[vadi]

I apologize beforehand if this isn’t the proper section for this – it’s the best that I thought fit.

I’m starting to look for alternatives to bbPress. I went with it initially because I was impressed by WordPress – so much functionality in one package, all basics included, and the offbeat requirements were largely fulfilled by third-party plugins. bbPress as a forum were also innovative, quick, and the “new generation” designed with the mistakes of current forums in mind.

However, unlike WordPress, the basic package doesn’t quite provide the basic functionality – and having 3rd party plugins do the essential jobs needed is unreliable. For some things, there is no such plugin yet, for others the plugins are outdated, or poorly designed.

Does anyone know of similar forums – designed to be lean, and up to date on today’s web design and technology?

I’ve looked at a whole bunch lately, and am eyeing Vanilla right now. However any suggestions are welcome.

Thanks!

edit: sigh, my ampersand is being replaced with & which leads to some trac ticket…

[Ipstenu (Mika Epstein)]

In bb-config.php

define('BB_AUTH_KEY', 'WP's AUTH KEY halmstad');

define('BB_SECURE_KEY', 'WP's SECURE KEY halmstad');

define('BB_LOGGED_IN_KEY', 'WP's LOGGED IN KEY halmstad');

Also make sure you have the salts:

define('BB_AUTH_SALT', 'WP's AUTH SALT');

define('BB_LOGGED_IN_SALT', 'WP's LOGGED IN SALT');

And that you have these defined:

$bb->secure_auth_cookie = 'wordpress_sec_456c71223b3bb9958349ec3d65b850f6';

$bb->logged_in_cookie   =  'wordpress_logged_in_456c71223b3bb9958349ec3d65b850f6';

Personally, I set my cookie domain to .domain.se for both WP and BB.

[JesperA]

Hi!

I´ve tried a WordPress and BBpress integration and it works just fine, i´ve have added all the cookie information in both config files of WP and BB press but it still doesnt work on login, only on logout.

My WP:

define(‘AUTH_KEY’, ‘halmstad’);

define(‘SECURE_AUTH_KEY’, ‘halmstad’);

define(‘LOGGED_IN_KEY’, ‘halmstad’);

define(‘NONCE_KEY’, ‘halmstad’);

define(‘SECRET_KEY’, ‘halmstad’); // Change this to a unique phrase.

define(‘COOKIE_DOMAIN’, ”);

define(‘COOKIEPATH’, ‘/’);`

BB:

define(‘BB_SECRET_KEY’, ‘halmstad’); // Change this to a unique phrase.

$bb->wp_siteurl = ‘http://www.domain.se/’;

$bb->wp_home = ‘http://www.domain.se/’;

$bb->wp_table_prefix = ‘wp_’;

$bb->custom_user_table = ”;

$bb->custom_user_meta_table = ”;

$bb->authcookie = ‘wordpress_456c71223b3bb9958349ec3d65b850f6’;

$bb->cookiedomain = ”;

$bb->cookiepath = ‘/’;

$bb->sitecookiepath = ‘/’;

Can anyone spot the problem?

[techypenguin]

nice. i’ll installed it later on. might show some good results.

[John James Jacoby]

@lolos:

Firstly, while there’s two ways to skin a cat, david’s method kills the kitty in the process. My advice is not to do it that way. If you need to get the absolute path of a directory I made a quick file to do it…

Put this code in a php file, I named mine “abs.php”

<?php

$p = getcwd();

echo $p;

?>

Then upload that file to the directory you want to find the path to, and visit it in a web browser. It will echo the absolute path for you. Copy the output. Delete the file. Done!

Duplicating the themes is really the best way to do this, and I promise that once you’ve included WordPress into bbPress properly, it’s a really straightforward and rewarding process.

Firstly, download Notepad++. It’s free, and it rules.

Firstly.5, make copies of your WordPress header.php/footer.php files, and save them someplace safe. We will be modifying these files and don’t want to ruin the actual working WordPress ones.

Secondly, open the header.php/footer.php files for both the stock bbPress theme, and the copied ones I just mentioned. In Notepad++ you should now have 4 files open.

We’re basically working from the outside in.

Thirdly, take all of the relevant bbPress PHP code from it’s header.php/footer.php files, and start copy and pasting them to the equivalent places in the WP copy header.php/footer.php files. Like in mine, I actually have:

<?php

bb_feed_head();

wp_get_archives('type=monthly&format=link');

wp_head();

bb_head();

?>

Which loads all of the WP and BBP head related functions inside my BBP forums. Because I want links to my feeds and what-not…

Fourthly, once you’re done with this, then you start poking around the other BBP theme files, and modify all of those files to work within the same construct as your WP theme does, with the same DIV classes and names and what-not.

Because we’ve included the WordPress functions inside bbPress, and because we’re using the same original WP theme header.php file, all of the same style-sheets and JS from that theme are already coded and loaded, even though you’re looking at bbPress. The rest is just tweaking all of the files to look how you want them to.

This is the process I used at http://www.delsolownersclub.com, and I think it’s worked really super well.

[Sam Bauers]

@bebopcool

There are a couple more things you have to do to integrate WPMU. It’s a different thing to the standard WordPress in a few ways, so requires some extra setup.

You need to set the SALTs as well as the KEYs in your wp-config.php for a start. You also need to set the cookie names individually or just set the COOKIEHASH as well.

One day I’ll document it all, but right now we are just trying to sort out standard installs first.

[lolos]

Sam,

When I tried the “deep integration,” I kept getting several errors that I would rather keep them apart for now until the operation of integrating them together is more seamless and free of bugs.

As you can tell, I am a total newbie and there are ton of information to grasp! Can you point me to the right direction on how to make bbPress theme look like wordpress theme?

Here is the one I am using:

http://www.der-prinz.com/2008/01/25/wordpress-theme-im-magazin-stil-branfordmagazine-wordpress-magazine-style-theme-branfordmagazine/

Thanks again!

[Sam Bauers]

The only forum solution that will actually reside in your WordPress installation is Simple:Press.

bbPress (the 1.0-alpha at least) uses different methods for sharing data with WordPress.

[Sam Bauers]

OK, so davidbaldwin opens a can of worms with his advice here.

I don’t recommend doing it this way, my advice is to create two separate themes for WordPress and bbPress that look alike and if you enable “deep” integration, then carefully pick the functions you want to use from WordPress and insert them into the bbPress template.

Throwing in the whole WordPress header is potentially problematic. It’s possible to do it cleanly with a lot of work, but most people won’t have the knowledge or the time to do that.

[davidbaldwin]

lolos,

first of all, if you are doing this with WordPress 2.6 or newer, you have to run 1.0-alpha. If you are running an older version of wordpress you can use the stable version. I attempted to roll back to an older version of wordpress, but i was unsuccessful, so this method is for 1.0-alpha users.

I found the intigration information at:

https://bbpress.org/documentation/integration-with-wordpress/

https://bbpress.org/forums/topic/first-pass-at-a-fix-for-deep-integration-in-trunk#post-21572

you need to add the following to the bb-config.php file, after <?php

if ( !defined( 'ABSPATH' ) ) {

include_once( '/Full/Path/To/wp-load.php' );

}



require_once('/Full/Path/To/wp-blog-header.php');

the full paths have to be absolute paths on the servers, not the domain paths.

this will load wordpress when bbpress is loaded.

and then you need to add this line to the very top of every page that has this line: <?php bb_get_header(); ?>

<?php get_header(); ?>

please note that the line above has to be line #1 in every page that already calls the bb header, if it does not call the bb header, do not add this, the final result should look like this:

<?php get_header(); ?>

<?php bb_get_header(); ?>

this will load the wordpress header when the bbpress header is called. you can edit the bbpress header to remove all the unnecessary code. (like the title, etc.)

and then you need to add this line to the very bottom of every page that has this line: <?php bb_get_footer(); ?>

<?php get_footer(); ?>

please note that the line above has to be the last line in every page that already calls the bb footer, if it does not call the bb footer, do not add this, the final result should look like this:

<?php bb_get_footer(); ?>

<?php get_footer(); ?>

this will load the wordpress footer when the bbpress footer is called. you can edit the bbpress footer to remove all the unnecessary code. (like the title, etc.)

I hope this helps. if you have any questions, please feel free to ask!

david

[Ipstenu (Mika Epstein)]

tomwi – Two easy options.

1) Use the build in RSS sidebar widget in wordpress.

2) Add the PHP Widget plugin and then toss in something like this:

<?php require_once (ABSPATH . WPINC . '/rss-functions.php');

$today = current_time('mysql', 1);

// insert the feed URL here

$rss = @fetch_rss('http://domain.net/forums/rss');

if ( isset($rss->items) && 0 != count($rss->items) ) {

echo '<ul>';

// set the number of items from the feed to display (5)

$rss->items = array_slice($rss->items, 0, 5);

foreach ($rss->items as $item ) {

echo '<li><a href="';

echo wp_filter_kses($item['link']);

echo '">';

echo wp_specialchars($item['title']);

echo '</a></li>';

}

echo '</ul>';

}; ?>

[tomwi]

this is great! i had downgraded to 2.5.1 for integration.

i am using bb latest discussions to show latest bbpress posts in wordpress which I could not get to work with alpha 2. i want to move back to 2.7 and alpha 4…… does anyone know of a plugin that works in bbpress alpha wp 2.7 to pull latest bbpress posts to wordpress/wordpress sidebar?

[lolos]

but then wont they be two separate identical themes that is not connected in anyway? I want to be able to use my wordpress theme as the parent theme, in the same time I can access the bbpress forum within wordpress parent frame.

If I duplicate the theme, how will I make wordpress links work in bbpress lookalike theme?

[Ipstenu (Mika Epstein)]

It may not be integrated. Duplicating a theme between bbPress and WordPress is pretty simple, since it uses similar templating styles.

[lolos]

davidbaldwin,

How did you change the font size and color of the bbpress in your wordpress theme? are you using two separate css style sheets or only one?

Can you give me some instructions on how did you make bbpress work within wordpress theme? i.e. when you click on forum it opens bbpress forum in the same page under word press header??

Please some one help me.. I spent over 4 days trying to understand how do just that!!

[Sam Bauers]

Just remembered, if WordPress is loaded then bbPress relies on the setting of WPLANG in WordPress to determine which language to use.

This will all probably require some more work.

[lolos]

Immeldoy, can you upload your theme and send me the link please?

I want to do the same thing and tried to do everything but I keep failing! I just want to have bbpress inside my word press theme! Is that a hard thing to accomplish?!!!

[lolos]

Anyone?

[jgk1013]

OK some more info. Background: I’m trying to install bbpress 1.oAlpha4 to integrate with WPMU and BuddyPress, following the instructions from here https://trac.buddypress.org/browser/trunk/bp-forums/installation-readme.txt

So. I’ve uploaded the bbpress files to forums.wearelabor.com. I’ve gone there in my browser and started the installation process. Got the bb-config.php created, good. On to WP integration. I’ve clicked yes I want to integrate and yes on cookie integration and here’s where my problems are.

WordPress “auth” cookie key

– have that, found in wp-config.php, entered

WordPress “auth” cookie salt

-supposed to be the value of auth_salt found on the wp-admin/options.php page but I don’t see anything like it there. (Help?)

WordPress “secure auth” cookie key

-found at wp-config.php, entered

WordPress “secure auth” cookie salt

-supposed to be found at wp-admin/options.php but its not there. BUT I did find it at wp-config.php. What should I do?

WordPress “logged in” cookie key

-found at wp-config.php, entered

WordPress “logged in” cookie salt

-supposed to be found at wp-admin/options.php but its not there. BUT I did find it at wp-config.php. What should I do?

Any and all help appreciated. This is quite frustrating.

[gogoplata]

They are completely independent platforms, but can be integrated if needed.

[John James Jacoby]

@Sam:

You know, I think about this everyday, but between you and me (and everyone else reading) I’m convinced more and more that no one really has any idea how to code XHTML, or what kind of object should rightfully be used to encapsulate content.

For the first 20 years of the modern web, everything was done in tables. For the last 5 years of the modern web, everything is being done in lists, divs, and paragraphs. Half the time things are marked up as paragraphs even though they aren’t actually blocks of text. The other half things are marked up as lists even though they contain 1 link. (WordPress and bbPress both suffer from this type of issue, specifically in the pagination and previous/next functions.)

One thing that the Smarty engine does promote, is keeping ALL of the XHTML out of the source code, allowing “template designers” to focus ONLY on the mark-up and then inserting the Smarty tags where the dynamic content belongs.

I’ve noticed that Automattic products tend to really try to think ahead in terms of a typical layout and what their audiences want, and that’s not a bad idea usually… But when the audience changes their mind and wants to go from UL’s to DL’s, inserting a DT becomes impossible and the function is immediately flawed by design. A Smarty type of engine avoids this all together.

Smarty is way too big and fat to include in either WP or BBP in my opinion. We’d be better off with a slimmed down version that’s used in CHBB, which I would LOVE to see implemented personally…

[rootf]

Hi.

I want to create a forum on my WordPress 2.7 website and I decide to try bbPress, but I don’t know what integration method will be the best and I wonder wheter it is possible at all. I want fully integrated bbPress and WordPress (common header, footer, user database, etc., saying simply bbPress included in a WordPress page). Could you help me? Or maybe should I use an other script like Simple:Press Forum, punBB or phpBB? Thanks in advance.

Regards,

rootf.

[csseur3]

no, you can use only bbpress if you want. WordPress is not required

bye

[jgk1013]

Here were my errors:

>>> Fetching missing WordPress cookie salts.

>>>>>> WordPress “auth” cookie salt not set.

>>>>>> WordPress “secure auth” cookie salt not set.

>>>>>> WordPress “logged in” cookie salt not set.

This is clearly the issue. However, when I went to where I was told these things would be, http://wearelabor.com/wp-admin/options.php, I didnt see any reference to them.

What am I doing wrong?

[colegeis]

Hello, I want to use bbPress but I am not using WordPress for my website at all. Do I need to have WordPress installed and setup on my domain for bbPress to work??

– Cole