[johnhiler]

@grassrootsspa – The size of the code isn’t necessarily the key factor in bloat. A tiny but poorly coded feature or plugin can put an immense load on the server! I think for most personal sites this isn’t a big factor, but scaling is a huge factor for some sites and I greatly appreciate having the choice to keep features out of my core engine.

In any case, history is on your side… Matt tends to move features from the plugin into the core (or just add them straight to the core). Sam was moving in that direction too – Voices went straight into the core without any discussion or debate, even though it could easily have been implemented as a plugin:

https://bbpress.org/plugins/topic/topic-voices/

Overall what bbPress needs right now is not new features or a new release. It needs documentation of what we have, and a focus on building a developer/designer community. A themes directory would go a long way towards that. So would sprucing up the Extend/plugins tab not to be using the 0.8.x version of bbPress… which isn’t even signin integrated! And Stats have been “coming soon” for several years now:

https://bbpress.org/plugins/topic/bb-cumulus/stats/

Implementing this stuff (along with a site redesign) would also give the Automattic leadership time to get to know the bbPress community better, before any hasty design decisions are made.

[grassrootspa]

@ kevinjohngallagher:

One doesn’t need bbpress to display Voices, but it’s built into the core.

One doesn’t need bbpress to give every registered user a profile pic or gravatar, but it’s built into the core.

One doesn’t need bbpress to display Tags, but it’s built into the core.

One doesn’t need bbpress to allow users to ‘favorite’ posts, but it’s built into the core.

One doesn’t need bbpress to display a user’s recent activisty, but it’s built into the core.

One doesn’t need bbpress to display a user’s location, occupation, and interests, but it’s built into the core.

We could go on, and on, and on. One could make the argument that those features above (as well as others) could easily just be offered as plugins (no one REALLY needs to use them) but they are there to make the software more robust, fun, and useful! Think about each one and how things like Tags, favorites, gravatars, profile pics could simply be kept as plugins. Thank God those features were incorporated into the core.

Yes, bbPress could be the most barebone of all barebone bulletin board programs, with multiple plugins required to do anything more than throwing up a forum post, but for this software to become what WordPress is to blogging/CMS software it needs to offer a more robust list of core features that can be refined and further fleshed out with future plugins.

Again, I’m not saying you NEED to have TinyMCE turned on, use bbPress widgets, show how many times a topic has been viewed, display how many users are online, or use (new) default topic icons, but build this stuff into the core so folks can optionally use it, develop plugins to flesh those features out (imagine plugins/themes built around customizing various icon sets), and this stuff can grow with bbPress.

bbPress is like 1.93 MB is size. Plugins like mini-stats are 37.9 KB. You guys are killing me, like incorporating stuff like some of the more popular plugins is going to make bbPress too bulky and bloated to use? Someone isn’t going to go, OMG, bbPress is 2.20 MB in size, its just to bloated to download and install on my server and it offers too many optional features! Come on guys, this is getting silly. Let’s make bbPress more robust in features so it blows vBulletin out of the water.

[refueled]

Live Preview

Release Page

‘Marked’ is based on a design by freewpthemes.net.

[johnhiler]

Yes, 1.0 has a dramatically higher load.

I’m running 9 0.9.x bbPress installs along with a WordPress install on a single machine that’s doing around 10mm pageviews a month. If I was using the 1.0 branch, I don’t think I could come close to that.

[kevinjohngallagher]

It is, by about 50%.

That said, no version of BBpress is particularly heavy on the processor

[gerikg]

Heavier, yes. Will the average user notice, no.

[kevinjohngallagher]

@timskii

“Joanna Average forum reader doesn’t care about any of that, and is probably keener on things like WYSYWYG, email, etc.”

This is a really excellent point, but you have to realise that “Joanna Average” doesn’t hang around on these forums, and so any suggestions of what the ‘average’ user wants – especially in terms of interactive functionality – is generally the poster projecting their own wishes.

There is also this great myth that the ‘average user’ is a tech savvy person, running JavaScript on a fast machine, who greatly enjoys a every feature out there. If you look at the trend of the internet over the past 15 years, almost all types of interactivity on the client-side or ‘feature requests’ become popular and then get phased to a small percentage real quickly.

@grassrootspa

“…private messaging, TinyMCE/rich text, topic views, Allow Images, Smilies, User Directory, Members Online, Related Topics, Reputation, Top Posters…”

The issue i have here mate, is that very few of these are essential to the running of a forum.

I use, and one or two other do two, something called E-mail as a private messaging system. My website, bless it – almost 14 years old now – has something called a Contact Form. I’m not sure that forums absolutely *need* another way of contacting people to function.

I don’t want to debunk your list, but given what you and timskii have said that we should redefine the categories we’re placing things into:

1) Features that are essential to administer a forum.

2) Features that are essential for users to use a forum.

3) Features that you’d like to see available to your forum.

4) Features that could be kind of cool.

5) Features that are useless.

BBpress development should, in my opinion, focus on Section 1 and then Section 2. Once we have a working stable and maintained version of BBpress, plugin developers will start to work on Sections 3 and 4. We know this because that’s how WordPress works, and its how BBpress was working about a year-18 months ago with version 0.9.

My issue is, while everyone’s opinion would vary, i don’t see many of the features you think should be included as standard being in Section 1 or 2. I understand that they may be features you want in t a forum as standard, or features that you think your users want as standard – and that’s totally cool – but lets focus on the features that both we (admins) and the users need as a minimum to use our forums effectively.

Just my two cents.

[claudiuro]

I want to install bbpress but I am considering server load, so can anyone tell me if 1.0.2 in terms of server load is “heavier” than 0.9?

Thank you.

[kevinjohngallagher]

OK, i may be a little off the reservation here, but for me the One feature that BBpress has seriously lacked has been… The ability to complete simple/standard Administration tasks form the Backend.

Heck, some of them cant even be done at all…

Why is it that we’ve not been able to move a post from one Topic to another for 2 years (since 0.7’s plugin stopped working for 0.9a)? That seems a fundamental to me.

Why is it that we cant move/edit/delete/administer topics (and/or posts) from the Backend?

Matt, i realise that you’re trying to get to grips with a community that’s been downtrodden for the last year, and you’re re-galvanising what’s left, and that’s all very cool. But may i strongly, and humbly suggest, that BBpress to made to work as a forum and then we go about adding things?

I know that could sound a little condescending, but 0.9 had loads of plugins (they were horribly organised but they existed), and infact development of plugins and functionality for BBpress only started to slow down once the 1.0.3a debacle kicked off. Without getting all historical out of the 10 features you’ve asked us to vote for on the Poll, 8 of them existed and were working in a stable plugin for 0.9.

The realism is, BBpress has been a moving target for way too long and while its really great that you’re stepping in (and it is – thank you) there were 9 months of sheer Project Management craziness that have scared alot of Plugin Developers away.

Please, before you go adding any crazy “the public have spoken and they want …” features, how about getting a Project Plan, a Trac with actual data (and not a Trac that’s 4-5 months out of date as you’re trying to release software you’ve decided not to beta test, even though the last alpha had a huge number of bugs), and give us a platform to once again build upon.

Many Thanks,

Kevinjohn

ex- http://www.bbprogress.com

[citizenkeith]

@grassrootspa : Remember back in 2004 when Movable Type pushed everyone away with their new pricing plan? The result: BLAM! WordPress REALLY took off, fitting the bill as a viable free easy-to-install, easy-to-use alternative.

I remember it well. I was using Blosxom and decided to finally move over to MT right before they changed their pricing plan. I switched to WP and never looked back.

I hope Matt and all the developers will discuss this in the next IRC meeting.

[adamcap]

nvm I’m cool now, all I had to do was disable then reenable permalinks

[refueled]

@fmimoso

This version is completely rebuilt and is meant for bbPress 1.0+. If the older version works for you though, no need to upgrade.

[adamcap]

I changed my directory as according to sonza’s instructions and it worked…but I have a problem.

I had bbPress synchronization set up, but it’s not quite working anymore. It creates the new topic whenever I make a new post, but when I click on it in the forum, I get redirected to a “Nothing found…” page.

Other than uninstalling and reinstalling everything, is there anything I can do to fix this?

Thanks, Adam

[fmimoso]

What’s the difference between this one and the older? Changelog?

My (fast) interpretation of this theme: http://forumemprego.net/ (a work/job discussion forum).

Thank you.

[bmft2000]

Solved. Please see: https://bbpress.org/forums/topic/adding-location-to-users-post-info#post-6692

[timskii]

Cross-Domain Intergration

I’ve not seen anything about messy cross-domain integrations, so I thought I’d share my method. I’m using WordPress 2.8.6 with BBPress 1.0.2. Your mileage may vary on other versions. I suspect this method is not valid for 2.5/0.9.

The setup:

– example.com/blog

– example.com/forum

– example.org/forum

With shared user tables and database.

The config AUTH_KEY/SECURE_AUTH_KEY/LOGGED_IN_KEY should be the same for all (remember to add BB_ to the forum config files). Within the BBPress admin intergation, have the same auth/secure/logged in values for all forums (remember it’s the value shown within the WordPress options screen, not the values in the config files).

In this case cookiepath should be ‘/’ ($bb->cookiepath = ‘/’; // in bb-config and, define(‘COOKIEPATH’, ‘/’); // in wp-config). Set other $bb->style configurations as you wish.

Basically, everything is the same. Except: The Cookie Domain must be explicitly set**. And not always set to the same value.

In example.com/blog’s wp-config add: define(‘COOKIE_DOMAIN’,’.example.com’);

In example.com/forum’s bb-config add: $bb->cookiedomain = ‘.example.com’;

So far, so simple.

Now, in theory, example.org/forum can be set with $bb->cookiedomain = ‘.example.com’; // But I’ve not tried. Paranoid browsers would surely reject this. Instinctively having the forum rely on something that might look like a security risk is bad.

Instead, try adding this to example.org/forum’s bb-config: $bb->cookiedomain = ‘.example.org’; // Users will still need to log in separately when they switch domain, but all the other integration features seem to be fooled, with no adverse problems.

I’d welcome any feedback on this method. I’m still not sure this is the best approach.

( ** Not setting the cookie domain appears to work, until the user switches between domains – example.com/blog doesn’t simply fail to find a cookie set by example.org/forum, it may fail a fresh blog login until cookies are cleared. I’m not sure exactly what’s happening, but it’s messy.)

[noz]

Ok i found to change the encryting method.

In /bbpress/bb-includes/backpress/class.passwordhash.php :

function HashPassword($password) {

// Delete the previous code and put yours

}

[johnhiler]

I wouldn’t use forum restriction… it was abandoned by the original author and _ck_ took it over, but then she later created the excellent “Hidden Forums” plugin from scratch:

https://bbpress.org/plugins/topic/hidden-forums/

I was actually using “Private Forums” by another author for a while, but it had a major bug where it would randomly open up private folders when you used the admin menu for other plugins… it was a nightmare:

https://bbpress.org/plugins/topic/private-forums/

Hidden Forums has been fantastic – I’ve used it on multiple installs and there’s never been a privacy breach. Highly recommended.

[noz]

Yes i will try but i installed the instant password plugin so i know my password.

I wanted know if a guy found the solution to unencrypt passwords.

If i find i will post here.

edit :

Maybe it’s possible to change the method to encrypt…no ?

I saw a lot of functions in folders in bbpress/bb-includes/backpress/…anyone has an idea ?

[Michael]

Agreed – very nice.

I specifically chose a theme (and edited it deeply) because it was clean, new, and the buttons are easy to find.

See what I mean: http://www.inniosoft.co.cc/devstation

Great job refeuled!

[Raize]

Can’t wait!

[Raize]

Great themes!

I’m currently using Kakumei Blue, and I think my main concern with it is the small size of the “Add New” button. Most members are deterred from posting if they can’t find the button to post.

[Raize]

I agree with you guys, but for a different reason.

vBulletin feels old and clunky compared to what we’re used to today – lightweight and easy to use sites with soft edges.

People like me need an alternative, and there simply is none….yet. So bbPress is simply the best and natural choice for the Forum 2.0 world.

[QuickD]

Any suggestions Thanks

[chrishajer]

You could probably use the Hidden Forums plugin:

https://bbpress.org/plugins/topic/hidden-forums/