark. Alternatively, you can also use the “:after” pseudo element and add things that way. Both work.

[Tecca]

I think the best place to ask would be in the support section for that specific plugin. And if you can’t seem to get it working with/without support, possibly try Yoast’s SEO plugin — I honestly believe it’s the best one around for WordPress.

[Tecca]

It’s a plugin for WordPress so you’d install with your current website. The domain would be something like mywebsite.com/forums

The style will be inherited by whatever WordPress theme you’re using.

[Tecca]

It’s possible that your theme has a bbpress.css file which is overriding whatever you’re putting in the default file. Regardless, you should be editing the file that’s in your theme’s directory, which would look similar to:

webroot / wp-content / themes / yourtheme / css / bbpress.css

If the file isn’t in there or you don’t have that folder in your theme, copy and paste the file over.

Also make sure you’re hard refreshing your browser to clear its cache, after making your changes (hold CTRL then press f5 on your keyboard, or press the browser’s refresh button a couple of times).

[Tecca]

In your bbpress.css file, change the background of each of these:

.entry-title {
background: red;
}

#bbpress-forums div.odd,
#bbpress-forums ul.odd {
background: yellow;
}

#bbpress-forums div.even,
#bbpress-forums ul.even {
background: green;
}

Just change those color names to hex codes to make them look a bit better.