[kevinjohngallagher]

I don’t think anyone’s against getting the next version of bbPress out the door

My concerns are:

• If bbPress0.9 support was meant to last until late 2010, why end it in May?
• Why/When was this decision taken?
• Why not inform us before the code was deleted?
• In fact, why not inform us at all?

Basically:

Sam wrote, as an employee of Automattic, that bbPress0.9 branch would be maintained until ‘late 2010’, how can this be true if we’ve had patches for 0.9 sitting since July2009 without a rollout, and are now not being released?

bbPress 1.0.2 and bbPress 0.9.0.6 legacy version released

That effectively means we’ve not been supporting 0.9 since 0.9.0.6 was released on 28thJuly 2009. Awesome, we supported it for a whole 25 days after 1.0 was released (on 3rd July 2009).

Thats a heck of a decision to go back on One’s word like that. And a considerable slap in the face to those of us who have forums still stuck on 0.9 due to 1.0’s failings.

Here’s another issue.

I don’t think we should update the 0.9 branch anymore, and probably not 1.0 either. (Same as WP.)

Matt looks at this project as if it’s working in the same way WP is. It’s not. And I think thats why he’s found the “bbPress community” so hard to get a grip on.

bbPress0.9 and bbpress1.0 are very very different. It’s not a simple upgrade in the way that many versions of WordPress have been – it’s a total and utter rewrite of the backend to use external code being run by a totally different team as an independant product.

bbPress0.9 and bbPress1.0, whichever you prefer to work with, are not incremental releases in the traditional sense – they are very close to being different products. That was reflected in the communities strong desire to have support for bbPress0.9 extended when Sam asked us. Thats right folks, we were asked and voted. Then a decision was made. And thats the crux of the problem.

Saying one thing, doing another, then not mentioning it in the hope no-one notices until weeks after – man, thats just not cool. And the kicker is, I don’t think it’s intentional at all. That’s worse though, because it means we’re a total afterthought (maybe not even an afterthought).

If the decision was made to drop 0.9 support, all someone had to do was make a blog post, or a forum sticky before hand and give folks a heads up. Why is it so hard to treat us with any respect?

Those of us who can’t write brilliant code, attempt to do our best by answering questions on the forums. My plugins will never rival some of _ck_s / Nightgunners / Zaerls. Thats a good thing. My code will never be as good for the Core as Gautam / Sam / mdwaffe. Thats even better news. But really, how can we answer questions that people ask with any certainty at all, when things like this happen (constatly)?

Help us, help you!

please.

[btko]

Thanks again. I’m building the wordpress one at the same time-ish. It is slow going mostly because of the PHP that I’m not completely familiar with, but it’s getting there.

Cheers

[kevinjohngallagher]

Glad it helped mate.

If building your own theme, I’d advice making a wordpress theme first.

The technique is the same and once you’re in the right mindset, you’d be amazed hoe easy theming bbPress is. But you will/might hit a few roadblocks if you try and pull data in a differnet way. Don’t be peturbed, just come back and ask

[ohcean]

1. I installed the forums using same info as WordPress database

2. After installation it said forums were installed with minor errors -> “Forums not installed”. which contradict each other.

3. Every time I go to the forum page http://ohcean.com/bbpress/ it redirects to the install page http://ohcean.com/bbpress/bb-admin/install.php (which I removed, so now it’s a blank URL).

4. I activated the plug in in wordpress

5. I changed the cookies.

6. It’s still redirecting to the install page.

Why does it keep redirecting to the install page?

[cvili]

it seems its api.wordpress.org/ problem – kode change solve problem.

[Gautam Gupta]

1) When is 1.0.3 coming out. Seriously. What day? (when I check the “bbpress company blog” I seem to only see hacked up IRC chat logs from 5 months back… so much for “official sounding” posts, huh!)

I had sent a mail to Matt a few hours back, lets wait for sometime.

2) Who (names?) has editing rights to bbpress.org?

Chris (I am not sure), matt, mdawaffe.

3) Is bbpress definitely becoming a WP plugin?

There are 90% chances for this.

4) If bbpress becomes a WP plugin, will it also remain standalone?

5) How will bbpress plugins be integrated into a proposed WP plugin?

As bbPress is not in the plugin phase, there is no roadmap for this (for the time being). Also check https://bbpress.org/forums/topic/bbpress-as-a-wordpress-plugin-thoughts

6) What exactly is backpress, and what is it’s status?

Check http://backpress.org/ There were also some developments in it about 2 weeks back.

7) Who (names?) is in charge of updates/commits/releases for bbpress at this moment?

Matt, mdawaffe, filosofo (inactive), chrishajer. Don’t know about anyone else.

How can plugin devs update their bbpress plugins and stay in touch with higher ups?

What do you mean by “higher ups”?

[kevinjohngallagher]

Ok, “$user” is blank/empty for some reason, it’s not even a global that needs to be redefined. I’m sure I’ve fixed this elsewhere, let me hunt around some of my forums and get back to you

EDIT: it’s $bb_current_user

Apparently, we wanted to be as different from wordpress as possible

global $bb_current_user;

echo bb_get_avatar($bb_current_user->ID, 100);

[Terence Milbourn]

Kevin, you’re a great bloke and your heart is soooo in the right place, but you are being naive here. Do you think Matt got where he is, that WordPress, bbPress, BuddyPress and all the others got where they are today without him making demands on people. You are wrong about that Kevin. It is perfectly OK to make demands on people, as long as they are for the greater good. Often it helps people find out who they really are and what they can become; what they can achieve. Preferring their ‘easy’ life, folk sometimes don’t make those demands of themselves without that little shove, that imperative, that demand. But as they say “…come the day, come the man”. And they say it for a very good reason, Kevin. Clearly you must think a demand is being made of you here. Is it really that demand you are trying to deny?

[Terence Milbourn]

Have fun, think different, create value, pay it forward.

[arcadedig]

Great website. I don’t speak Dutch, but can still easily find my way around. Looks great, and functions great. Love your bbPress integration.

[johnhiler]

There’s some real passion here, which is great! There’s nothing stopping any of us from forking the code… that’s how WordPress was started after all. A fork of b2.

I want to go back to an important point that was raised earlier.

Matt isn’t taking us all out to dinner?!??

[kevinjohngallagher]

well Matt’s moving bbPress to be a WordPress plugin, and it already runs the WordPress support forums, so in that effect Automattic aren’t going to lose out. It fulfils all their needs.

And right now, bbPress more than fills my needs for 80% of my forum work; but then it was never intended to fill the other 20%.

I stay here and contribute because it has real potential (I suppose everything does), but the more I dig around, the more I can see bbPress taking off in a big way wiht a bit of care and love, and well, management/planning.

Good luck in your search Terence, best of health to you!

[Terence Milbourn]

Kevin,

My goal is to build Virtual Crowds way beyond 100 a day and yes moderation will be a big issue, you’re right.

I’m not looking for the easy way out (never do), which is why a poked my head up above the parapet in the first place. What I want to do, is do it right; get the best possible solution.

As far as I can see, the way I have to work is from the inside out. In other words, as I am not committed to bbPress or BuddyPress for that matter, I need to start with WordPress and add my forum (social networking functionality etc), as and when I can, and it makes sense, i.e. once the smoke clears a little.

Its a real shame, but I cannot see that being the original bbPress, flawed and brilliant as it is.

But you know what they say, one door never shuts without another opening.

Who knows, maybe Mingle will get its act together and eventually become that much needed WordPress forum and social network plugin, and then Matt will lose out on both bbPress and BuddyPress.

And so will you guys, I am afraid. And I am sorry about that. I wish there was something I could do.

[kevinjohngallagher]

Basically Terence,

If you know you’re way around WordPress and are good at theming or hacking some code into a fucntions.php file, then you’ll find bbPress easy to set up and get going.

Looking into the future of bbPress is never going to help. It doesn’t have a project lead, other than the Wizard of Oz (every 6 months there is a voice from behind the curtain that everyone bows down to). But it’s open source software, it’s never going to go away, and the next version does have some great little fixes.

My biggest suggestion is this: How busy will your forum be, and how much moderation will it need? bbPress fails at helping you moderate your site once it gets very busy.

Knowing it’s faults though, it’s still my go to bit of software for forums where I’m expecting less than 100 posts a day.

Kev

[Terence Milbourn]

Mod – thanks for the steer.

Kevin – thanks for taking the time to write such a detailed and helpful reply.

In the end, I think I am left with the same dilemma, only you’ve clarified one or two points for me.

Many thanks.

[Terence Milbourn]

Well then, why doesn’t somebody do something about it? If I remember rightly, WordPress itself was salvaged from another star that had entered a decaying orbit.

Are there no Buzz Lightyears out there?

[kevinjohngallagher]

Ah BackPress.

Like Marrying my high school sweetheart it was a wonderful idea at the time, that somehow comes back to bite me on the behind every damned day ever since ;-]

(here’s hoping she doesn’t google me!!)

Mr Pelle,

I truly believe that bbPress is a grand little product, it’s so flexible and extendable that it’s potential in unbridaled. if your forum doesn’t requite alot of moderation, then I can’t think of anything better than bbPress.

It’s just hampered by no management and no communication, which I feel only exasperate/exagerate it’s problems. And this comes from the the moany SoB who points them out

bbpress 1.0.3/1.1 (cos we’ve no-one in charge to make the decision to release anything) contains a great number of bug fixes that have plagued bbPress for too long. All small, all annoying and great to get them out of the road. Even if you don’t need the 2 new** features, it will be a good thing when this comes out and you upgrade.

I’m all for pointing out mistakes, and keepingon top of this to geet things released, and maybe get some answers out of someone at some time (Seriously, 6 months per blog post – crazy from the company behind WordPress blogging platform) and then we’ll take stock and see what happens then.

** they’re not new, we’d had them for years as plugins. God himself only knows why we couldn’t have a bug fix release instead, then work on new features. But that requires stakeholders to be consulted and decisions to be made…

[kevinjohngallagher]

Gareth Gates earned a bit over of leway in the Gallagher household for Jordan, but Stuart McCall… y’all are going to hell of keeping him alive/busy for a while longer

Anyway, what you want is to make sure that your bbPress config file has the same info as teh wordpress config file for each of these below

in WordPress

define( 'DB_NAME', 'database_name' );

/** MySQL database username */

define( ‘DB_USER’, ‘user_name’ );

/** MySQL database password */

define( ‘DB_PASSWORD’, ‘password’ );

/** MySQL hostname */

define( ‘DB_HOST’, ‘localhost’ );

/** Database Charset to use in creating database tables. */

define( ‘DB_CHARSET’, ‘utf8’ );

/** The Database Collate type. Don’t change this if in doubt. */

define( ‘DB_COLLATE’, ” );

in bbPress

define( 'BBDB_NAME', 'database_name' );

/** MySQL database username */

define( ‘BBDB_USER’, ‘user_name’ );

/** MySQL database password */

define( ‘BBDB_PASSWORD’, ‘password’ );

/** MySQL hostname */

define( ‘BBDB_HOST’, ‘localhost’ );

/** Database Charset to use in creating database tables. */

define( ‘BBDB_CHARSET’, ‘utf8’ );

/** The Database Collate type. Don’t change this if in doubt. */

define( ‘BBDB_COLLATE’, ” );

If they are the same, then I’m a bit clueless right now

[pukkap]

Yeah Bradford! Famous for riots, serial killers and Gareth Gates (apologies for that last one guys lol)

What i wanted to do was have bb integrated with wordpress so users can log into both with same details

Anyway my config file has as name app100750237xxxx and this should be user name and i know password but still same error?

[kevinjohngallagher]

A Bradford man eh? I was down there on thursday.

Anyway, welcome to bbPress.

What you want to do here is look at your WordPress config file (wp-config.php) that is already on your website (i am presuming here that you’re wanting to add a forum for appertunity.com – or at least on the same server).

You will see what it has for each of the details that you filled in for the corresponding bb-config.php file. that should give you some insight as to what the database settings should be

[chrishajer]

If anyone really wants to know what’s going on with bbPress, I suggest contacting Matt Mullenweg. I don’t know if there’s anyone else in charge who would know more.

[kevinjohngallagher]

Is bbPress going to live or morph into something else?

Both. According to Matt, who stated it back in January in the middle of an IRC chat, bbPress will become a WordPress plugin… eventually.

I doubt that’ll happen anytime soon though.

With the release of WP 3.0 just around the corner (I am already running WP3 RC2), what’s going to happen with bbPress then?

Same as what’s happening now. Some good folks will work on code (some community members, some Automattic folks), and we’ll sitin silence not knowing what tomrrow will bring.

Do I install bbPress on WP as a forum and use BuddyPress to access it?

If you’re using BuddyPress, you’re not talking to the people behind the bbPress you’re using. the bbpress that works with BuddyPress is a different beast, and for some reason they decided not to rename it, so we get the support questions and bad rep – constantly!

Or is something going to change and make the combination and integration of all the plugins for each and of WP3/bbPress/BuddyPress all too much of a royal pain in the petutie?

WP/BuddyPress plugins are never going to work with bbPress.

There’s a long answer behind why, but basically, thats a no go.

I wish someone could give me some clarity on the direction bbPress and BudyPress are going.

BuddyPress actually has some great folks who are very communicative and support their community so well it’s unreal. But you’d need to be on the BuddyPress forum for that – as it’s got nothing to do with us.

bbPress, well, we’d all like some communication – but thats never been it’s strong point. Don’t worry, thats not new, and it’s not going to change.

Someone. Anyone?

ECHO ECho Echo echo… etc

[Gautam Gupta]

Also check https://core.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/12185

[_ck_]

As rude and weird as this entire topic is, the reality is the form of bbPress that you have known up to now and through 1.1 (1.2?) from Automattic is over.

Once bbPress stops being stand-alone, everything will change: all the advice on this entire forum will be mostly useless, the plugins and themes will be pointless for the WordPress plugin version of bbPress.

In fact they should probably call the plugin something other than bbPress as it will only confuse people when they search for help and resources for the plugin.

The turning point for bbPress was BackPress. The state we are in now is 100% the problem with that decision (made by Matt in January 2008, quite cavalierly IMHO).

To be more specific, bbPress based on BackPress actually would have been almost acceptable, IF, and this is critical, IF WordPress had been also converted to use BackPress. But it wasn’t and now almost obviously never will be.

So we are left with an orphaned product, not bbPress, but BackPress itself, which makes the 1.x line of bbPress a dead-end because of it’s dependency.

I need to be very careful what I say next because some people immediately jump on every word as some kind of promise, which I am not making. All I can say is that I will attempt to maintain 0.9 in my own way as long as reasonably possible (years?) until a better solution emerges (which is unlikely, but we’ll see).

Considering how it’s all up to Matt now, I’d be *more* polite to him, not less.

[Terence Milbourn]

The other big question in my mind is this.

Is bbPress going to live or morph into something else?

With the release of WP 3.0 just around the corner (I am already running WP3 RC2), what’s going to happen with bbPress then?

I am at a critical stage with my site’s development and I have to make a decision to jump one way or the other; partly because I just don’t have the time or money to develop two themes for one site.

Do I install bbPress on WP as a forum and use BuddyPress to access it? Or is something going to change and make the combination and integration of all the plugins for each and of WP3/bbPress/BuddyPress all too much of a royal pain in the petutie?

I wish someone could give me some clarity on the direction bbPress and BudyPress are going.

Someone. Anyone?