[Jared Atchison]

jjj will respond when he has a chance, but I’ll say he does 3 different jobs so he doesn’t always have time to respond right away.

He is an Automattic employee where his full time role is head of “social”. bbPress and BuddyPress are his other projects that he does on the side.

I encourage you, when you have time, to listen to a recent interview with jjj http://wpcandy.com/broadcasts/community-interviews/002-john-james-jacoby – you’ll get an idea of just how much work he has on his plate – frankly I don’t know how he does it.

Both bbPress and BuddyPress are maintained by volunteers like jjj and myself. We contribute and help out as much as possible, but ultimately projects that “pay the bills” come first.

I’ll let jjj give his point of view, but I can tell you with 99% certainty that there is no easy way to make bbPress 2.x look like bbPress.org – they are simply two completely different platforms. bbPress 2.x was a total rewrite of bbPress, from the ground up, so that bbPress could be a plugin instead of a stand alone install.

And yes, when bbPress.org is upgraded – whenever that time comes – it will adopt the new bbPress 2.x look. I understand that some people like the 1.x look better however that all comes down to personal preference – personally I like the 2.x look but that’s my preference.

Googling for bbPress themes and plugins is hit or miss but is going almost be a miss if you are using 2.x. It’s been out only a year, so the vast majority of what you find is going to be for 1.x. Recently there has been quite a few nice plugins popping up that are for 2.x – you can find these in the WordPress.org plugin repository

https://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/search.php?q=bbpress

bbPress is actually quite well documented, however right now most of the documentation is in the actual code. Writing up documentation takes a lot of time and effort – WordPress.org codex is a perfect example – it’s fantastic but it is also maintained by 100s of contributors.

I’m sure jjj could spend some time writing documentation, but then none of the bugs that come in would be addressed in a timely manner, none of the features that people are constantly asking for would ever get written. Every comes down to volunteers – we just don’t have enough. Anyone with a user account can write and contribute documentation for bbPress so i think it’s unfair to expect jjj to do that on top of the dozens of other things he already does.

I do know that when 2.1 is released, which should be fairly soon, we are going to add some stuff to the bbP codex, however it’s night going to be something that appears overnight.

I’m not sure what you mean by “better standard theme” – the theme that ships with bbPress 2.x works well – the one that ships with the upcoming 2.1 is even better. Logistically it’s impossible to ship with a bbPress theme that fits everyones needs and works with all WordPress theme, but we try to make it as compatible as possible.

bbPress does a lot of great things “out of the box”. However it comes to a point that when certain customizations are needed you are either going to have to get your hands dirty with code or hire a developer to assist you – and that’s just the nature of the beast – for any open source project.

If you are looking for a forum application that has 100s of contributors, many of which focus on the project full time, then unfortunately bbPress may not be the best fit for you. Vanilla, phpBB, along with others are some great alternatives.

[John James Jacoby]

bbPress uses WordPress’s user profiles code, so any new fields you add to the dashboard profile (with a plugin or otherwise) should be mirrored in the theme. If you need an easy GUI to create profile fields, try BuddyPress.

There are a bunch of examples on how to do this with WordPress. Follow those instructions and you should be fine.

[Jimfire]

JJJ,

Are you following this thread? I’d love to hear your spin on it. How can we get the 2.x BBP to look like this site?

Jim

[John James Jacoby]

That’s not a bug. It’s just letting you know that your active theme doesn’t come with bbPress templates, so bbPress is going to automatically fill in the gaps as best as it can.

[John James Jacoby]

Probably the same bug others are running into with setting forums as Private or Hidden, and then changing them to Public. The topics in those forums still act like they are hidden; will be fixed soon.

[John James Jacoby]

The plugins page has a big yellow disclaimer on it, with a link to plugins for bbPress 2.0. The blog has recent posts, and the forum is alive and well. What makes you think it was ever dead?

[John James Jacoby]

Short codes are not used in bbPress, to limit their exposure from unauthorized users. Most shortcodes do not have capability checks attached to them, and since bbPress comes with its own shortcodes, we don’t want shortcodes inside shortcodes.

Maybe in a future version.

[dorsetjon]

jaredatch, thanks for that. However, I assume/hope that the look of the bbpress site is to do with the theme you are using, etc, and not because it is version 1.x because it looks so much better than 2.x. Hopefully the bbpress site won’t end up looking like what comes with 2.x when you upgrade!

I still don’t get this though. I’m searching Google for ‘free bbpress themes’ as suggested above and all but one of them on the first page of results has been for bbpress 1.x and not 2. All I want to do is make some basic changes to the layout of the forum but I have spent more time trying to understand where to start with bbp than in setting up all the rest of my wp site.

I know bbp relies on volunteers, but some documentation, examples and a better standard theme would really help us new users and perhaps it would be worth getting that right before further new features are added. Not a criticism but just a thought.

[Aahan Krish]

In case it helps, I have identified the code that determines the text. It’s in wp-contentpluginsbbpressbbp-includesbbp-common-template.php but it needs to be modified by adding a function in functions.php, and I don’t know how to do that.

Anyway, this is the code:

/** Home Text ********************************************************/



// No custom home text

if ( empty( $args['home_text'] ) ) {



// Set home text to page title

if ( $front_id = get_option( 'page_on_front' ) ) {

$pre_front_text = get_the_title( $front_id );



// Default to 'Home'

} else {

$pre_front_text = __( 'Home', 'bbpress' );

}

}

[Aahan Krish]

I just installed bbPress 2.0.2 forum plugin for WordPress, and would like to change the text of link Home to iGeek (or anything else, for that matter).

So the breadcrumb Home › Forums becomes iGeek › Forums (or something like that). How do I do that?

[Jared Atchison]

bbPress 2.x = WordPress plugin.

bbPress 1.x and 0.9 = Stand alone installs.

bbPress.org will eventually (hopefully sooner than later!) be upgraded to 2.x as well.

[Aahan Krish]

@jaredatch: Oh, I didn’t know that!

@dorsetjon: There’s your answer (I guess).

[Jared Atchison]

You haven’t missed anything. bbPress by default doesn’t have all the options you would likely want to run a 100% private forum.

That will best be handled by a custom plugin – unforunatly I don’t think anyone has written one yet.

[Jared Atchison]

They are two different versions of bbPress, which is primarily why they look so different.

The lastest version of bbPress is 2.x while bbPress.org is running (I believe) 1.x.

[highexistence]

In the BBpress 2.0 plugin, single replies show the exact date posted instead of X hours ago/freshness format. How can I switch this back to freshness format?

[Aahan Krish]

Yeah, I hoped to so too. Good luck!

[crashweb]

I found that If you make the post sticky, it will appear listed in the forum, but you get a 404 error if you try to visit the page without being logged in.

[crashweb]

i’m having the same issue

[dorsetjon]

Thanks, I’ll have a look at themes.

I know my way around wordpress and was confident I could accomplish something with bbpress but am rapidly losing faith given the lack of documentation and examples for bbpress!!

Given how good the bbpress site looks, if that is done with a theme then it would be a good idea to make that theme (or similar) available. Even better if bbpress used something impressive “out of the box”.

I’m off to find some themes…

[Aahan Krish]

Yeah. Jon, I am a newbie too, but since I know my way through wordpress, I am confident that I can accomplish something with bbpress.

That’s exactly what I am talking about. Search for bbpress themes. You might end up finding something with features closer to what you mentioned or better.

Any theme that looks better than the default bbpress theme will make you happy for the time being, until you know your way around bbpress.

That’s a starting point. Enable the new theme, start changing the look with CSS, make it look your way. That’s what I was suggesting. Sorry if I didnt catch your point still.

[dorsetjon]

Thanks for that. I assumed a theme just covers the look and feel of a site but does it change the layout, etc, too?

For example, on the https://bbpress.org/forums page the layout is totally different to the default – there is a list of forums on the left, a search box and list of tags below that and on the right is a list of recent topics. The columns included in the topic and forums list are different to normal too and above the topics list there is a “start new” link. Those are the sort of changes I want to make. I know CSS but can’t see how I change all that through CSS or will a new theme do more than change CSS?

Sorry for asking such basic questions but while BBPress seems great it is a bit impenetrable for the newbie!

Thanks,

Jon

[ksmithtn]

We have bbPress 1.2 installed on our site, but it is currently being throttled by our host because of slow load time. I need a programmer to work with to optimize the site.

We are also interested in upgrading to version 2.0.

Please send your rates & availability to:

admin@raptureintheairnow.com

Thanks.

[Aahan Krish]

@thetalltree : Take a look at the forum index of bbpress.org, and you’ll notice that there are at least 2 spam posts. SPAM! And what’s even more alarming is that they are still there!

Take my advise, ask elsewhere. (Try asking on wordpress.stackexchange.com)

My $0.02!

[Aahan Krish]

I am currently modding my own bbpress installation (and I all I know is CSS).

My idea would be search Google for ‘free bbpress themes’, find the one with the functionality that you want – – in your case, something that looks like bbpress.org – – and then design it your way with custom css.

You get my idea? Good luck!

[dorsetjon]

Good question and I’m struggling with this too. The bbpress.org site looks great but the default install is very different. I don’t mind doing the work to make the changes but having looked through the forum and what documentation there is I still don’t know where to start. Can anyone give any pointers as to the sort of things used on the bbpress.org site so implementers can use this on their sites?

Jon