[Jared Atchison]

What version of bbPress/BuddyPress are you using?

[Jared Atchison]

The problem with this is that bbPress is maintained by @jjj and a few other contributors. So the time and features have to be prioritized.

Writing an importer is a *lot* of work. Right off the bat a forum importer is going to be at least twice as much work as, say, a MovableType -> WordPress importer.

Now you have to take into account how many, ultimately, separate importers you would have to write. Let’s see here… vBulletin, phpBB, Vanilla, punBB, SMF, IPB… and those are just some of the popular ones. So 6 importers *might* cover most off people’s needs.

Then you have to keep in mind that the importers are constantly breaking because of software updates to the original forums packages. I’d say ever 2-4 months you can expect breakage due to an update.

Bottom line? You are looking at 6 importers (at least) to cover the popular forum suites, that not only would take a huge time investment to get off the ground, but would have to be constantly maintained and updated so they don’t break or get out of date.

Is it do-able? Sure. However, if you want @jjj to tackle this don’t expect to ever see another bbPress update or feature again – it’s just a matter of time.

This is really where contributors need to step in and help out. This would ideally be written and maintained by different contributors.

[SK]

@residentmeevil

bbpress should already match your site’s look and feel if you have installed bbPress plugin for WordPress. bbPress ships with a TwentyTen child theme which is used to lay out the bbPress pages within the wrapper of your active theme (if the active theme is not already bbPress-supporting)

[JABŁOŃSKI]

I am interested in knowing this too.

[SK]

bbPress needs to face the fact that most people who want a forum, have already had a forum. The *new* market for forums is much smaller than the *installed base* of forums.

Consequently, most of the people who would want to use bbPress probably are already using another forum script and need help migrating. It is collossal mistake to leave this for community plugins.

If I have a forum software in a production environment, then one of the major factors influencing my decision regarding migration is whether or not there is a robust, stable, tried and tested and reliable migration path to the target software. This is extremely important for me. In fact, I would suffer a somewhat inferior software willingly rather than move to a better software if there is no clear migration path or there is a high degree of risk in migration.

It is a mistake on part of bbPress to leave migration to community plugin developers. Even if there were some plugins out there that did the job, it would be much less reassuring to prospective users compared to a migration/import path created by the bbPress team. As it happens there are only 2 import plugins ( http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/forumconverter/ and http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/bbconverter/) out there and both of them are broken and not supported.

WordPress does it right in building an importer directly into the core.

Over the next 18-24 months, I expect to see a mass exodus from phpBB as they rewrite the software from ground up ( http://area51.phpbb.com/phpBB/viewtopic.php?f=75&t=41583). If bbPress provide a good migration path, it stands the chance to capture some of fleeing population.

Task

I think it would be greatly beneficial to the project if the bbPress team build a bbPress importer that supports the top 4 forum software: phpBB, Invision, SMF and vBulletin.

Such a migration tool, importer or converter will:

i) import topics and forum hierarchies into bbpress

including the relations between forums, topics and replies

and slugs for forums, topics and replies

ii) generate an .htaccess to place in the old forum directory so that old URLs are 301 redirected to new ones.

iii) import users including profiles, passwords, signatures and roles

@jjj You have mentioned at http://bbpress.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/1740 that this is more appropriate for a plugin and that bundling that code in the core of bbPress seems needless for many users that are starting off fresh.

I believe that this function is too important to be left to the mercy of others. There is a huge trust issue…if I have to entrust my data to someone, I want to make sure that they are reliable, trustworthy, good enough, and understand the software well.

I take your point about not bundling the function in the core. How about a migration plugin by the bbPress team?

[Keshav Saini]

I read all the documentation before installing buddypress but the got the same issue many others are facing. I couldn’t find any fix in any discussion thread here at buddypress site and other forums.

I followed the same procedure written in buddypress codex. I am using both the group forums and site wide forum using bbpress.

But when I post a new thread in site wide forum, the activity isn’t displayed in buddypress activity stream and my profile activity.

Here is the site http://www.environmentabout.com/community

[David Decker]

You should also try this great free plugin: “bbPress Antispam”

https://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/bbpress-antispam/

It works similar to the awesome “Antispam Bee”:

https://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/antispam-bee/

Greetinx, Dave

[John James Jacoby]

No sweat. Happy to have you around.

[Jimfire]

Thanks. As you may have guessed I’m new here.

[rhek]

Hello,

I have a BuddyPress, Multisite with bbPress installed. We want to use bbPress on the main site and the subsites. I activated bbPress on one of the subsites and have a “possible conflict” message under “Archive Slugs” for “Forums base”. The message is “Possible BuddyPress conflict: Forums page”. What do I do regarding this message?

Each subsite has a different theme. Can bbPress be setup in subsites with a different theme?

Thanks,

Rhek

[John James Jacoby]

Hi Jim – If it’s not bbPress related, you probably won’t get much help here.

Also, 10 hours is not a long enough period of time to bump your topic. These forums don’t see much traffic and the staff is volunteer only. When someone that can help you wants to, they will. If they can’t, they won’t.

bbPress looks like it’s fitting into your TwentyEleven theme nicely.

[Jimfire]

Same thing goes for my “CALENDAR” page. I have it set to PRIVATE. When a visitor hits the CALENDAR menu item, I get:

This is somewhat embarrassing, isn’t it?

It seems we can’t find what you’re looking for. Perhaps searching, or one of the links below, can help.

How do I get it to just tell the user “You have to log on to see this” ?

[Jimfire]

I have it working much better now.

I have it so that a visitor can see the home page and all of the menu items. Thats fine.

I have set some of the items on the menu to PRIVATE, so they should not be able to access those areas without being logged on.

When they hit my “discussions” item on the menu, they get a message that says “Oh bother! No forums were found here!.

Is there a way to give them a message that says “You must log on to access this area” instead?

http://www.scc4911.org

Thanks,

Jim

[Jared Atchison]

If you want to hide the menu item completely from non-logged in members there is no easy way to do that using the WordPress menu system except using CSS.

[Jimfire]

OK, I can access my forum page from the menus now, but even though my forums are set to PRIVATE, the menu lets any web user access to the forum area. How do I set up the menu item to PRIVATE?

[Jimfire]

Fantastic! Thank you. Now all I need to do is get the font size reduced in the Forum area and I’m set.

Is there an easy place to do that?

This is what it looks like right now. Now very pretty.:

http://www.scc4911.org/forums/forum/forums/union-business/

[Jared Atchison]

Add it in your menu. Appearance > Menus.

[Jimfire]

OK, here’s progress. I changed the permalinks from DEFAULT to POST NAME, and using the /forums/ url brought up my forum.

So, how do I get the WP menu to have Forums in it so my users know that it is there?

[Jimfire]

I followed your instructions. Permalinks are set to Default. When I go to the /forums/ url, I get a 404 error page.

[Jared Atchison]

First reset you permalinks by going to Settings > Permalinks. (after you activated bbP of course)

Once that is done try going to yoursite.com/forums/ (this is created for you, no page is needed)

[Jimfire]

Anyone out there?

I have deleted all my forums. Deactivated bbPress. Re-activated bbPress. Created a new formum. It is an Open, Public, Forum.

When I go to the home page, there is no item in the menu to take me to the forum.

What am I missing?

Anyone?

[John James Jacoby]

Adding…

add_filter( 'bbp_show_lead_topic', '__return_true' );

…to a custom plugin or your themes’ functions.php will separate the lead topic out from its replies.

As far as styling goes, opening up Firebug/Inspector and using the classes in the templates should be enough to get you by. Some extra classes were added in the development version of bbPress, which will hopefully be out in a few weeks.

[Jared Atchison]

Yes there is, I wrote a quick plugin for it.

Take the code from https://gist.github.com/1902067 and put it in a bbpress-css.php file inside your wp-content/plugins/ directory.

Then go to your plugins page and activate the plugin.

It will use bbpress.css from your theme directory, so my suggestion would be to make a copy of bbPress’s CSS file and move it there as a starting point, then you can edit as needed.

[jamescarson1]

Thanks Jaredatch and carminka,

You are addressing a similar thread which I just posted on. I’m cross-posting this

carminka because it could be useful for you:

Incorporating bbPress theme files, into a pre-existing theme.

jaredatch I haven’t had luck with overriding it in my theme’s css unless I use !important.

To ask the same question that I asked there, is there a way to get bbpress to use a bbpress.css in the theme folder instead of the plugin folder?

Really love bbpress… thanks

[Jared Atchison]

My last suggestion would be to deactivate all other plugins *except* bbPress. Then go and switch your theme to either TwentyTen or TwentyEleven.

This will at least eliminiate plugin/theme conflicts.