[ripten]

The final pulldown asks you to pick the user. I selected Admin (myself) and hit complete install. The error I got was that it couldn’t work with that user. I don’t remember the exact phrase as I was a little ticked off that the proposed solution was the delete it all and start over. Is there some sort of access the forum needs? I am using Apache and by default on my server everything is set to user access unless I specifically go in and grant write access to group. If there is a certain file/folder that BB Press needs Apache access to outside of its own please let me know. Also, if the problem is something else please let me know that as well. I will try this install exactly one more time. Thanks, Chad-

[Michael]

Greets

I recently had a problem with my tag cloud, which I have not resolved. I landed up having to revert to the default tag cloud.

Now that I’ve done this, the tags look too close to eachother. So some tags look as if they are one, when they are actually two.

My idea is to separate them with bullets (•) of the same size. Once again, I don’t wanna go messing around with the core unless I know what I’m doing.

Any way to do this?

Peace, Michael

[johnhiler]

I use that subscription plugin I linked above… it’s been great, and we haven’t had problems with delivery. It might get out of hand if we default subscribed members to threads… but it’s opt-in, so the number of subscription emails is much lower than you’d think.

[hoppie]

Backed up everything.

Saved my bb-config.php (but did not need to re-install this, right?).

Saved my my-plugins dir.

Disabled all plugins.

Changed from 0.9 to 1.0 using a symlink reset.

Was asked to enter several config options, such as database name. Did it all.

Installer claims that db was available etc. and declares the job done.

New Forum 1.0 appears, I can login using previous credentials.

Postings seem intact.

However, clicking on “Admin” makes the browser go briefly to bb-admin and then back to the home page.

Clue: after login, the browser claims:

The requested URL /pub/pub/ was not found on this server.

My Forums live in /pub and this was also offered by the installer as default. The /pub symlinks to the 1.0 dir. Manually going there works.

Jeroen

[Gautam]

Hello all,

I am currently coding a theme to match my blog’s layout (which is Mystique theme by digitalnature). I want it to be a bit different from the default kakumei theme, so I need all your suggestions of what improvements can be made in the theme.

Here is the current theme which I have prepared till now – http://forum.gaut.am/

(Also check any topic page)

Thanks!

[Jeremy G]

Great ! It works now.

It appears that using the Gnome Nautilus integrated FTP function doesn’t respect permissions by default, I re-uploaded every file with FileZilla and everything is OK (even if files are set by default with a 604 permission in filezilla, instead of 644 as you suggested. Looks OK though ?)

Thanks again chrishajer.

[sgordon]

Maybe it’s me, but I have no clue what I’m supposed to put for my database title in the very first step – as in what is hte database file usually called by default and where would I find it?

I’m running wordpress 1.9.

I’ve installed the bbpress folder renamed as “forums” in my root because if I put it under /blog/forums I get a 404 and the rss list of posts from wp

I have the database host set as the default “localhost” per suggestion

I assume ‘databse user’ and ‘database password’ are not pre-existing UN & PW but the same ones used to access the admin of WP, but if they are a way of setting new UN and PW then I’d be using the same for both BB and WP.

I’m using Yahoo as my web host

[timskii]

Checkbox under posting form, checked by default

I assume this checkbox auto-subscribes to this topic.

But that raises a side issues: User Settings. Remember the default per-user, as an account settings.

Currently I hack settings into the profile data (since they are easy to call out almost anywhere without special functions). Of course I also had to hack the profile data structure slightly to categorize each piece of profile data – both to split settings from public information, and do other things – like group similar data together, or define the input field type. Note that there is an array already in place to categorise profile information, although it refers to data by position (0,1,etc), not key name, which can makes hacking it messy.

Cookies would be the lazy option, but a tad confusing for users that don’t visit regularly, or visit from different computers.

(After 10 minutes I didn’t get anything – but it could be an email snarl-up.)

[thierryyyyyyy]

In the current version of bbPress, anyone can change the display_name.

I really think this is a stupid “feature”, anyone can make a joke (good or bad) taking the name of “admin” or anyonelse. That a primitive type of spoofing.

Before all my forum member discover this “feature”, I would love to forbid it.

I could easily say that displayed name is the login, but then, I can’t change the display name for the admin.

Which is stupid : “admin” is the default login for the administrator, but I don’t know any admin whose name is “admin” …

I searched on how could I disable that myself “nicely”: no plugin, this is not in my theme (a bad solution would have been to suppress the form input).

Someone has another idea ?

[Matt Mullenweg]

Click subscribe above here, and then leave a post on this thread and you’ll also get notifications when other people do.

TODO and patches welcome:

* One-click unsubscribe using nonces

* Checkbox under posting form, checked by default

* AJAXify subscribe link

* Profile page that lists all subscriptions

[chrishajer]

Everyone defines basic in a different way. That’s the problem with adding more things into the core by default. I agree that finding plugins that work has been a problem, but that’s less of a problem with the fact that bbPress is minimal and more with a problem of the way the project has been run, and the amount of resources it’s gotten.

[grassrootspa]

@yutt (or is it Skull Man?) & Dailytalker:

I agree 100% with your points. ‘Simplicity is a feature’ and ‘less is more’ are great slogans, but it’s impractical to require someone to find/research/download/upload/configure zillions of plugins to do extremely basic forum tasks that are taken for granted with other programs. I want a stable forum program that contains basic features that aren’t going to stop working if a plugin developer walks away or won’t update them to work with future bbPress builds. I love bbPress but find it just too stripped-down and feature-less out of the box. Would be great to see more optional features you can use or turn off like Gravatars. The default text input interface in-particular leaves much to be desired.

Plugins like Topic Views should be incorporated into the base feature-set of BBpress as well as things like Widgets and the ability to edit themes or plugins from within the admin.

I am not a professional programmer and really admire and appreciate those who develop plugins, such as NightGunner5, Paul Hawke, Michael Adams etc. Going out on a limb here, I would guess it would not be too difficult to incorporate SOME of the more popular plugin features into the Core (especially focusing on _ck_’s best stuff as she will likely not be back). Again, I’m not talking about building in Nintendo emulators or Weatherbug displays but why the heck should someone need a plugin to display how many times a topic has been viewed?!?

@all:

Something I think base minimalists and more-base-feature advocates like yutt & Dailytalker would all agree on is that that bbPress’s admin should display plugin update notifications like WordPress’s admin does. This would be extremely helpful for everyone, especially when security risks are discovered in plugins one has running.

Haha, I bet even kevinjohngallagher would agree with me on this one!

[chrishajer]

Checked from command line on Linux and it redirects if you don’t use the slash:

[~]$ curl -I http://authorstock.com/forum

HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently

Content-Length: 168

Content-Type: text/html; charset=UTF-8

Location: http://authorstock.com/authorstock.com/forum/

Server: Microsoft-IIS/7.0

X-Powered-By: ASP.NET

Date: Tue, 29 Dec 2009 23:36:34 GMT



[~]$ curl -I http://authorstock.com/forum/

HTTP/1.1 200 OK

Content-Length: 0

Content-Type: text/html; charset=UTF-8

Server: Microsoft-IIS/7.0

X-Pingback: http://authorstock.com/forum/xmlrpc.php

X-Powered-By: ASP.NET

Date: Tue, 29 Dec 2009 23:36:40 GMT

Can you access any other directories and get the index file instead of a redirect? Is there a way to ensure that index.php is the index file for the directory?

1. In the IIS Manager, double-click Default Document.

2. Click Add, then enter index.php and click OK.

[gerikg]

I keep getting this error when trying to post a new topic in a forum.

Warning: extract() [function.extract]: First argument should be an array in /home/xx/public_html/forum/bb-includes/backpress/class.wp-users.php on line 506

Warning: Cannot modify header information – headers already sent by (output started at /home/xx/public_html/forum/bb-includes/backpress/class.wp-users.php:506) in /home/xx/public_html/wp-includes/pluggable.php on line 865

after returning to the forum and refreshing I see that the post gets posted.

It’s now on the default template.

[Gautam]

This is the CSS from the default (kakumei) theme:

/* Page navigation

=================================== */



a.page-numbers,

span.page-numbers {

border-right: 1px solid #bbbbbb;

border-bottom: 1px solid #bbbbbb;

padding: 4px 4px 2px 5px;

margin-left: 5px;

background-image: url('images/page-links-background.gif');

background-repeat: no-repeat;

background-position: 0 0;

}



span.page-numbers.current {

color: #ffffff;

background-position: 0 -100px;

}



#latest a.page-numbers {

font-size: 0.8em;

padding: 3px 3px 1px 4px;

margin-left: 3px;

}



a.prev.page-numbers,

a.next.page-numbers,

span.page-numbers.dots {

border-width: 0;

padding: 0 4px;

background-image: none;

}



span.page-numbers.dots {

padding: 0;

}



a.page-numbers:hover {

background-position: 0 -100px;

}



a.prev.page-numbers:hover,

a.next.page-numbers:hover {

color: #006400;

}

[brayjason]

I am using the default template. The kakumei one.

I have not done too much work yet at all. Unfortunately I deleted all of the files off of my server and the reuploaded them via ftp (cyberduck)

After that I had to go through the installation step one and when I entered in the information it said its already installed! (weird since I had deleted everything)

I’m going to try and delete everything again. Re download the files from bbpress, and re upload them. Maybe it will work

thank you so much for a quick reply btw

[eyashwant]

I installed wordpress mu and bbpress in single database and installed integration plugins of respective ones on both. And configured it.

As of today mine is the latest wordpress mu version and bbpress version. The problem I am facing is :

1) Login integration

2) User roles integration

3) Theme integration

In detail :

1) Login integration :

When I login in to wordpress and then move to forum, I am logged in. Also when I logout of wordpress and then go to forum I am logged out. This works perfectly. The problem is when I login in to forum and then move to wordpress, it does not work. Also when I logout at forum and then move to wordpress I am still logged in. I can access wp-admin. When I access wp-login it seems like I am logged out. But if I access wp-admin I am logged in. If I press log out I get error :

You are attempting to log out of Test 1

Please try again.

URL of where I am getting is http://test1.soulblog.net/wp-login.php?action=logout_wpnonce=f3ec0d7e0f

2) User roles, in wordpress I installed Role manager. In bbpress I see the registered users as “Inactive (no role)”

3)I want to integrate wordpress theme in the forum. I followed the steps below :

____________________________________________

styling your forum

1. Open bb-config.php and add the following line (replacing PATHTOYOUR with the

relative path to your blog):

require_once(‘/PATHTOYOUR/wp-blog-header.php’);

2. Navigate to the folder for the theme you are using on the forum (the default is

Kakumei, which is in /bb-templates/kakumei) and open the header.php

file. Replace the contents with <?php get_header(); ?>.

3. After the <?php get_header(); ?>, ����������������������������������insert the following line of code:

<link rel=”stylesheet” href=”<?php bb_stylesheet_uri(); ?>”

type=”text/css” />.

4. You can do the same with the footer, replacing it with <?php get_footer(); ?>

if you wish.

5. Open the style.css file for the bbPress theme you are using. Search for the

following line in the header: class.

background: url(‘images/page_header_bblogo.png’) no-repeat

Remove that line and save the file.

6. View the forum. It should now be very similar in look and feel to the rest of the

blog network.

__________________________________________

This replaced the header and footer, but did not integrate well.

So some one please guide me with these 3 issues and get me solved asap.

[chrishajer]

Looks like you are using a modified template maybe? If so, please try the default, unmodified template.

If you are already using the included kakumei template, make sure all the files were properly uploaded. It looks like some things are missing.

If you haven’t done too much work yet (either modifications or posting) I would just save the bb-config.php and delete everything else, then reupload all the bbPress files and try accessing the forum again. It just doesn’t look complete.

If you did anything other that just install the bare bones bbPress, please post here what you did. Things like integration, modifications, 1-click install from your host, anything interesting about your hosting setup. Thanks

[chandersbs]

Guys,

I’m really happy there is a thread like this. I voted ‘integration with WordPress’ but honestly, there are a LOT OF THINGS I wished, were by default.

When I switched from SMF to bbPress, I didn’t know what I was getting myself into. The reason I switched was, because SMF is using this license that you can’t change the code or something. And because of that, plugins were hard to find.

My users who visit my site, daily and already so many years, were totally used to the many features that SMF had/has. So the day I switched, they arrived at a forum who was completely empty.

Sure there are plugins, but not all plugins work (well) and sometimes you need spent hundreds of hours to get a plugin working. Not everyone has the time for it.

My forum doesn’t have a private message system, cause the plugins that are available, don’t work on it.

The forum doesn’t have a build-in feature for users to upload their own avatar. I had to achieve that via a plugin and hundreds of hours spending on this forum.

I don’t wanna sound like I’m complaining, I just want that it should be clear to some members that they should be a bit more open minded and not think that everything is fine and everyone can handle it. There are webmasters out there, that spent lots of time on bbPress forums and their own site to make it work like a normal forum.

[Elias]

The one thing I love on bbPress

The one thing I love on bbPress is: It is simple and fast. “Simple” means, its functionality is easy to understand and to use for a less experienced internet user and there are no features distracting from the one core thing in a forum, from that funny discussion thing. And “Fast” means, that the bbPress core is even faster than the rather minimalist PunBB on the virtual server I use bbPress on. These are the two “features” of bbPress I really want to see in the future.

The things I hate on WordPress

Following the current discussion reminds me on my own experience with the great WordPress blog software. I am a WordPress user since WP 1.5.x, and WP 1.5.x was the software making me a blogger. It was easy to use, had a clean and simple user interface for the blogger, could be extended easily and replaces my simple home-written system after one week of testing and comparing to s9y.

Now, I do hate my long ago decision for WP sometimes. The current WP version 2.8.x is bloated, slow and without a good caching plugin not well-suited for a blog with readers.

As an example, there is a tiny german blog filled by me and less frequent some other people. It is called “Blah”, and most of its postings are simply links to other internet resources, mostly political, conspirational and funny ones. Did I mention that the blog is called “Blah”? It is not really a “successful” one, in the last six months there were approximately 2,000 visits per day, that’s not much. The “average visitor” requests five postings, and only one percent of them ever leaves a comment. The blog’s database contains 4,300 posts at the moment, that’s not much too. If I deactivate the WP Super Cache plugin, the server fails to handle that little load, the response time of the tiny blog grow to 30 to 50 seconds, the apache processes accumulates and finally the server runs out of virtual memory, giving visitors that funny “Out of memory” PHP error messages or a plain white page.

This is a situation totally unwanted for a bulletin board, which is a highly dynamic kind of website that can not be cached as easy as the less frequent views of a blog.

From bbPress 0.9.x to 1.0.x, the number of database queries to view the same page has nearly doubled, and the execution time has grown by approximately 60 percent on the same server. From the user point’s of view, it was exactly the same page, and bbPress is at the moment still performant enough to be better than any other bulletin board software. But from my point of view it remembers me to the things I experienced again and again with many new WordPress versions in the past, reaching the current point of a blog, which isn’t made to have more than a handful of readers. But for a WP blog, I can work around with WP Super Cache, for forums this approach is nearly impossible.

Some words about readers

I’m looking at the statistics generated from the apache logfiles of the Blah-blog for the last six months. It is a blog in german language, and of course most readers are living in Germany, less in Austria or Suisse, some in the Netherlands, Danmark, Belgium, Poland, Russia or Hungary too. These are not readers from the so called “third world”. (There is only one world, and we all have to share it!) In the last six months, 19 percent of the Blah-blog readers used an old dial-up modem connection to access it. (Identified by the rather speaking hostnames given in germany for that kind of connection I can identify, there may be some more readers with a low-bandwidth connection.) For this fifth part of my readers (which may be a representative value for other websites in germany too, but most people seems not interested in this kind of information), every use of large JavaScript magic which has to be loaded via a low-bandwidth connection gives an impression of slowness, and this is something I do not want to give them. That’s a reason for the rather minimalistic design of this blog.

Let me compare that 19 percent to another statistical number for the Blah-blog. 12 percent of all readers uses that fu… fine Internet Explorer 6.0 for surfing. (Identified by the user-agent string, which may be faked in rare cases.) The IE 6 is an old and ugly browser with many problems and a CSS box model interpretation giving a good headache to designers, and there are much better browsers out for free. But in many cases it is unwanted to exclude that 12 percent of website users or to give them a totally trashed design experience. It is also amazing, how many people are still using Windows 98 or ME or even Windows NT 4.0. I assume these people use rather old computers, still working for their personal requirements, so they don’t want to throw them to waste. Yes, there are people out there, which are poor and simply cannot spend a few hundred euros for new hardware every few years — me too. These are people I don’t want to exclude from any website I maintain, and especially I don’t want to exclude these from pages about political or cultural subjects. Every kind of bloat is wrong in my point of view.

(I use bbPress for a small forum on an uncommercial artists’ webpage, and it is great for that. This usage is my reason why I’m maintaining an inofficial german translation of bbPress, there is simply no language file for German at the moment, and not to share this work is stupid.)

Some words about the dashboard

The current bbPress dashboard is fine, it is aesthetical appealing, easy to use (compared to other bulletin boards’ backends) and fast even via a low-bandwidth connection and on a not up-to-date computer. It can be used with all browsers, and it makes all administrative tasks easy. The current WordPress dashboard sucks. It is unuseable slow with the Opera browser, and even with other browsers needs an enourmeous transfer of data and an long initialization time before one can do that simple thing which is blogging: writing a new post. If someone uses an older computer (older than five years), it is unuseable with any browser, and it is unbelievable frustrating to use via a dialup connection. And no, that “Google Gears” stuff does not help.) The huge amount of features are overwhelming for an unexperienced user, and for the little artists’ site (with eight authors) I still have to help some people for every post they want to blog. Since I had to upgrade that site to WP 2.8.x (it used 2.0.x and 2.3.x for a long time), the other authors hate me. Some of them are poor people. I recommend the usage of BlogDesk for them, but sometimes there are tasks which cannot be done with BlogDesk, as deleting an unwanted idiot’s comment or declaring a post as sticky (to announce an action, happening, exhibition, sound vernissage, reading, party, etc.). Since WP 2.8.x, the posting frequency of some co-authors is reduced to zero, and if I had the possibility for it, I would create my own WordPress fork (a DietPress for people who wants blogging without bloat).

And this is the way bbPress should avoid, in my opinion.

The bbPress of the future I want

bbPress is great! The bbPress core is good, and the features in an out-of-the-box installation are enough in many cases. But of course, there are things that could be improved, and there are many features often missed by people who wants a bulletin board. The probaly most wanted features are (list may be incomplete)

• eMail notification for new posts
• A kind of bbCode, which meets better the standard people expect in a BB software
• An improved editor, helping the user to do the wanted markup (may be bloaty magic WYSIWYG, but even eight buttons with a little JavaScript are better than nothing for the inexperienced user)
• An internal system of personal messaging (I hate it, but others love it)
• Attachment of files to a post
• Perhaps an avatar system independent from Gravatar
• An easy to extend user profile with additional informations
• A “who is online now” display
• Counters how often a post has been read
• A “terms of usage” statement which is required to be accepted by newly registered users
• An extended search with criteria as forum, tag, date range, username. (The existing search is better than the WordPress search, but I can still be improved. In a support forum with ten thousands of topics, it would be good to have the accumulated information more “findable”.)
• An interactive (and plugin-extensible and i18nable) help system for all core bbPress features, explaining the bbPress usage to inexperienced users and the concepts they cannot understand directly, especially tags. This is something I haven’t seen in any other BB software, but it is something really needed. It may even contain some words about netiquette…
• Perhaps a “widget system” similar to WP as a simple way to modify the order of appearance of the displayed entities without editing in themes

And of course, bbPress must remain performant, non-bloated and easy to integrate with WordPress. That’s a lot…

Many of these frequently requested features are not a good “standard” functionablity.

• The eMail notification is fine for spammers too. I am registered in some boards with this “feature”, and from time to time someone registers, writes spammy posts to various topics and the BB software dutifully and reliable sends that spam to a lot of users, before a moderator can do something. That’s why I am deactivating it always — one day, I received more than 100 mails “from my favorite forum”… aaargh!
• An over-improved editor slows down the forum for people with old hardware and makes the forum unusable for blind people with their strange solutions for surfing. (Yes, some of my “readers” are blind.)
• Personal massaging is a poor reinvention of good old internet eMail that sucks. For someone active on various boards, he has to check it messages in many places, which is ugly.
• An extended user profile is exactly the thing spammers want. The links in approximately 5 percent of my eMail spam are going to user profiles in bulletin boards, which are misused in many ways.
• Every upload possibility to the server can be a security problem, can be used by spammers to put spammy graphics in the internet or can consume execessive hard disc space on the server if heavily used.

But of course these features are wanted in many cases.

We should have a bbPress slogan for all future development. My suggestion is: Let’s make simple things easy, and let’s make complex things possible.

Learning from that part of WordPress which sucks means: Doing it better in bbPress. The core system should kept as a small one, perhaps a little smaller than the actual core. (The current user profile is sometimes unwanted.) And all additional features should be implemented in plugins, that a forum administrator can activate and configure as needed.

Core Plugins

But plugins are a huge problem too. Using a plugin indenpendent from the core system means: Making the update of bbPress to a new version sometimes to a migraine upgrade, whenever the needed plugins do not work with the newer version. Sometimes, I have this problem with one of my sites based on WordPress. And if the plugin’s functionality does require editing in the themes, it excludes less-experienced forum-administrators with a lack of PHP knowledge from using the plugins, which is not exactly the way to make complex things possible.

So there should be a set of plugins which are part of the bbPress release, which are developed together with the core system, let’s call them “core plugins”. It is not required to activate them to have a simple and basic bulletin board, but if someone do so, he will never have problems with upgrades. The “core plugins” are guaranteed to be delivered and to work with every release version and every security fix ever released. We have this kind of “core plugins” already, bozo users and Akismet. But it is a concept to be extended. A better post editor, a “terms of usage” page, a PM system, an internal avatar system, attachments to posts and all the administrative stuff around these features are good candidates for “core plugins”. If someone does not need them, he does not activated them. But if someone activates them and only them, this will never make the next bbPress release to a upgrade hell.

There may be bbPress-tags which are implemented empty if a core plugin isn’t activated, to make it easy to program the default theme and any other theme independent from the activated set of “core plugins” and without that sucking lines of if (function_exists ('bb_great_feature')) bb_great_feature ();. This kind of interface can be defined long before the “core plugins” are stable, and it can be documented for theme developers to allow them making their themes future-proof. (Oh yes, we need some good themes, the default one is fine, but some people want a richer selection.)

The bbPress features eighty percent of people want can be implemented in “core plugins”. Simple things will be easy. And if someone wants a small bbPress, that’s easier, he simply does not need to activate any “core plugin”. And there is still a plugin interface which makes complex things possible — sometimes a little editing in themes is required, but most people never needs to do so.

That’s the way bbPress should go, in my opinion.

(It may be a way for the future of WordPress too. But that’s not the topic here, and the WP developers do their work for a huge community of users and simply cannot change earlier decisions easily.)

And excuse my english. My poetic german is much better… and shorter.

[grassrootspa]

@ kevinjohngallagher:

One doesn’t need bbpress to display Voices, but it’s built into the core.

One doesn’t need bbpress to give every registered user a profile pic or gravatar, but it’s built into the core.

One doesn’t need bbpress to display Tags, but it’s built into the core.

One doesn’t need bbpress to allow users to ‘favorite’ posts, but it’s built into the core.

One doesn’t need bbpress to display a user’s recent activisty, but it’s built into the core.

One doesn’t need bbpress to display a user’s location, occupation, and interests, but it’s built into the core.

We could go on, and on, and on. One could make the argument that those features above (as well as others) could easily just be offered as plugins (no one REALLY needs to use them) but they are there to make the software more robust, fun, and useful! Think about each one and how things like Tags, favorites, gravatars, profile pics could simply be kept as plugins. Thank God those features were incorporated into the core.

Yes, bbPress could be the most barebone of all barebone bulletin board programs, with multiple plugins required to do anything more than throwing up a forum post, but for this software to become what WordPress is to blogging/CMS software it needs to offer a more robust list of core features that can be refined and further fleshed out with future plugins.

Again, I’m not saying you NEED to have TinyMCE turned on, use bbPress widgets, show how many times a topic has been viewed, display how many users are online, or use (new) default topic icons, but build this stuff into the core so folks can optionally use it, develop plugins to flesh those features out (imagine plugins/themes built around customizing various icon sets), and this stuff can grow with bbPress.

bbPress is like 1.93 MB is size. Plugins like mini-stats are 37.9 KB. You guys are killing me, like incorporating stuff like some of the more popular plugins is going to make bbPress too bulky and bloated to use? Someone isn’t going to go, OMG, bbPress is 2.20 MB in size, its just to bloated to download and install on my server and it offers too many optional features! Come on guys, this is getting silly. Let’s make bbPress more robust in features so it blows vBulletin out of the water.

[grassrootspa]

@ timskii, great observations. re: “There’s a risk of being unable to upgrade because a key plugin won’t work anymore” and “Joanna Average forum reader doesn’t care about any of that, and is probably keener on things like WYSYWYG, email, etc”:

This is exactly why some of the more widespread plugins and features should be incorporated into the core as optional features one can turn on or off. It seems silly to force someone to download a plugin and mess with the template to do basic bulletin board admin tasks like display how many times a topic has been viewed, throw an icon next to each forum topic, allow rich text for those posting.

My only major complaint after a year of bbPress use is the lack of features/polish that exist in vBulletin. Simply put, its just too bare after initial install. I know this will be extremely unpopular to many of you, but over the past couple years there have been many great plugins developed, like private messaging, TinyMCE/rich text, topic views, Allow Images, Smilies, User Directory, Members Online, Related Topics, Reputation, Top Posters, Terms of Service, and some of these features should really be incorporated into the Core as OPTIONS that can be turned and off. So should stuff like the ability to set default topic icons, human test for signups (@$%@%$ spam users), widgets for the sidebar, ability to delete topics, Post Rating, etc. I’m not saying every single feature out there should be incorporated, but what is the hangup with more stuff that can be optionally turned on or off in the admin? If its in the Core, its not going to break when a new version comes out, and additional plugins can be developed to customize those features even more!

Right now bbPress is VERY bare after initial install so multiple plugins are required to snazz it up…and you can’t even edit the css or template from inside the bbpress admin. And yes there are plugins for everything but the kitchen sink, but some of the older plugins don’t work in newer versions of bbPress! Not sure how many of use also use IntenseDebate, but bbPress software’s core admin should consider have some of the same stuff which can easily be turned on or off, like voting, reputation, smilies (http://intensedebate.com/features or http://intensedebate.com/plugins)

How cool would it be for a brand new bbPress install to optionally display which users are online, how many views a topic has, or topic icons right out of the box with no fiddling with the css or template files/additional plugin installs? I’m not saying a Nintendo emulator or Weatherbug display should be built in, but if bbPress remains so barebone, it won’t fill the free-easy-to-install easy-to-use vBulletin alternative niche (it should).

[Ipstenu (Mika Epstein)]

Documentation needs:

1) Definitive integration directions.

1a) Integrate a new WP and BB install

1b) Integrate existing WP with new BB

1c) Integrate new WP with existing BB

2) Better Theme directions

Unlike WP, BB by default uses ‘child’ themes, so unless your first step in CSS is to wipe out all settings, you’re going to have weird legacy going on there, which throws people off.

3) Upgrading

The upgrade used to leave out things like ‘save your .htaccess’ but it looks like that’s finally be addressed so never mind

Everything could use some screenshots. Like the upgrade says the upgrade button is really obvious, well, show us WHAT it is. A picture speaks 100 words.

[grassrootspa]

I honestly don’t get this sudden push to make bbPress a WordPress plugin rather than continue as standalone software. There is so much potential for bbPress to grow and succeed in the 2010 standalone bulletin board market. Disagree? Think about this:

Remember back in 2004 when Movable Type pushed everyone away with their new pricing plan? The result: BLAM! WordPress REALLY took off, fitting the bill as a viable free easy-to-install, easy-to-use alternative.

One can make a strong argument that vBulletin is currently doing the same exact thing Movable Type did with their pricing plan snafu! (http://www.technologyquestions.com/2009/10/28/vbulletins-visceral-price-structure-angers-clients/) Check out this comment by donnacha which says even more: (http://weblogtoolscollection.com/archives/2009/12/11/bbpress-lives/#comment-1321740)

Throw in how complicated phpBB and vBulletin are compared to bbPress (not to mention how easy bbPress is to pickup for those familiar with WordPress) and there is a major bulletin board niche opening for Automattic.

This current bbPress 1.1 development push can really provide a great vBulletin alternative if it is done right. Shine up bbPress so it has some of the default features vBulletin and other boards offer (as OPTIONS in the admin interface) and we will see an exodus a la Movable Type to WordPress in 2004.

[buddha-trance]

@radovanx – if you want to use your own default custom avatar for users without gravatars, you can try this plugin

https://bbpress.org/plugins/topic/bb-avatars/