I’m having this same problem. Fresh installation using version 0.9.0.2.
Referrer is OK, beginning installation…
>>> Setting up custom user table constants
Step 1 - Creating database tables
>>> Create table bb_forums
>>> Create table bb_posts
>>> Create table bb_topics
>>> Create table bb_topicmeta
>>> Create table bb_tags
>>> Create table bb_tagged
>>> Added index wp_users UNIQUE KEY user_nicename (user_nicename)
>>>
>>>>>> Duplicate key name 'user_nicename'
Step 2 - WordPress integration (optional)
>>> WordPress address (URL): MYURL
>>> Blog address (URL): MYURL
>>> WordPress cookie secret key set.
>>> WordPress database secret set.
>>> User database table prefix: wp_
Step 3 - Site settings
>>> Site name: MYSITENAME
>>> Site address (URL): MYURL
>>> From email address: MYEMAIL
>>> Key master role assigned to existing user
>>>>>> Username: admin
>>>>>> Email address: MYEMAIL
>>>>>> Password: Your existing password
>>> Description: Just another bbPress community
>>> Forum could not be created!
>>> Key master email sent
There were some errors encountered during installation!
I should note that I assigned the key master as my admin user in WordPress. When I go to my forum I receive the following error….
Parse error: syntax error, unexpected T_STRING in /MYPATH/bb-config.php on line 22
Just found out:
My problem was even simpler:
I instaled MD5 Insecurity and Mouldy Old Cookies on folder bb-plugins when I should had install it on folder my-plugins.
I change them to the new folder, delete again the line
$bb->cookiepath = ‘./wordpress’;
on bb-config.php
And it is still working.
I was having the exact same problem, but with normal WP (not WPMU).
My problem was that I instaled wp and bbPress both in subfolders, like:
http://www.mysite.com/wordpress
http://www.mysite.com/bbpress
The problem was on cookies, since bbPress was creating them on root and wordpress both on root and on ./wordpress – but it seems that the ‘good cookie’ was the one on ./wordpress.
The ideal solution would be to set WP to use cookies only on root, but I wasn’t able to do it in a simple way. So I configured bbPress to set cookies on ./wordpress.
This was done by simply adding a line to bb-config.php:
$bb->cookiepath = ‘./wordpress’;
Now it seems that all is working fine.
Hope it helps you too 
It made sense to me, but I didn’t think it would be happening any time soon. Since WordPress just got this functionality in 2.5, I figured it would be a while until bbPress got it since it’s not quite to version 1 right now. The projects they took on for the Google Summer of Code were related to import/export, not anything like this, that I know of.
https://codex.wordpress.org/GSoC2008#Web_Forums_Export.2FImport_Standard_and_Tools
@ mykes
What version of WordPressMU?
I’m not sure that the latest version is compatible with bbPress yet. The recent Release Candiadte is though.
Chris, you have a point. However the URL structure of forums and topics always begin with “forum” or “topic”. As in:
http://www.example.com/bbpress/forum/pets-discussions/
http://www.example.com/bbpress/topic/my-sweet-dog
So it would seem that it should be possible to remove the “bbpress” from the URL without interfering with a WordPress installation.
Having said that, I think the solution proposed in the thread I referred to in my last post (https://bbpress.org/forums/topic/nicer-slug-url-rewrite-plugin-done) is a much more elegant solution for shortening the bbPress URLs.
It could work like that I think if there were no website (like WordPress) in the www root. Otherwise, how does the server know it’s a bbPress page vs. a WordPress page?
If you are running a forum only on a domain, then it would be silly to have it in any sort of directory at all. Otherwise, if you have a website in the root, you have to put bbPress into some sort of directory to prevent confusion.
wp_validate_auth_cookie has an error. When hashing for the key
$key = wp_hash($username . $expiration);
WordPress and BBPress do it differently thus nullifying the ability to integrate the cookies of the two.
The problem is that this in bbpress pluggable.php:
$key = wp_hash($username .’|’. $expiration);
should be this:
$key = wp_hash($username . $expiration);
There are a few other places where this needs to be fixed too
I login on my WordPress 2.5 site. Then I go to the BBPress 0.9.1 install which was installed second and setup to be integrated with WP. When I hit BBPress, I have to login again.
On WordPress, the plugin area it will show:
There is a new version of “PLUGIN” available. Download version X.X here or upgrade automatically.
when there is an upgrade.
Can someone make that for BBPress?
This code works fantastic! Thanks
Now I have a new problem. When I make a comment on a post in WordPress it will change all my other previous comments to the same user and comment as demonstrated here:
http://www.fawked.net/2007/12/29/wannabe-rappers/
Everything in bbpress is working fine for now, it shows the correct comments.
A few days ago, out of the blue, users of my bbpress forum reported that submitting a new topic/post resulted in an error. Previously, my bbpress forum was working perfectly. However, over the last few days, I have verified that if you submit a new post or leave a comment, the browser takes you to bb-post.php, where the page hangs. You can verify this on my forum using user “testuser” and password “test123”.
There are a few weird things about this:
- I hadn’t touched the server for some time prior to this sudden problem, so it’s weird that the problem started, since I hadn’t changed anything
- I’ve been running two bbpress forums authenticated against the same WP user table. The problem is only with the first bbpress installation, while the second bbpress installation continues to work with no problems.
- When you post, the browser returns a 500 internal server error, and doesn’t display a “die” message, e.g. “You need to actually submit some content!”
- Although the browser returns a 500 internal server error, the posted content does go through.
I’ve hand-inspected http://boards.weddingbee.com/bb-post.php, and it has exactly the same PHP code as http://classifieds.weddingbee.com/bb-post.php. I’ve tried everything I can think of… I disabled plugins and Akismet, and the problem didn’t go away. (I’ve turned them back on.)
I’m using bbPress 0.83, with bb_db_version 788. I haven’t upgraded to bbPress 0.9.0.2 yet because I’ve integrated my WordPress 2.33 install with two bbPress installs and a Mediawiki install, and it will be a ton of work to reintegrate. However, that is the next step…
Does anybody have any ideas? 
I put a ticket into trac about this a few months ago.
https://trac.bbpress.org/ticket/779
Changing the way it functions is not too difficult but it does have to be done via the core so unfortunately I can’t address it via a plugin. At least I dont think I can, not easily.
Oh and forget a captcha ever being built into bbPress/WordPress. It will have to be done via plugin with a hook. Because the moment thousands of people have the same standardized captcha, that’s the moment it will be analysed to be broken by bots. As a plugin the method can be changed on a whim and vary from site to site easily. Besides, I’d rather have people do simple math than an awkward captcha.
Ahhh… thanks!
Didn’t know I could do that.
Cool!
Ted
Just add new page with slug, as in the folder your bbPress installation.
For example, “forums”.
Hi,
I just installed bbPress and have it sharing settings with my pre-existing WordPress installation. Everything is great, but I can’t figure out how to add a link form my WordPress to the forums. Is there some easy way that I am overlooking? How about a sidebar widget for WordPress that displays something?
I’ve been looking around this site, but I am confused about the plugins because I am never sure if they are for bbPress only or WordPress and there is nothing on the WordPress extension site.
Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks,
Ted
I’ve been running into cookies issues while trying to integrate bbPress into my existing WPMU site. My WPMU and bbPress installs are located in separate directories on my server (/blogs and /youngadults/forums).
bbPress is currently setup so that when users log into the forums, they are automatically logged into WPMU as well. However, for some reason this is not working the other way around – if I log into WPMU first, I am not logged into bbPress.
Does anyone know of a way to log into bbPress when going through the WPMU login?
I am using the MD5 Insecurity and Mouldy Old Cookies plugins, along with this snippet of code in the bb-config.php file:
$bb->usercookie = ‘wordpressuser’;
$bb->passcookie = ‘wordpresspass’;
I have had bbpress working on my doteasy account, and I decided to reinstall it – probably shouldn’t have 
When I contacted them, they informed me that they would try running the script and installing it…and I got this message back
“Hello Antonio,
This script appears to be incompatible with our hosting servers. Please try using a different script.”
“The database failed to install. You may need to replace bbPress with a fresh copy and start again.”
Now here is what happens when I try to install the script.
Your site settings have been saved and we are now ready to complete the installation. So what are you waiting for?
Then when I proceed to the final step I get this error.
“Internal Server Error
The server encountered an internal error or misconfiguration and was unable to complete your request.
Please contact the server administrator, advancedsupport@doteasy.com and inform them of the time the error occurred, and anything you might have done that may have caused the error.
More information about this error may be available in the server error log.”
At this point, if I refresh the page it goes back to the installer and I get this message ” bbPress Installation
Welcome to the bbPress installer
Step 1 – Database configuration
« completed
Step 2 – WordPress integration (optional)
« skipped
Step 3 – Site settings
Installation complete!
Show installation messages: “
If I then go back to atriskstoriesofhope.com/bbpress it wants to go back through the installation. What should I do?
**update**: just found https://bbpress.org/documentation/faq/#pretty-permalinks
after looking for days, don’t know why it took so long to find. this did the trick!
Also having a problem with pretty permalinks. i am on bluehost with the following:
wordpress 2.5.1 installed at example.com/blog
bbpress 0.9.0.2 installed at example.com/bb
i do have my wp akismet key applied in bbpress, but other than that no wp integration. bbpress works fine until i activate pretty permalinks. at that time, i can see all of my topics & stuff, but i just get 404 when i try to get to them.
here’s an interesting thing i discovered: both installed to my site via SimpleScripts. WP works fine, but bb appears to have no .htaccess file at all. i do see one in attached to a theme, but that’s it, and apparently not useful there.
since this seems to be the issue, sort of narrowed down, i created an .htaccess file using the code shown by jethro, but i know there’s something missing. it didn’t break my site, but i couldn’t even get to admin area to see if i could make the permalinks work.
i’m not a programmer, but if anyone can tell me what code i need to have in the .htaccess file, i can make the file and upload it.
thanks!
