[Anne-Lise]

My bbPress install is integrated with my WordPress install and they serve members of my orchestra. Both the WP-part as the bbPress-part are only accessible for registered users. However we have a few kinds of users: substitutes (users that fill in vacancies temporarily), aspiring members (users that want to become member but who haven’t auditioned yet) en members.

In bbPress I want to block the substitutes and give the aspiring members an inactive role. However, it doesn’t work. When I edit someone’s profile and set his role to blocked or inactive and click edit profile, nothing’s changed.

I’m using bbPress 0.8.3.1.

[austink]

Does this have any effect on the speed wp pages are loaded? When I include this line the pages take about four times as long to load. When I remove it, they go back to normal. Anyway to avoid this drastic slowdown?

[lookfab]

Thanks very much for the kind words.

WordPressl, I mock up a few different design options in PhotoShop and when I’m happy there I move to the code. Since this was my first exposure to bbpress I ended up iterating between PS and the code a lot as I got to understand bbpress better. The challenge was to keep the flavor of the blog, but still make it clear to the user that they are somewhere different.

The mechanics of the template are similar to the default theme. The different look is achieved mostly through the CSS stylesheet. One major change to the layout is to add a floating div for the sidebar on the left. All the rollovers are CSS. I do the tabs simply in php by checking which forum the user is in and displaying the tab bar appropriately. Most of the other changes are actually about hiding some of the power of bbpress.

I’m glad the “tabs” resonate. I had a full working site in beta without them, but just wasn’t happy. The breadcrumb is a little subtle (particularly for folks who are new to a forum), and with only 4 forums and no sub-forums seems like overkill. But without the breadcrumb the user is lost once they’re in one of the forums or topics. The tab solves that and makes it easy to get to any forum from almost everywhere.

[_ck_]

Okay I have created a new plugin “Human Test” which will do some tests during registration to try to slow down the bots.

Eventually will do more tricky things like captcha and variable math but for version 0.01 it simply asks what the answer to 2+2 is.

I need to know if this still works with older versions and weird themes:

http://ckon.wordpress.com/files/2008/01/human-test.txt

Awaiting inclusion in the bbPress plugin depository for newer versions.

[Sam Bauers]

@ _ck_

I suggest you try a new test install of both bbPress and WordPress integrated to see the way the auth and secrets are supposed to match up in a “clean” environment. You should be able to adjust things in your existing installation as a result.

[Sam Bauers]

> so an existing forum with 1000 users will have to instruct every single one to clear their cookies

Not necessarily, it just may be an issue if your cookies weren’t expired already.

> I wonder if this has to do with the hard coded hash I have set in bb-config.php

> How does this affect a setup with a shared login from wordpress where you have to match the same hash it has?

You will need to also run WordPress trunk to match the cookies and hash methods up. WordPress has also migrated their cookies and password hashes in trunk.

> hope there was a good reason to fiddle with it

Judge for yourself, we followed WordPress’ lead:

https://trac.wordpress.org/ticket/5367

[lookfab]

Thanks for the input sayremedia. I see your point on the links to blog and forum not popping out. We’ll be thinking about how to achieve that with the next rev of the site.

Yeah, I have read the WordPress integration info. The thing is that I don’t want users to be able to log into the wordpress blog. I would like to combine the forum and email notification lists though.

[_ck_]

Ugh, so an existing forum with 1000 users will have to instruct every single one to clear their cookies – meaning at least 50% won’t understand and try to contact the forum operator personally.

I think there is a better way – perhaps an upgrade plugin that can detect the out of date hash and instruct the client to delete the old cookie and redirect back to the login.

Actually, wouldn’t bbpress replace the hash data in the cookie upon login? None of this sounds right – I created a new user under 1075 and was still unable to login.

I’ve gotten build 1006 to work properly so I guess I will try another investigation into the upgrade from there tonight. I wonder if this has to do with the hard coded hash I have set in bb-config.php

How does this affect a setup with a shared login from wordpress where you have to match the same hash it has? I had the integration working just right, hope there was a good reason to fiddle with it.

[Sam Bauers]

You know that both cookie and password hashing have changed? You may need to clear your old cookies manually to make way for the new ones. Send a mail to the dev list or hit us on IRC in the #bbpress channel and well work out what’s going on.

We’re acutely aware of how spammers attempt to “fool” Akismet. There are steps being taken now to help improve the processes involved in combatting this. Remember that we are users of Akismet too, so have an interest in keeping it ahead of the game.

The nature of Akismet’s purpose means that back-end code needs to remain closed. If spammers knew how it worked, it would likely make it possible for them to game the system. Of course it is opt-in, so if you don’t like it then you don’t have to use it. Controlling the data that is passed to Akismet is controllable from the client end using plugins that can limit it’s behaviour. These already exist for WordPress, bbPress ones could be easily developed too. If there are hooks missing to make that possible then we’ll add them.

[_ck_]

I’ll probably be forced to join the dev list to try to solve this but I just tried moving from 951 to 1075 and I cannot get the logins to “stick” (ie. logs in and then acts as if it is not logged in)

Seems like the old cookie path issue but I’ve looked the cookies and the code and everything seems healthy. Even created a new user with 1075 and that user cannot login either.

eta: 1006 does not exhibit the login issue

ps. don’t kid yourself with Akismet stopping spam. Spammers just escalate their deviousness on what they can get through it. My wordpress.com blog gets spam almost daily now, bleeding right through Akismet. And Akismet hasn’t been given peer-review for privacy/security issues such as passing every single message entered on every single blog and bbpress through automattic – even for private posts and private sub-forums. Won’t make for good headlines when people start to think about it.

[Sam Bauers]

You are right, 1075 is probably the most stable release for “cutting-edge” users, but we would appreciate testing of trunk during integration of BackPress.

We do intend to experiment with PingBacks and TrackBacks in topics via XML-RPC, and you could be right about spam, but we won’t know until we try. We will build out the spam tools provided by Akismet to try and meet the challenge of spam at the same time. There are also other ways in which we can utilise XML-RPC besides those two features which you may not have considered, we already have some cool ideas about user integration and content aggregation that should be driven by the needs of the hosted project. I hope you don’t leave us just for giving it a whirl

The “Press” names are mostly about branding and the they need not be taken literally. We can leverage a lot of good-will by associating with WordPress, and we intend to create better ways to integrate the two projects, regardless of where they are installed or hosted.

[Sam Bauers]

Things may be a bit confusing at the moment with two new and different names flying around. I’ll do my best to clarify things and we can use this topic for everyone to ask questions on the subject and provide input.

For those who are interested, the first thing to do is read this post (and the articles it links to) in the blog:

The future for bbPress

That post is pretty vague about things. So let me be more specific here. First, I’d like to make it clear that bbPress is not being replaced or abandoned or drastically changing direction. As for the two new names that have been mentioned, I’ll cover them below.

BackPress:

bbPress has a lot of shared code with WordPress. BackPress is the name of a new project which is attempting to normalise this shared code into a set of generic files that will simply plug in to both projects (and potentially others). This allows us to leverage the testing and improvements made to this shared code without the overheads of manually merging changes. This way we can spend more time on bbPress’ unique code and extending new functionality.

TalkPress:

It has been public for a while that Automattic intends to create a hosted forums service based on the bbPress project code. The intention is to make this work much like the existing WordPress.com hosted service for blogs. Matt Mullenweg let it slip that the working name for the project (and not necessarily the service) is TalkPress. We probably won’t talk much about it here, but I can say that the majority of the code written to create this new project will be released as open source. Regardless of the name of that service when it launches, the name of this project, “bbPress”, will not change.

As for the upcoming work for bbPress, I’m happy to elabrorate here:

bbPress code:

Along with the inclusion of BackPress into trunk, there are other things going on. We are in the process of implementing a new taxonomy structure for tags. Improving bbPress’ object cache to make it compatible with various WordPress object cache plugins. Replacing the fairly ordinary “favourites” system with a much more flexible and useful topic aggregation tool, and later on we will be incorporating a set of functionality based around the XML-RPC tools available in WordPress such as pingbacks and trackbacks.

bbPress.org website

The bbPress.org website is due for a clean up. Most importantly, the extend area will be upgraded to include a plugin repository similar in functionality to the one that exists on the WordPress.org website. There is a possibility that we will also launch a theme repository based on the same system. A little later on, we plan to re-design the whole site.

I hope this clears things up a little and I’m happy to answer any questions here. I can’t think of anything, but it’s possible that there may be some things that I can’t say about the hosted service project. Feel free to ask though.

[Sam Bauers]

Repost from the dev mailing list:

As of the last commit at this time (revision 1076), trunk is in an experimental and unreliable state. We are attempting to abstract some functions and classes for easier sharing of code between WordPress and bbPress. This shared code is called “BackPress”, and we’ll probably be mentioning it a few times here and there in Trac and other dev discussions.

[Andrew]

Works like a charm. Thanks fel, you do yeoman’s work here.

[fel64]

global $bb;

if( isset( $bb ) ) {

//...

}

[Andrew]

I’m hoping this is straightforward. I’ve integrated BBpress and WordPress at a theme level – ie reusing header and footer. What I would like to do is display different information (such as a link to a user profile) in the header only when a bbpress page is being displayed. Is there a conditional variable I can check with php that would allow me to do this? Which global variable? Thanks.

[d00d13]

“I guess I will go with one of these: https://codex.wordpress.org/Plugins/Forums”

Where’s the beef?

[d00d13]

I put require_once(‘/home/domain/public_html/gypsylablue/wp-blog-header.php’);

in bbpress’ config, but it isn’t displaying wordpress’ header in bbpress. Is there anything elso one should do?

[d00d13]

“I was able to modify the source coding for bbPress to display within a page of WordPress”

How did you do that??

[chrishajer]

Not possible or at least not easy to do (I don’t think I’ve seen any one do it.) See here:

https://bbpress.org/forums/topic/unable-to-log-in-in-iframes?replies=9#post-11051

[dag-henning]

I managed to install bbpress, and its all working well, getting the data from the wpbase. but what i wis to do is to integrate bbpress as a part of my wp site, it should load in the main content frame. is this possible?

ex: http://www.indexhibit.org/forum/

here the skeleton of the cms remains after going to the forum.

help is much appreciated

[fel64]

Not sure who reads the WP feeds, so here’s an interesting snippet:

Mullenweg says he’ll use the new cash to fund more projects, including a new forums product. Called TalkPress, he said it will be “smaller, lighter, with fewer features but a richer customization API.”

In other words, it will work a lot like WordPress, which is a basic framework upon which users add the features they really need. Mullenweg some time ago created a forum program, BBPress, and the TalkPress service will be built on that.

“I spend a lot of time on forums, and they drive me crazy,” he said. “They haven’t changed in 10 years.”

http://blogs.chron.com/techblog/archives/2008/01/the_importance_of_being_matt.html

[Beau Lebens]

@starnet – The best way is to have it in an auto-load WPMU plugin, which means stick it in a file called “no-404s.php” or something in wp-content/mu-plugins/.

[rslater]

I am trying to think if there is a work around // using what works .. I.E wordpress. Since the passwords would be the same for both.. Maybe there is an angle I can take there.. Sign them up in wordpress and dump the new users into bbpress to edit profile/ or add the additional bbpress profile fieldsto wordpress profile edit.. Just thinking out loud..

[rslater]

I have tried all different ways of entering email addresses. I am baffled. The only thing I can think is the following:

bbpress resides in folder one up from Word press. I am wondering if there is a file permission issue for that folder. But again the odd thing is.. the favorites notification works just fine and it is in the same plugin folder as the plugin Sam had me upload. I do not know. I hope Sam may have more ideas.

None of this makes sense. It has to be a BBpress email php coding issue.. But why is it so different from wordpress and the bpress plugin “favorites notification” that work fine.