[KimJCastleberry]

Hey Chris, thanks for this info. I was struggling to figure out what part of W3 Total Cache causing the forum to report “Please complete your installation before attempting to include WordPress within bbPress” any time I attempted to use it. Turns out it was the JS Minify stuff which I checked after seeing your post. Thanks for sharing!

[xarzu]

I did everything I thought I should do.. Still, it does not seem that when a blog is made there is an automatic form addition. Isn’t that how this is supposed to work? It seems it is just cookie settings and sharing user ID and passwords

[_ck_]

_ck_… you’d rather let bbPress die than let it be reborn and successful as a plugin?

To clarify, I’d rather see the name “bbPress” be retired than recycle the name for another purpose when there are years of development and history already in existence.

I have no problem with you/automattic/whomever making a new forum program, zero problem with it and I honestly wish you the best.

My problem is calling it “bbPress” when it has virtually nothing to do with the original bbPress project. Even worse, it’s being called bbPress 1.2 which is downright weird. 1.2 implies updates to 1.1 – but this is a complete rewrite into something else.

The only reasons I can conclude why it’s being called bbPress is because Automattic/Matt already owns the name, and y’all can’t think of another name or simply don’t want to bother.

Like I said before, and feel it’s worthy of explaining again: What if the WordPress core was suddenly completely re-invented on a whim, breaking all compatibility, and it was simply called “WordPress 3.1”. Wouldn’t that be really dumbfounding and confusing to the community?

@gswaim – the reason why this topic isn’t being closed, is because this is the most conversation we’ve EVER had about bbPress’s future/politics. Even during the backPress changeover we had nothing really like this, just bits and pieces. Matt would make a decision and we’d hear about it a month later during an interview or speech.

I believe this talk/venting is good and healthy as long as it’s not done by attacking individuals personally.

And I’d rather see it all focused here in this topic than a dozen topics eventually created on the subject, (especially since after all these years we still do not have a topic merge function in the api).

But if you want it closed in the hopes it will end people’s feelings on the subject, that’s not really how people behave/think is it?

[xarzu]

In the FORUM dashboard, I found under settings, “WordPress Integration”

[xarzu]

(continued)

Making a new Blog post does not create a new forum topic. Shouldn’t it?

Creating a new catagory in the Blog does not create a new forum group in the bbpress forum. Shouldn’t it?

It seems that the users are sync’ed. I mean if someone logs on to the blog, their user ID works on the forum.

How do I further link up the Blog and the Forum.

[willcrain]

I think that it was a cookie issue… after a number of different changes, uninstalls and reinstalls it seems to work fine. Not really sure what was going on but it seems to all work now… hopefully it stays that way…

thanks though for the help… i am sure that i will have some further questions

thanks again

[John James Jacoby]

Again, just too many of the same points to repeat myself, but bbPress standalone isn’t going to be “unsupported”, it just isn’t going to see any additional features, which is exactly what I think most of you want. Correct me if I’m wrong here?

If I wasn’t on my iPad I’d quote myself volunteering personally to commit any bug fixes to the 1.1x branch of code if anything comes up, but again, that went totally unresponded to.

All of the things I’ve offered to do, to help continue the 1.1x branch of standalone code in addition to creating the 1.2 plugin, have gone totally unacknowledged. If you want to be able to do it yourself, you’ll need to have the experience to understand that the code you write is responsible for powering millions of sites around the world, and that you can easily create global chaos with one click of a button. Call me melodramatic, but in environments like WordPress.com, it’s very true. My experience over the past year has had me much more close to that kind of environment, particulalrly with BuddyPress.

A year ago I felt keeping bbPress as a standalone made sense because a year ago I didn’t comprehend what was coming in WordPress, particularly 3.0 where custom post types have made much more possible. I also had less experience with BackPress, and don’t get me wrong; BackPress is awesome, but bbPress won’t reach its full potential until it’s a plugin for 25 million other websites.

Kevinjohn, I’m sorry but you’ve got a knack for twisting words around and quoting things totally out of context. That’s not really fair, and I wouldn’t do it to you or anyone else so I’d appreciate the same.

I don’t get what you all want bbPress to do differently that would even require a new standalone version. I’ve asked that before, and there’s no answer; just frustration.

bbPress has always been an Automattic endorsed project, and considering without Matt it wouldn’t exist, or have a trac, an svn, or core developers thus far, it seems like he’s the one who’s earned the ability to make decisions on the future of the project. If you call me believing that to be true drinking that Kool Aid, I’m happy to do it because I believe Matt and Automattic and bbPress has earned that from me. If Matt wanted to abandon bbPress completely and close up shop, he could, and someone could graciously keep it alive by forking it. None of that stuff, should make anyone this upset.

My employment status or relationship with Automattic aside, I’m happy, blessed, and consider it a great privilege to have the trust of Automattic and the surrounding community to take this on, even if some of you don’t understand why it’s me, or why now, or why a plugin.

Regarding TalkPress, the main reason it’s named differently is to avoid the confusion people have with WordPress.org and WordPress.com. bbPress is the opensource forum software of choice for WordPress users. If any of you want to help the plugin work on top of backpress, patches welcome and I’m open to the idea. Otherwise, I’d wager 60% or more of the support questions regarding bbPress are incorporating it with WordPress. It’s been said in this topic already, but making it a plugin alleviates those issues, and still allows everyone to keep loving bbPress.

In all honesty, all this back and forth is tiring, and all it’s doing is taking the team of people that are here to help keep bbPress alive, and make us the enemy to the people that are just happy to see life again. That, and it’s taken our ability to communicate news to the bbPress community away from us, and instead forced us to try and put out this fire for the past 4 days.

Quite frankly, it all kinda sucks.

I get that the reality (for some of you) of switching bbPress to rely on WordPress instead of BackPress doesn’t sit well or even make sense, but I promise you it does. I might even have a trick that will help make the admin area a little more familiar. But 1.2 isn’t going to use BackPress anymore. Instead it’s going to use WordPress. bbPress itself is getting lighter, and we inherit all the eyes and updates that WordPress has had that BackPress hasn’t. That alone, if you ask me, is more than enough reason to be thankful for this move. If you need it super optimized, we’ll inherit all the caching plugins for WordPress. If you need bells and whistles, we get WP plugins. There is too much to gain, to not have bbPress be a WP plugin.

The existing standalone committers, are doing a great job already. There are very few trac tickets to work through in terms of bug fixes, and most of the enhancements would naturally get fixed by making it a plugin.

So… I want to say again, your passion and enthusiasm is something I want, and appreciate. If any of you are going to WordCamp Savannah, I’ll gladly discuss this over drinks and dinner. Whatever you need, I want to make it happen for you, but the name isn’t changing, Myself and the team are going to support the standalone with security updates as needed. Since I have commit access, I’m happy to commit fixes as needed because I’ve been trusted with that ability and I want everyone happy with a safe and functional piece of software, plugin or standalone.

I also, typed this out entirely on my iPad over the course of an hours worth of “leisure time.” if that doesn’t say you have my attention and commitment, I dunno what does.

[chrishajer]

Wait – if you are NOT logged in, can you get to wp-admin and log in? Maybe it’s just a cookie issue.

Are you logging in with bbPress or WordPress? And did you integrated the two some how? At this point, I think it’s got to do with the login cookies. Try a different browser and see if you can log in to wp-admin first, without trying to log in to bbPress.

[chrishajer]

If you cannot access the WordPress admin, even without bbPress installed, then some other change is making your WordPress admin inaccessible. Did you modify wp-config.php in any way? Can you access your WordPress site without getting a white screen?

If you have access to logs on your server, you can find out what Internal Server Error (500) is causing the white screen.

To uninstall, you just need to remove the folder and drop the tables in the database. But with the folder removed, I don’t think your white screen has anything to do with bbPress at all. Unless you modified wp-config.php or any of your template files to incorporate bbPress.

Did you make any changes other than installing bbPress, at or around the same time?

Sounds like you have it installed in the correct place, according to the layout you posted here.

[john010117]

My two cents (if it’s worth anything): Keep bbPress 1.1 and continue to maintain it. However, get a new dedicated group of developers to actively code and maintain a wordpress forum plugin (named differently like talkpress for example). And on both website’s front pages, specifically list the differences between bbPress and “talkPress” so people won’t get confused.

[johnhiler]

I completely support Automattic’s investment in a new WordPress forum plugin!

That said, I think it would avoid a lot of confusion if it were named something else besides “bbPress”.

[_ck_]

Well actually I am typically fairly quiet about the back end stuff and community politics.

But I’ve regretted over the past year or two not voicing enough concern at the start over backPress so now I simply do not want to see another big mistake, the bbPress name hijacked for a third, completely different forum program.

My request is quite simple: do whatever else you’d like but please do not call it bbPress when it has no relationship with any previous version of bbPress.

If bbPress truly is an open source community project and not exclusively owned/managed by Automattic, well then here’s the chance to prove that.

If Matt suddenly announced that WordPress would radically change from 3.0 to 3.1 and out of the blue use a newly developed core that completely invalidated all existing themes, plugins, utilities and knowledgebase – wouldn’t you be just a little bit concerned and upset? Would you speak up or “go with the flow” ?

In the above scenario, if you were new to WP 3.1, you wouldn’t care and would wonder why people were complaining so much. But if you had a few years invested, maybe you’d feel a little differently. Maybe you’d ask them to leave the old version alone and call it something else.

[willcrain]

sorry about that. I did have it set up like that. (my spaces didnt show up in the post)

wordpress-instance ( http://www.examplesite.com )

---

>files with wp instance (ie wp-config.php, index.php, etc)

---

>[folder] wp-admin/

---

>[folder] wp-content/

---

>[folder] plugins/

---

>[folder] themes/

---

>[folder] myCustomTheme/

---

>[folder] index.php

---

>[folder] wp-includes

---

>[folder] bbpress instance (which i call ‘discussion-center’)

in this case in order to access my bbpress site i use:

http://www.examplesite.com/discussion-center

and that works, i can see it all and interact with both…but, once logged in however i can not access the wordpress admin panel, http://www.examplesite.com/wp-admin … just a white page… as well as http://www.exaplesite.com/wp-login.php… even if i remove the [folder] bbpress instance from my wordpress instance it still doesnt offer access for wordpress… i would try uninstalling it and reinstalling it but what else would i have to remove other than the instance folder?

thanks again for any help

[Ryan Hellyer]

Why do the powers that be not see reason in what _CK_ says above?

Justin Tadlock’s forum plugin avoids these problems. Why can’t the new Automattic created one too?

http://justintadlock.com/archives/2010/07/16/a-wordpress-forum-plugin-using-custom-post-types

[_ck_]

Holy cow, there is some serious kool-aid drinking going on.

You can’t just up-end a community and then ask everyone to be positive about it.

Zero consultation was done with the community/contributors, exactly the same amount that was done with backPress. Let’s be CRYSTAL CLEAR about that right from the start.

For the people showing up out of the blue and jumping into the bbpress project suddenly this year, having NEVER contributed in the past few years, and in effect telling us to “shut up and go along with it” – I am seriously not going to take that nonsense, even if you say “please”.

You don’t just take a project and completely re-write it into something else and take it’s name. It’s not yours, it belongs to the community who adopted the existing program and worked many hours to install it, figure out bugs and improve it. It’s not yours to show up late and completely re-invent after that.

You don’t wash away the years of forum questions and answers by intermingling them with a different, incompatible version.

You don’t just call it 1.2 when it will have nearly zero code/layout/theme/compatibility with 0.9/1.0/1.1 – I mean sheesh, even calling it 2.0 would have been a minimal effort to note it’s something different but no, 1.2 is to confuse as many as possible either on purpose or out of apathy.

You don’t insist it has nothing to with Automattic when the SVN/TRAC slots were decided and made by Automattic people on Automattic servers at Matt’s directive as a plugin for another Automattic managed product.

The main developer of bbPress 0.8/0.9 was an Automattic employee (Michael) under Matt’s directive, the main developer of 1.0 was an Automattic employee (Sam) under Matt’s directive. It’s an Automattic product, always will be. Matt has been trying to figure out how to monetize it for years which is why it keeps getting messed with, so he can make a wordpress.com equivalent for forums.

Even JJJ admitted a YEAR AGO, that it’s a good thing bbPress is separate from WordPress because of how blogs and forums are different even though they share similar data structures. But now it’s a 180 turn in the opposite direction because of Matt’s whim.

If you want me and the other people who have a problem with this to shut up, it is SUPER SIMPLE to end this problem:

1. don’t call it bbPress
2. start another Automattic site to build your forum plugin

   (or attach it to a wordpress.org subdomain which probably would have been more appropriate)

3. finish what was started: it’s too late for 0.9 to be properly finished as it should have been into 1.0 before the 180 with backPress but it’s not too late for 1.1 to be released and then matured into 1.2

Don’t just march into an existing community, take it over and change it’s course into another 180 turn for the second time in three years and expect anyone to just smile and go along with it.

What you aren’t seeing are the 10,000+ sites that don’t post here and have successfully adopted it, even with virtually no advertising or support from the WordPress community.

Ironically I would have far more easily accepted another forum project being started by Matt and unfortunately letting bbPress slowly die over what is being done now.

[xarzu]

I have moved my wordpress blog from a subdirectoy down to the root and it seems to be working fine now.

When I installed the wordpress and the bbpress, I gave settings to ensure that they were tied together.

Now that I have moved the wordpress to the root directory, what do I have to change in the wordpress and the bbpress to make sure that when you post to the blog it appears in the forum etc.?

[chrishajer]

If your WordPress site is at http://www.example.com, and that corresponds to “wordpress-instance”, then you want the folder “bbpress-instance” accessible at http://www.example.com/bbpress-instance.

It’s hard to tell the hierarchy of your folders from your post, but basically, you want a folder (with bbPress files in it) at the same level as wp-config.php. The name of the folder matters, since it will be visible in the URL (bbpress-instance in the above example.)

You should end up with this folder setup when you are done.

wordpress-instance/

----bbpress-instance/

bb-config.php

bb-templates/

----wp-config.php

----wp-content/

plugins/

themes/

Make sense?

[willcrain]

After the first time that I logged into my bbpress account after the install with wordpress I was no longer able to access the wordpress wp-admin page. no login option or anything. whenever i try to login i dont get anything… i can however log into the bbpress admin account

My set-up is as followed:

wordpress-instance

>files with wp instance (ie wp-config.php, index.php, etc)

>[folder] wp-admin

>[folder] wp-content

>[folder] plugins

>[folder] themes

>[folder] myCustomTheme

>[folder] uploads

>[folder] index.php

>[folder] wp-includes

>[folder] bbpress instance

Is this where i would want to put the bbpress instance for installation?

Any help would be very appreciated. Thanks.

[John James Jacoby]

Too much to address, but I’ll pick some points.

WordPress + BuddyPress + W3 Total Cache = less than 10 queries on a complete social network. If optimization is your cup of tea, there’s lots of ways you can achieve that. Core issues with WP should be directed over to those folks.

If you have a method to make it better, submit a patch. Then you can work your way up to being one of ‘those people’ that are making the decisions that you don’t agree with.

Pete’s status, isn’t any different than the way you all feel about things. If you can vent your frustrations, so can he.

Help me understand why we’re upset again.

1. bbPress 1.1 (standalone) – Still in active development

2. bbPress 1.2 (plugin) – Months before anyone should consider it stable, but you’re welcome to jump on the bandwagon early and help make it exactly the way you want it, side by side with Pete and myself, and anyone else that’s along for the ride.

Regarding # 1, what MORE do you want your lightweight standalone software to do? If you want it to be more efficient, spend some time walking through queries and making it that way. If you want something in the UI changed, do it; patch it; make it go, and I will review it, and commit it.

Regarding # 2, our goal is to have this usable ASAP as part of the 3.org initiatives, but I wouldn’t want anyone outside of that initiative using it for production until it’s released. I know we all like to live on the bleeding edge (I’ve always been that guy too) so now’s your time to start helping us weld things in from the very get-go. If you think the way we’ve doing it now is completely wrong, let us know and provide us a better way; I am happy to listen and make it right, because I want what you want; the best bbPress possible.

I think all this talk about Matt, and Automattic, should be redirected back towards Automattic the company, and not bbPress the open source software. I understand the two are perceived to be tightly integrated because mixing money and open source is mixing business with pleasure, and it’s always hard to explain or understand the difference.

I think the general negativism has taken its toll already, and it’s time to try to look at this glass as half full going forward. Please? Kindly?

Not trying to be a jerk here, but man… there is no end in sight here, and it just isn’t productive or helpful anymore. We need to tighten this ship up before it sinks itself. I say this, not from a “looking down” perspective, but from a “‘we’re in this together so let’s make the best of it” perspective.

[Aaron Jorbin]

JJJ and Pete: Congrats and best of luck on the project. I’ll lend any support and help I am able to. I am excited and looking forward to this plugin.

_CK_ I’d really like to know why you think this is an auttomatic decision? Neither Pete nor JJJ work for Automattic. As far as WordPress goes, multiple lead developers/committers are non Automattic employees. WordPress is a Meritocracy. The more you contribute, the more you demonstrate an understanding of the philosophy, the more responsibility and influence that you have. If you find your opinions are being ignored, I suggest trying to influence those that have contributed diplomatically or contributing patches.

[doobadabba]

I’m excited to hear that bbPress as a WordPress plugin is getting spirited attention and development!

I can also feel for all the contributors to current and past iterations of bbPress, who may have felt left in the dark, or unappreciated. Well, I appreciate you!

I’ve got a little niche community site right now. The site has a blog, and a classifieds section, and a bbPress forum. I’ve got integrated login working, but would love to have even more integration between bbPress and WordPress (especially shared header and footer, and it would be good to have just a single “profile” associated with members of my site).

As digging into code is not my most favorite thing, I’m hoping that bbPress-as-WP-plugin can simplify all of my WordPress projects.

I’m aware that some people may want to keep a standalone bbPress project going, even if only the maintenance of current and former iterations of bbPress.

And I can see that using the same name “bbPress” for both the upcoming bbPress-as-WP-plugin, and the current-and-former-standalone-bbPress-iterations that may be continually maintained, is potentially a source of confusion.

But, I don’t think it has to be confusing.

If a central location, such as this website, clearly presents and describes the differences between using the upcoming bbPress-as-WP-plugin and current-and-former-standalone-bbPress-iterations, then I think people will be able to decide what is best for them.

If I understand correctly, Matt was the original coder (and I’m guessing namer) of bbPress. And it seems that he is the top caller of shots for how bbPress goes forward. As such, I don’t think he should need to rename bbPress-as-WP-plugin to anything other than bbPress, even tho so many other people have been making bbPress what it is today.

But if he did rename it to something like pbPress (plugin-board-press), it might simplify things. How about ccPress (community-creation-press)?

That’s my though-gasm in this moment anyway. Thanks to all of you who have gotten bbPress to where it is today, and to all of you who are moving bbPress forward, and also to all who are mindful of moving forward in a fashion that is not unduly regressive

[chrishajer]

What happened the very first time you tried to log in with the generated password? Were you integrated with WordPress?

[Rich Pedley]

I doubt it is a plugin myself. I suffered from these a long time ago, but hadn’t made any changes to the site for a while at that time.

some of these may be worth a look:

this forum has some interesting comments about it.

What is a core file

WordPress and core dumps

WP tavern

[Gautam Gupta]

Kevin my friend,

For those of us who make a living with bbPress, unilateral decisions made without visibility and with no re-course for questioning nor appeal are scary. really scary.

At least v1.1 is there for the time being, hopefully that would be released soon (after 2 bugs on 1.0.3 and 1.1 are fixed). It’s pretty stable and those who want to run a standalone, can run it and customize it with existing plugins/themes.

And about making a living, it can also be done with bbPress as a WP plugin

I think people are allowed to be a little shell-shocked at this bombshell; especially as it didn’t even warrant its own forum post, sticky or blog post. It just comes across as a footnote and unimportant.

The forum topic is this one and the announcement is here (I know no one told any of us about this blog).

For others – Justin just posted about the WP forum plugin that he has made on his own – http://justintadlock.com/archives/2010/07/16/a-wordpress-forum-plugin-using-custom-post-types

[kevinjohngallagher]

Tom,

I totally agree with the premise.

Focussing on the positives is the way forward.

For those of us who make a living with bbPress, unilateral decisions made without visability and with no re-course for questioning nor appeal are scary. really scary.

I for one, am totally and 100% behind the separate forum plugin for WordPress. But I think it’s ok that we ask some questions about it, and while the thread’s not in the most positive tone, I don’t think anyone has asked anything from left field, nor said anything antagonistic or derogatory.

It’s not like we’re asking for info that won’t have already been discussed when making the decision about plugin vs. standalone.

There would have been bench tests, user experiences, requirement gather – y’know numbers and paperwork. I know we’re never going to see the full documentation, but I think it’s ok to ask for an overview. Not to pick holes in it, but to feel positive that the decision is a good one, and one that we can get behind/support/make better

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

Andrew, Pete and JJJ and I have had a wee email conversation earlier in the week, before (and during) this thread started. There was some truly great info in that thread. Information that would appease some of the issues brought up here, quell some of the language & tone being used. It confirmed to me that these are the people to take bbPress forward. But that doesn’t mean I am going to put my own and my children’s livelyhood on the line and follow blindly.

everything is going to be A-okay

is alot like

Relax. We’ve done this before.

And man, that didn’t work out too well

I think people are allowed to be a little shellshocked at this bombshell; especially as it didn’t even warrant it’s own forum post, sticky or blog post. It just comes across as a footnote and unimportant. It comes across as “shit, you folks found out? um…” Now of course that ain’t true, but thats the base perception.

Apparently the scrapping of all current bbPress code and new of it’s replacement isn’t even important enough for someone to hit that “sticky” button at the bottom.

Because of this, some emotions will run high, but we’ve both been around the block enough to know that as long as people keep the conversation in house and try to resolve things then we’ll get there

Not everyone will agree with everything, but we’ll get there as long as no-one makes any derogatory comments about the software or community in a KeyNote speech or on an influential Twitter feed we’ll be grand at resolving this, and bringing folks tegether in a positive sense

The dudes who are now running the show just need to give out enough info to get control of the conversation. Once that happens, even more of life will be positive.