[jeffmax]

I imported a huge forum from PHPBB (Over 1M posts and 100K users). It’s very slow to load and submit posts. Any suggestions on the indexes that should be created? It doesn’t look like the default BBPress indexes are sufficient for forums this size. I thought BBPress would be able to handle it with it’s default structure. Thanks in advance.

[Robin W]

Yes, and I totally agree, the documentation is woeful, unfortunately those that know the answers won’t update, and the rest of us work out bits that function, but are never sure whether these are the best ways.

Anyway onto your question.

bbPress is a plugin, and out of the box it works well with twentyten, and I understand twentyeleven.

Beyond that you’ll need to style it.

This consist of two elements :

Functionality
Styling

Functionality

I create a page called “forums”, and then put whatever forum text at the top followed by the forum shortcut [bbp-forum-index]

See http://www.gospbc.co.uk/forums/ for an example

Then loading a plugin called bbPress WP tweaks adds a forum sidebar to your widgets area.

I have loaded this with a login widget, forum list, recent topics and recent replies, as well as some other stuff from my website. See link about for what is in there.

This then gives you a basic forum area.

Then onto

styling
bbPress using the default bbpress.css as it style doc unless you tell it otherwise

You can customise look and feel – fonts, colours, background quite easily by using one of two methods, knowing what to change is the hard part !

If you have an existing child theme, you can override the bbpress default for elements by adding them to your own child theme style.css BUT you need to put !important into them to prevent the bbpress plugin from loading later and overwriting them with the default

As an example if you wanted to change the font-size of the forums list you’d put the following into your css

#bbpress-forums .bbp-forums-list li {
	font-size: 11px !important;
	}

The alternate method, and perhaps better if you want to make lots of changes, is to copy the default bbpress.css from /wp-content/plugins/bbpress/templates/default/css
to /wp-content/themes/%your-theme%/css/

you can then edit it there to your hearts content, and you don’t need the !important bit.

OK so how do I know what to edit?

You’ll need to get familiar with using something like firebug with firefox. This lets you examine sections of your website and see precisely what css element is styling it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tdIk2PztcL0 gives the start of a tutorial on this

When I get a moment, I’ll start to add this to the bbpress documentation.

I only started with WordPress and bbPress in March, and am still learning the basics !

[thirtyfivemill]

Guys, I’ve searched goodness knows how many threads, read the two standard documentation posts and I cannot for the life of me fathom how to activate a simple bbpress theme. Every thread I read tells of others with the same problem or notes that the documentation is out of date.

Has anyone written a concise and easy to follow step my step instruction post on how to install and activate a theme using the current release of bbpress? Or a video? I just can’t figure how I can spend an entire day googling and searching the site for something which virtually every new user would look for within the first phase of bbpress installation and setup? Have a I missed it?

As far as I’m aware I’ve done everything asked for in these two posts:

http://codex.bbpress.org/theme-compatibility/

http://codex.bbpress.org/step-by-step-guide-to-creating-a-custom-bbpress-theme/

yet having followed them to letter as best I could I can’t quite see how the newly installed “blue static” is to be called into play as functions.php is calling for the default theme?

The two posts above seem to get you about 90% there and then fail to explain the last few steps required to actually make everything work. Or it could be I’m going senile very early in life, in which case please for give me but could someone help me anyway? 🙂

Many thanks in advance for any help you might offer.

[Cars10]

Urgh…..by default the Screen Options swallow the forum bars and you need to activate them manually.
A slim bar could be activated by default, so that is my suggestion for a default setting in upcoming releases.

Close it

[Robin W]

Not sure how much help I can be, but can you post a link to a forum thread where this is happening?

and say which replies they can’t see – eg is it all their own replies, or just the first one?

I’d also suggest eliminating conflicts by disabling all the plugins (except bbpress of course!) and seeing if the problem goes away. If it does, re-enable the plugins one by one to see which is causing the conflict.

if the plugins are not the issue, then change to a default theme such as twentytwelve and see if it still occurs

[salvador21]

Thanks very much

It’s a tiny database 455KB, the forum has only one forum, 70 topics. So it seems I can safely assume it’s just not working.

I have all the correct vales, exactly as on the config.php

This is what I see:

“Delete users WordPress default passwords (0 – 99)
Converting users (0 – 99)
Deleting previously converted data (0 – 99)
Starting Conversion”

After an hour or so of this (with the spinning wheel thing) I can go to Forums in the admin dashboard and sometimes there will appear to be a forum with 70 topics, but on the fornt page only a forum with 0 topics.

Other times I try the import and there is just no forum at all.

Is there a premium support for this? I would be happy to pay for some help.

[tristanojbacon]

Hi guys, still looking for a solution to this rather big problem. I’m shocked that it’s this difficult to integrate bbPress with what is actually a fairly straightforward theme in terms of the coding hierarchy.

[Stephen Edgar]

At what point do I give up and start again. Should it take over four hours?

You should see it start and offer you some sort of notice that it has within seconds.

Via FTP or your web host cPanel admin etc, open your phpBB config file /public_html/phpbbv3/config.php and make sure these are the values you are using on the bbPress importer screen.

<?php
// phpBB 3.0.x auto-generated configuration file
// Do not change anything in this file!
$dbms = 'mysqli';
$dbhost = 'localhost';
$dbport = '3306';
$dbname = 'my_phpbb_database';
$dbuser = 'my_user_name';
$dbpasswd = 'abcdefgh';
$table_prefix = 'phpbb_';

(The $dbhost & $dbport may be blank as thats the default so use the settings I list above which are the default on the bbPress importer anyway)

[Matoca]

I should mention that this setting is properly checked in the bbPress settings and has been since it was installed, as it appears to be the default setting:
Akismet Integration
Forum settings for Akismet
Use Akismet: Allow Akismet to actively prevent forum spam.

In most cases if a plugin was acting like this I would just un-install and then re-install but with the forum very active I don’t think I should be doing that?

[KatieKat]

I removed the original default avatar from the heading but please see the links below. The site is still in test and I am doing some styling but you should be able to see from the following.

http://spotlightjustice.co.uk/forums/users/willowtop/ – just says About in the Heading
http://spotlightjustice.co.uk/forums/users/willowtop/topics/
http://spotlightjustice.co.uk/forums/users/willowtop/replies/
http://spotlightjustice.co.uk/forums/users/willowtop/favorites/ – just says About in the Heading unless I make a topic a favourite

Please note that the subscription page below can only be seen when you sign in but it is similar to the favourites page.
http://spotlightjustice.co.uk/forums/users/willowtop/subscriptions/

Hope this helps.

[ggwarpig]

It appears that scripts and styles in the default theme are being added regardless of whether I’m viewing the forums or not.

For example: I have bbpress setup at /forums/ but I’m seeing /bbpress.css in the header of /blog/ and other pages.

At a minimum, head_scripts() is outputting a jQuery document ready call that I can’t be having all over my site.

[rsix08]

hey thank’s a lot for your help. I’ve added the code but it doesn’t look like it worked.

this is the file I had to modify

/wordpress/wp-content/plugins/bbpress/templates/default/bbpress/loop-single-reply.php

[Robin W]

ok, so you’ll need to edit

web/wp-content/plugins/bbpress/templates/default/bbpress/loop-single-reply.php

line 45 shows the avatar, so try adding a line 46

<?php echo bbp_get_user_post_count( $user_id ); ?>

haven’t tried it !

[jsalomone]

Wordpress 3.7.1, bbPress 2.4.1

Users (all roles except Administrators) cannot see the first post in any topic, regardless of it being their own post or not. Changing forum role doesn’t do anything. Only making them Administrator on the wordpress site does. Tried setting default theme and disabling other plugins to no avail.

Not using Wishlist Member and never did. Unsure how to debug, and seen other topics strand with no solution.

[raduszeged]

nicoblue: I checked your website and – as far as I can see – you solved the problem. I’ve the same issue now; could you help me with the solution?

Wordpress version: 3.5.1
BBpress version: 2.3.2
Theme: Default Twenty-eleven (from earlier WP) with my own minor modifications

The problem is the same: the bbpress forum style on the full-width pages are working flawless. But when I use the shortcode, the floating elements are broken, for example the pagination is messed up. The styling was okay a year ago, but I updated bbpress not so long ago, after I did not checked the shortcode pages (my bad…), and yesterday I faced with the problem.

I show you the difference:

On full-width page, without shortcode (perfect):

Link: http://www.radu.hu/forum/f/kerdesek-a-pontos-adatokkal-kapcsolatban/

With shortcode, pagination and other styles are broken:

Link: http://www.radu.hu/hasznos-eszkozok/jo-minosegu-backteszt-adatok/adatok-letoltese/

At the bottom of the page, the new topic box (the border) is wrong:

Link: http://www.radu.hu/hasznos-eszkozok/jo-minosegu-backteszt-adatok/adatok-letoltese/

If anyone could give me a hint… 🙂

[nickhepp]

I have been coming to some realizations as to what exactly is happening and some ideas on how to tackle the issues. The solutions I will propose will not be optimal, but better than the current default.

When using bbPress for new user registration they are actually using the WordPress system for user registration. Now I have tried a few plugins to avoid spam with user registration but most seem old and none seem to work out of the box. Welp, if you cant beat them, join them. Instead of using the bbPress registration form maybe I will direct the user to the WordPress backend, or a page similar to the default WordPress backend that I stylize to look like my site’s page. There I can include links back to the forum and they dont get this feeling like they have left my site.

Regarding the registration email, this is actually the WordPress registration email. You can change this to your liking with a host of plugins.

Overall I think there are a lot of rough edges. I cannot ask for too much since this is free, but given the number of support issues revolving around these topics it would be cool if bbPress could incorporate these features on its own. It would make this great plugin just that much cooler.

Cheers!

[tristanojbacon]

I have tried to install bbPress, but am having issues with the Forum Index page.
This is the forum index: Forums. However, the actual forums work fine, as you can see on a test forum I created called Suggestions.

Any ideas as to why it’s doing this? I’ve followed the few instructions I could find, including the page about Theme Compatibility. I added the bbPress theme files to my own theme, as suggested in those intructions.

Also, is there a way for the link to just be ‘http://thewhitesharks.co.uk/forums/suggestions/&#8217; instead of ‘http://thewhitesharks.co.uk/forums/forum/suggestions/&#8217;? Seems a bit long to me…

[connielk]

It’s as if there is a php file missing in pugins\bbpress\templates\default\extras that displays the search results. Where can I find that?

[connielk]

As per the theme support page, I went to bbpress\templates\default\ and copied the bbpress and css folders into my theme folder. I also copied archive-forum.php and single-user.php in to the theme folder.

I made a few modifications to archive-forum.php and single-user.php to fit into the page and remove the sidebar.

Seems like most functions are working now except Search. It still goes to a wonky page. Where do I go to look to fix that?

[drdoogs]

Hi there.

This is the page in question: http://www.michiganracquetball.net/forums/

I’m wondering if there is a way for me to remove the “posted by … ” and the “categories” at the top and the bottom of the forum content area. I think those might be related to the metadata of the forum (the page thinks the forum is a “post”?), but I haven’t a clue where to find what is generating that or how to get rid of it.

Any help you can give me would be much appreciated.
Thanks!
Jen

[channelwiki]

I am currently using BBPress and will integrate it with MediaWiki.

However, the problem is as my forum’s index is set to display as a shortcode on a page called ‘Forums’, which is set as my site’s homepage the breadcrumbs display as follows:

Forums >> Forums >> Digital Terrestrial

See: http://www.channelwiki.org/forums/?forum=digital-terrestrial

As you can see the second ‘forums’ link takes a user to the default BBPress Forum index (not my sites homepage). How can this second ‘Forums’ link be removed?

The second issue is, as users are signing in via MediaWiki and will then be signed in to WordPress when they access the site automatically, how can I disable sign in via WordPress and registration, but still allow access to private messages and sign in via the wiki? The WP-Admin bar will also be hidden

Another issue is that I do not know how to redirect users back to the wiki. I’ve though about placing a ‘Log in’ link in the site’s main navigation, which links to the wiki’s login page but I’m not sure how to redirect them back.

Many thanks in advance,
channelwiki

[Robin W]

Glad you’re sorted

[JeremyPark123999]

I am ashamed to say, that it seems that I found a solution that was staring me in the face in the settings panel for bbpress. I simply disabled the “Allow users to subscribe to topics” field, and that has done the trick well enough, sorry for the trouble.

[Robin W]

tried to sign up for an account so that I can see this, but the signup worked, but login didn’t. Maybe you need to authorise?

[JeremyPark123999]

I disabled all of the plugins except bbpress, and I also tried adding that code to bbpress/includes/common/functions.php and also to my themes functions.php . Maybe I am doing something wrong though, is there perhaps a way to hide the check box? That would work just as well for me.