[Stagger Lee]

Thanks Robby.

Dont want to talk about design and style. It would ruin all from my title.
But yes, bbPress is ugly as hell when installed and takes lot of time to design. Better to keep written notes what you do and how, to be able to use it next time.

I have some ideas of making bbPress more acceptable to Pods or ACF. It would open many possibilities. Some of them could be, polls, attachments (very regulated and narrowed), SVG icons, reply title (it is just text input field), avatars, etc..

Dont know what to say about buddyPress serving as “Jetpack”. I like to install buddyPress along with bbPress and think they do better with design. Guess it is up to them, will they be standalone WP plugin or serve as filling gaps for bbPress.

Anything that is the same as Jetpack. Lots of modules all deactivated on default, to not force people use what they dont need and want. And without connection to wordpress.com.
If you make some better cooperation with Pods you get automatically mass of new developers and possibly mass of custom tweaks shared around. Same would be with bbPress “Jetpack” or buddyPress if they want it.

Back to your question. Cannot point exactly what is hard for begginers and users. It is all small bits and parts making it difficult. Even to me is hard and takes lot of time to have one bbPress forum ready for live server.
Guess it is huge amount of time spent searching on Google and forums howto. I made those mistakes on my first 2-3 instalaltions and noticed it is impossible to continue this way. Now I have searchable and filterable database with bbPress, buddyPress snippets. Just for bbPress circa 150 of them and some tutorials. But not many people will do this. When they spend half day searching on Google how to solve something they will simply go to phpbb, SMF forum and it is one user less.

Most of this time lost is fixing and tweaking third party plugins, using their adapted code in functions.php, etc. Design OK, but usually easy to find answer on Google.

In some way I try to imagine how would it be to charge a client for a bbPress installation and customization. I dont do it for money, i spend time on it because I think it is fun. But so many spent hours and days is impossible to charge. Hence, nobody will setup bbPress forum for living and earning. Web companies goes to other solutions.

In matter of fact price of one bbPress installation and customization goes easy to level of one very advanced web shop. Only know it is not sustainable and should not be this way.

Dont want to talk about money, just took it as example of how many hours and days bbPress takes to be finished and looks professional.

[illwriteit]

A few problems with this i wanted to comment on, as I’ve completely re-wrote your entire theme.

A. The way you do forum.php is going to break a lot of templates. Premium templates on theme forest, many of them have other functions to generate the WP header and footer. When you do it the way you have done it, any template that does this will be broken by this template.

B. Enabling white.php completely broke my website just by turning it on.

I stripped out all your javascript, completely re-wrote your forum.php file to use standard wordpress protocol, and turned your forum template into this:

http://www.illwriteit.com/forum/

Each forum is color coded, each forum has custom font icons assigned to it. When you view a sub forum, I completely re-wrote your loop-forums so it displays all sub topics within all child forums.

I also custom integrated mycred so that your badges and rank are shown in the topic view like:

http://www.illwriteit.com/forum/topic/patriotic-writings/

I also custom designed a privacy system so that some topics are only shown to people I give access to based on their ultimate member role.

[Robkk]

Because I see potentioal and how WordPress self can make bbPress powerfull. Or buddyPress, I install it all the time together.

I know a lot of users who ask for more features like other forum solutions are like this because they all do see potential.

But, one thing is very specific for bbPress. I would not dare to touch it as average User, who installs and setup phpbb or SMF forum without big problems. It is extremely hard for beginners

In what ways is it difficult? Is it anything about user experience, or from just going from one to another?? Any ideas to improve it for beginners?

At least take those 10-12 plugins from Github and put them in WP repository. Dont ask developer, it is GPL. Developer had 2-3 years or more to decide to do it byself, and he did not wanted it.
Problem there is notification about updates.
Just one example, lost many hours to see why Live preview stoped to word and by chance checked on Github versions. If it was in WP repository I would be notificated directly there is an update for it.

There is some plugins on Github but that doesn’t mean everybody should use them. Some plugins on github were made from developers from jobs they did for people(might contain specific db table names for a specific site), are just some custom plugins they use on their site(might contain several referances to a site), custom projects for themselves(just playing with stuff/learning development). There is a difference between building a plugin for yourself, and building a plugin for everybody to use. When you begin to build one for everybody to use, you definitely take into consideration some plugin conflicts that might happen(I think GD bbPress attachments and bbp live preview comes to mind). There are some plugins on there that actually should be considered to be on WordPress.org, so I will keep that in mind.

Just to not be missunderstood. I personally dont have any problem whatsoever with this list above. Implemented with help of code tweaking and those plugins all of this. And much, much more. All except proper Polls. For this I cannot find a solution.

The polka polls plugin is the best plugin for polls for bbPress. It does require use of shortcodes, I do not think you have to whitelist the shortcode or anything, I think it just works. I guess it could get inspired from some ideas of the bbPress polls plugin for v1 that _ck_ made.

I am not telling about design, despite this too is hard for Users beginners to tweak.

Please say any issues you might have on this, I have ideas for users to make design for theme compatibility easier.

Github should never be primary source of plugins. Additional OK, but only and one never.
I know there is a plugin that makes updates from Github possible, but demands some lines added by author in plugin self.

It isn’t, any plugins listed on the featured plugins list are really just plugins that might have functionality similar to what might be suggested to core. Github was never really a plugin repository for WordPress, mostly development. Some of the information why some plugins might not be in what I already said above. Plus some plugins were pretty neat not to leave in.

Something like Jetpack for bbPress would be a killer, perfect. But I do understand when you say there are not many developers of bbPress. Wish just you start discussion about it and report back to us how it went. Jetpack probably started with few developers, and with years come to number of 46. It doesnt have to start great, developers are attracted later to all good staff by itself.
Do you know what all those names behind Jetpack say to me ? Not in the first hand anything about code quality, but about security. I know it will flow huge amount of years before this plugin is abandoned. And with all new WP versions they adapt code before new version get out.

If we are talking about Jetpack as a plugin full of features, then BuddyPress could be something like that. There is also another plugin but it is paid (has minimized free version) that has several other features like bbcode, attachments, quotes. Creating another plugin like that I will keep in mind.

[Robkk]

@vizcano

I don’t think you need to just start over like that.

Can you post a link to your site? did you try the order function for regular WordPress pages to see if it is functional?

[Robkk]

There should be a clear cache button at the top of the WordPress toolbar. I suspect it to be just page cache so just clear that.

[Robkk]

What happens if you logout from the WordPress toolbar, which has nothing to do with bbPress?? If you come across the same issue something is just redirecting you.

You might have to do some troubleshooting

Troubleshooting

<?php bbp_logout_link(); ?> pretty much uses wp_logout_url{} in WordPress.

https://codex.wordpress.org/Function_Reference/wp_logout_url

[Robkk]

now for the mobile navigation I need to get all profile pages into the main menu, too.

This might be custom development.

followed this which also uses the add filter above, but did not get it to work: https://bbpress.org/forums/topic/user-porfile-page/

Does it just not show up?? I am starting to think you have some fancy slideout mobile menu and you want the profile link to show up there?

1. links don’t work. on profile page no nicename is used. and the created menu links give a 404page as the username is not inserted.

Does the login widget with profile links not work?? or does the actual links on the profile not work?

2. cannot set the location of profile page as submenu item.

This might be a little tough. I think you have to construct a small menu, but it may not work well with your header menu for example. And also if you decide to put just a sub item under something you constructed in the menu section in the backend of WordPress.

[Unicornis]

Please check https://wordpress.org/plugins/pollka/

[alekseevas]

Please suggest how to make changes to «bbPress User Roles and Capabilities» (address D:\WebServers\home\localhost\www\wordpress\wp-content\plugins\bbp-capabilities\bbp-capabilities.php)?
Is it possible through changes to the file to assign individual sub-forums moderators for individual (or the individual columns)?
* So that moderators can edit only their own subforum (or section).

[Unicornis]

Hi,
I found I GitHub stuff mentioned above really complex to setup and having a few glitches. So have fixed them, added full configurability for the messages sent. Currently working on attachments and translations.

All of this is packed into the plugin, with all third party software needed, so now it is installable like any other WordPress plugin.

You still need to setup a free PostMark account and configure reply e-mail redirect, if you do not want to see the PostMark address in reply-to (which might be confusing for your users). Detailed step-by-step howto is on my plugin page.

BR, Jj

[Unicornis]

Hi,
I have fixed this bug, as well as a few others, added full configurability for the messages sent. Currently working on attachments and translations.

All of this is packed into the plugin, with all third party software needed, so now it is installable like any other WordPress plugin.

You still need to setup a free PostMark account and configure reply e-mail redirect, if you do not want to see the PostMark address in reply-to (which might be confusing for your users). Detailed step-by-step howto is on my plugin page.

BR, Jj

[Stagger Lee]

I dont ask anything of this be in the core. Just to find some other solution because this now doesnt work well.

Dont ask plugin developers. Is it GPL ? Yes. Use code as you wish and make completely new plugin if you need. Just some of your names stand as Author of plugin.

I see tendencies to become little Joomla community. They dont want to piss off developers of very popular extensions and they never add anything good in the core (dont let “core” confuse use, using it just as example here).

I personally have tweaked bbPress to unimaginable level. It is localhost, but still one Kunena import with many Users, topics and posts. Good for testing. spent huge amount of time on it. Not for the money, nobody would pay all those lost hours, impossible. Because I see potentioal and how WordPress self can make bbPress powerfull. Or buddyPress, I install it all the time together.

But, one thing is very specific for bbPress. I would not dare to touch it as average User, who installs and setup phpbb or SMF forum without big problems. It is extremely hard for beginners, and all those important plugins depending of how will it go in private life of (one) developer, make it much more difficult to touch and maintain.

At least take those 10-12 plugins from Github and put them in WP repository. Dont ask developer, it is GPL. Developer had 2-3 years or more to decide to do it byself, and he did not wanted it.
Problem there is notification about updates.
Just one example, lost many hours to see why Live preview stoped to word and by chance checked on Github versions. If it was in WP repository I would be notificated directly there is an update for it.

[daybo]

Hi Uniprint QLD

I am a WordPress specialist, with some bbPress experience based on the Sunshine Coast – if that is of interest…

Regards
David

[Robkk]

@stagger-lee

I have seen this list but it is not the same as Feature plugins are for WordPress core.

Im trying to spruce up the page on the bbPress codex.

Not of things on list has anything to do with me personally, just using other popular forum scripts as reference.

Anything that BuddyPress already has as a feature and putting it into bbPress is a BIG decision to make, this could shy away from the plugin integration with BuddyPress in bbPress, but it would make bbPress stand on its own compared to other forum solutions though. Most of the features people want could be added by just installing BuddyPress with bbPress. I am starting to think if users want something like Vbull or IP Board they install should install BuddyPress to add any social network features. If users want a simple forum just use bbPress.

Here is what I think of your plugin list, it is just my opinion, my opinion could change depending on how you reply to how I feel about this. Maybe tell us a reason of why to incorporate these features into core vs a plugin. I just want to know what you think, and please do not just tell use that this forum is doing this and that bbPress should have do it also, make it an interesting discussion.

• Live preview – maybe bring TinyMCE back, as long as it doesn’t have issues
• Report content – Josh Eaton’s plugin I think personally is pretty darn good and well developed to stay being a great plugin for awhile. Might have to see how his plugin favors in the 2015 survey for any core considerations though.
• Ignore User – I don’t know really know, this might need some additional functionality somewhere else, maybe plugin territory.
• bbPress moderation panel separate from backend –  I could see improvements on front-end moderation, maybe not exactly similar to the way the backend is set up, but I have ideas.
• Notifications – BuddyPress can add this..
• Make topics/forums read, unread (dont know if it is already in the core) – Not in core, toss up if in core or not, lots of plugins to choose from.already, do not know which one is the most optimal for most sites.
• bbPress TinyMce plugin – Maybe bring TinyMCE back, as long as it doesn’t have issues
• Reply titles – I don’t see a benefit from this, there is already a plugin for this though.
• View counts – I had this implemented on one of my forums using WP PostViews, after awhile I got to thinking that the voice and reply count really do show how popular a certain topic is, especially the voice count. Because the higher the voice count amount the more participation from users and not just back and forth between two people. Plus this will bulk up your database with a bunch of data.
• Topics for posts (very important even if not used on all installations) – Something like this is set for core. The creating a new topic for each blog post and linking to the topic where the comment form is gold. Entirely replacing the comments is where I had thoughts about this and I started to question possible issues that might come forth from this, and also the set up needed to make this work flawlessly.
• Online / Offline status – Don’t know really, I don’t really care either way, it is neat though.
• bbPress Polls (not shortcode based) – Maybe someone should just fork _ck_’s version of polls and make it work for bbPress v2, but this in my opinion this should stay plugin territory.
• Attachments – bbPress definitely needs more support for the import of attachments from other forum solutions, but managing them might shift to BuddyPress because they have the attachment API now, and BuddyPress might handle it better. I could see a simple image upload button in toolbar though.
• Move topics / replies between subforums – Yeah probably needs to be core. Maybe just topics with its own replies, not single replies??
• Avatar management – Same thing with attachments, needs more support for the import of avatars, managing them might be considered a toss up too, maybe BuddyPress/plugin territory, maybe core.
• Like / Vote topics, replies (I personally would never use this one, but..) – Probably plugin territory, I have seen some great plugins for this that are compatible with bbPress though. This also gives the user to have more choices on what to use, a 5 star rating, thumb voting, up down rating, like only topics. There are lots of choices.
• New plugin that makes it easy to add custom fields and add them where you need (this one is not referenced by other forum scripts).- I think you could use Advanced Custom Fields, but I am not entirely sure where you are going with this one??

Take some of those plugis from your list and give them to bbPress core developers. Or ask original developers to sign some of you on list of plugin Authors. For those developers who dont have much free time you have some plugins literally made from one-two PHP files. Just as it is a GPL take ownership from todays developers, or cooperate with them as co-maintainer Author.

Well this is tough sometimes too, contributing is one thing but taking ownership is another. Some devs might not see eye to eye, some have probably have gotten most of their income based on a very popular bbPress plugin.

There are plugins that I have suggested merging into core because they seem to improve areas that bbPress already has, the plugin seemed simple enough to consider thinking about since it is very commonly requested, and also that it would make life easier in some cases. I have also contacted a few developers if they wanted to contribute some have said they would like to see what they made into core, and others have not replied back.

Also some plugins could be very small, that might not mean put it in the plugin anyway.

There is not a lot of core devs in bbPress as one might think to start taking over some plugins while bbPress would have a bug that needs to be fixed, testing, code improvements, and other features added to core that may not exactly be a plugin on WordPress.

If you mean just any other active plugin developer to ask them to take over stuff, well I can’t really tell what they are good at besides making their own plugin. And I don’t want to seem bossy by asking people to do stuff that they might not agree to or have time to.

All those names of developers are very active in core community. Developers of bbPress plugins are not.
Either they abandon plugin and lose lust, dissapear.

WordPress core is very active compared to bbPress, but they are two different things. One is a plugin the other is the entire CMS. Other forum solutions are CMS’s to themselves but bbPress is just a plugin.

If there are some plugins that are abandoned and do not have an alternative/fork that you think the plugin should be resurrected and be contributed to, you can say which plugins here.

I think I got most of your points, if I missed one point it out. Try not to be rude at all or come off as rude, just have a decent discussion.

[vizcano]

Hello everyone!

This is my problem: i was creating my forums they were in alphabetical order but at some point it got all mess out, is not in alphabetical order anymore. I tried to set the order inside each forum with the Order section and it still doesn’t work.

I used to have it in the past and it worked just fine. But now i can’t get it to look properly.

I disable all other plugins and the problem persists…

I have wordpress 4.2.2 and bbpress 2.5.8

Anyone… help?

[Robkk]

You could use the regular WordPress toolbar, that is exactly what bbpress.org uses.

Anything custom you have to do it yourself, or hire a developer. Only thing I can say is you probably need CSS to style the drop down profile form.

[PinkishHue]

Just to add another suggestion, I’ve found this plugin works well on a regular WP install (not yet used with a live bbpress installation but the plugin info does say it supports it):

https://wordpress.org/plugins/wp-spamshield/

[PinkishHue]

This plugin is really handy for logging in as different users/user levels:

https://wordpress.org/plugins/user-switching

[Robkk]

Use is_user_logged_in()

https://codex.wordpress.org/Conditional_Tags

[Robkk]

I made changes and changed my email to what should be over at Gravatar and hit submit and get a 404 error and end up seeing the BBpress book for sale.
I don’t know if it took it or not…. It may not be allowing changes as far as I can tell

@folgerj

It probably didn’t work, and you can could always add additional email addresses to Gravatar. So if you want a specific Gravatar for wordpress/bbpress.org add the email you used on those sites. You can always remove it then change the email on the sites later.

..Curious to know what the bug is/was..could happen to any of our sites too I suppose.

@uncle-jimmy

I think I made an educated guess last week to what commit caused the issue, and Stephen pinpointed the issue. Also the reason the issue is on this site is because this site is running the latest alpha, so this site see any issues first before releasing the next update.

@longchelsea @candicexiang

do what I said here

https://bbpress.org/forums/topic/edit-allowed-only-for-1st-post/#post-164195

[Robkk]

The activate component I think you are talking about is part of BuddyPress.

I can’t find any documentation that details if there needs to be a shortcode on that page but mine is blank…This is the downside so far. In the Docs there should be a description of each of the required pages and what they do as well as what I need to do with them

When BuddyPress is installed you will have a register page usually at yoursite.com/register/, and also an activate page so after you register you are required to activate your account usually here yoursite.com/activate/.

All documentation for the activate page would be on BuddyPress, in their codex.

Register and Activation Pages

There might be more documentation on the activate page, but I can’t find them if you want more information about it contact BuddyPress in their forums.

https://buddypress.org/support/

bbPress does allow shortcodes for registration, lost-password, and also for login, but none for users to activate their account. bbPress relies on how WordPress sets up registered users.

[Robkk]

I don’t know why they really need to be from Australia but you could hire someone from http://jobs.wordpress.net/ or whatever freelance site you can find.

[wcreimer]

When I activate the latest bbPress (2.5.8) or SimpleRestrict (1.0.2) plugin then try to login to my site, the WordPress dashboard does not open. Instead, I simply get the home page of the site.

To deactivate these plugins, I have to go to my site files, rename the “plugins” folder, sign in to the site (the Dashboard appears) then reactivate my plugins other than bbPress and SimpleRestrict. Signing out, then signing in shows me the Dashboard. I have repeated this procedure about 3 times with the same result. The site is http://ruralpolicy.ca.

If I activate bbPress (in order to use the Forums option), the site seems to work okay, but I can’t log in to the Dashboard.

I recently redefined the site address URL and it seemed to make the necessary changes to the shortlinks okay. I can’t be sure, but this bbPress-Dashboard problem appeared around the time I made this change.

I’m using the Twenty-ten theme with a child.

Any suggestions what the problem might be?

[Robin W]

@slim1212

possibly

https://wordpress.org/plugins/bbp-topic-count/

[seo india]

Most of the Marketing Bots are advance enough to break through any type of Captcha Code. The real issue is not pondering over your captcha code, but you need to make your login/registration process secure with additional questions such as

What is the 3rd character in my Domain after www. ?

As far as math captcha is concerned, it can be easily cracked by Marketing Bots. You need to create your own custom question and this will surely help to get rid of automated registrations.

I was handling wordpress blog for 1 client and every day I used to get around 10-50 comments. Ultimately I had to block the commenting feature. Spamming is really bad form of marketing.