[_ck_]

By the way I want to address this quote:

…it’s not “Automattic” that decides what ends up in the core of WordPress – we have open discussions to set the feature lists for each release and the decisions are driven based on input from a large base of regular contributors.

You are kidding yourself if you think the community is given anything but choices on minor things. Major decisions that change the entire direction of these projects for Automattic are made every year by Matt. Changing bbPress to use backPress is the #-1 example of a single sourced decision done without any input from any contributors. bbPress as a WordPress plugin is another one.

The very first simple question I asked when I heard about backPress is “when will WordPress be changed to also use backPress” (to benefit from all the work needed and the theoretical savings from using a common function set). It’s a very easy problem to predict but was never asked and never answered, ending us up exactly where we are today.

[deadlyhifi]

Can we focus on the positives:

bbPress was laying there dormant – it now has a future. This future isn’t going to suit everyone but that’s life.

I’m not at all surprised bbPress will become dependant on WordPress. People have wanted an easy to integrate solution for a long time. The majority of support posts on this forum tend to be about integration (if they’re not CSS based!). bbPress as a plugin will satisfy those needs.

Yes, there will be certain users that get burned, but there are ways around it.

People are falling into 3 groups:

1. Need a forum that works with WordPress
2. Need a standalone forum, but some WordPress integration is ideal (sign in/users)
3. Needs a standalone forum.

1. Satisfied customers
2. Satisfied customers – this will be easier than it’s ever been. I know, I’ve spent hours and hours theming bbP, making sure cookies work, and all the other hoops I’ve had to jump through.
3. Either run WP and don’t use it (just let it sit there, but really, how many sites don’t have some kind of blog associated with them?), and if it’s really not ideal or you’re completely against it there are plenty of standalone forum softwares out there.

At least we know what is happening and people can make informed decisions about which way to go with their site.

The decision has been made so accept it and use all this energy and knowledge to contribute to the project and make a great product.

_ck_, you know I always appreciate your efforts towards plugins and your extensive knowledge on bbPress, so why not use it to participate and keep the new bbP plugin streamlined – as much as it can be considering your comments on WP3.0 performance.

[mr_pelle]

But the users in Group3, the people who chose this as standalone forum software and didn’t make that decision based on WordPress – they’re being thrown out on their ear. With no warning.

That’s exactly what I was trying to say!

By the way, http://twitter.com/petemall/status/18674039981

[_ck_]

With all the eyeballs looking at WordPress and all the new faces every few years, it’s amazing to me how much code optimization falls through the cracks and is never addressed.

bbPress as a plugin is now going to be exposed to that. In fact, ironically in 0.9 there are functions from earlier versions of WordPress that were never optimized and do “expensive” recalculations and yet it’s STILL significantly faster than 1.0 with the newer functions from BackPress.

WordPress still has places where it calculates kinds of conversion tables yet never stores them statically for when it will likely be used again in the same page load. All those eyeballs looking at the code never see it and never fix it.

WordPress after all these years STILL uses the poorly performing SQL_CALC_FOUND_ROWS, something that was discovered and fixed in bbPress 0.9 but ironically was re-introduced with BackPress in 1.0, and will likely continue as a plugin.

My problem with “progress” is regression. It happens often because no-one questions the bloat and then the bloat starts to hide mistakes because the code is too hard to follow and people forget the original purpose of a function.

But by all means, keep throwing junk into the core, don’t dare keep it isolated in a plugin where it can be examined and improved easily (ie. avatars, tinymce, phpmailer, etc.)

They never do version freezes for long periods of time to clean up and optimize code, they just pile on features in the name of progress.

Go install WP 2.1 and check the memory and query footprint.

Then install WP 3.0 and compare. It’s fairly disgusting in comparison.

[_ck_]

@Marius, but everyone downloads different ones.

I’d never want to see even a handful of my plugins built into bbPress by default.

As much as people express the desire for a program to do everything they want out-of-the-box, it’s a VERY bad idea with software. Makes things too bulky. WordPress today is a perfect example of what happens when you give into that desire, you get bloated, overloaded, slow code.

But sadly they don’t believe in plugins – I’m kinda surprised even akismet is not hard coded into WordPress.

bbPress should have been a lightweight framework, half the size that it is now, that maybe shipped with a dozen plugins that are OFF by default. Too late now though.

[kevinjohngallagher]

Hi Pedagog,

You’re not wrong. ther are more options for login/registration in WordPress. The simple solution is to physically point the links for login and registration to the WordPress ones.

Anywhere you output a link to bb-login, just change that to wp-login. You will have to edit your theme to make this happen, but its well worth it

[Ivaylo Draganov]

A well written post too!

Thanks! Just a bit too many links for Akistmet though

And of course it could not be seen in action on my forum, because it is visible only to logged in users… silly me

The bbpress.org forums could also use a simple toolbar. Not so sophisticated but at least like the one on wordpress.org

[kevinjohngallagher]

Morning Peter,

It’s cool if you disagree. I’m confident we could all pick something in WordPress in the core that we think should still be a plug-in; and of course there is no right answer. What I’m not sure you’re aware of though, and you might be, is just how different the “overhead” between bbPress and WordPress is.

bbPress0.9 loads and runs at 10 or under SQL queries per page. Including the front page. Thanks to certain DB/query tweaks, and some wonderful _CK_ code, I have that at 8 SQL queries on one of my smallest intranet forums.

This is in comparison to the same 8 queries generated by the new wp_nav_menu in WP3.0. In fact the wp_nav_menu calls a not totally-in-expensive INNER JOIN for each post-type reference in the menu. It’s not a set 8 calls, without judging anything based on what it will become, if wp_nav_menu starts to accept custom post types natively, that’s going to shoot way up.

In a flat comparison, the default theme of WP3.0 with no plug-ins running, generates 19 SQL queries. Twice as much as bbPress0.9.

As someone mentioned earlier, the new bbPress plug-in would be lighter or sleeker. If it takes more SQL calls to generate the header and footer of WP than it does to load an entire bbPress forum – how does that work?

(I do realise that not all SQL queries are equal, but I do think it’s quite a good initial benchmark. Especially if you look at SAVEQUERIES output and see what sort of query each is, and its execution time.)

Additionally, as someone with your background with WP, I would love to hear your take on the caching issue. For two of my websites that have relatively ok traffic, caching is essential on WP. There are plug-ins that do this brilliantly, so thats no worries. But thats very much a “1 to n” nature. Forums are an “n to n” nature; and really don’t lean well with caching, especially in the flat-file constant-updated format.

How would one percieve that to affect WP based websites with a forum plugin of this nature attatched?

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

I think there is a viewpoint that is being missed here.

People are falling into 3 groups:

1. Need a forum that works with WordPress
2. Need a standalone forum, but some WordPress integration is ideal (sign in/users)
3. Needs a standalone forum.

There appears to be a presumption is that we’re all in Group 1 and that we’re fighting change. That’s not the case at all.

I’m actually in favour of there being a WordPress forum plug-in. I think loads of people here will be. I also think that with JJJ working on it, and Justin Tadlock’s second attempt out there in the wild that it will go really well. I wish it the best of luck, and if we can offer advice or war stories or anything to help out – we’re here. We’re here because we support FOSS

The issue arises here is if you’re in Group 2, you have a decision whether to “upgrade” to running everything through WordPress or not. It’s just been presumed that’s your actual goal. At this point in time, we’d like some information (positives/negatives at a minimum) and info on how this decision has came about. People in Group 2 could move into Group 1 easily if given more information than:

“everything is going to be A-okay”

“Like it or not, this is the hand we’ve been dealt…”

But the users in Group3, the people who chose this as standalone forum software and didn’t make that decision based on WordPress – they’re being thrown out on their ear. With no warning. JJJ has stated, and I think we all appreciate that he’s taken the time to sit and answer some questions, that bbPress1.1 will be it’s last. Well, thats announced as bbPress1.1 is 1 trac ticket away from being released. How much warning is that??

If you’re in Group3, and large chunk of our support questions come from people who are, you will now be ‘forced’ to run WordPress if you want to stick with bbPress.

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

I suppose what I’m saying is this. Changes in Life and in FOSS happen. Some we like, some we don’t. But there has to be a carrot with every stick, or people start to feel publicly flogged.

I want JJJ and Pete and anyone who helps them to succeed in achieving their goals. But I’ve scanned this forum page, and the emails they were kind enough to send me, and right now, if you didn’t come here specifically to use a forum inside WordPress… I can’t see the carrot.

There are people here alot cleverer than me, and alot better at wording than myself, so if i’m missing the carrot, please do a Denzel “explain it to me like a 3 year old”.

[Peter Westwood]

It will probably also suffer from what I call the “kitchen sink” syndrome of WordPress where massive chunks of code are added as features which should have been plugins. But Automattic in general has a “not invented here” attitude towards plugins – if it’s not in the core, it doesn’t count.

Firstly, it’s not “Automattic” that decides what ends up in the core of WordPress – we have open discussions to set the feature lists for each release and the decisions are driven based on input from a large base of regular contributors.

Secondly, I strongly disagree with the implication that WordPress has a “kitchen sink” feature set – in fact we try very hard to only bring in the things which have a wide audience and leave the more niche things for plugins.

One of the factors which helps a feature come into the core is the existence of a plugin which is popular showing a clear demand for a feature and sometimes providing a starting point for the implementation as well.

[_ck_]

@gswaim, except history is about to be repeated with nothing learned. “Very near” is also not likely this year. Completely different people worked on 0.9/1.0 and now the plugin version. There is going to be a learning curve.

The plugin version is going to have the same tumultuous development pattern that bbPress 0.7, 0.8, 0.9, 1.0 did and probably take a couple years to get stable and feature rich. It will probably also suffer from what I call the “kitchen sink” syndrome of WordPress where massive chunks of code are added as features which should have been plugins. But Automattic in general has a “not invented here” attitude towards plugins – if it’s not in the core, it doesn’t count.

There is also the problem that anyone on a shared host will unlikely be able to run WP 3.0 with the bbPress plugin unless they have a very small forum/memberbase. The resource demand is going to be massive and require hours of fine tuning which most novices will not be able to do. Forums cannot be heavily cached like blogs can.

Then you are right back to the same old WP problems which will be introduced into bbpress after avoiding them previously, plopping regular users into confusing WP admin menus to change settings and completely different than the site theme.

For the casual WP user that has a few dozen members and wants a simple forum, the bbpress as plugin will be very handy. For those with thousands of members and end up with a very active forum, they will spend a great deal of time dealing with the resource loads.

Remember, there are already a couple of plugins for WordPress that bring forum functionality – go look at their problems to foresee what is going to happen. That’s how I ended up adopting bbPress standalone in the first place, I decided it was the best way to deal with the problems (work AROUND wordpress, instead of through it).

[pastorbobsforum]

Hello.

I’m back with a few results, both good and bad, but mostly bad; in fact – disastrous. It might be just me, but I find modifying kakumei much more difficult then wordpress’ default theme (twentyten). My skills, on a scale from 1 to 10, are at about 3, but everything that’s changed from the default in wp (except the header and footer jpegs), to what you see here now were made by me.

So, this is what I have at the moment: http://i896.photobucket.com/albums/ac166/nobody5973/post.png

http://i896.photobucket.com/albums/ac166/nobody5973/prelogin.png

I got round my last issue, by placing the header.jpg in a branding div, which came before a colophon-header, containing the login and my returntosite. For the time being, the header and the footer can stay as they are.

My current issue needs, I guess, a different topic, since it has to do with the forumlist table.

[gswaim]

At the end of the day it’s free, open source software. Polarized or not, bbPress has a team now. If this can just be summed up as a years worth of pent up frustration coming out, I can understand that, but we’ve all been going at this for almost 3 days now, and I’d rather write code and fix stuff and make progress than rehash bbPress’s tumultuous existence.

Exactly. There comes a time when it is time to move on. IMHO that time is very near.

JJJ has patiently articulated, to this group, the mission he was commissioned to handle and IMHO it is time to code. As I watched this thread, I feared that he would get bogged down and burnt out trying to make everybody happy. However, he seems to be keenly aware of this and has done a good job of keeping his eye on the prize.

I am a WordPress user that has been waiting for a core forum plug-in for well over a year. As soon as it is available I am installing it, and I suspect I will not be alone.

If only 10% of the WordPress.org-powered websites install this plug-in, the bbPress plug-in user base would dwarf the stand alone bbPress user base. Making bbPress available to a much larger audience cannot be a bad thing, in the long run.

[Peter Westwood]

Westi didn’t comment on it in my email to him, though he did say that he didn’t know that bbPress was dependant on BackPress – and he’s the BackPress lead!! really lovely guy, but it hardly bodes well.

That isn’t a fair representation of what I said in reply to the email which was:

I was unaware that BackPress was blocking bbPress release this is the first I have heard of it.

Which is perfectly true – no one had tried to contact me directly about it before you.

I was and still am surprised that a point release of bbPress would be running with a floating external as trunk of BackPress is never guaranteed to be perfect code.

I would actually expect it to be run against the last revision that bbPress was release / against a branch with specific fixes as required.

If anyone want to be sure to get my attention for a BackPress issue then the extremely quite BackPress-dev mailing list is the best way – I read every email to that list promptly – https://lists.wordpress.org/mailman/listinfo/backpress-dev

[ColinBradbury]

thanks everyone for your help, I have managed to sort the forum out all except the footer, I can’t seem to be able to get it to be at the bottom of the page like on the other pages of my site. (Its relative to the whole forum, not just the page liked above).

[Joe Gibson]

Mr P –

As we say in the WordPress world, woot! Zaerl Editor is absolutely perfect. I don’t want people to import pics and such — the main thing is embedded links.

Kev – Also thanks for the suggestions.

Joe

[kevinjohngallagher]

I browse the net with javascript disabled, and JS is disabeld as standard on every PC at my current client (4th biggest uni in UK). All it does is slow people down who want to help

[mr_pelle]

You can always view page source via View > Page Source (in FF) or a similar menu in any broswer toolbar.

[Rich Pedley]

No the error is more likely to be in your CSS.

I tried adding

position: absolute;

width: 75%;

to your mainContent. This seems to on the right track, at least in Firefox.

Your disabling of right click doesn’t work in Firefox. If it had then I wouldn’t have been able to help.

[ColinBradbury]

<?php bb_get_header(); ?></p>

<p><div class="bbcrumb"><a>"><?php bb_option('name'); ?></a><?php bb_forum_bread_crumb(); ?></div>

<div class="infobox" role="main"></p>

<p><div id="topic-info">

<span id="topic_labels"><?php bb_topic_labels(); ?></span>

<h2<?php topic_class( 'topictitle' ); ?>><?php topic_title(); ?></h2>

<span id="topic_posts">(<?php topic_posts_link(); ?>)</span>

<span id="topic_voices">(<?php printf( _n( '%s voice', '%s voices', bb_get_topic_voices() ), bb_get_topic_voices() ); ?>)</span></p>

<p><ul class="topicmeta"></p>



<li><?php printf(__('Started %1$s ago by %2$s'), get_topic_start_time(), get_topic_author()) ?></li>

<p><?php if ( 1 < get_topic_posts() ) : ?></p>



<li><?php printf(__('<a href="%1$s">Latest reply</a> from %2$s'), esc_attr( get_topic_last_post_link() ), get_topic_last_poster()) ?></li>

<p><?php endif; ?>

<?php if ( bb_is_user_logged_in() ) : ?>

<li<?php echo $class;?> id="favorite-toggle"><?php user_favorites_link(); ?>

<?php endif; do_action('topicmeta'); ?></p>

<p></div></p>

<p><?php topic_tags(); ?></p>

<p><?php do_action('under_title'); ?>

<?php if ($posts) : ?>

<?php topic_pages( array( 'before' => '<div class="nav">', 'after' => '</div>' ) ); ?></p>

<p><ol id="thread" class="list:post"></p>

<p><?php foreach ($posts as $bb_post) : $del_class = post_del_class(); ?>

<li id="post-<?php post_id(); ?>"<?php alt_class('post', $del_class); ?>>

<?php bb_post_template(); ?></p>

<p><?php endforeach; ?></p>

<p><div class="clearit"><br style=" clear: both;" /></div>

<p class="rss-link"><a>" class="rss-link"><?php _e('<abbr title="Really Simple Syndication">RSS</abbr> feed for this topic') ?></a></p>

<?php topic_pages( array( 'before' => '<div class="nav">', 'after' => '</div>' ) ); ?>

<?php endif; ?>

<?php if ( topic_is_open( $bb_post->topic_id ) ) : ?>

<?php post_form(); ?>

<?php else : ?>

<h2><?php _e('Topic Closed') ?></h2>

<p><?php _e('This topic has been closed to new replies.') ?></p>

<?php endif; ?>

<?php if ( bb_current_user_can( 'delete_topic', get_topic_id() ) || bb_current_user_can( 'close_topic', get_topic_id() ) || bb_current_user_can( 'stick_topic', get_topic_id() ) || bb_current_user_can( 'move_topic', get_topic_id() ) ) : ?></p>

<p><div class="admin">

<?php bb_topic_admin(); ?>

</div></p>

<p><?php endif; ?>

<?php bb_get_footer(); ?>

I think my problem is somewhere in here… if that helps…

[ColinBradbury]

I have managed to run the validator and sorted out some of the problems but its left others that part of the bbpress code.

Unfortunatly this hasn’t fixed my sites problem any other ides?

[ColinBradbury]

Thank you Chrishajer, yes I have anti right click java script as I have had problems with people taking images from my site with out gaining the owners permisission, whether that be mine or someone who has generously donated the images.

You can usually access the page source through the view menu bar or some other way in your browser however I have checked this and it is a copyright symbol I missed when tidying the site up.

I will fix this and then try the validator

Thanks for your help

[kevinjohngallagher]

I think what I might be confused about, is if bbPress as it is today is close to exactly what it should be, what would you want it to do 2 years from now that wouldn’t add more bloat or slow it down?

bbPress0.9 is as good as any forum software out there, save for 2 things. Moderation and the Admin section. It’s crazily fast, secure, and extentable. It’s let down by lack of actions/filters, default theme and documentation.

bbpress1.0 is 50% slower and breaks alot of plugins but has some more hooks and an Admin section. Moderation is still the big thing, as is the default theme.

A clear out (archiving) and rethink of the plugin section and the creation of a new theme would make it very very useable.

Additionally both have also been let down by the layout/use of this forum, which makes finding information difficult; and a plugin section that doesn’t work.

Basically, all the feature requests we recieve, all go over the same ground – and can be covered by plugins. Most are covered by plugins (in a 90%) sort of way. With everything in Limbo there is no need to take things to the n-th degree.

From an honest to goodness Project management point of view, bbPress can be where we need it to be within 9 month – a year. But that time grows as we add more features (that we already have as plugins grrr) and less bug fixes.

So yeah we could fork it as is. But given Matt’s current desire to berate us (both the people here and the software) in public at Wordcamps, and his latest more… evangelistic approach to publicly taking umbridge at anyone he doesn’t like or disagrees with him; he makes the envornment out there relatively difficult to consider moving into, while intentionally hampering our efforts here.

If today, it’s good; then let’s fix up what we have to put out a solid 1.1 stand-alone, and when shift gears to focus on 1.2 as the plugin milestone.

Dude, we’re trying.

I mean, i know you know that

But in order for that to happen, we need the head honcho or “he who wont talk to us, only about us in keynote speeches”. All Keymasters, all of those who package things up and can edit the website… AutoMattic. The same folks who’re scrapping us for you.

I hate this looking like an US vs. THEM scenario, it just polarises people, and looks childish. But in honesty, “we” didn’t put ourselves in this holding pattern.

Additionally, putting out a solid 1.1 standalone will be tough and time consuming. We’ve 13 months of bugs, we’ve 13 months of backPress changes and potential changes in 3 releases of WordPress to contend with; there is going to be alot of bugs found in testing – and with Jane telling people that bbPress in its current implementation isn’t going to even work the WordPress.org forums and Matt telling people not to use the software we’re are hemmoraging people.

[kevinjohngallagher]

You have to hand edit them.

Which is actually a very good thing. The new WP_nav_menu in wordpress for example requiers more SQL calls and processing power to display on every page than bbpress0.9 takes to load the entire forum/topics/posts/users etc.

[kevinjohngallagher]

Does a plugin (sponsored or otherwise) help new and updated versions of bbPress core get released to everyone that’s using it? No.

But then JJJ mate, nothing does.

We’ve not had a core release in over a year. It’s not like theres not been code added. Our only option was to add plugins to fix the functionality.

I’m not wanting to get too historical, but you’ve not been here in the trenches for a while bro. Your last non BuddyPress topic you opened was well over a year ago. Other than teh welcome back Matt stuff, you aint been here my friend. You’ve not been here during the “all your plugins won’t work – lets take stock after 1.0’s released” era where we entered limbo.

That limbo stayed when Sam left, so our bug fixes added to the core weren’t released.

That limbo was compounded when Matt came and announced no bug fix release.

Since then we’ve been adding to the core, and now Matts against us releasing (not that we can because we’re tied into BackPress which has only had 2 core updates in 5 months – instigated by us).

With respect, what you fail to realise here is that bbPress is very close to being ideal for alot of us. Not adding to the Core is not down to a lack of desire to add to it, but rather not able to jump through the gates of the gatekeeper – especailly as he refuses to talk to anyone about bbPress (unless insulting us publicly).

The major gripes that people have with bbPress have all been fixed. Yes 90% of them are currently in plugins, but they would be alot tighter and brought into line if 1) we weren’t in a holding pattern for over a year and 2) Automattic stopped fucking with the website so people could actually get at the plugins!!!

I’m not against you making an awesome forum plugin for WordPress (little p); I contributed a little to Justin Tadlock on his 2nd attempt (although at a high level) and I’ll be glad to help you on this project too. But make no mistake my friend – you’re views on bbPress have been tainted by the perception that Automattic has been (mud?) slinging for a while.

Now you may think i’m wrong on that, no worries.

Can i ask then, what advantages will this plugin have over the current bbPress, and what disadvantages?

I’m presuming that someone thought that out before making this decision

[Rich Pedley]

apart from when plugins are taken on board and integrated into the core.

I for one would hope that the ability to skip akismet is built into akismet for bbPress at some point in the future – retrieved from akismet is quite common here, and on the WordPress forums – enough to warrant it being added to the core. I know that is a plugin – but it is a slightly different case.

I may not be able to help to much with the coding, but testing wise, and perhaps even accessibility wise I would be able to help.

Would now be a good time to start a new section on here for discussion related to this new version?