[chrishajer]

Don’t use the same table prefix for bbPress that you are using for WordPress. That will overwrite tables. Make sure the table prefixes are unique for bbPress and WordPress.

[Gautam]

Specifically, bbPress is effectively set up to meet singular criteria, and really struggles to be adaptable. I’d go as far as to say it’s far to blog like in data structure. I’m confident that if i had a few days off work (and with no kids) that i could easily make a wordpress theme that would look and work exactly the same as bbPress. That’s fairly disappointing.

Theme porting is not that much work, I have done that 2 times till now.

bbPress makes no attempt to update parent forums. It’s a major flaw that leads to forum X having no information on forum Y at all, even though they are directly related. Instead, in order to find this out, a plugin that makes numerous SQL calls every time a forum is loaded (and for every forum listed) must be created to fake this basic functionality.

Report it in trac.

Regarding moderation, in the latest trunk you can mass-delete posts and topics, and I have also posted a working patch to delete multiple users in one go and have the patch (on my local copy) to sort users by username, email, signup date ascending/descending.

[kevinjohngallagher]

Last Thursday, after an email conversation with 3 people I respect from this board, i decided to take a look at the old bbProgress code. With a bit of dusting off, the weekend has seemed quite fruitful. there are though, still a few things that bother me greatly, and the more I delve into bbPress and the ability to theme it differently or extract data in a different manner, the more questions it raises.

Specifically, bbPress is effectively set up to meet singular criteria, and really struggles to be adaptable. I’d go as far as to say it’s far to blog like in data structure. I’m confident that if i had a few days off work (and with no kids) that i could easily make a wordpress theme that would look and work exactly the same as bbPress. That’s fairly disappointing.

It’s disappointing because forums and blogs are very different in their make up. Forums have genealogy and many to many relationships, while blogs do not. It’s not just a case of a feature wishlist, or replicating features on other forum solutions, it’s rather the mindset that bbPress has evolved with. The “this works for us” mentality. Here are some examples:

Genealogy

bbPress makes no attempt to update parent forums. It’s a major flaw that leads to forum X having no information on forum Y at all, even though they are directly related. Instead, in order to find this out, a plugin that makes numerous SQL calls every time a forum is loaded (and for every forum listed) must be created to fake this basic functionality.

Should your forum have no parent/child relationships (such as this forum and the WordPress support forums), then the issue probably hasn’t arisen.

This somewhat forces bbPress forums into linking via topics/posts rather than forum structure. I’m neither for nor against this, it definitely has its advantages for some forums, but for larger more structure forums where parent/child/child relationships are helpful, this quickly becomes very difficult when it doesn’t need to be.

More importantly, by only storing information in this blog-esque flat-file scenario, we’re keeping theme development very tied into plugins for even the most basic of information such as:

Forum – > Last Post

I’ve raised this one for a year and a bit now, but its a great example (imo).

Lets say, i run a review forum for restaurants in Pennsylvania (i don’t):

Forum

---

Topics — Posts — Last Post

=======================================

USA

---

0 topics – 0 posts – No posts

– Pennsylvania

---

0 topics – 0 posts – No posts

– – Philadelphia

---

0 topics – 0 posts – No posts

– – Pittsburg

---

0 topics – 0 posts – No posts

– – Allentown

---

0 topics – 0 posts – No posts

– – Scranton

---

0 topics – 0 posts – No posts

– – – chinese restaurants– 1 topics – 1 posts – nom nom nom by fat albert

– – – french restaurants— 3 topics – 42 posts – i hate snails by Jody

– – – italian restaurants— 9 topics – 99 posts – i love pasta by Bob

Ok, so i hope this will illustrate the problem. According to bbPress USA, Pennsylvania, Scranton all have 0 posts in them, but that’s not true. They are parents in a forum sense, and have 13 topics and 142 posts under them.

The issue as a theme developer is that if you attempt to emulate the look/feel of any other forum software out there, then you have to make crazy complex SQL calls just to display the data that your users are used to. Or worse, (as i’ve shown in some real world examples) display “No Posts” on a forum that actually has loads of posts, just divided into their children.

I’m not saying that one way is better than another, but right now we’re stuck with only having data that fits one type of forum, and that’s one that has no need for parentage (such as this forum and the WordPress support forums).

Definition of Forums, Categories etc.

bbPress, in an attempt to roll in some backward compatibility of a plugin, included the “forum_is_category” meta. The issue here is that it’s a 1 to 1 relationship, a boolean, a yes/no; and yet we’re holding this data in the meta table, rather than the forum table.

What this means is that anyone pulling a list of the forums in a plugin, then has to compare each one to a different SQL against the meta table. Why isn’t their just a column in the forums table “is_a_category”? or even better, “forum_is_category”, and then no code would need to be changed in the existing “bb_forums()” loop. Why? well because if a forum doesn’t use categories because it has no need for parentage (such as this forum and the WordPress support forums) its not something they’re going to run into.

But of course, there is a bigger issue. A forum can only be a category or not a category. A Category is described (and categorised as) being Read Only and having Sub-Forums. The thing is, what if I want to make a forum read-only, but it already has child forums (for example, i want to make Philadelphia read only because i’ve divided the city into North/South as sub forums), would that mean that i want Philadelphia as a category? no. But that’s the bbPress definition.

bbPress has no way to add any form of settings or meta data to a forum. Forum A is treated the exact same way as forum B and forum Z, when in reality for forums rather than blogs, that’s not always the case.

There is no way to set any forum as read only, or hidden, or anything else. Forums don’t have settings, and why is that? because they’re exactly the same as categories in wordpress. Which suits the current need of one type of forum, and that’s one that has no need for parentage (such as this forum and the WordPress support forums).

A forum (n to n) not a blog (1 to n)

This is where the problem starts to expand. bbPress’s 1 to 1 reliance does not play well when attempting to assign other meta data. This really starts to throw issues as soon as your board becomes a certain size. Moderation is a nightmare because the whole n-to-n abilities of every other forum is non existent. Users to groups, groups to permissions on a forum per forum basic, rules on a forum per forum basis and per user and/or group.

Outside of WordPress integration the most common questions on this board are “how do i do X basic forum feature (read only, hidden forums, assign moderators etc)” and the answer is never good.

These are not issues for bbPress’s major role (the WordPress support forums), a forum with 5 sections, no parentage, and everyone is a WPuser already. But if you look around any of the “powered by bbPress” forums, and then look around any of the not-powered by bbPress forums, there are amazing differences. Those differences suit Automattic, and they may suit you (awesome if they do), but why do we continue to code/design/develop in a static flat-file based way that only meets the needs of one system, instead of assigning data in an N-to-N structure so that people can theme/develop/forum their own way?

My name is Kevinjohn Gallagher, and this is the 3rd February in a row i’ve written this (or v similar) post. I fully expect to be called an Angry Celt, “concern trolling” or whatever else is popular these days. In honesty, i’m holding my hands up to not being a great IA or Developer, and hoping that if i can raise these issues maybe we as a community can solve them.

Have a great day!

[Ashish Kumar (Ashfame)]

I can’t see anything on that page but I guess you want to run bbPress inside a WordPress page or just want a matching WordPress theme?

Integration can be done by following my tutorial – http://blog.ashfame.com/2009/07/integrate-bbpress-10-with-wordpress-28/

and my bbPress resource page is here – http://blog.ashfame.com/bbpress/ in case you need any other help with bbPress.

[staticfrost]

Hi I was to intergrate my forums with my wordpress but had an error at install…

Said i had wrong database prefix. wp_ which i know was right, then said unable to write to bb-config.php

Also want to make my forums look inbuilt to my wordpress on this page http://telltoyota.info/?page_id=7 instead of being all alone on telltoyota.info/bb

[chrishajer]

If you can log in at WordPress, navigate to the forums, still be logged in, and then log out and do the reverse, your cookie integration is fine. To test the rest (the reason you included wp-load.php) try using a WordPress function (wp_list_pages()) in a bbPress template and see if it works. Those would be good tests.

[Aaronski]

I’ve installed bbpress along with my WordPress site and so far everything is working great! Currently when you go to the forum, you can register, sign in, and start a brand new thread as a member. Is it possible to restrict members from starting new threads? I’m fine with a member having the ability to respond and comment on an already existing thread, but I would like the admin to have sole rights for posting new threads. Is this possible? If so, how would I do that? From what I’ve seen, there doesn’t seem to be much the administrator can do to restrict or modify user permissions.

Thanks in advance for your help!

[chrishajer]

Is this require_once('/../wp-load.php'); inside PHP tags near the top of your bb-config.php file? Like this

<?php

require_once('/../wp-load.php');

/**

* The base configurations of bbPress.

.

.

.

?>

If it is properly inside PHP tags, then there might be something wrong with the syntax of that line.

The other thing is, chances are the file is NOT located at the root of the server. You have it starting out here: / – which is the root. Might look more like this:

require_once('../wp-load.php'); if wp-load.php is located one directory up. You can also use the full path to the file, if you know it. Like this:

require_once('/var/www/htdocs/wordpress/wp-load.php');

Looks like the path is wrong there if you have it starting with a slash, at the root.

[kevinjohngallagher]

Hi there,

Can i ask what version of WordPress and what version of bbPress you’re using please?

Basically, the guide you followed was recorded at a time when we were on bbPress0.9 and WP2.7; we’re now on bbPress1.0 and WP2.9 so there’s been a large number of changes since then, and integration wasn’t something that Automattic had prioritized to make work.

Could you look at your error log to see exactly what is going wrong? until we know that we’ll struggle to help any more than guessing.

That said, your bbPress install uses “www” while your WordPress doesn’t. No idea if thats the issue or not, but given how difficult “deep integration” has become, it’s at least one thing to look at. Throw us your error log iff possible.

[thelobbyist]

I followed this guide: http://wordpress.tv/2009/01/23/integrating-a-bbpress-forum-with-your-self-installed-wordpress/

Did a fresh install and did everything the same except I did not use www at the start of my url’s and I did not deep integrate yet.

Worked flawlessly. And integration is seemless. But the forum theme I’m using requires deep integration.

So when I went to add: require_once(‘/../wp-load.php’); for deep integration it blows up again and nothing shows up at the link for the forums.

I think the problem is obviously something I’m doing wrong to get deep integration working.

Thoughts? Thanks in advance!

[chrishajer]

Just redirect the users to register for WordPress instead of bbPress. If integration is done properly, when the user logs in to WordPress, they will be loggged in to bbPress.

https://bbpress.org/forums/topic/wordpress-bbpress-register-plusgtgtgtgt

https://bbpress.org/forums/topic/how-to-redirect-all-registration-to-wordpress#post-19596

There were a couple other topics as well, but basically make all your register and login links point to WordPress, and remove those functions from bbPress files.

[radiothomas]

I have a WP/bbPress install that uses a custom WP plugin based on http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/external-database-authentication/ to auth against our external account system.

This works perfectly well for WP, where the plugin will trigger on WP login. However, I don’t want my bbPress users to have to log into WP first in order to access the forums. Ideally, bbPress could use the same plugin (or follow the same logic) to externally auth and create the shared WP account if needed.

Is there a quick way to repurpose or simply invoke the WP plugin from bbPress? If not, can I hook the bbpress login in the same way as wp (in a “bb_authenticate” action)?

[Dailytalker]

@Il Gatteo

Regarding smilies…how about this smilies:

http://www.dailytalk.ch/forum/stammtisch/ddd/

You need the bbpress smilies plugin and the smilies you want. Than you can replace the ugly wordpress-bbpress smilies with the smilies you want. Its easily done.

Regarding polls: Take the plugin “bbpress Polls”.

What I need is a much better BB_code toolbar Plugin and a facebook connect plugin….

[Il Gatto]

I have many ehehe

from most important to least important:

1) Better BBCode (like PhpBB, VBulletin or any other forum) + Quoting (“user says”)

2) Better MULTILANGUAGE SUPPORT!!! (this would rock – like qtranslate in WP)

3) Advertising manager (a port of the popular Advertising Manager plugin in WP would do)

4) User profile pages (with many customizable profile fields, etc)

5) User photo galleries

6) Better moderation tools

7) Some social networking tool like Facebook connect, OpenID connect, Twitter feeds, etc.

Better Smilies

9) Better User Avatar System (Bavatars does a neat job though)

10) Better Integration with WordPress (sometimes sucks)

11) Customizable Forum icons

12) User can post Polls / Surveys

13) Event calendars…

[Il Gatto]

Hello

I recently updated my wordpress installation with a new theme; for the occasion plus some SEO reasons I moved the bbpress forum from forum.domain .com to http://www.domain.com/forum – the moving went ok and I have the website working fine (i’ve replaced all entries in the database relative to the forum position change – now the forum is in a subfolder of the wordpress installation, which is in the root)

except for one problem:

if a user is logged in in BBPress, it automatically logs out of WordPress; and viceversa: if a user logs in WordPress, it’s automatically logged out of BBpress – This is very annoying and confusing

also because in this new theme I developed for BB/WP, I’ve placed a link to register/login in both wordpress and bbpress pages; when the user logs in, it should display “Hello, Username!” – When the user logs out or is unregistered, displays another message plus links to register or log in – therefore it’s confusing for users because they are logged in BBpress but from the WordPress page they are told they’re logged out (in fact they are)

I’m making all users registering from BBPress – however sometimes they might want to comment the WordPress blog posts

the integration is working otherwise fine, because I’ve also the BB/WP synchronization plugin installed (blog posts are republished in the forums and forum discussion replies appear correctly in the blog post comment thread)

the only issue is cookies – how to solve this?

thank you very much

[David-]

bbpress should remain a stand alone forum script while still being able to integrate with wordpress.

I love this script so much even with all the brouhaha and non-leadership.

[johnhiler]

A few questions:

1) What versions of bbPress and WordPress are you using?

2) What plugins do you have active on your site now? Make a list and we can flag any ones that generate problems!

3) What’s the link to your website?

That should help us troubleshoot your problem!

[sweetiessecret]

I am not sure if this is the place to ask or not. I need someone who works with BBPress who can work with me for my site. The original person who set it up for me got too busy and cannot help me now. I need someone who understands WordPress, BBPress, and the integration of both together. That is how I have it setup.

I need someone I can go to when I have problems and of course, I will pay you.

My site works most of the time but there is a problem that I cannot solve on my own right now. BBPress locks up sporadically, usually for 5 minutes at a time. It gets a database connection error most of the time. It does not appear to be the web hosting that is the problem because I have literally been on the phone with them daily for the last month and they cannot find anything wrong on their end. It worked fine when it was setup but as of 2 months ago this problem has been happening without anyone to help me figure it out. It does not appear to be a plug-in but cannot be for sure with that either.

This is the problem I need help with now but there will be things that need to be developed over time that I can use help with as well so I am looking for a “go to” guy or gal.

Thanks. Feel free to write here and I will respond. I don’t know if there is a private message option here but if there is please use that instead.

Wendy

[paulhawke]

Getting back to what @frooyo asked at the start…

Since the future is that bbPress will be a plug-in of WordPress, does that still allow bbPress itself to have plugin capability? Because essentially then, any plugin of bbPress would be a plugin of plugin to WordPress.

Plugins would be managed in a single interface. They would use the regular WordPress functions to add admin-area functionality, and to add action hooks and insert themselves into the filter processing. The issue is which actions and which filters are registered in a given plugin. As bbPress is migrated to being a plugin the developers will make sure that it will broadcast its own actions, separate from WordPress, when it makes sense to, and share action/filter hooks when it makes sense. For instance, I could see the “talk like a pirate” plugin for WordPress being shared between bbPress and WordPress on a given site.

In addition to action and filter hooks being distinct between the two systems, or shared in certain cases, it’s entirely possible to write code that a plugin registers with, separate from the main WordPress. Take for instance the current “Topic Icons” plugin that allows other plugins to register new “rules” on how to apply icons. This capability allowed the “Topic Icons” plugin to support skinning the “Support Forums” icon set without ever needing to be coded into the core “Topic Icons” plugin – people who dont run “Support Forums” never need activate that piece of code. What I’m getting at here is that one plugin can register and talk to another – there just has to be a little care about how its done; if bbPress becomes a WordPress plugin, there’s nothing to stop it having its own sub-set of plugins specific to it.

How would the Admin interface look for bbPress within WordPress

Its very easy to add a new top-level menu item in the admin interface, its just not something plugin writers normally do. In the case of bbPress, I could see a “forum” menu being added that then contains a sub-menu of management pages specific to bbPress. That said, we get user and theme management for free from the main WordPress.

@bobtheman – you asked an interesting question

on a side note, this sorta makes you want to ask yourself, will every project that automattic picks up be transformed into a worpdress plugin?

It’s been said that “when all you have is a hammer, all the worlds problems look like a nail”

The fact is, WordPress is a thoroughly versatile foundation to build upon. To quote another software engineering saying, “it isnt code re-use the second time some code gets used – that’s just a happy accident. Code re-use doesnt happen until the third and subsequent time.”

What do I mean here? Simply this: the foundations of WordPress (user management, theming, admin, plugins, etc) are great. They make a solid basis for building from. BuddyPress started down that road and by a “happy accident” made use of the features. Now we are looking at bbPress and saying “wow – code re-use!” but there are large slabs of code that will not be used when you’re a bbPress user/admin. The thing which needs to happen is to look, now that a third (WP, BP, bbP) project is building on the same backend, and refactor the truly common code into a modular WP-Core that is lean-and-mean, and the additional functionality builds upon. We have an opportunity to drive the architecture of WordPress into a better place as bbPress becomes a plugin.

For instance, what if I want to swap out and run my WordPress against Microsoft Active Directory for all the user management thereby gaining single-signon in a corporate shop? Impossible right now, but if the core is more modular, maybe it would be possible. If the core were more modular, then an install of bbPress need not drag the entire WordPress codebase along with it.

[Marius-]

I want to get rid of Hot Tags. Im not just talking about the menu on the left, but completely remove it.

Remove:

-Hot tags menu

-Listed tags in topics

-Tag box in reply-form

Is there an easy way to do this?

I now have 100 members on my forum, and nobody uses it, and its just ugly.

Is tags a widget, or is it so hard coded into wordpress that I have to edit loads of files to get it away?

Should I bother removing this now, or will this be easier with an updated bbpress, thats perhaps coming sooner than I happen to know?

[petroski]

It’s the great thing about open source software – no one is stopping anyone of carrying on bbPress as a stand alone project. Myself, I like the idea of bbPress as a plug-in – much of the work I do with WordPress is providing a CMS web site solution – a bbPress plugin would become yet another powerful tool for easily integrating into a wp web site.

[bobtheman]

@olaf

bbpress has ever opportunity “as long as no forces push bbpress in a different direction” to flourish and continue to be successful as any other opensource project does. The lack of contributions is a direct reflection of issues that need to be resolved within the community but are in no way unresolvable. Making bbpress a plugin goes against the goals of bbpress and most definitely isnt keeping the USER first, unless they change that to read “keeping the WordPress User first”. Making bbpress a WordPress plugin limits bbpress in so many ways, while other projects are focusing in on simplicity, extendability and yes integration even with wordpress but also with other platforms.

on a side note, this sorta makes you want to ask yourself, will every project that automattic picks up be transformed into a worpdress plugin?

[Olaf Lederer]

@bobtheman,

you’re right, but I don’t believe in bbpress as the big forum system anymore. If I need to build a big forum I go for bigger projects like vbulletin. I think if bbpress is a plugin it will be a better system and frequently updated. And what’s wrong to have a blog and a forum on one site? I write so much articles on forums which better fit into a blog than a forum. Since bbpress has so many bugs the system need much more development than now. I’m sure systems like vbulletin has much more developers than bbpress (I forget there is currently no one)

[talatorre]

One other note, unlike wp_list_pages() you need to call this function with echo:

<?php echo bb_list_pages();?>

or modify the last few lines of the function from:

// Return the string to the caller

return $output;

to:

// Return the string to the caller

echo $output;

return;

then you can call the function similar to wp_list_pages()

<?php bb_list_pages();?>

[talatorre]

aprendedor

This is how I understand the code:

function pages_table() {

global $bb; //calls global variable

// Compute the name of the table we need to query

$table = $bb->wp_table_prefix; //this calls the wp prefix from the wordpress integration settings, ex: wp_

if ($bb->wordpress_mu_primary_blog_id != “”) //checks for a WPMU id in the WP integration settings

$table .= $bb->wordpress_mu_primary_blog_id.”_”; //appends the id, ex: wp_1

$table .= “posts”; //appends “posts”, ex: wp_posts or wp_1posts

return $table;

}

To answer your questions the code works no matter which type of WP flavor you are using