[chrishajer]

Q1 – many people want to share user details, share WordPress and bbPress functions and get a similar look between WordPress and bbPress.

Q2. Yes. One problem arises when you want your navigation from WordPress to be present in bbPress. Most people want to do that with wp_list_pages or get_header or something, and those functions aren’t normally available in bbPress unless you integrate somehow. If you just want a link back to the WordPress site in bbPress, you can just edit your template files. Getting current navigation in bbPress that matches your WordPress site is harder and some people like to do “deep integration” to have access to WordPress functions in bbPress. If you don’t care about that, don’t integrate.

Q3. Yes. It’s a little harder but will probably have a better end result. There were a couple of bbPress <> WordPress plugins, but they’re out of date now. If you post what you mean by “integrate posts” someone will help with how to do that without resorting to integration.

[pittsleyb]

Is the only reason people want to integrate the two is for cross users? If I dont care about sharing the database for users then cant i simply edit my bbpress theme to match my wordpress theme and then cross link them?

Can I integrate posts without integration and sharing the database?

[Ben L.]

Install bbPress. On one of the installation steps it allows you to integrate with WP.

[Pomy]

can anybody tell me what should i do for next step?

[Ben L.]

The plugin (as far as I can tell) is https://bbpress.org/plugins/topic/wordpress-bbpress-syncronization/

There is a settings screen – you might have to edit some settings to be able to make it work.

[chrishajer]

What version of bbPress, WordPress and plugin are you using? Also, the URL to the plugin please.

[gerikg]

daudev, I messed up on step

4 Open bb-config.php (in the bbpress folder) do the same thing here. With the SAME keys you put in the wordpress file put in the bb-config file around line # 41-45. ***You have to add BB_ to the front of the names. Example: BB_AUTH_KEY to all eight.*** Save. Keep the file open for now.

[gerikg]

SpinDoctor, OMG i can’t believe I forgot!!!! thank you I was going insane.

1 When installing wordpress/bbpress do NOT use “www.” Example: use bbpress.org not http://www.bbpress.org and use the same database. You do not need to change the prefix, I prefer you don’t because you’ll run into problem later.

2 Make sure bbpress is in a folder in wordpress. example: wordpress/bbpress/ not on the same level.

3 The folder does not have to be named bbpress, most people make it forum or forums.

*After successfully installing both programs open wp-config.php (in the wordpress folder) file. Around line # 45-# 48 you’ll see define(‘AUTH_KEY’…. go to this URL (https://api.wordpress.org/secret-key/1.1/salt) and get the EIGHT keys and REPLACE the FOUR keys that are there. Save. Keep the file open for now.

4 Open bb-config.php (in the bbpress folder) do the same thing here. With the SAME keys you put in the wordpress file put in the bb-config file around line # 41-45. You have to add BB_ to the front of the names. Example: BB_AUTH_KEY to all eight. Save. Keep the file open for now.

5 Clear your cache on your browser. Log into your bbpress dashboard and go to Settings->Wordpress Integration-> WordPress Administrator should be keymaster. Every other option should be member for now. WordPress address (URL) should be the URL again NO www. Blog address (URL) the same as before. The last 3 should be LOCKED if not repeat the steps 3&4.

6 Login to your wordpress dashboard. Go to Plugins->Add New-> search for “bbPress Integration” it should be the first one. Install it and activate.

7 Go to Settings-> bbPress Integration. Enter the bbPress URL without the www. Your plugins URL leave blank. Click on Save Changes. On the bottom box you’ll see some text copy it. Most likely it will say “define( ‘COOKIEPATH’, ‘/’ );”

8 Paste the line in wp-config.php file around line # 16 (MUST be on top. Don’t know why) and paste it in bb-config.php in line # 13 (Must be on top). Save. You can delete the plugin, it’s no longer needed.

9 Clear your cache on your browser and you’re done.

Known Problems

*Two different database, one for WP and one for BBP, does not always work.

*Changing the database prefix. There are tutorials out there that tell you to do it, just don’t.

*Hosting companies that offer free databases, have buggy databases.

*BBpress not being in WordPress folder. I don’t think the plugin takes that into account.

*When you upgrade from an older version (wordpress/bbpress) the XX-config.php files are different than what you already have. Check wp-config.php against wp-config-sample.php & bb-config.php against bb-config-sample.php should be fairly simple.

[Pomy]

ok I’ve taken complete and partial backup for all tables…so what’s next dear chrishajer?

[chrishajer]

yes, it’s possible. I would back up the complete database if you can, but if not, at least the user table and usermeta, because that’s what bbPress will mess with when it tries to integrate. Backup everything first then give it a shot.

[Pomy]

Hi to all………..

I want to integrate bbpress with my existing working blog i.e. http://www.softinfo.info …. is it possible to integrate fresh bbpress to my working blog without reinstall wordpress?

also tell me what kind of database backup i need?

thank in advance!!

[timskii]

This hack redirects non-editing users from their WordPress profile to their forum profile. Set $my_forums_directory to the directory or URL of the forums, and save it as a WordPress plugin.

Sometimes the page headers have already been sent, so wp_redirect() can’t be relied on, and instead the HTML has to perform the redirect.

WordPress users that can edit posts will still see the normal WordPress user screens. Since these screens don’t integrate well, it might be sensible to redirect admin users to /forums/bb-admin/users.php – but I’ve not done that here.

add_action('admin_head', 'my_wp_profile_redirect', 0);



function my_wp_profile_redirect() {

// Based on a part of Kim Parsell's https://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wp-hide-dashboard/

global $parent_file, $current_user, $user_login;

$my_forums_directory = "/forums/"; // Set this to the directory or URL of the forums.

if (!current_user_can('edit_posts') && $parent_file == 'users.php') {

$my_profile_destination = $my_forums_directory."profile/".esc_attr( str_replace( " ", "-", strtolower( $user_login ) ) )."/edit";

if (!headers_sent()) {

wp_redirect($my_profile_destination);

} else {

echo '<meta http-equiv="refresh" content="0; url='.$my_profile_destination.'"><script type="text/javascript">document.location.href="'.$my_profile_destination.'"</script></head>';

echo '<body><a href="'.$my_profile_destination.'">View profile</a></body></html>';

}

exit();

}

}

[kevinjohngallagher]

@myballard

this would be the single most important bbPress feature imaginable.

@Ruben S.

right now Facebook rulez the planet the existence of this plugin will kick asses

I totally respect the opinion of these folks, and the others who’ve written similar statements. I’m wondering, if possible, if these people (or others) could back this up with data so we can have a discussion about it and see the real value of something.

@Grassrotspa

Facebook Connect would both be awesome.

Heck, what about Twitter Connect and IntenseDebate Connect as well?

This is the start of it though. So lets be blunt. BBpress, after 2.5 years of development, cant integrate with WordPress, which is one of its advertised features (one may even see major selling points??) – how on earth do you think we’ll be able to keep up with other API’s?

When will 1 API be enough? Got Facebook? Now Twitter. Got Twitter? Now OpenID. Got OpenID? now google. Got Google? How about msn/yahoo (is it still called hailstorm/myPassport or am i showing my age).

Maybe i’ve got this wrong, but BBpress is forum software. Forum’s of this format have been around for 20 years now, and have gotten along with without Facebook Connect. If this has changed, can someone pelase let us know?

Many Thanks to all,

Kev

[kevinjohngallagher]

In an attempt not to derail the “1.1 Feature Poll” thread, I thought i’d cut and paste my comments from there into a new thread. Alot of people have been talking up Facebook Connect, but without actually saying what the benefit would actually be. So lets talk it out, so that people on both sides of the arguement, and those in the middle can make a balanced and reasoned deduction.

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

I’m going to be using quotes from the lovely from the following threads:

http://bbpress.org/forums/topic/login-using-facebook-connect

http://bbpress.org/forums/topic/11-feature-poll

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

@grassrootspa

“in this day and age people hate having to register a new user name and password for every single site”

I’m not in anyway meaning this in a disparaging way, but this is nonsense. Its the opposite. With email access alot easier now than 10 years ago, with email spam filters improved, with multiple-tabs per browser, with “the average user” used to having to sign into different websites – users are FAR more likely and used to signing up for services than they used to be.

There is a myth that techinical people, who are by far the largest percentage of forum users, project onto the average user; that the average user wants ultra dumbed-down-simplicity and a one-stop-shop coupled with also crazy interaction features.

Its a myth thats been doing the rounds since Flash 4 popped up, or when Flash 5 went really big, or when dHTML became popular or when AJAX became big etc. etc. And yet somehow, these new “omg my users NEED that kk” features all seem to be not quite as needed as we were told after a little while.

“Like it or not, FB is the big social-networking dog out there”

Agreed, totally; and i do like Facebook. But you miss my points mentioned here: http://bbpress.org/forums/topic/11-feature-poll#post-61894.

1) Nothing stays top dog forever. If we were having this discussion 2 years ago we would have been talking about MySpace, before that possibly MSN messenger signings, and defintely before that AoL signing. No-one has made a point about why we should develop something into the core of BBpress that is dependant on the popularity and propriety software of another company.

And lets not forget Facebook has only become the No.1 Social Networking site i the US this past year. MySpace was recieving more pageviews according to Alexa until Feb/March of this year. Maybe lets see if this lasts first? (who remembers AoL?)

Okurt, for example, while is run by google (yet not popular in the western world) is the second biggest social network. What if google pushes that so that it becomes No1. Should we then forget about Facebook Connect because its no longer No1 and demand a GoogleFriend plugin?

2) Facebook is popular only with a certain demographic. I’ve included links to the stats on my previous post, but the sheer percentage of people on facebook that are White, 15-25, High School Educated or higher, and from the Western World (mostly USA and Canada) is staggering. As it stands, creating a Facebook Connect plugin would (statistically) really only benefit White people from North America who had finished High School. Why should that be something that BBpress includes in its core?

“I think all our bbPress sites would see more interactions if FB connect could be used (optionally turned on or off)”

Awesome, what data are you basing this on?

3) If your focussing on the needs of your end user, then surely content should be king. If someone feels strong enough to take part in your discussion then not being able to log in from Facebook probably wont be an issue.

4) Lets say you offered Facebook Connect. The user clicked it, opened a popup that said “please type in your facebook username and password” – how many do you think would automatically do that? We’re constantly reminded to not give out usernames and passwords, and to look out for phishing websites etc etc. So if a user go to a website or forum, and wants to get involved in the conversation, but not enough to sign up, how likely is it that they’ll use FBconnect instead? Can you back this up with data from other forums or is it just anacdotal?

5) The service itself has been woefully rolled out by Facebook. Here’s a quote from Mark Z

“We’ve made a lot of mistakes building this feature, but we’ve made even more with how we’ve handled them. We simply did a bad job with this release, and I apologize for it.”

That was in February this year, and in that time, they’ve changed the API twice without telling any of the end users. Can you imagine, seriously, BBpress building something into its core that relied on another companies API not changing inbetween BBpress releases? We’d have to release a new version of BBpress everytime Facebook made a change to its API that broke the previous version – which btw, we’ve had 4 such incidents of this year!

6) Beacon. Not sure you know about this, but Beacon collected data from non-facebook websites you went to or linked to or signed into via FBconnect, sent the info to facebook so they could sell the info to advertisers. Yes, while you see the positives of a single sign in, its been used as a Big Brother spyware, or rather was, right up until the class action lawsuit that Facebook lost only 3 months ago – paying out 21million dollars. Orwellian doesn’t begin to cover it.

7) Facebook Connect != New users.

Lets scrap annacdotal Evidence and go with a real live website with stats availible on the internet.

Gizmondo, one of the founding partners of Facebook Connect almost 18 months ago has seen a steady increase of people using Facebook connect, At the start of December it found that circa.21000 page views were through FBconnect – thats just under double what that number was in March of this year. On its own, thats a big number, but the thing is, its roughly 0.6% of page views for the site.

http://statistics.allfacebook.com/applications/single/-/44615671688/

As popular an idea as FBconnect is, it’s still not that popular in reality. FBconnect gets loaded 50million times a month, a high number (almost 1.5% of facebooks monthly login); but this 50million actually includes every time a page loads with the FBconnect Javascript file, and doesn’t account in anyway for how often its actually used. It is *not* 50million logins with FBconnect a month!

http://venturebeat.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/04/fbconnect.png

If we take Gizmondo as the average (for this example) – which its not, its slightly above average, in that it has technical people and early adopters using its site in a higher percentage, so these numbers should favour FBconnect.

Gizmondo gets roughly 3million page views a month with 700,000 unique visitors. Thats an average of 4.3 page views per person. Now FBconnect counted for 21000 page views at 4.3 pages per person equates to 4884 unique visitors that use FBconnect on one of the partner sites in which its had 18 months to promote the brand linking. Thats a massive uptake of FBconnect on a partner site – of tech savvy people no less – of… drumroll please… 0.7% (not a shock to anyone as i mentioned the figure above).

Do we really, really, think that this is something vital to having people competantly use a BBpress forum?

If 0.7% of your community on your website want to use FBconnect, how many actual people is that?

To put it in context, for every 1000 people that actually post on your forum, 7 will use FBconnect. Thats not 7 new posters, that 7 posters total. We’ve no idea how many of them are new.

So lets take it a step further, what percentage of that 0.7% are users who would not have created an account and signed in if it wasn’t for FBconnect? What if half of those 0.7% aren’t new users, what if half are people who prefer to use one sign-in. Will an increase in traffic of 0.35% really be worth all the time and hassle involved in getting BBpress (which cant even integrate with WordPress – its parent companies flagship product) to integrate with moving target badly run by another company?

Before you advocaate Facebook Connect, ask yourself these questions:

1) What sort of increase in numbers or percentage of posters would make this worth while to me?

2) Am sure that this is the best option for a global product, given that Facebook’s poularity is localised?

3) Am i suggesting a Feature that I myself want?

4) Does BBpress need this feature to actually funciton as a forum, as per the original remit – outlined here: http://bbpress.org/about/features/ ?

As someone who lives in a country where Facebook is 3rd or 4th favourite Social Network (it fluctuates), and just inside the Top 10 of websites visited, it always amazes me when people go overboard about it as if its the second coming. I like it and use it, but every time i ask someone to back up why they think BBpress needs FBconnect all we get is short annacdotal evidence based on their own desire, so lets get past that and have a nice conversation about it

[johnhiler]

Elias – I thought your previous post was excellent, and I agreed with almost 100% of it – including your suggestion around the core plugins structure.

Just wanted to clarify as an unbiased third party (I have zero affiliation with WordPress/Automattic and am not a mod on this board) that your post being flagged as spam was almost certainly just Akismet acting up again.

Posts with links are often flagged by Akismet – it’s happened many times on this forum:

https://bbpress.org/forums/topic/akismet-4-link-limit-in-posts-or-whitelist

https://bbpress.org/forums/topic/where-is-the-option-to-allow-more-links-in-a-post

On a separate note… I don’t think it’s helpful to refer to the future direction of bbPress as a “WordCrapPressy Bloaty Piece Of Unuseable And Totally Overloaded Shit”. I’m super worried about bloat and feature overload too – it’s just that inflammatory language tends to shift the conversation into yelling at each other, rather than focusing on addressing the issues raised.

[Dailytalker]

“Please vote for features which aren’t available yet”

There is only a Tinymce-Editor available but its not compatible with the current bbpress-edition and its not what I am looking for. bbpress should use exactly the same editor as it’s used in wordpress. This would be a further integration step. It is not really nice to use 2 different editors for the forum and for the blog. Therefore please vote for WYSIWYG-EDITOR. The WYSIWYG-EDITOR should contain buttons for links and pictures

Please also vote for FACEBOOK-CONNECT. (The OPEN-ID Plugin does not work with the current bbpress-version and it doesn’t offer facebook-connect as the author is waiting till facebook will join the open-id-project. This may be in 2 years which is a very long time.

[kevinjohngallagher]

I really can’t understand why most people voted for “integration with wordpress”

Well, probably because… Its one of the 7 core features advertised on the feature page: https://bbpress.org/about/features/

Also, its been the number one request for the last two years, and its the number one posted topic for the last two years, and the number one used tag for the last two years and… actually to continute would be flogging a dead horse.

P.S. How bad has Akismet been recently? Not to spark a different conversation but maybe it needs a different way of deciding if Forum posts are spam in regards to teh way it decides if Blog Comments are spam.

[chrishajer]

I really can’t understand why most people voted for “integration with wordpress

I voted for integration because it’s the number one, most common problem here, based on the number of questions, most often used tag, big selling point was “ease of integration” and that promise has been completely unmet. Getting single log in working for bbPress and WordPress, getting the theme to look the same, having access to WordPress functions, all these things are promised by integration, and none of them work unless you light some incense and candles, sacrifice an animal and dance around naked under a silver moon. Then, MAYBE, you can get integration working. I don’t want a single new feature until that happens.

Until that point, and until people here stop asking how to do it, I will continue to vote for integration as the number one feature. If it’s not going to happen, then stop saying it will on the front page of this website.

[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.

[kevinjohngallagher]

“Please vote for features which aren’t available yet”

1. WYSIWYG-Editor

Availible for about 18 months now mate…

2. Facebook Connect.

Can i ask please mate, and with no disrespect, because alot of people are asking for this so there’s obviously a good reason that i’m just missing, in what way is it helpful to BBpress (which right now cant integrate properly with WordPress) to spend development time tyring for integration with someone else’s closed software? What are the advantages to the people who run forums of Facebook Connect?

Am i missing something since i hit 30?

We cant properly administer topics and posts, half the plugins we used to use dont work, and folks think Facebook Connect is the way forward? I’m not knocking it, i’m just loking for the reason. Thanks

*NB – to clarify, i’m not putitng anyones opinion down, I just dont see what the benfits of this system are. We’ve seen every internet company since ’90s (with the possible exception of google) go through Boom Bust scenarios and become obsolete. What the benfits of spending development time on this?

[Dailytalker]

I really can’t understand why most people voted for “integration with wordpress” and “anonymouse posting” because bbpress is already integrated in wordpress and it exists already a plugin for anonymouse posting. Please vote for features which aren’t available yet!

My favourites are:

1. WYSIWYG-Editor

2. Facebook-Connect

[chandersbs]

According to Google Webmaster tools, my site is slower than 77% of sites. Mostly it can be reduced by enabling gzip compression.

Does anyone here know how to make this work for bbPress?

I did some googling, and found this plugin for WordPress

http://ilfilosofo.com/blog/2008/02/22/wordpress-gzip-plugin/

[gerikg]

in WP go to /<home-folder>/wp-admin/options.php

check that everywhere you see the url has the www

Then go to your BBpress admin and click on Options check bbPress address (URL) see if the www is there.

try define( 'COOKIEPATH', '/<home folder>/wordpress/' ); first. Clear you cache after doing this. Then login and test it out.

if not.. then I ran out of ideas.

[johnhiler]

@timskii – Completely agree with you on the idea of standard plugins. WordPress is starting to move in a similar direction:

https://wordpress.org/development/2009/12/canonical-plugins/

Also agree that forums are more dynamic and less suitable for caching than blogs, making bloat an especially important factor. This wasn’t as much of an issue through the 0.7-0.9 branches, but has starting to become more of an issue in 1.0 – especially with the BackPress integration.

[timskii]

Briefly on the bloat comments:

Forums are different from ‘blogs, and these differences need to be considered in the design:

• Users tend to interact more with forum pages – more page views, less use of remote feeds.
• Advertisers dislike forums – they’re much harder to fund using advertising.

So a “processor-intensive” forum can become a technical headache once you start seeing tens (or even hundreds) of thousands of users each day.

I’m in favour of features – BBPress clearly needs more to compete with mainstream expectations. The problem is specifically with features that are not optional – features that cannot be removed.

The logical approach is to include “standard” plugins in the distribution, which can be turned off as required. But that might still be problematic, if the most basic forum has to haul in the whole of WordPress before it does anything…