[Gautam Gupta]

Kevin my friend,

For those of us who make a living with bbPress, unilateral decisions made without visibility and with no re-course for questioning nor appeal are scary. really scary.

At least v1.1 is there for the time being, hopefully that would be released soon (after 2 bugs on 1.0.3 and 1.1 are fixed). It’s pretty stable and those who want to run a standalone, can run it and customize it with existing plugins/themes.

And about making a living, it can also be done with bbPress as a WP plugin

I think people are allowed to be a little shell-shocked at this bombshell; especially as it didn’t even warrant its own forum post, sticky or blog post. It just comes across as a footnote and unimportant.

The forum topic is this one and the announcement is here (I know no one told any of us about this blog).

For others – Justin just posted about the WP forum plugin that he has made on his own – http://justintadlock.com/archives/2010/07/16/a-wordpress-forum-plugin-using-custom-post-types

[kevinjohngallagher]

The one change I made to Zaerl Editor was snipping out the part of the code that put that needless “Code” button on the top.

If you’re on a non-US (or i suppose non English/qwerty) keyboard, the backtick key is a total git to hit. there’s quite a large difference between North American keybaords and the rest of the world.

The only disappointment is that it doesn’t seem to understand strikethrough fonts. I tried both “strike” and “del”

bbPress doesn’t process them as standard.

*sorry Zaerl mate, just seen your answer*

[kevinjohngallagher]

Tom,

I totally agree with the premise.

Focussing on the positives is the way forward.

For those of us who make a living with bbPress, unilateral decisions made without visability and with no re-course for questioning nor appeal are scary. really scary.

I for one, am totally and 100% behind the separate forum plugin for WordPress. But I think it’s ok that we ask some questions about it, and while the thread’s not in the most positive tone, I don’t think anyone has asked anything from left field, nor said anything antagonistic or derogatory.

It’s not like we’re asking for info that won’t have already been discussed when making the decision about plugin vs. standalone.

There would have been bench tests, user experiences, requirement gather – y’know numbers and paperwork. I know we’re never going to see the full documentation, but I think it’s ok to ask for an overview. Not to pick holes in it, but to feel positive that the decision is a good one, and one that we can get behind/support/make better

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

Andrew, Pete and JJJ and I have had a wee email conversation earlier in the week, before (and during) this thread started. There was some truly great info in that thread. Information that would appease some of the issues brought up here, quell some of the language & tone being used. It confirmed to me that these are the people to take bbPress forward. But that doesn’t mean I am going to put my own and my children’s livelyhood on the line and follow blindly.

everything is going to be A-okay

is alot like

Relax. We’ve done this before.

And man, that didn’t work out too well

I think people are allowed to be a little shellshocked at this bombshell; especially as it didn’t even warrant it’s own forum post, sticky or blog post. It just comes across as a footnote and unimportant. It comes across as “shit, you folks found out? um…” Now of course that ain’t true, but thats the base perception.

Apparently the scrapping of all current bbPress code and new of it’s replacement isn’t even important enough for someone to hit that “sticky” button at the bottom.

Because of this, some emotions will run high, but we’ve both been around the block enough to know that as long as people keep the conversation in house and try to resolve things then we’ll get there

Not everyone will agree with everything, but we’ll get there as long as no-one makes any derogatory comments about the software or community in a KeyNote speech or on an influential Twitter feed we’ll be grand at resolving this, and bringing folks tegether in a positive sense

The dudes who are now running the show just need to give out enough info to get control of the conversation. Once that happens, even more of life will be positive.

[_ck_]

By the way I want to address this quote:

…it’s not “Automattic” that decides what ends up in the core of WordPress – we have open discussions to set the feature lists for each release and the decisions are driven based on input from a large base of regular contributors.

You are kidding yourself if you think the community is given anything but choices on minor things. Major decisions that change the entire direction of these projects for Automattic are made every year by Matt. Changing bbPress to use backPress is the #-1 example of a single sourced decision done without any input from any contributors. bbPress as a WordPress plugin is another one.

The very first simple question I asked when I heard about backPress is “when will WordPress be changed to also use backPress” (to benefit from all the work needed and the theoretical savings from using a common function set). It’s a very easy problem to predict but was never asked and never answered, ending us up exactly where we are today.

[zaerl]

I have inserted the “code” button for the simple reason that the backtick character is difficult to be typed on a keyboard that isn’t the “standard” U.S. ASCII. This is true for the vast majority of the keyboard layouts worldwide.

The only disappointment is that it doesn’t seem to understand strikethrough fonts.

It doesn’t understand strikethrough cause that tag (the obsolete ‘s’) isn’t enabled by default on bbPress.

I provide support for standard tags: strong, em, a, img, ul, ol, li, blockquote, code and the non standard img that is widely used.

My plugin do not enable new tags (and implicitly new buttons) in current version 0.3.2 but it does in 0.4 (trunk). I have taken my position regarding the future of bbPress and so I will not upload new plugins and/or updates (https://bbpress.org/plugins/topic/zaerl-editor/page/2/#post-5992). Anyway if you need the new zaerl Editor with custom buttons and other fancy features write me a couple of lines. za AT zaerl.com

[bobbyh]

Look in your plugins for an extra “space” that is sending output (plugins aren’t supposed to send output). This could also be in one of the files you edited or in one of your plugins.

Here is somebody who experienced the same thing: https://bbpress.org/forums/topic/errors-in-installphp-line-10-and-functionsphp-line-1898#post-12300

[Gautam Gupta]

Can we focus on the positives:

bbPress was laying there dormant – it now has a future. This future isn’t going to suit everyone but that’s life.

Exactly.

[pagal]

my recent wp error log file

http://pastebin.com/raw.php?i=Vw2XbdRb

Please see it and suggest a solution

[deadlyhifi]

Can we focus on the positives:

bbPress was laying there dormant – it now has a future. This future isn’t going to suit everyone but that’s life.

I’m not at all surprised bbPress will become dependant on WordPress. People have wanted an easy to integrate solution for a long time. The majority of support posts on this forum tend to be about integration (if they’re not CSS based!). bbPress as a plugin will satisfy those needs.

Yes, there will be certain users that get burned, but there are ways around it.

People are falling into 3 groups:

1. Need a forum that works with WordPress
2. Need a standalone forum, but some WordPress integration is ideal (sign in/users)
3. Needs a standalone forum.

1. Satisfied customers
2. Satisfied customers – this will be easier than it’s ever been. I know, I’ve spent hours and hours theming bbP, making sure cookies work, and all the other hoops I’ve had to jump through.
3. Either run WP and don’t use it (just let it sit there, but really, how many sites don’t have some kind of blog associated with them?), and if it’s really not ideal or you’re completely against it there are plenty of standalone forum softwares out there.

At least we know what is happening and people can make informed decisions about which way to go with their site.

The decision has been made so accept it and use all this energy and knowledge to contribute to the project and make a great product.

_ck_, you know I always appreciate your efforts towards plugins and your extensive knowledge on bbPress, so why not use it to participate and keep the new bbP plugin streamlined – as much as it can be considering your comments on WP3.0 performance.

[pagal]

Support Ticket Answer,

Core files are generated when one of your scripts fails

I advise to check/update your plugns in order to fix this problem.

You are free to delete them all

Thank you.

---

Kind regards,

Yuri Peters

Just Host

http://www.justhost.com

It’s definately not from bbPress mate

@ Rich Pedley I’m still confuse that which bbpress/wp plugin is creating trouble and generating core files.

[mr_pelle]

But the users in Group3, the people who chose this as standalone forum software and didn’t make that decision based on WordPress – they’re being thrown out on their ear. With no warning.

That’s exactly what I was trying to say!

By the way, http://twitter.com/petemall/status/18674039981

[_ck_]

What’s ironic is that while the question itself is not spam, what is the purpose of 100 blogs/forums, so automated they have to be controlled from one location?

ie. Sounds like possible search engine spam to me.

But if there’s an honest use, please correct me.

[_ck_]

With all the eyeballs looking at WordPress and all the new faces every few years, it’s amazing to me how much code optimization falls through the cracks and is never addressed.

bbPress as a plugin is now going to be exposed to that. In fact, ironically in 0.9 there are functions from earlier versions of WordPress that were never optimized and do “expensive” recalculations and yet it’s STILL significantly faster than 1.0 with the newer functions from BackPress.

WordPress still has places where it calculates kinds of conversion tables yet never stores them statically for when it will likely be used again in the same page load. All those eyeballs looking at the code never see it and never fix it.

WordPress after all these years STILL uses the poorly performing SQL_CALC_FOUND_ROWS, something that was discovered and fixed in bbPress 0.9 but ironically was re-introduced with BackPress in 1.0, and will likely continue as a plugin.

My problem with “progress” is regression. It happens often because no-one questions the bloat and then the bloat starts to hide mistakes because the code is too hard to follow and people forget the original purpose of a function.

But by all means, keep throwing junk into the core, don’t dare keep it isolated in a plugin where it can be examined and improved easily (ie. avatars, tinymce, phpmailer, etc.)

They never do version freezes for long periods of time to clean up and optimize code, they just pile on features in the name of progress.

Go install WP 2.1 and check the memory and query footprint.

Then install WP 3.0 and compare. It’s fairly disgusting in comparison.

[_ck_]

@Marius, but everyone downloads different ones.

I’d never want to see even a handful of my plugins built into bbPress by default.

As much as people express the desire for a program to do everything they want out-of-the-box, it’s a VERY bad idea with software. Makes things too bulky. WordPress today is a perfect example of what happens when you give into that desire, you get bloated, overloaded, slow code.

But sadly they don’t believe in plugins – I’m kinda surprised even akismet is not hard coded into WordPress.

bbPress should have been a lightweight framework, half the size that it is now, that maybe shipped with a dozen plugins that are OFF by default. Too late now though.

[kevinjohngallagher]

Thats a leap mate.

The joy of bbPress is that if you want something, you can use a plugin. It keeps things nice and light for those that don’t want it

2. Less (code) is more

3. Simplicity is a feature

https://bbpress.org/about/

That said, _ck_, congratulations!!

Its wonderful for it to be so obvious as to how much you’ve contributed.

[Marius-]

Which is a strong indication that a huge majority of BBPress users wants the functionality offered by many of your plugins. Which should make it obvious that many of them should be built straight into BBpress by default.

[Ivaylo Draganov]

Just came to my mind that bbPress does not support bbCode without a plugin.

But the good thing is that this technique can be easily adopted for use with HTML input by simply changing the toolbar set used by markItUp.

[Ivaylo Draganov]

woot – that zaerl editor is right on the point, I hadn’t noticed it before. You could also check out this topic on how to implement markItUp as editor for bbPress:

https://bbpress.org/forums/topic/bbcode-toolbar-with-markitup-editor

The explanation is for bbCode, but it could be easily changed for HTML input.

[pedagog]

Hello Kevin

Thanks for your reply. I’m not using WP, but I think I get your point. At the moment, I can register new members through ‘my’ admin, and it saves the details to my database ‘and’ bbpress.

But as you are more than aware, for various reasons, when a new student logs in to bbpress, they are registered as ‘inactive’.

I’ve not started working on a single login point from ‘my’ site yet.

I will try to tinker with what you have said and get back to you on my success (or failure).

Thanks for your input – I’ll get to work on it.

[Ivaylo Draganov]

A well written post too!

Thanks! Just a bit too many links for Akistmet though

And of course it could not be seen in action on my forum, because it is visible only to logged in users… silly me

The bbpress.org forums could also use a simple toolbar. Not so sophisticated but at least like the one on wordpress.org

[kevinjohngallagher]

Morning Peter,

It’s cool if you disagree. I’m confident we could all pick something in WordPress in the core that we think should still be a plug-in; and of course there is no right answer. What I’m not sure you’re aware of though, and you might be, is just how different the “overhead” between bbPress and WordPress is.

bbPress0.9 loads and runs at 10 or under SQL queries per page. Including the front page. Thanks to certain DB/query tweaks, and some wonderful _CK_ code, I have that at 8 SQL queries on one of my smallest intranet forums.

This is in comparison to the same 8 queries generated by the new wp_nav_menu in WP3.0. In fact the wp_nav_menu calls a not totally-in-expensive INNER JOIN for each post-type reference in the menu. It’s not a set 8 calls, without judging anything based on what it will become, if wp_nav_menu starts to accept custom post types natively, that’s going to shoot way up.

In a flat comparison, the default theme of WP3.0 with no plug-ins running, generates 19 SQL queries. Twice as much as bbPress0.9.

As someone mentioned earlier, the new bbPress plug-in would be lighter or sleeker. If it takes more SQL calls to generate the header and footer of WP than it does to load an entire bbPress forum – how does that work?

(I do realise that not all SQL queries are equal, but I do think it’s quite a good initial benchmark. Especially if you look at SAVEQUERIES output and see what sort of query each is, and its execution time.)

Additionally, as someone with your background with WP, I would love to hear your take on the caching issue. For two of my websites that have relatively ok traffic, caching is essential on WP. There are plug-ins that do this brilliantly, so thats no worries. But thats very much a “1 to n” nature. Forums are an “n to n” nature; and really don’t lean well with caching, especially in the flat-file constant-updated format.

How would one percieve that to affect WP based websites with a forum plugin of this nature attatched?

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

I think there is a viewpoint that is being missed here.

People are falling into 3 groups:

1. Need a forum that works with WordPress
2. Need a standalone forum, but some WordPress integration is ideal (sign in/users)
3. Needs a standalone forum.

There appears to be a presumption is that we’re all in Group 1 and that we’re fighting change. That’s not the case at all.

I’m actually in favour of there being a WordPress forum plug-in. I think loads of people here will be. I also think that with JJJ working on it, and Justin Tadlock’s second attempt out there in the wild that it will go really well. I wish it the best of luck, and if we can offer advice or war stories or anything to help out – we’re here. We’re here because we support FOSS

The issue arises here is if you’re in Group 2, you have a decision whether to “upgrade” to running everything through WordPress or not. It’s just been presumed that’s your actual goal. At this point in time, we’d like some information (positives/negatives at a minimum) and info on how this decision has came about. People in Group 2 could move into Group 1 easily if given more information than:

“everything is going to be A-okay”

“Like it or not, this is the hand we’ve been dealt…”

But the users in Group3, the people who chose this as standalone forum software and didn’t make that decision based on WordPress – they’re being thrown out on their ear. With no warning. JJJ has stated, and I think we all appreciate that he’s taken the time to sit and answer some questions, that bbPress1.1 will be it’s last. Well, thats announced as bbPress1.1 is 1 trac ticket away from being released. How much warning is that??

If you’re in Group3, and large chunk of our support questions come from people who are, you will now be ‘forced’ to run WordPress if you want to stick with bbPress.

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

I suppose what I’m saying is this. Changes in Life and in FOSS happen. Some we like, some we don’t. But there has to be a carrot with every stick, or people start to feel publicly flogged.

I want JJJ and Pete and anyone who helps them to succeed in achieving their goals. But I’ve scanned this forum page, and the emails they were kind enough to send me, and right now, if you didn’t come here specifically to use a forum inside WordPress… I can’t see the carrot.

There are people here alot cleverer than me, and alot better at wording than myself, so if i’m missing the carrot, please do a Denzel “explain it to me like a 3 year old”.

[pedagog]

Hello

I’m not sure if anyone can help, but it would be very much appreciated if they can.

I have a registration, login and update personal info system that I use for my site. I am trying to integrate bbpress into my site.

However, I would also like to integrate the registration and login system of bbpress into my site. That is, I would like my members to use the registration and login system of my site, and have that update and use the database of bbpress.

Therefore, all of the members of my site will only use the admin features of my site, not bbpress.

Has anyone done this successfully? Or can anyone help please?

PS: I like bbpress a lot, it’s just that I think it would be easier to manipulate my system rather than bbpress’.

Thanks if you can.

[Peter Westwood]

It will probably also suffer from what I call the “kitchen sink” syndrome of WordPress where massive chunks of code are added as features which should have been plugins. But Automattic in general has a “not invented here” attitude towards plugins – if it’s not in the core, it doesn’t count.

Firstly, it’s not “Automattic” that decides what ends up in the core of WordPress – we have open discussions to set the feature lists for each release and the decisions are driven based on input from a large base of regular contributors.

Secondly, I strongly disagree with the implication that WordPress has a “kitchen sink” feature set – in fact we try very hard to only bring in the things which have a wide audience and leave the more niche things for plugins.

One of the factors which helps a feature come into the core is the existence of a plugin which is popular showing a clear demand for a feature and sometimes providing a starting point for the implementation as well.

[pagal]

Support Ticket Sent!

[Rich Pedley]

It’s a hosting issue. You should be ok to delete them, but I’d recommend talking to your host first.