[kevinjohngallagher]

So this will be another of my unpopular posts, i’ve had a whole week of working on bbPress, so this is my 3rd of the week – apologies to all.

It’ll really help this conversation if you read http://bbpress.org/forums/topic/future-of-bbpress#post-60022 which is written by the wonderful Andy Peatling who has integrated bbPress with BuddyPress (and therefore into WordPress). Basically, he is the authority on the matter.

I bring this up because I thought today, what the heck are we doing? WordPress integration is the single most asked for feature, it’s the reason a large number of people choose bbPress, and according to Matt:

Strategically the most important thing we need to figure out is how to integrate bbPress better with WP

-http://bbpress.org/forums/topic/future-of-bbpress

Ok, but if we look at what Andy has said, in order for this to happen we need to remove BackPress from bbPress. Except… 90% of the changes from bbPress0.9 to bbPress1.0 was adding BackPress.

So, if integration is the plan (even as a plugin), and integration = no backPress, then whatever platform we build the fully integrated bbPress out of is bbPress without BackPress, or as we commonly call it bbPress0.9.

So then why are we building on top of bbP1.0, when we’re going to have to port that code back to 0.9 in the future or worse, attempt to combine the two. Why are we focussing on features that are already in WordPress as standard, given that they will work as via the WP functions once integrated.

How far down the rabbit hole are we going to go before we take a slightly longer term look?

Anyone have any thoughts for a Friday evening?

[kevinjohngallagher]

Just over 12 weeks ago:

…documentation team has been put together comprised of Tom39Away, pmall, justintadlock, and Nightgunner5…

http://bbpress.org/blog/2009/12/2009-12-09-meetup/

http://weblogtoolscollection.com/archives/2009/12/11/bbpress-lives/

I’m afraid i don’t know any of you personally, and we’ve had no IRC “weekly” meetings for 5 weeks, so i was wondering if any of you had any updates, or things you needed help with?

[Ashish Kumar (Ashfame)]

Offtopic- But in my opinion bbPress should have only the basic feature set and additional functionality (may be popular) should be supported by plugins. And by plugins which I mean some actual official plugins because the functionality is popular among other forum scripts.

[johnhiler]

I believe Gravatars are supported by default in v 1.0+.

Because Gravatars are in the core, I remember reading once that it should be easier to create avatar plugins using the Gravatar hooks. I think Bavatar uses these hooks:

https://bbpress.org/plugins/topic/bavatars/

[kevinjohngallagher]

Any webmaster that isn’t really tech savvy…

bbPress is not aimed at non-tech-savvy people. Infact the same with WordPress really. Editing of files and the ability to use FTP is a must or the thing won’t work (you have to edit and upload a config file).

Editing or changing anything involves some basic-PHP knowledge really, and this is pretty much always going to be the way of it – if you don’t got for a premium theme/framework/plugin.

It’s unbelievable actually in this day and age.

We hear this from time to time, and i can’t understand why it comes up. But it comes down to “basic” features and what is now considered “standard” features for forums. The difference is that “basic” features are things that forums need to do it’s job. “Standard” features are from a personal perception based on what other forum solutions have – that doesn’t make them any less valid as feature requests.

bbPress is always going to be feature-less in comparison to other forums out there, with the reliance on people writing plugins or editing the code to customize things for themselves – thats an aim, not a side effect. As much as the people on this forum try and help out those that are new or not quite sure, the realism is we’re years away from a free “out of the box” solution for 90% of the requests people make.

[af3]

Dailytalker, i’m not a coder, so i hope this will point you to the right direction:

1. i’m running wpmu+buddypress+bbpress and installed bp-fbconnect plugin

2. for bbpress, i followed the fbconnect instruction in facebook website; it has a step by step instruction how to get the fbconnect installed in a page (meaning, hack your bbpress theme files).

[Ashish Kumar (Ashfame)]

Integrate them so that user tables are shared

http://blog.ashfame.com/2009/07/integrate-bbpress-10-with-wordpress-28/

In WP setting, change the setting that only required users can comment

and then in bbPress disable registrations or redirect them to WP register page

http://blog.ashfame.com/2009/11/disable-bbpress-registrations/

Hope that helps!

[gofastbargains]

experts please swing by http://www.gofastbargains.com and tell me what you guys think. buddypress is not working 100%, still working out the bugs…

[chrishajer]

You could rename the tables with the prefix that works, to get around this. But you’d have to update the data in the tables as well, I think there are permissions maybe that refer to the table by name.

Or, you could further troubleshoot connecting to that database and selecting data from the tables with the prefix you currently use.

I’ve not heard of that problem before, but there probably aren’t many people who upgraded from .9 to 1.0 AND had a custom table prefix. The fact that it wants to perform a new installation when the bb_ tables don’t exist makes sense, since bbPress does not know there is a current installation.

I haven’t looked at the upgrade code to see if maybe there’s a bug where the database connection fails due to a non-default table prefix, but you could check that as well.

[r-a-y]

Thanks Chris and John for the replies.

Cleaning up the meta data would be great in a future version of bbPress.

[DaddyJ]

Having followed what I presume is the “deep” integration method outlined in various posts here (i.e., replacing the 4 keys with the 8 keys) and gotten WordPress and bbPress to talk to each other, I find that Search in bbPress doesn’t work reliably: some words in a post it refuses to find, others it does. I’m a first-timer to the bbP world and don’t know where to start bug shooting this.

[websitedesign]

I have a current website that has both wp and bb press. I want the visitors to register in order to make a comment or post on the forum. I do not like the way that the have two seperate logins and registrations. Is there a way to have one general login ?

I think the best solution is to change the link for:

You must be logged in to post a comment.

How do I change this to go to the bbpress login screen instead of wp?

[Scott Kingsley Clark]

I wanted to let everyone know that I’ve been working on a clone of bbPress which is built entirely in Pods. I’m not intending it to replace bbPress, but I am intending to continue development of the functionality to bring it to more of a vBulletin level. That’s the big picture anyway, I’m nearly done with getting bbPress functionality done itself.

You can see my progress here:

http://www.scottkclark.com/forums/beta-testers-unite/current-status-of-the-forums-package/

Once I’ve completed it, I will post the package on the Pods site so you can just import the package into your own site.

For info about Pods, go to http://pods.uproot.us/

[paulhawke]

As far as I know, there’s no way to modify the text from the admin area of bbPress. However it’s not that hard to find the file to change – if you look in either ‘bb-templates’ or ‘my-templates’ you will find your theme. In the theme directory you’ll find “register.php” – you can make your edits there.

[victor980]

I was able to convert everything successfully! But when I login as the administrator I don’t get the Admin link to access the “administration panel”. Has anyone had this same issue and found a solution???

[56alifar]

Resolved because of this great new plugin:

https://bbpress.org/plugins/topic/bb-open-in-new-window-plugin/

Thanks to Keith Graham

[admingsc]

Hi, all. Is it possible to change the wording on the registration page through the Admin dashboard alone? I’d like to add additional instructions for users, but I don’t know how to code (the BB was built by a design team, and I’d like to avoid having to pay them to make such a small change.)

My theme is Navigation for bbPress 1.3

Thanks!

[elforesto]

I’m attempting to do an upgrade of bbPress from 0.9.2 and get the following error every time I attempt to access any bbPress pages:

ERROR: Could not establish a database connection

I did some experimenting and found that when I change the table prefix from the one I’ve been using back to the default of bb_, I’m prompted to perform a new installation. The problem with this is that I don’t want to lose the existing contents of the forum.

Any advice or suggestions would be most appreciated.

[chrishajer]

Allesandro, your request is outside the scope of bbPress support. So, if you post your contact information here, (as you did,) I will close the topic and people can contact you with their offers of assistance.

[Jonathan Stegall]

I’d love to hear if anyone has found a way to successfully convert the format of the passwords from phpBB to bbPress.

[paulhawke]

Where are we now?

Aside from the questions surrounding integration with WordPress, another of our big questions is “how do I import from _____” (insert a different forum product of your choosing)

Right now the approach is ad-hoc at best: We are handing a PHP script around hand-to-hand that is able to convert a phpBB v2.0.x forum over to bbPress v. 0.9, and if you want to convert a different forum (say, SMF) the accepted wisdom is to install phpBB, convert to that, then convert to bbPress 0.9 and then upgrade.

The official coding standards for WordPress state:

Avoid touching the database directly. If there is a defined function that can get the data you need, use it. Database abstraction (using functions instead of queries) helps keep your code forward-compatible and, in cases where results are cached in memory, it can be many times faster.

As it stands bbPress imports clearly violate that principle by using the script we are passing around.

Solving the problem

Importing data clearly is an example where a strategy pattern solves things in an elegant fashion.

The strategy pattern (also known as the policy pattern) is a particular software design pattern, whereby algorithms can be selected at runtime.

The strategy pattern is useful for situations where it is necessary to dynamically swap the algorithms used in an application. The strategy pattern is intended to provide a means to define a family of algorithms, encapsulate each one as an object, and make them interchangeable. The strategy pattern lets the algorithms vary independently from clients that use them.

More concretely, this means creating a bbPress Import plugin which provides an overall multi-step process, and delegates to an external sub-plugin to retrieve the external datasource specific steps. I would argue that this ought to be a plugin (and remain a plugin rather than being pulled into the core of bbPress) because once you’ve imported from a given external forum, you can deactivate and uninstall the “import” code as its no longer required.

Roadmap

1. We need to create a basic import plugin. — This I have done, it’s experimental and I’d like some more eyes on the code before calling it “done”
2. We need to create import strategies for external forums, starting with phpBB2 — This I have done, by extracting SQL from the script we all pass hand-to-hand. Again, it needs more eyes on the code as a QA step.
3. We need to create import strategies for other external forums, specifically SMF and phpBB3 — this is where the strategy pattern comes into its own – each can be developed independently and combined later. Its also a great place for community input.

Looking further out

The import plugin relies on calling the internal bb_new_post, bb_new_topic, bb_new_forum and to a certain degree the bb_new_user methods. As we move toward bbPress being a plugin to WordPress, these will become the only way to import data, as the script we pass around will become evermore obsolete.

Secondly, WordPress itself has an import framework. I suspect that any “import plugin” we write now will become somewhat obsolete in that timeframe. That said, if we do things right, the import strategies we create might migrate over. What I dont know is the timeframe. Is the bbPress-as-a-plugin-to-Wordpress change close enough on the horizon that we should simply target the WordPress import framework directly?

Thoughts / comments?

[Ashish Kumar (Ashfame)]

No worries! You are at the right place

[kevinjohngallagher]

In this instance, i would write a script that set a new password for them, and emailed them it. (can/should be done outwith bbPress).

In the email i’d tell them why they are getting it, and suggest that they log in and choose a new one.

It’s not ideal, but this isn’t really a common siutaiton so i doubt there’s a plugin for it.

[David-]

I achieved this within 30mins or less. Here’s how to go about it:

The first thing you need to do is download the latest phpbb, and install on a subdomain (I name mine phpbb, like this: http://www.mysite.com/phpbb).

Then download the Smf 2.0 to Phpbb converter here: http://dicky.askmaggymae.com/files/SMF_20B3_to_phpBB3.zip

Now upload the zip file to the root directory where you installed phpbb (in my case: http://www.mysite.com/phpbb)

I suggest you upload the zip file directly, then extract from your cpanel file manager in order not to mess up with the folder structure.

Now point your browser to where you installed phpbb, in my case: http://www.yoursite.com/phpbb/install/index.php and then click on the convert tab, and a list of converters will come up, you’ll see smf 2.o listed there. Just continue from there following the instructions listed.

During the convert there’s a stage where phpbb would be asking for the path to your smf 2.0 board, simply enter it. In my case smf was on: http://www.mysite.com/forums, so I entered: ../forums. Initially my smf was installed at: http://forums.mysite.com, I kept getting errors, so I just moved it with my cpanel file manager to: http://www.mysite.com/forums. And the whole process went smoothly.

But if your smf is on the root, just enter this value there: ../

If you follow the above instructions, you should get your smf converted to phpbb without a glitch.

Now it’s time to convert to BBpress (the mighty bbpress).

Download the latest version, and install exactly where you want it to be, in my case I installed it on the root which is http://www.mysite.com. You must install bbpress using the same database with the phpbb you just converted.

Now download the phpbb to bbpress converter here: http://members.lycos.co.uk/wmnkhayal/files/phpbb3tobbpress%20converter.tar.gz

Extract the zip on your desktop, and you’ll end up with two files.

Upload the phpbb3tobbpress.php file to the root directory of your phpbb (in my case: http://www.mysite.com/phpbb)

copy the other file which is: _phpbb3_pass.php to your newly installed bbpress plugins directory. Copy this to bb-plugins folder and not to my plugins.

Now point your browser to where you installed phpbb, and add the link of the converter at the end, in my case this was: http://www.mysite.com/phpbb/phpbb3tobbpress.php and follow the instructions to convert your phpbb board to bbpress.

As simple as that. I’m no expert, so anybody should be able to do this. Anyways I’m available to questions.

Welcome to bbpress!

[jasbg]

Thanks a lot ashfame !

As you observed I managed to get rather confused about the connections between the different systems here.

I will follow your advice and test the combination you mention here !

Jens