If the integration between bbPress and BuddyPress isn’t working, it might be because BuddyPress is in maintenance mode and needs to be updated. In that instance, bbPress turns itself off since BuddyPress may not be reliable loaded.
If you have a custom theme (one which you control and maintain yourself) you can create a file named ‘bbpress.php’ in the root of your theme to act as the “wrapper” template for all of your forum content.
Template files prefixed with ‘page-‘ are for WordPress pages, and also reserved for actual Page Template designs. It’s a bit confusing, but you quickly adapt. 
WordPress custom post types use the ‘archive-‘ prefix to denote the default fallback template file if you have not created a WordPress page using the page template in its place.
You could also create a WordPress page with the slug ‘forums’ and make a template called ‘page-forums.php’ and bbPress would default to that too. There are several ways to skin this cat, and bbPress comes with the ones that are tho most flexible.
I’ll be on a work related trip through October 1, so my availability to help will be diminished. In the meantime be sure to keep your eyes out for plugin conflicts, and please document any duplicatable bugs you find at http://bbpress.trac.wordpress.org.
Moderators, the power is yours.
Is this after importing from bbPress 1.0? If not, do you have any plugins installed that might be altering the queries is strange ways?
@Andre – you’d need to do some switch_to_blog() action to pull it off, but it’s doable.
I think the culprit is the bbPress 1.0 caching functions for first posts and authors. Working on a fix.
I have been able to install it, no problem. I just wanted to keep my blog theme and to also build a new theme from the ground up for my forum. So two separate themes for the blog and the forum. That’s why I wanted to install bbpress as part of a second wordpress install in a different directory. This way I could set one active theme for the forums that would be independent of the blog’s theme.
Actually, I was able to accomplish this. My blog is installed in “mywebsite.com”. Then I also installed wordpress in “mywebsite.com/forums”. The problem with this method is that bbpress adds a “forums” base to the URL. So the forums index ends up being ” “mywebsite.com/forums/forums”. The solution was to create a new index page and make it the static home page in wordpress. The index page that I created was called “index”. So the home page/ index page of the forums ended up being “mywebsite.com/forums/index”, this is more presentable, and I was happy with that, but there was still a problem. When ever you would click on a forum in the index… the breadcrumbs at the top of the page would still show the “forums” base that bbpress adds to the directory. So if you visit a forum called “chat”, the breadcrumbs at the top of the forum would still read “index/forums/chat”. So I was able to solve the problem with the home page, but the “forums” base is still part of the actual directory, which ends up being a problem in this case.
Like you said though, I should just install the plugin as part of my blog, and that would eliminate these problems, except that then the forums would be constricted by the blog’s theme, and I really don’t want that.
I think you misunderstand. Just search for ‘bbpress’ in plugins. You should find bbPress 2.0 there, the brand new bbPress plugin. It’s a straight forward install and should work straight out of the box with your default 2010/2011 theme, or with minimal tweaks in any other theme.
Thanks for the reply. I thought I read somewhere that bbpress can be integrated with another wordpress database as long as they are both under the same domain name. Oh well, I’ll just stick with a different bb program. This doesn’t seem worth the trouble.
You really don’t want to do it this way. The whole point of bbPress is to have an easy way to integrate your forum software with your main WordPress install’s theme and userbase.
I run a fairly large site with a standard integrated bbPress forum, categorized by groups. I’ve been able to successfully update to version 1.5. However my attempts at migrating to bbPress 2.0 have so far been unsuccessful.
All I’ve tried so far is the default process:
Tools -> Import -> bbPress Standalone
I’m given a path to bb-config.php, at the root of my WordPress install, which seems to be correct. Going by these default settings has worked just fine on a much smaller test site. On this big one however, no such luck.
We have ~20’000 threads and ~15’000 users. If you’ve attempted to migrate a fairly large website to bbPress 2.0 from the legacy BuddyPress forum, kindly share your findings.
Thanks for confirming. I’d be happy to add it to the docs somewhere, but it doesn’t seem to be set up for contributions at the moment. Hopefully that’ll eventually come along with the other site improvements bound to happen when bbpress.org is updated to bbPress 2.
Here’s an update. I was able to get further by adding the following to ‘step3’ of the bbpress.php file.
ini_set("memory_limit", "500M");
but, it seems the import script lags behind incredibly.
Is there no way to run this on the command line?
Is there any reason why it is so inefficient with memory usage?
Okay this gets even stranger.
So I have a Forum that has 418 topics in it (and +25 hidden, whatever that means…), spread out 50 topics / page over 9 pages.
Here’s where it gets weird:
Pages 1 – 5 are showing their posts in the correct order (most recent at the top). However, they are still not the most recent topics all together. They’re the 50 oldest topics, sorted in the correct order (so post 368, 367, 366, etc.)
Pages 6 – 9 are then showing their posts in oldest first.
The oddity prevails.
We are creating a custom theme and have been trying to activate “hot tags” like those being used on wordpress.org/forums and other boards. I’ve searched around the board and found threads that are pretty dated and the code isnt working. BBPress has probably moved past most of the old suggestions.
What do I need to do to add the tag heat map to an area on my custom theme on mysite.com/discuss?
I am using bbpress 2.0 plugin for WordPress. I am trying to have all the forums listed, subforums/categories, on the first page. Much like how the forums are displayed in the Dashboard. Is this possible ? If not, how do I go about making it possible.
I posted this over on BuddyPress’s support but can’t get any support there. Hoping someone here can help because this issue is holding up an urgent job
OP – http://buddypress.org/community/groups/how-to-and-troubleshooting/forum/topic/bp-1-5-bbpress-2-site-wide-slugs/
I want to be able to use /forums for the bbp’s site wide forum on a new site. However when I try, there is a conflict with BP. I have to change bbp’s slug to something like /discussion, which leaves /forums with a message: “The forums component has not been set up yet” because the group forums have not been set up, and don’t want to use them.
When I try to get bp to use a different page, and use /forums with bbp, it doesn’t work – I just get a blank page and forums cannot be accessed.
Is there a way to get bbp’s sitewide forums to use /forums ??
Thanks for your help.
It worked! Thank you so much, anointed! Now just have to sort out how to format those pesky Gravatars, but I hope I can handle it on my own (wouldn’t want to waste your time!)
The way that I have my wordpress directory setup is “mywebsite.com/forums”. That’s where I have wordpress installed. When I installed bbpress, I got “mywebsite.com/forums/forums” as the URL to the forums index.
Is there anyway to change this so that I can keep wordpress in the “mywebsite.com/forums” directory on my server and still make “mywebsite.com/forums” as the URL to the forums index?
I already have a wordpress theme installed in my home directory, so I thought it would be easier to manage the forums in its own admin control panel. That’s why I installed it in a different directory.
Something else that I was wondering though… in the case where bbpress is intalled alongside the main wordpress site (blog, news page, homepage, etc.), is it separately customizable? Can bbpress have its own theme?
I looked at “http://codex.wordpress.org/Using_Permalinks”, it reads: “For performance reasons, it is not a good idea to start your permalink structure with the category, tag, author, or postname fields.”
I can’t seem to be able to use the recommended link structures with bbpress forums and topics such as /%post_id%/%postname%/.
Will the permalink structure greatly affect the loading time of my different pages or has this issue been resolved with the latest version of WordPress?
Any chance making it so all the comment forums for a multisite installation are handled by one of the sites.
Example
1.abc.com, 2.abc.com, and 3.abc.com have their comments in the forums at forums.abc.com?
My topics are showing up oldest first…I don’t believe this is the default setting, but I’m not sure where I can change this. Anyone know how this is controlled?
@krisl
Except that the two don’t seem to work together. Which is my confusion. If you go to BuddyPress and Forums you see that you can install Site Wide Forums, which is BBPress 2. But then you see this
“You may activate both Group and Site Wide forums, but this may create a poor experience for your members.”
So, if you already have/had BuddyPress Forums, and decide to want to move to BBPress…..what do you do?
@ericdano You do not have to move it (as far as I am aware)
We do want to move it though, our users prefer standard forums, not group forums..
@anointed Thank you for prompt reply, that’s good news
Kris
