[eclipsenow]

Anyone know if Lynda.com is about to do the latest WordPress, (let alone bbpress?) They covered using WordPress.com 2.6, but not 2.7 yet, and have about 3 courses on Joomla.

I’m there to learn Adobe CS4, and have ambitions of learning Dreamweaver, Photoshop, Indesign, etc and delusions of grandeur that I might one day understand my mac almost as well as my wife. (Who’s a VERY professional graphic designer, but a web-illiterate like I currently am). So I paid up for a year at Lynda.com (and will claim that on tax), and sat through 10 hours of CSS training and 3 hours of XHTML and am now starting on Dreamweaver. All this slowed down by Christmas, kids home for 6 weeks in the Australian summer break, and my messing about with Joomla! (There are some things I like about Joomla, but some bad experiences with trying to modify their templates left me a bit blech…. as well!

Yet I hear there is a state of the art Dreamweaver integration pack for $60 that will let me style up WordPress themes in DW! Woah! That almost won me over and gave me delusions of grandeur about one day donating a few state-of-the-art templates to the WordPress world as advertising for my own WordPress theme’s business.

And then the kids came in demanding ice-cream, and reality slapped me across my fantasising, drooling, delusional face.

So… in this vulnerable state of mind, I need a hug. Cult like it is, this “choosing software before you know software” business and frame of mind!

As a bit of an activist with other causes (and having had a little exposure to marketing, not a lot but enough) can I just comment that I think it would be better “press” if bbpress had some more features turned on in this forum? I personally really rely on email notification that someone has replied to a forum, and only check my RSS about once a day. (It’s all inconvenient). Instead of just clicking “Send post” I have to then click RSS, and then click Google Reader when that comes up, and then remember to check my RSS. I think the vast majority of bulletin board users like email notification of a reply. Is there a reason bbpress decided not to showcase some of their best plug-ins on their leading forum?

Anyway, so tired I’m nearly hallucinating. Night night, and no offence meant by any of the above.

[_ck_]

Sidebar would be done in the header.php or footer.php like it’s done in WordPress usually too.

However if you need wordpress functionality in the sidebar you’ll need to do full integration (which I personally recommend against but many people do anyway).

[John James Jacoby]

It would actually be really easy to build in bbPress theme functionality into the get_header and get_footer functions of WordPress, and I’ve thought about doing that in a few of the themes I’m making. Let me experiment this evening and report back.

[chrishajer]

Just edit the link in header.php in your template folder to point it to your WordPress home page, rather than the bbPress home page.

So instead of this:

<a href="<?php bb_uri(); ?>"><?php bb_option('name'); ?></a>

You would have something like this:

<a href="http://www.example.com/home/">WordPress Home</a>

[chrishajer]

What’s not to like about Joomla?

• seo friendly URLs are not built in, and need to be handled by each component individually
• Section > Category > Article – those are my choices, no more, no less? That’s lame
• Community support: the WordPress community is far more helpful than the Joomla one, in me experience.
• Seems like 80% of the add-ons for Joomla are paid, where 80% of them for WordPress are free. I really think that has held Joolma back: the fact that everything you want to add to it costs money

Also, sometimes you just understand where certain software is coming from, more than others. I understand WordPress better than I understand Joomla. And I’ve never had a problem with a WordPress upgrade, where almost every Joomla upgrade I attempted resulted in pain.

Of course, YMMV. You use whatever tools you need to to get the job done.

[chrishajer]

I didn’t think WordPress could do that, at least not at 2.7. I know they have added that functionality for plugins, but not for themes. Correct me if I’m wrong.

[chrishajer]

When you say “copy” do you mean “have the wordpress sidebar in bbPress” so it will be dynamic, just like it is in WordPress? Or, will you just copy and paste the code for a static sidebar into bbPress and it will never change?

If you want the former, you need integration, and you need to include WordPress inside bbPress so you have access to WordPress functions, like get_sidebar();.

If you want the latter, you just need to modify your template files to include the sidebar where you want it, and then modify the CSS to allow the space to exist in your forum.

[chrishajer]

Did you try any of the WordPress-style tricks?

<?php $topics = get_latest_topics('exclude=3' ); ?>

<?php $topics = get_latest_topics( -3 ); ?>

[_ck_]

It’s just wikipedia politics and someone wants to feel like they have power.

I would guess once Matt starts promoting bbPress on WordPress.org/com you’ll see the page restored as bbPress becomes more famous.

Fairly certain bbPress has over 10,000 users now and will do another survey in February – there are projects with far fewer users which still have a page on Wikipedia.

[superrad]

How can I get my bbpress header image to link to my wordpress home page?

[inztinkt]

any change? its been a while since fb connect was launched. surely the popular facebook conect plugin for wordpress can be slightly adapted to work as a bbpress plugin too? or am i way off?

[tinkerer]

Hi,

chrishajer ist right, the wp-blog-header is required in order to make it work.

But apparently this is still not enough; you’ll need to make sure bbpress accesses the event calendar’s CSS files as well; furthermore the events list from this plugin is designed in a way that it will display the details of an event by making use of javascript; this, however, fails. I couldn’t get this to work yet. So in my bbpress people see that there is an event on a certain day, but cant click on it.

Any ideas how to fix that?

Also I’d like to know whether there is a way of accessing the plugin via the bbpress dashboard instead/in addition to the wordpress dashboard. Or, skipping the bbpress dashboard altogether and have one dashboard for WP and bbpress.

[mousenator]

Just wanted to thank you for this post, you’re a genius

[eclipsenow]

[edited by moderator]

I haven’t played with BBpress to know all its features. However, ideally, and I think I may have said this before, I think bbpress should become an extension of WordPress, or at least have that as an option. I can install Joomla in 50 seconds using Fantastico, and then install their POWERFUL little forum Agora in about 50 seconds because it is an extension right in Joomla! Too easy.

[Malice]

Sound interesting eclipsenow

You can backup bbpress using a wordpress backup tool. If integrated, bbpress and wordpress use the same databases anyway. The plugin I use sends a backup of the whole blog & forum to my mail every week, day, month or whatever you want).

I use this plugin: http://www.blogtrafficexchange.com/wordpress-backup/

Though this seems the most popular: https://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wp-db-backup/

If you customize your template you should manually take a backup of that template as well, though. It’s just one folder you should get from your webserver whenever you change the template. If you don’t change the template (which I think is probably the case for you), then backing up your template folder is not of your concern yet.

More info & alternatives:

https://codex.wordpress.org/WordPress_Backups

(I’m sure the experts in this forum can tell you a lot more about general backup through cpanel and such. I’m just a guy learning through tutorials & trial and error just like you:p )

[pauljosephlp]

Hi,

I am new to bbpress but have been using WP for sometime. The main reason why i changed to bbpress it to make my users register at one blog and use it to login to bbpress.

I want to know

1) is it possible to intergrate ONE WP 2.7 blog.

2) is it possible to intergrate 8 WP 2.7 blogs.

3) Also is it possible for users to register on ANY of the 8 BLOGS can login to ONE bbpress forum.

Please answer this, it will help me a lot.

Thanks and Regards

Paul Joseph

[eclipsenow]

If bbpress is going to be such a big part of WP, isn’t it a good idea to have the compatible themes accessible from within both bbpress and WP? (I love the way WordPress can now browse the official themes library from within the control panel. That beats Joomla hands down in that particular department).

[Ryan Hellyer]

Thanks.

I assumed my functions.php file in WordPress would handle that though? I’ll give it a try anyway.

Oh, I forgot to mention that it isn’t a problem at all on my local install. Just when I post it live on my HostGator.com account.

[_ck_]

WordPress and bbPress itself does not use sessions but some plugins do.

It’s been my experience you need to do a session start at least once before you can access any session variables in a page.

[Ryan Hellyer]

In case yer interested, here’s the crude demo within a WordPress page … http://pixopoint.com/bbpress-demonstration/?generator=on

And here’s some previews of the built in themes:

Revolution Generated

Hellish Simplicity

Aqua Vaccinium

[Ryan Hellyer]

Hi,

I’m trying to setup a demo forum of bbPress (Version 1.0-alpha-6 ) to allow users to create their own bbPress themes. The template generator itself is powered by WordPress, and bar the occasional bug seems to work fine. The bbPress themes it exports seem to be working okay too bar a few code gremlins which I intend to iron out once I get the system up and running.

What should happen, is that you should be able to go to the following URL, make as many modifications as you want, click submit and bam! a new design for your bbPress forum should be shown. However for some reason, whenever the bbPress forum loads it kills the session variables which store all of the data relating to the current design

http://pixopoint.com/demo/bbpress/?generator=on

When you go back to the WordPress version (http://pixopoint.com/?generator=on) the original design is gone and it reverts back to the default

Any ideas?

As a temporary measure I plan to create a WordPress Page with the same HTML as would be in the bbPress forum so that users can see their design as they’re modifying it. But it would make a lot more sense if they could modify it within a real live bbPress forum.

[Ipstenu (Mika Epstein)]

The answer can only be found in what you want to do with your site.

If you want an all in one, integrated what not, you need a CMS. If you want a blog, I’d say you want WordPress (or similar). Functionality is the name of it all. Sometimes you find a tool you love so much you’re willing to forgo integration for features. Other times you decide you have to have it all be on. I’ve run Drupal, WordPress, bbPress, Gallery, PostNuke, PHPNuke, phpBB, SMF, InvisionBoard, MediaWiki, and more. They all fit the needs I had for the site I was designing at the time.

Figure out what you want to do, and what will be more important. If you have to have native integration, use a CMS. If you don’t, then your choices are infinite.

[Ipstenu (Mika Epstein)]

The answer can only be found in what you want to do with your site.

If you want an all in one, integrated what not, you need a CMS. If you want a blog, I’d say you want WordPress (or similar). Functionality is the name of it all. Sometimes you find a tool you love so much you’re willing to forgo integration for features. Other times you decide you have to have it all be on. I’ve run Drupal, WordPress, bbPress, Gallery, PostNuke, PHPNuke, phpBB, SMF, InvisionBoard, MediaWiki, and more. They all fit the needs I had for the site I was designing at the time.

Figure out what you want to do, and what will be more important. If you have to have native integration, use a CMS. If you don’t, then your choices are infinite.

[Malice]

Well, I used Joomla intensively for several months. It lacked serious category/site structure management (no tags, archives,… ), the seo urls were not implemented standard, decent comment functionality had to be paid for (jomcomment), limited feed management , no pingback…

WordPress has just so many plugins! Joomla you’ve seem them all pretty quickly, if I recall right. In wordpress I keep discovering new awesome stuff all the time. Just a few minutes ago I discovered you could make post templates, which is awesome for me because I report in the same style over and over again (events).

I know each CMS has its own function, but for me wordpress answered my needs a lot better.

[eclipsenow]

Yeah, point taken. And I have to say, I’m attracted to the design of WP and BBpress. But Malice, what didn’t you like about Joomla?

Honestly, I’m not here to troll but am keeping an eye on all developments across the Joomla / WordPress / Drupal divide. (But Drupal gives me the shudders because I don’t know php language).

Joomla has new extensions being developed all the time, and there’s a whole new 1 click blog installation coming out to. The “Agora” module is truly revolutionary with it’s 1 click installation into Joomla with complete integration. Also, the current “ugly” Agora forum templates are getting a total work over after version 3 is introduced. Agora is a complete package that does something like 70% or 80% of everything phpbb3 does, and so I don’t need to go hunting down 20 extensions.

So Malice, what’s not to like? I’m almost beginning to think that it’s what one encounters the best community support with first. “First impressions” matter, much like joining a new community, church, or whatever. Good experience first time and some small measure of progress made = lifetime member, and all other competing opportunities screened out as “too hard, I’ve made my choice”. It’s just the way it seems I function and many others… newbies that is. Maybe long term professional web designers and developers have made their choices on more rational grounds.