Before bbpress I used SMF (Simpe Machines Forum) http://www.simplemachines.org/. SMF is also open source and it offers much more features than bbpress and it has much more developer. I changed to bbpress for two reasons:
I searched for something which I could better integrate into wordpress and I thought that wordpress and bbpress are more SEO friendly than SMF and Tinyportal.
When I changed from SMF to bbpress I lost about 50% of my previous forum members. It’s because bbpress doesn’t offer as much features than SMF. Some members complaint because of this, thats why I know it.
what is the point of a forum if you can’t post photos…
I can honestly say, since using my first Bulletin Board back in the very early 90s, that i’ve never uploaded a photo to a forum.
Why not just include the majority of them and have them turn on/turn off able for people who want a more simple forum and people who want dozens of features
And which magical elves would build, debug, and maintain all these wonderful features that at least some people don’t want?
I have to agree. I want all of CKS plugins included into the new bbpress. I know some people like simple, but I for one don’t. I want all the features of a normal message board like phpbb etc. Otherwise, what is the point of a forum if you can’t post photos, easily bold/underline etc all within a little bar for each posting, have new post notifications. Why not just include the majority of them and have them turn on/turn off able for people who want a more simple forum and people who want dozens of features? If there isn’t the same plugins available for 1.1 and beyond like there is with 9.6 ….I won’t upgrade the forum, I will simply leave it as it or start another one using phpbb etc.
@chris and kevin, I do not understand what you want to tell me? Shall I stop to use bbpress and just use facebook instead?
Do you think that the time for forums is over?
I just want to use the facebook network to promote my blog and my forums thats all.
Agree with grassrootspa.
By the way, mimicked your forum’s looks (only the table part 
) – http://forum.gaut.am/ (This is the Mystique theme which I have ported today to bbPress, still under development)
There’s still plenty I want to do with it – most of that will happen when I purchase a new domain for it. 
I’m glad you like it. I must say, however, that I’m not too happy with it.
I also preferred the fluid look for a while, but I found that more and more people are using wide-screens – some even HD, so there’s a lot of white-space, even on 1280×800 (my current resolution).
I quite like those designs. If you didn’t have the ‘Powered by bbPress’, I wouldn’t even know which forum software you were using (only at a glance, though). I like what you have going there. I’ve been trying to incorporate avatars in the forum list, but with no luck.
I’m not too sure what you mean. I think you should open up a new topic for this – I have a funny feeling this one might be closed because we’re going off topic.
Michael:
Everyone’s different, but I do like your forum’s current look. Looks very sophisticated and more like a vBulletin theme than a bbPress theme. Maybe your new one will be even better though.
Haha, I liked BusinessLike too and was actually going to build a new theme around it as well (I prefer the fluid look, the fixed width feels limiting as to what you can do). After a bit of playing just decided to make my current theme fluid.
(This was my old layout structure: http://SportsTalkPA.com/
Here is the new fluid one: http://NewsTalkPA.com/
Obviously the colors are different, but you get the general idea.
I’m running into problems with the forum.php and frontpage.php coding for some reason (see the bottom: last poster, last poster gravatar, link to last post in forum are not generating properly) The last poster/gravatar stuff is appearing on the wrong line for some reason and the link to the last forum post doesn’t work.
Gautam: Thanks. I thought that because I made the forum only show categories, the recent conversations should have more information. Otherwise there would be too much whitespace.
If you do, let me know so I can comment.
grassrootspa: Thanks very much. You think so? I still would like to make changes to it. Would you do that if it was your forum?
I downloaded a template called BusinessLike from AwesomStyles.com and modified most of it.
Thanks for your kind comments guys.
I’ve searched for hours but can’t find out how to accomplish this…
If I have WPMU subdomain blogs installed at: blogname.domain.com, how do I install a bbPress forum within one of these subdomain blogs at: blogname.domain.com/forum?
Since there is no actual subdomain configured within cPanel and the WPMU subdomain blogs are virtual, I don’t have a folder there to install bbPress into.
I only need to install a bbPress forum within 1 WPMU subdomain blog, however, I will take a solution that does this for all subdomain blogs, if need be.
From there, I’m assuming that I can integrate the bbPress installation(s) with WPMU so that user accounts can be shared, like usual?
Need to figure this one out very soon!
Thank you!!
@ Michael:
Your forum is incredible. One of the best bbPress designs I have ever seen. Did you do it all yourself?
It was _ck_’s work, her post just happened to be mangled by bbPress and become unusable.
Excellent Chris! I know it’s a very simple plugin, but you should still submit it to the bbPress plugin directory.
It’s running perfectly in 0.9.0.6.
Have you tried out this stats plugin? It gives stats on number of topics and posts and registered users… it’s really great:
https://bbpress.org/plugins/topic/mini-stats/
Nothing is dead until it stops breathing and its heart stops beating, bbpress is opensource, if you like it as a forum and want it to continue then get coding, the wordpress codex says of opensource:
“open source – is simply programming code that can be read, viewed, modified, and distributed, by anyone who desires. …”
The next thing is promote it, if you have a blog do what I have done here: http://www.macmend.com/archives/114
If you just have a forum with no blog then use what I have done above as a sticky topic.
hmm why no stats plugin for bbpress?
Facebook connect would be very useful. I have about 600 facebook friends….unfortunately they don’t want to join my bbpress forum. They prefer my facebook group forums. That’s the problem. When I post a topic in my bbpress forum on my website only few people will reply. When I post the same topic on facebook some hundred people reply.
When I could offer them an easy login with facebook connect the chance that they would visit my forum more often would be higher. Thats why I need facebook connect.
Open-ID is something for developpers but not for simple facebook users.
There is no script I know of to migrate from IPB to bbPress.
There are themes available but finding them is a little difficult right now. They are scattered about, not in one central repository as with WordPress.
If you feel it’s a bug, I encourage you to open a ticket at http://trac.bbpress.org
hpguru, I would open a ticket at http://trac.bbpress.org
I’ve seen that here too. As moderator, I can see the link, but I can’t actually access it and it responds as you describe.
Michael, I have this one working in 1.0.2:
https://bbpress.org/forums/topic/open-links-in-new-window/page/2#post-57027
http://pastie.org/753419
http://pastie.org/753419.txt
(not sure how long pastie links are good for)
I think I changed pre_post to post_text. And also, in that original post, the $1 is stripped out. That one had me puzzled for a while. Look closely at any of those posts with preg_replace in them and you can see two spaces in some places. That’s where the $1 should be.
Hi!
maybe it was already discussed, but it has occurred to me (as a newbie without programming skills)
we all know plugins need updating, or developing to make bbpress more functional
so, my idea is, instead of paying some developers privately to make our forums works, to fix this or that plugin,
it would be better to pay from this forum, to do it and they could package these plugins for everyone to share!
it was a sad news re _ck_ and donations.. or rather lack of them, but maybe my idea would work better?
we all need work done, and sometime we have to pay someone anyways, but at least this way community could benefit
Kind regards
Kris
Yo pondría el bloque de login en el sidebar, igual que en el theme de wp 
I would put login block in sidebar, as in wp theme
