[techypenguin]

Thanks for this forum integration into WP.

Just what we needed for the blog.

I have one question here….

Why is BBpress much faster than WordPress?

They are freshly installed into a same debian server and wordpress would take a while to load. Most amazingly BBpress just take les than a second to load. Anyone got suggestions?

[kevinjohngallagher]

Sadly not mate.

I know what you’re thinking.

Something like : https://codex.wordpress.org/Template_Tags

But no, it’s all guess work.

[kevinjohngallagher]

I know what you’re thinking, that it probably *should* be mentioned either here:

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

or

https://bbpress.org/download/

but it’s not

BBpress, great software, also useful for testing your abilities to mind read!

[John James Jacoby]

That is why…

2.6x and .9 series won’t integrate or play nice together…

You could either go back to the 2.5 series of WordPress, or move up to the 1.0 beta version of bbPress…

[nookingtons]

BBPress Version- 0.9.0.2

Wordpress Version- 2.6.3

[John James Jacoby]

Which versions of bbPress and WordPress are you using?

[_ck_]

Unfortunately bbpress.org does not have theme browser yet like wordpress.org (which was just recently revamped).

bbpress.org is overdue for a makeover and I suspect they will get to that after 1.0 is released, maybe early next year.

[nookingtons]

I think it might be because i tried integrating with WordPress follwing the “Functions” rules on this site. I read somewhere here that it broke the login.

How can i fix it?

[Ipstenu (Mika Epstein)]

>> This meant once I’d logged in via bbPress, when I was browsing WordPress (although it set the ‘auth’ cookie fine and I could view wp-admin/) it ‘appeared’ that I was logged out (log in and register link, instead of log out and site admin). <<

I’m still having that problem, even after following those directions.

I have my WP site URL as root, but the wp-home is set to /blog (since that’s where the blog folder is).

Cookiepath is set to /forums/

sitecookiepath is set to /blog/

[kevinjohngallagher]

“Oh one big thing I should point out – the features in bbPress, and the time of the main developers are first and primarily geared towards the need of Automattic and WordPress.org – people forget or don’t realize that.”

We don’t get or realize that because… it’s not written anywhere.

We’re not mind readers.

“The features that are “missing” from bbPress just happen to be the features that Matt decided weren’t a priority for WordPress.org and the other Automattic forums.”

Oh. See, now that’s a totally different light on the subject. I didn’t realise i was building something for Matt to fit Matt’s needs and for the needs of Matt’s companies. Maybe that should be written down somewhere too…

“It’s also why there is no documentation, remember Matt has to pay the coders, why does he need documentation for 3rd party plugin developers if it’s just going to cost money.”

I do understand that, but surely the actual developers have some form of documentation too. Couldn’t we all see that to make ‘Matts’ product better? And it’s not like Automatic is short of a few bob.

Surely, from a business point of view, having documentation to increase the number of theme and plugin developers will increase the take-up rate of BBpress.

“bbPress 1.0 and the backpress integration are now being driven by Matt’s goal of TalkPress for WordPress.com members.”

So, what this means is that we can’t, as a community, do anything about anything, because we’re all following Matt’s plan, to which we have no feature list or roadmap or really any visibility of?

I dont expect Matt, or really any WordPress/Automatic employee, to have to run things by anyone in the community – i’m not saying that I do. But the… pretence that this is an open source project is totally nullified if we’re all coding against a grand plan and road map we’re not allowed to see.

If the new standard answer is going to be “that’s not on Matt’s wishlist but we’re not going to tell you what is on it – go on GUESS” then can start to see why so many people have left the BBpress community, and why all the themes/forums we’re seeing all look the same.

[Ipstenu (Mika Epstein)]

Psst! You mean to put bbpress here:

/home/www/example.com/bbpress

If you put it under wordpress, your URL will be http://www.example.com/wordpress/bbpress

[_ck_]

Oh one big thing I should point out – the features in bbPress, and the time of the main developers are first and primarily geared towards the need of Automattic and WordPress.org – people forget or don’t realize that.

Remember, bbPress is a purpose driven product that happens to also be open source. It wasn’t just a few people that said “hey let’s make a better free forum because we can”.

The features that are “missing” from bbPress just happen to be the features that Matt decided weren’t a priority for WordPress.org and the other Automattic forums. It’s also why there is no documentation, remember Matt has to pay the coders, why does he need documentation for 3rd party plugin developers if it’s just going to cost money.

bbPress 1.0 and the backpress integration are now being driven by Matt’s goal of TalkPress for WordPress.com members.

So there’s the logic that some might not understand without perspective. There are projects like SMF that literally WERE “let’s make a better free forum” that have matured now so you can compare to them – but remember they are half a decade old. bbPress is far younger (and bbPress is way easier to write mods for).

[WebDev WaxLotus LLC]

while ($stars_in_heavens) {

deadmedic.karma += extra_scoop_of_icecream();

deadmedic.praise_sung += 1;

}

You fixed it.

Here I was searching for all instances of setcookie…novice error!

WP2.6.3; bbPress 1.0a2; PHP5; Apache 1.3

I can log in and out of WP and bbPress from any direction!

I did not use the .htaccess edits, just the rtrim line.

Thank you, so very much!

I wonder if this is going to solve my bbSynch and bbLive issues?

BTW, there is a WP plugin to skin the wp login. They have a flickr group to share what people have done.

I like the idea of funneling registrations through bbPress, as most of my members will hit the fora.

I have to go and clean up some nasty things I’ve been saying around the web about integration…

Thanks again, man.

Cheers.

[mxadness]

A simple phpBB3 to bbPress converter would be great. I really hope this gets done soon — bbPress + WordPress absolutely rocks.

[chrishajer]

Put it in your root, but in a folder of its own. So, if you have WordPress here

/home/www/example.com/wordpress/

you can put bbPress here:

/home/www/example.com/wordpress/bbpress/

Then, your website/blog is http://www.example.com and your forum is http://www.example.com/bbpress/

You can call your folder whatever you want, it might be forum, forums, bbpress, anything at all.

[suzkaw]

I just ported the awesome iNove wordpress theme over to a bbPress template. Here is a link to download it and see a demo:

http://ericlbarnes.com/inove-for-bbpress/

Hope someone finds it useful!

[matteoraggi]

in installation manual is written to upload files, but not in which folder of wordpress, into plugins or content or on root or where?

[stevedrum]

as someone who has used phpbb 2, phpbb3, invision and many other smaller packages i was probably a little bit biased towards forums. but then i started blogging with wordpress, and hence to bbpress.

let me say first of all that i like bbpress. after using those other bloated packages for years, it’s refreshing to get back to what it’s all about: a lightweight forum that’s just for… talking.

but i agree with the guy who wrote the original post. there are some things that a forum package needs. using bbpress straight out of the box is like stepping back in time.

here are my personal bugbears…

1) guests need the ability to post. you can’t build up a forum from scratch without that — it’s near impossible. because no one bothers to sign-up until the forum is relatively busy.

2) you need some kind of permission system. otherwise how can you talk to the other moderators? there is no PM system (which is fine) — but the only way you can do it out of the box is by email. you need to be able to create a forum that only the moderators can see, and other stuff like that.

i haven’t looked at the new version you’re working on, so maybe they are included in the new one. but leaving stuff like that up to the plug-in makers is crazy. Not that the plugins wouldn’t work fine, because no doubt they would — but nobody could be certain that a plugin will still work when a new version comes out. it could potentially wreck the usability of your board.

i think when you leave simple stuff like that out all it does is put off the people who might otherwise be prepared to switch over from packages like phpbb.

i do like bbpress though, and i am still going to carry on using it. …so i say these criticisms with love!

[epiphone]

This is a interesting post.

Im currently running WP 2.5.1 and bbPress 0.9.2, and Im getting slightly worried on falling behind on WordPress upgrades. I think this the most success someones had with WP 2.7 and bbPress.

Im sure I’ve seen a WP 2.6.3 and bbPress 1.0.2 installation and it didn’t like it at all, sent out a redirect loop.

Thanks for sharing

[kevinjohngallagher]

Great answers again _CK_.

As always you bring an authoritative voice to this discussion.

“Tables have vertical rows that can be sorted which would be 100x times harder with lists. Javascript has specific abilities on tables that don’t exist in lists. Lists do not have vertical relationships between their “cells”.”

I’m going to be one of those guys here a sec and say you’re totally and utterly wrong about this.

The DOM of a browser treats a TABLE like an XML file that it iterates through in a singular parent/child relationship.

The DOM of a browser treats a LIST like an XML file that it iterates through in a singular parent/child relationship.

Both are sorted based on their parent AND their attributes.

The perception that tables are easily sorted natively by JavaScript is only brought to the fore because libraries such as jQuery etc. have built in functions to sort tables. The same underlying code works for lists in exactly the same way.

eg. The browsers DOM can’t tell the difference between:

TABLE

– TR

– – TH

– TR

– – TD

and

DIV

– DIV

– – DIV

– DIV

– – DIV

or

OL

– LI

– – SPAN

– LI

– – SPAN

Let me give you an example again; Back to the backpacker website (real world examples are good I find).

UK (Category)

– England

– – London

– – – Travel

– – – Hostels

– Scotland

– – Edinburgh

– – – Travel

– – – Hostels

– – Glasgow

– – – Travel

– – – Hostels

Now if we output these as 1 flat tables (even with fancy CSS tags), and we use JavaScript to sort it (lets say alphabetically), we get this:

Edinburgh

England

Glasgow

Hostels

Hostels

Hostels

London

Scotland

Travel

Travel

Travel

UK (Category)

Because, again, if things are in a singular flat table structure there is not way of knowing which child belongs to which parent.

Again, i’m only advocating the use of lists for the forums, not the topic list, which is a singular list, and therefore well suited to using tabular data.

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

What I want to stress here, because i’m feeling like i’m repeating myself a little and thats never good, is that i’m NOT here to get BBpress to change from tables to lists or divs or anything else.

What i’m here to discuss is that BBpress is going down a route, a route that solves one set of needs. Can you list the topics in a singular table in a singular order while the only differentiation between each row/cell is in the CSS worked out after the tag has been sent to the browser.

That is a very very singular way of doing things. My point is that all over the shop here in BBpress 1.0a we’re doing things in a singular method, and not in any way giving any for of extensibility to the software.

I use the forum parent/child output example cos it’s on the front page. I could use the example of having template functions HARD CODED in the bb-includes folder as opposed to being in the template folders. I could use the example of “forum” or “topic” being slapped before all the permalinks with no option to remove them.

Lets be honest here, in terms of changes from 1.0a1 to 1.0a2 the first 17 changes were style changes to the template file that we’re all (hopefully) going to replace with our own template.

The 3 latest changes to the repository have been to fix TYPOS in the comments.

There was 85 days, almost a 1/3 of a year between 0.9 release and 1.0alpha, and I may be wrong here but the biggest change seems to be that XML RPSeeWhoCaresAboutThisReally was added.

People are complaining about the same things on this board over and over. Most plug-ins were written over a year ago, and have been hacked to death. Vital information is stored on Page 3 of a forum thread started 18 months ago because no-ones updated the website.

Heck, saying that 0.9.0.2 the STABLE bbpress release doesn’t actually work with anything beyond 2.5.1 of wordpress, let alone the stable wordpress release of 2.6.3 ISN’T EVEN ON ANY OF THE WEBSITE PAGES. It’s stored on the forum software, in a random post.

This is not a complain against the great men and women who have done some marvellous work here, _CK_ so far is a screaming example of someone who’s given up huge amounts of time and created some amazing code, but come on.

If we try to develop something with no roadmap, no feature list; if we try to solve single problems with singular solutions; if we do this all with no documentation; heck if we do this with no project management whatsoever then we’ll end up with a bunch of things that look somewhere between a blog and a forum all with slightly different colours and a different header picture.

Then we can all pretend that we’ve build a totally extendable bit of software that every user has just decided to use exactly the same way out of pure luck, and not because they’re effectively forced to.

Heck while we’re at it, i’m going to pretend i’m Brad Pitt. Make believe is SO much fun. I’d suggest you all try it, but maybe you’re already there…

[John James Jacoby]

I’ve logged into both sides with a test account and still run into this problem. It seems that integrating with WordPress interferes with some capabilities. Like, when viewing a topic logged in as Key Master, I can see the IP addresses of people that post, and I have the link to add that topic to my favorites, but I cannot post a reply, I cannot edit the tags, and I cannot see any other admin functions; all of their capabilities return no value.

I haven’t given up yet! hah!

[John James Jacoby]

Screen readers and modified browsers might love lists, but they also love properly coded tables, of which most people really seem to do.

Google “everything you know about css is wrong” and check out how to style lists and div’s as tables, it’s an interesting read also. I don’t agree with it, but it is interesting.

The idea of a DIV is not to nest them, but to use them to DIVIDE content. The idea of a table is to compare data in a relational way. I think if you were going to use lists for forums, you would HAVE TO use DL’s and use dt’s for the headers at the very least, to provide a definition to the content being displayed.

I mean, I see how the argument goes both ways. (Off topic: If you’re really into accessibility, check out my WordPress section 508 theme at http://www.wp508.com? It’s not completely full of content yet, seems I have about 5 half finished projects right now ugh.)

[kevinjohngallagher]

I’m not sure who has access to edit the information on this website (outwith the forums) but any change we could have :

<b>”Do NOT try to integrate WordPress 2.6 with bbPress 0.9 – only use WP 2.5.x – the reason for this is simple – WordPress has radically changed the way cookies are used. “</b>

oooh i dont know, maybe on the INTEGRATION TO WORDPRESS page?!?! or even on the download section.

How daft is it to hide it away in a forum when it’s quite essential information? If you download the latest stable wordpress and the latest stable BBpress – they’re uncompatable. that to me seems kind of important to new people who download stable releases of both to get started!

[John Doe]

Ok, it’s a slight fix since it’ll only solve one of the issues (I was having) with integration.

The problem was that I could not for the life of me force bbPress to set a ‘logged_in’ cookie with path ‘/’.

WordPress: domain.com

bbPress: domain.com/forum/

This meant once I’d logged in via bbPress, when I was browsing WordPress (although it set the ‘auth’ cookie fine and I could view wp-admin/) it ‘appeared’ that I was logged out (log in and register link, instead of log out and site admin).

I’d already tried this in bb-config.php, along with the other ‘integration speedups’ bbPress supplied;

$bb->sitecookiepath = '';

I’d also tried setting it to ‘/’ as well, but every time the cookie would not get set.

And here was the culprit; line 673 in bb-settings.php;

$bb->sitecookiepath = rtrim($bb->sitecookiepath, '/');

Then on line 735, it checks if $bb->;sitecookiepath is not set or empty. Otherwise, the ‘logged_in’ cookie for sitecookiepath will not get added to the $cookies array, and hence will not be set when wp_set_auth_cookie is called (specifically line 172, pluggable.php).

Changing the culprit to this fixed it for me;

$bb->sitecookiepath = '/' . trim($bb->sitecookiepath, '/');

The complete fix (for me) was to force all logins, registrations and logouts through bbPress with this in a .htaccess at the WordPress root;

RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} action=register

RewriteRule ^wp-login.php forum/register.php [R=301,NC,L]

RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} action=logout

RewriteRule ^wp-login.php forum/bb-login.php?logout=1 [R=301,NC,L]

RewriteRule ^wp-login.php$ forum/bb-login.php [R=301,NC]

This actually worked out better for me, since bbPress by nature allows you to skin the login, and users get to enter a little more info for their profile during registration.

Hope this of some help to others!

[kevinjohngallagher]

“But yes, yes, GOD yes, the documentation whomps. Then again, so did WordPresses back in the day “

Agreed.

But lets learn from those mistakes