Well I am THRILLED to report that it finally ALL works as it should!
The odd part is that I never found any errors when I added the RewriteRule lines back in one by one – it was time consuming but worth it in the end (seems strange that copying & pasting the whole block in at once triggered the 500 error, but doing them one by one did not, but oh well – sometimes it’s just better to not question things too deeply)….
I even added in the three lines needed for the plugin and had no trouble, so now the page numbers are working perfectly on the front page.
I can’t thank you enough for all your patience and perseverance with this problem….I just sent you a well-deserved donation via your link on the showcase…….if I were ever going to have kids I’d seriously consider naming my firstborn _ck_ 
Ok – thanks! I understand you need to leave – no worries (i know we all have day jobs )
I did add back in the remaining RewriteRule lines, but that triggered the 500 error. I’ll try adding them one by one until I hit the error, and post back which line it is…..
Okay – so far so good – added the Options +FollowSymLinks after the -Multiviews and added the two lines to RewriteRule – no 500 error yet
Ok…..here is what I have in my (root) WP install folder:
Options -MultiViews
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{http_host} ^travel-writers-exchange.com
RewriteRule ^(.*) http://www.travel-writers-exchange.com/$1 [R=301,L]
# BEGIN WordPress
<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^/Forum/
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule . /index.php [L]
</IfModule>
# END WordPress
I also modified my .htaccess file in /Forum as follows:
Options -MultiViews
<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /Forum/
</IfModule>
No 500 Server error – Yaay! this is progress….slugs are still disabled.
Sorry for the delay in responding – for some odd reason my primary (desktop) computer logged me out of this forum and would not let me log back in….tried many times making certain I was typing my username/password correctly…….so I had to go boot up my laptop…
Anyway, to answer your question, no – I read all the instructions on pretty permalinks and did not see that – I thought I read most of the posts on the issue but must have missed that. In any case it did not work for me….
I put $bb->mod_rewrite = "slugs"; into my bb-config.php and uploaded – this of course changed my default permalinks to the name-based ones (great) but when I click on the links, I get this error message:
Multiple Choices
The document name you requested (/Forum/topic/article-titles) could not be found on this server. However, we found documents with names similar to the one you requested.
Available documents:
/Forum/topic.php/article-titles (common basename)
Please consider informing the owner of the referring page about the broken link.
And of course if I have the .htaccess file uploaded, I still get the 500 Server error
Sorry! I guess I should have mentioned 1&1 – didn’t realize that they might be part of the problem…….I’ll try calling their Tech Support to see if they can help, however, I’ve been with them for around 5 years with a lot of domains, and while I’m happy with their hosting packages, their Tech Support is lousy. They used to be very good, but since they moved it to India I’ve had a very poor experience with them – very rarely do I get anyone who knows anything about computers, let alone how to actually fix a problem…..and something advanced like server configuration? I’m not holding my breath…..
Sigh…..still no luck……I put that as the first line of my Root .htaccess, then copied the /Forum htaccess file over to /Forum, still getting 500 error……..
I do appreciate your time and efforts – maybe when you wake up the morning a new idea will be dancing around in your head……
No luck 
Here is my root .htacces:
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{http_host} ^travel-writers-exchange.com
RewriteRule ^(.*) http://www.travel-writers-exchange.com/$1 [R=301,L]
# BEGIN WordPress
<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^/Forum/
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule . /index.php [L]
</IfModule>
# END WordPress
Root (WP install) works fine, but when I put the .htaccess file in /Forum then I still get the 500 error….
I have to run out but will be back in about 1/2 hour…..
I really wish I could say that this worked, but sadly it did not.
I made the changes to my .htaccess file in the root, and the root site still worked (which is good), then added back in the .htaccess file to my /Forum folder, but still got the 500 error. Even when removing all but the /Forum in the line added above in the root .htaccess.
I’ll try anything you care to suggest though, so don’t give up and I won’t!
Okay lets see if this sheds any light:
here is the htaccess file from my root:
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{http_host} ^travel-writers-exchange.com
RewriteRule ^(.*) http://www.travel-writers-exchange.com/$1 [R=301,L]
# BEGIN WordPress
<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule . /index.php [L]
</IfModule>
# END WordPress
Here is the htaccess I would put in my /Forum directory, if it didn’t trigger the 500 error 
<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /Forum/
RewriteRule ^forum/([^/]+)/page/([0-9]+)/?$ /Forum/forum.php?id=$1&page=$2 [L,QSA]
RewriteRule ^forum/([^/]+)/?$ /Forum/forum.php?id=$1 [L,QSA]
RewriteRule ^topic/([^/]+)/page/([0-9]+)/?$ /Forum/topic.php?id=$1&page=$2 [L,QSA]
RewriteRule ^topic/([^/]+)/?$ /Forum/topic.php?id=$1 [L,QSA]
RewriteRule ^tags/([^/]+)/page/([0-9]+)/?$ /Forum/tags.php?tag=$1&page=$2 [L,QSA]
RewriteRule ^tags/([^/]+)/?$ /Forum/tags.php?tag=$1 [L,QSA]
RewriteRule ^tags/?$ /Forum/tags.php [L,QSA]
RewriteRule ^profile/([^/]+)/page/([0-9]+)/?$ /Forum/profile.php?id=$1&page=$2 [L,QSA]
RewriteRule ^profile/([^/]+)/([^/]+)/?$ /Forum/profile.php?id=$1&tab=$2 [L,QSA]
RewriteRule ^profile/([^/]+)/([^/]+)/page/([0-9]+)/?$ /Forum/profile.php?id=$1&tab=$2&page=$3 [L,QSA]
RewriteRule ^profile/([^/]+)/?$ /Forum/profile.php?id=$1 [L,QSA]
RewriteRule ^profile/?$ /Forum/profile.php [L,QSA]
RewriteRule ^view/([^/]+)/page/([0-9]+)/?$ /Forum/view.php?view=$1&page=$2 [L,QSA]
RewriteRule ^view/([^/]+)/?$ /Forum/view.php?view=$1 [L,QSA]
RewriteRule ^rss/?$ /Forum/rss.php [L,QSA]
RewriteRule ^rss/topics/?$ /Forum/rss.php?topics=1 [L,QSA]
RewriteRule ^rss/forum/([^/]+)/?$ /Forum/rss.php?forum=$1 [L,QSA]
RewriteRule ^rss/forum/([^/]+)/topics/?$ /Forum/rss.php?forum=$1&topics=1 [L,QSA]
RewriteRule ^rss/topic/([^/]+)/?$ /Forum/rss.php?topic=$1 [L,QSA]
RewriteRule ^rss/tags/([^/]+)/?$ /Forum/rss.php?tag=$1 [L,QSA]
RewriteRule ^rss/profile/([^/]+)/?$ /Forum/rss.php?profile=$1 [L,QSA]
RewriteRule ^rss/view/([^/]+)/?$ /Forum/rss.php?view=$1 [L,QSA]
</IfModule>
I’ve verified that there are no errant spaces or line breaks……it doesn’t look to me like there are syntax errors or conflicts, but I’m no expert……
That’s probably the problem – maybe I misinterpreted the instructions, as I WAS adding those rules to the .htaccess file in my root directory, not in the /Forum directory.
However, I just tried adding an .htacces file to my /Forum directory, and pasted the rules into that, but that gave me a 500 Internal server error, so I deleted that file again…..
There must be something I’m missing still……..if I could get the pretty permalinks working, would that fix my problem with the page numbers?
Yep I downloaded the most current version of the plugin, and did not modify it in any way at all.
I did try using the mod_rewrite instructions (called the file rewrite-rules.php from my browser, copied and pasted the resulting rules into my .htaccess file, and then went to settings and chose the pretty permalink), but it just results in 404 errors when I click on any of my links.
I’m certain that’s because the rewrite rules are adding in to the URL an extra level as such:
what should be /Forum/forum-guidelines-please-read/ becomes /Forum/topic/forum-guidelines-please-read
Same for the forums – it is inserting and extra /forum into the path. Unfortuanately I don’t know enough about mod_rewrite (okay really nothing at all about it) so I am not able to correct the rules myself. OR if the problem is not with the rewrite rules but something in the core code, that’s beyond me too. I just know it’s adding something to the path that shouldn’t be there.
Hi _ck_ – thanks for helping.
Here is a link from the front page to a topic:
http://www.travel-writers-exchange.com/Forum/topic.php?id=43
I reported it working because the numbers showed up exactly how I wanted to see them, but I’m embarrassed to say that I didn’t actually “click” on the numbers at that point to be sure they actually worked correctly.
I didn’t change the plugin in any way. It does work perfectly on the other pages – the individual forum list of topics (forum.php) and the topic itself with the posts (topic.php)……I only get this error if I click on the additional page numbers on the front page.
(p.s. – I would LIKE to use pretty permalinks, but have not been able to get that working, even after reading everything I could find here on the subject and trying all of the suggestions – I’m hoping a future version of bbPress will fix this issue, but for now I’m stuck with the ugly permalinks)
By the way, this only happens on my front-page.php. When I use the pagination on my forum pages I don’t get the error……
Started new topic:
https://bbpress.org/forums/topic/topics-per-page-plugin-new-problem
Hmmm found a problem but not sure if it’s related to this pagination or not….
When I am on my Front Page and click on any of the other pages numbers (2, 3, Next>>, etc) I get this error:
Warning: preg_replace() [function.preg-replace]: Compilation failed: nothing to repeat at offset 0 in /[myURL]/Forum/bb-includes/template-functions.php on line 925
Any ideas?
I actually have a closely related but slightly different need – I need bbPress to NOT strip out the target if I manually enter it into an <a> tag and, ideally, to also not strip out the rel=”nofollow”
This plugin does add the rel=”nofollow” to links, but I wouldn’t want that added to my internal links, just external ones. But it is not adding the target=”_blank” and bbPress is still stripping it if I add it manually. Again, I wouldn’t want it added for internal links, just external (we want ALL internal (on-site) links to open in the same window, but want ALL external links to open in a new window).
The only way I know of to get this granularity of control is to do them manually, but dang it bbPress keeps removing them.
I agree totally that it’s not good to mess with core files, and I try to avoid it at all costs, but this is a very important issue for us – so if there is no plugin to add this level of control, how can I modify my file(s) to do this? I would happily add a functions.php to my theme and put it there, but am not a good enough coder to write this function myself.
Any suggestions?
Excellent tip on adding the text “Pages” – this is a great plugin and works perfectly.
