[_ck_]

Two huge strengths for stand-alone (simple) integration over deep integration are:

1. your forums can be still running even if your blog is temporarily down (or visa versa)

2. speed/performance – deep integration will crush a shared server if you get a surge in visitors

[swaymedia]

yeahs but BBPress is for coders to hack it together and make it suitable for a WP theme… that’s what its selling point is… its not just “another forum”… otherwise people would go for Vanilla or phpBB or other light forums.

The reason people come to BBPress is becuase of the intergration possibilities… and limiting the deep integration is the most Counter-Intuitive thing against its own selling point… utterly contradictory and frankly stupid… The majority will want deep intergration either now or later on… Regardless what type of user you are… there will be a point in that users time when he/she wants deep intergration.

[Ipstenu (Mika Epstein)]

Easy. You redirect BB presses signup/login to WP and then the WP profile to BB.

Okay, not ‘easy’ but … If you’ve integrated login, you can edit the login links on BBpress so registrations go to WP and then put a couple redirects in your htaccess in case someone gets ‘smart’. You still have people login through BB or WP, but since it’s the same server, it’s all good.

[lookfab]

@adeboy, thanks for the pointer to columbusunderground.

How is it that their signup/login is for WordPress, yet the profile page is from bbpress? Any idea?

[Ipstenu (Mika Epstein)]

seriously guys, deep intergration is probably the most essential feature an “intergratable forum” has to have.

All this talk about…. well… Not everyone wants it.. is utter garbage.

Wow. Harsh. So my not wanting it means I’m garbage or my site is garbage? Nah, I know you don’t mean I’m crap, no worries, but really think about what you just said.

I agree that SOME people want deep/full integration. And some people don’t. Should full integration be offered? Yes, but only for people who are totally hard-core hackers. Because it’s so hard, because it’s so complicated, and because it’s something that, if done wrong, will seriously jack you up.

Shallow integration, of users and db, is what most people need. If you can theme WP, you can theme BB. If you can make a theme in WP, you can make it work in BB too with about an hour of work and make it seem seamless.

A pain? Yes. But IMO better than having to re-code everything.

And I too would rather sit on a cactus than use iframes.

[Ipstenu (Mika Epstein)]

My guess would be this: wordpress.com is to wordpress.org what talkpress is to bbpress

Nes pas?

(and I’ve been told they don’t use those questions in the SATs anymore, which makes me feel old…)

[_ck_]

bbPress doesn’t yet have the ease of use that WordPress has

but it can be customized in pretty much the same way.

The problem is bbPress is much younger than WordPress so there is virtually no documentation and it’s also evolving so any changes you make today may have to be updated somewhat in a few months.

The best bet is to study existing plugins and themes however if you are not a coder that may be problematic.

You got this far though, I dare say you probably have the required determination to get it done.

[adammann33]

Hi all,

First off, I’d like to say wow, this stuff is awesome! Thank you for the effort that has gone into it.

I’d also like to pat myself on the back for having done two successful install/integrations of bbp and wp by following the integration screencast. Both have worked very well — I did have to use the fix admin login plugin on one, but it has worked since. The trick for a non-coder like me is to have the screencast in a separate window and pause it at every step.

For the site in my profile, http://www.herbalremedyforum.com , I’m using the tarski theme on the wordpress side, and the matching geneologies theme on the bbpress side. The two look fantastic together!

So my question is this: what’s the most effective way for me to get the knowledge/skills I need to pimp out my bbpress site like I did with my wp site as a non-coder? I’m not lazy — it just seems like I’m missing some basic information like how to get link into the bp sidebar with a widget as in wp.

As a bottom line, is there a suite of plug ins that gives the an approximation of the intuitive interface of the WP admin area? Or do I (gulp) need to go back to school and get a computer science degree? Somewhere in between? It seems like given the hand holding from the screencast that there must be other handholding that I’m not finding for the other basic stuff.

So two of the basic hand holdy questions: how do I put a link from my forum back to my wp blog? And how do a put an image in the header of the forum to match that of the wp blog?

ps — I just posted this a few minutes ago, then realized I needed to edit a typo, so I hit the edit button and when I tried to save, it saved as a blank post?

[adammann33]

Hi all,

First off, I’d like to say wow, this stuff is awesome! Thank you for the effort that has gone into it.

I’d also like to pat myself on the back for having done two successful install/integrations of bbp and wp by following the integration screencast. Both have worked very well — I did have to use the fix admin login plugin on one, but it has worked since. The trick for a non-coder like me is to have the screencast in a separate window and pause it at every step.

For the site in my profile, http://www.herbalremedyforum.com , I’m using the tarski theme on the wordpress side, and the matching geneologies theme on the bbpress side. The two look fantastic together!

So my question is this: what’s the most effective way for me to get the knowledge/skills I need to pimp out my bbpress site like I did with my wp site as a non-coder? I’m not lazy — it just seems like I’m missing some basic information like how to get link into the bp sidebar with a widget as in wp.

As a bottom line, is there a suite of plug ins that gives the an approximation of the intuitive interface of the WP admin area? Or do I (gulp) need to go back to school and get a computer science degree? Somewhere in between? It seems like given the hand holding from the screencast that there must be other handholding that I’m not finding for the other basic stuff.

So two of the basic hand holdy questions: how do I put a link from my forum back to my wp blog? And how do a put an image in the header of the forum to match that of the wp blog?

[_ck_]

People should not be registering domain names with any of the Automattic product names in them. While the programs are open source and free, the name is still trademarked by Matt. I doubt he would ever sue little websites but Matt has gently requested this before:

https://wordpress.org/about/domains/

Discussing/promoting the products on your site is one thing, registering domain names with the products entirely different. If you are worried about SEO or promotion you can just use the name as a subdirectory, ie.

my-example-website.com/talkpress/ = okay

my-talkpress-website.com/forums/ = not okay

subdomains might also be a loophole: talkpress.my-example-website.com

And it’s perfectly valid for them to have a commerical product called “TalkPress” that uses the open source bbPress engine. Just like BuddyPress uses WordPress MU and bbPress.

[adeboy]

@swaymedia, ouch!

Ipstenu is right, it would be a world of pain with upgrades, they need to stay apart. The profile integration is great and if you work on it a user would never know where WP ends and BBPress starts. Check out http://www.columbusunderground.com/forums/, best example i’ve seen

[matiaspunx]

It’s like wordpress.com a holding site for forums…

bbpress is bbpress and talkpress is talkpress.

im right huh?

[swaymedia]

@adeboy

i’d rather sit on a hedgehog than do that.

seriously guys, deep intergration is probably the most essential feature an “intergratable forum” has to have.

All this talk about…. well… Not everyone wants it.. is utter garbage.

[adeboy]

An easy way to integrate is to use iframes in your wp pages to load bbpress content. Might not be suitable for many things but is quick and simple to do

[DTI]

Can I hold two databases in same place using mysql, one is for forum and another is for myself (not for wordpress)?

When I install bbpress 0.9.0.4, it can’t been connected with forum-database(stick in step 1), although I use databaseConnect.php to test it that success connecting forum-database. But I use myself-database to replace it, it is work and pass step 1. 2. 3. (myself-database is first, forum-database is second in order.)

But it can’t be loged in, anybody password is incorrect in my forum. After using recovered password it still doesn’t work. I think the problem is forum-tables mixed with myself-tables, they stay in one database. So I want to reinstall bbPress but I worry to stick step 1 same before. Could you give me some suggestion.

I use bbPress 0.9.0.4 , not integrated with WordPress. My server use Linux CentOS, Apache 2.2.3, Mysql5.045 and Php 5.1.6 .

[swaymedia]

is deep intergration possible on alpha,… yeahs or no?

[DTI]

I use bbPress 0.9.0.4 , not integrated with WordPress. My server use Linux CentOS, Apache 2.2.3, Mysql5.045 and Php 5.1.6 .

[_ck_]

I’m not sure exactly when this year it happened but they finally replaced the front page on http://talkpress.com (I think it was on or around March 24th 2009)

Looks interesting. This one is the most interesting to me, because you might notice how much it looks like bbPress:

http://talkpress.com/wordpress-content/themes/talkpress-temp/i/4.png

update: oh and here is the actual website featured:

http://ask-the-expert.health.com/

It is indeed running bbPress (1.0 alpha 6)

So it’s an Automattic hosted bbPress with WordPress.com logins.

The bottom right of the page says “Powered by TalkPress VIP”.

Google first saw it on March 19th 2009

[adeboy]

I would have thought Automattic could monetize BBPress in the same way the make money from WordPress, there’s obviously a need for blogs and forums to be combined and people will pay for hosted versions.

Its great to get new WP features, but its now a well developed software and I think there’s much more scope for growth with BBpress. Once you link them together its very good and it solves a lot of the Profile customisation problems you get in WP. The alpha works fine as long as you don’t want too much from it and I don’t get how they don’t want to exploit that much more

[_ck_]

bbPress is certainly not abandoned. It’s not going away.

It’s paid for by a company with over a million dollars in funding.

It’s just not developing fast enough for some people and that minority is unfortunately the most vocal.

I think the biggest problem is people start using WordPress when it’s version 2.5 or newer and somehow they figure it’s always had all those features so they see bbPress by the same people and figure it must be as developed and managed like that.

WordPress was nearly exactly like this until version 2.0

I’ve suggested before that bbPress will get more attention once Matt finds a way to monetize it like WordPress.com did for WordPress.

There will likely be a few small releases of improvements to 1.0 and bug fixes for 0.9 this year (with one likely in April), but there will not be anything major in 2009 IMHO. If Sam or Michael asked me for my opinion I would suggest that 1.0 final should not be released in 2009, it’s just not ready and if you think people are complaining now, just wait.

To put it another way, if bbPress doesn’t have the feature you want right now and you aren’t willing/able to write it yourself, don’t start thinking it’s going to magically appear in 2009.

Of course I could be completely wrong and Matt will suddenly take a dozen of his WordPress developers and put them onto bbPress next month – but do you think that is realistic?

[Ivaylo Draganov]

I also support the suggestion for a blog/bettter communication.

Because now bbPress looks somewhat abondoned. I’m talking about people involved in the project to some degree but to an outside observer or a new user. People would like to know how the project is going and whether it could meet their needs in future versions without digging into the forums or Trac.

I came to bbPress because it is related to WordPress and shares many similarities (templates, plugins, etc.). I believe many others do that for the same reason. Using another forum platform I would have to learn from scratch.

[_ck_]

Yes, you are asking too much, it’s free software, there’s not even a 1.0 final yet.

Michael was working on bbPress before Sam joined Automattic, he has been working on other Automattic projects for the past few months and recently started working on bbPress again.

Name the current developers of WordPress, I suspect most people can’t – the point is that it doesn’t matter to most people.

Note that I don’t have some special insight on bbPress activity – Michael and Sam don’t tell me secrets and hide them from everyone else. I just go and read stuff, all the notes in the code, I watch trac updates, I read the history in bbDev.

If you don’t know what I know about bbPress it just means you are lazier than me and don’t want to bother reading it all and just want it spoon-fed to you. In which case, you seriously need to find other software that has reach maturity, is well documented and the developers twitter every darn day what they do. There are DOZENS of forum programs. Many of them have been integrated with WordPress on some level. Find another solution.

Again, if you are planning your website, project, etc. around the day-to-day, week-to-week or even month-to-month improvements in bbPress development you are using the wrong program. bbPress is pre-release, it is not final, it is not gold. If you need a timetable, you are using the wrong program.

If you are using bbPress now you are an early-adopter. Early adopters have to be do-it-yourself-ers who figure things out for themselves and/or don’t have timetables.

I cannot stress this enough, if you cannot deal with how bbPress is manged, and didn’t like it last month or the month before, you may have noticed nothing has changed to meet your desires. Please, please, please find other software and stop posting to the forums with this. Stop making YOUR need for timetables everyone else’s priority. Stop acting like you are entitled to special attention and time above the other thousands of bbPress users. Uninstall bbPress and switch to something else.

[hnsweb]

I have uploaded the bbpress in my server. and i get the 1st welcome installation screen. After i press “lets get started” .i get the following error…

“Warning: html_entity_decode() expects parameter 2 to be long, string given in /home/hnsalumn/public_html/ryt/bbpress/bb-includes/wp-functions.php on line 113″

Please HELP ! ( i have already installed wordpress MU in the server.)

[kahnoya]

SOLVED!

After troubleshooting this problem for the last 24 hours, I noticed in the screencast that sambauers installed WordPress 2.7.0 and not 2.7.1 the most updated version to this date. So I did a fresh install with WP 2.7.0 and bbPress 1.06 Alpha exactly the way he said. AND IT WORKED ON THE FIRST TRY!

[chrishajer]

The password in the database is encrypted. So, if you just pasted the plain text into the password field in the database, it won’t work.

What version of bbPress are you using, and are you integrated with WordPress?