[gerikg]

I hate to bring up this post again but what happened to “the next meetup on IRC will be Wednesday 16 December 2100 GMT irc.freenode.net #bbpress” did that happen?

[johnhiler]

@ChuckMcB -Hmm, since you can access the admin link while signed into bbPress, it’s probably not a case where you lost your admin access:

https://bbpress.org/plugins/topic/fix-admin-access/

It sounds like you may be onto something with the www issue you mentioned… one cookie is setting itself on www, while the other one is not.

[af3]

My mom is on facebook, so does my 60yrs old auth and uncle… and they are all living on the island of Borneo (googling it would probably show up among ‘the remaining lost world on earth’). So I got 3 ppl for my hard stats

I’m using WPMU+Buddypress and integrated with bbpress — since there are facebookconnect plugins for WPMU, and now facebook plugin specific for WPMU+BP, my installation of bbpress on WPMU+BP becomes the odd one. While BP is now with its own forum system, I have more reasons to abandon bbpress; yet I do hope facebook-enabled bbpress would make me continue to use this.

[hpguru]

Hi, i have very good bbPress forum. I like bbPress. I am use a bbPress 1.0.2 but i may found 1 new bug.

I go to my bbPress dashboard and see posts count, thats say: 4024 posts.

Then i go to bb-admin/posts.php and i see 1 – 20 / 4,121. This mean i have 4121 posts on my forum.

I try recounting without any help to this problem.

My plugins now:

Akismet

Human Test For bbPress

Topics Per Page

bbSmilies (maybe smilies from WordPress plugin, i change it name, when i modified smilies codes)

[chrisjdavisorg]

Thanks for all the help guys. The sys admins pushed out a new php.ini file that had magic quotes turned on. This broke bbpress terribly.

[chrishajer]

> have you had any issue with your 3 forums’ bbPress registration emails hitting folks’ spam folks?

Not really. Occasionally someone will email me and tell me they never received their password reset email, but that’s easily handled manually. The 3 forums are small, so management is not a problem. If they were larger with more users, I’d be looking for better ways of automating the management of them, but right now they are just fine. I have _ck_’s human test installed on all 3, and don’t use akismet. Occasionally I get a spam post, but it’s just a minor nuisance. At least I don’t have any trouble with false positives with Akismet. Again, if they were larger volume, I’d be looking for other ways of managing the forums.

[Michael]

It’s really nice to see some creative (yet minimal) themes for bbPress.

This is great!

[chrisjdavisorg]

Around 3 weeks of worry free activity. There haven’t been any software upgrades to bbPress, and no new plugins/themes. I am using the latest stable release. The environment is our own internal setup. No changes there as well.

[chuckmcb]

Ohh dear, seems I gushed too soon.

While the above does log me into bbpress once I’m logged into WP, when I click on the “Admin” link I get redirected back to the main form page. Only when I log out of bbpress and log back in again does the “Admin” link take me to the admin page.

I’m away to try dropping my ‘www’s

[johnhiler]

I had problems with spammers and troublemakers both before and after we created that plugin… but both got a lot better after I installed this plugin allowing users to report problems with single click:

https://bbpress.org/plugins/topic/report-post/

More recently, I installed Nightgunner5’s fantastic Moderation Suite:

https://bbpress.org/plugins/topic/bbpress-moderation-suite/

This allowed me to create a Moderator team of people I trusted, who can spam and delete posts… the plugin logs every moderation action too, so I can always reverse something if a volunteer Moderator makes a decision I disagree with.

[johnhiler]

GrassrootsPA – I used to have the same issue, until ck built this plugin which lets users select their own passwords:

https://bbpress.org/plugins/topic/instant-password/

Since users now pick their own passwords, it doesn’t matter as much if that email makes it through or not…

[grassrootspa]

@ chrishajer, just curious, have you had any issue with your 3 forums’ bbPress registration emails hitting folks’ spam folks? Had this issue with Yahoo, gmail, hotmail and other emails accounts. (It’s still not 100% resolved with all email accounts)

I must confess, this was initially a bit of a headache for this server newbie. (People complain that the registration doesn’t work, others don’t say anything and give up on the site at that point thinking the software doesn’t work) This really isn’t a problem with bbPress, but it is a tough issue to figure out when you are just learning the LAMP ropes. Thank goodness for knowledgeable server buddies!

Not sure if this explains anything, but this is one of the reasons (a minor one) why this LAMP newbie like the idea of allowing others ways to login like FB Connect…(it eliminates that potentially-troublesome email verification step and allows them to jump right in).

BTW, I would be ecstatic is FB Connect emerged as a plugin first and the next bbPress release focused on other things like integration, some cool new features, etc. You are a good salesman.

[chrishajer]

No apologies necessary.

I too am using various versions of bbPress (I think 1.0-alpha 2, 1.0.2 and 0.9.0.4) without problem. It works just great for me. So, thanks once again and sincerely, Happy Holidays to you.

[grassrootspa]

Best of luck with your future projects Sam. I am still enjoying your bbPress 1.0.2 release.

[Casemon]

Update: I no longer have this issue, since rebuilding the bbpress installation. Before, something was screwy, between outdated documentation, and just learning bbp.

Hurrah!

[Sam Bauers]

No problem chris I have to say that I’m sorry for not being around more. I didn’t intend to do the “hot potato” thing.

I’m also sorry for re-opening this topic, but for previously stated reasons I felt it was necessary to respond.

[chrishajer]

Thanks for the info Sam. Happy Holidays to you.

[Sam Bauers]

I just want to set the record straight a little here as some things have been said that aren’t accurate.

The flaming that Matt has received from @sadness above is unwarranted, unsubstantiated and quite cowardly.

I left Automattic to pursue my own interests both within and outside of the web development world. This was my own decision, there was no pressure from Matt or anyone at Automattic to leave. Before I left Automattic I talked with Matt about a bunch of possible directions for bbPress and my own options within the company. Whilst a lot of the ideas we discussed would make for interesting and important work, I didn’t feel passionate about it, and I was feeling a little burnt out after about 10 years of web development work.

_ck_ was always a constructive critic of bbPress. I always gave her plenty of my time so that she could fulfil that role. In the absence of a full-time lead on the project to hear that input I imagine that she felt her contribution in that regard was limited. It’s not that Matt isn’t good at listening, it’s just that he’s about 100 times busier than a full-time lead would be.

I’d also like to chime in on the future development path of bbPress a little. The idea of moving to becoming a canonical plugin I think is the only sensible way forward for bbPress. bbPress needs a bigger user base to be viable as a product. A big problem in the past has been justifying changes in WordPress for the benefit of bbPress, so the more users there are of bbPress the more accommodating WordPress will be in that regard.

WordPress development moves really fast, it was (and will be) totally inefficient to spend time and energy maintaining compatibility with WordPress as a stand alone product, when bbPress can get all that stuff for free as a plugin. There is a ton of common code between WordPress and bbPress now (mostly in the form of BackPress). That should all go away. The PHP framework is WordPress. The only issue is bloat for those using bbPress as a standalone product. WordPress + bbPress plugin will be a lot of code, and will probably be slower than bbPress 1.0 (and almost certainly slower than 0.9). But by hooking into WordPress, a lot of the work that has been done and that will be done in the future to speed it up will be gained. It’s a case of “two steps forward, one step back” but I think it’s the right decision for the project.

Although there was a lot of effort put into BackPress/bbPress 1.0, a whole lot of that work has ended up in WordPress, so it won’t be wasted development. The best vehicle going forward is the canonical plugin route. I suggest that the community gets behind that plan.

[chrishajer]

How long was it working before it became broken? Any changes that could contribute to breaking it (software upgrade, server upgrade, new host?)

What bbPress version are you using?

[grassrootspa]

@ johnhiler:

You make a lot of excellent points. It’s funny you bring up the memory issues (had to move my news website site from Godaddy to my own server because of that very issue with WordPress).

This is a great community and have no doubt it’s going to be a fun year for bbPress. Can’t wait to see where things go in the next six months!

[johnhiler]

@grassrootspa – It sounds like there are two different issues being discussed:

1) bbPress needs a Facebook connect feature

2) That feature (along with a bunch of others) should be in the core

1) FB Connect

On the first point… typically the way new features get built is to either:

* build it yourself, or to

* hire someone to build it for you.

The third path is to try and convince others to build it for you for free… but I’ve very rarely ever seen that work.

I’ve actually read stats that show that Facebook Connect can greatly uptick registration:

http://www.businessinsider.com/2008/12/facebook-connect-still-tiny-will-grow-fast

So it may be worth building. But it’s very very difficult to convince someone to develop plugins for free, especially when we don’t have many (any?) active plugin developers… so that basically just leaves the options to build it yourself or to hire someone to build it for ya.

If you tell the developer that it will be open source, maybe they will discount their fee? Or you could ask other users to contribute to the fee…

2) All/most major features should be in the Core

WordPress has put a ton of features into the Core. It’s gotten to the point where even smallish sites can’t run without a caching plugin:

http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/001105.html

It’s not just CPU – the latest versions also eat up lots of memory just to serve up a single page:

http://www.oceanlight.com/log/wordpress-28-memory-usage-and-bloat.html

I’m not sure if this Canonical Plugins initiative would help reduce this bloat or not:

https://wordpress.org/development/2009/12/canonical-plugins/

We don’t have to predict that moving most features into the core will increase bloat and slow down servers… it’s already happened on the WordPress side of things. I think most smaller blogs don’t mind – you can just add caching and be fine for a while. It’s a lot harder for larger sites… I’ve wrestled with scaling my blog, and I’m on a dedicated server. But Matt mentioned that scaling is not really an issue, so I must be missing something:

http://www.sitepoint.com/blogs/2009/08/28/podcast-25-wordpress-matt-mullenweg/

I think it will be a lot harder to cache bbPress than it will be to cache WordPress, since community sites update so many more times than to a blog. So the WordPress strategy to put a lot of features into the core and address scaling through a caching option… probably won’t be as effective on the bbPress side of things. So that makes it even more important to keep the bbPress core clean.

In any case, I don’t want to be a downer here – there’s still hope for the bbPress platform, if we can unite around keeping the core engine “simple, fast, and elegant” (especially fast!!). If not, then it will be tough to keep the platform viable and we risk losing what progress we’ve made so far.

[chrisjdavisorg]

I was informed by the support folks at $work that the support forums I built for them were broken. After some investigation I found that all the user accounts, including the original admin account are showing up in the admin as Inactive (no role).

How in the world did this happen exactly? The accounts are migrated from an existing non bbpress db upon login, and we don’t send the new user email. Is there a step that I missed somewhere that stops the accounts from being deactivated after a timeout? e.g. Is there an account verification step that I wasn’t aware of that has now been tripped, deactivating all the accounts?

Really lost here as to where to do next. All the role data in the usermeta table is fine, and I can’t find any references to any verification process in the code. Any help out there?

[grassrootspa]

@ (my affable sparring partner) kevinjohngallagher:

1) re: the 350 million facebook users, there was just a story on Mashable ‘Facebook’s Road to 350 Million Users’: (http://mashable.com/2009/12/02/facebook-350-million-users/)

“Mark Zuckerberg’s note detailing Facebook’s latest privacy changes also contained an announcement about another important milestone for Facebook: 350 million users.”

Facebook’s own website: (http://www.facebook.com/press/info.php?statistics):”‘More than 350 million active users”

I’m just going with what they said

2) I don’t have official ‘stats’ but can tell you Facebook connect is put to use on my site (I run Intense Debate, which offers various ways folks can leave comments). Twitter connect is occasionally as well (but not as much as FB connect) My general point is this: it’s optional and it and brings new folks into the discussion. IntenseDebate was smart to incorporate several different optional login methods! From my standpoint, I am very happy to offer FB connect to my readers

3) “So, who are these magical little elves that are going to build and then maintain all these features??” (BTW, I too am a South Park fan so I immediately got your reference):

Build and maintain all those features? You are missing my point…if existing popular plugins like ‘topic views’ or ‘bbcode’ are built into the core a third party no longer needs to maintain the plugin and make sure they don’t break in bbPress 1.0, bbPress 1.1, etc. They are STANDARDIZED and can be further fleshed out! (WordPress example: Just like WordPress did with the automatic updater and ability to thread comments…) _ck_ came up with some really slick and widely used plugins, and she is probably won’t be maintaining them from here on out. Maybe stuff like ‘BBcode Buttons’ should continue as a Core features?

Even though we both disagree on some of these things, we both want the same thing…bbPress to be more widely used & developed and the bbpress community to grow (those that make plugins, templates, etc). I would also like to see bbPress to emerge as a vBulletin alternative.

Again, things like Voices, gravatars, profile pics, profile occupation and location, tags etc could have all been simply left as plugins, but they were incorporated into the core. My overall point (forget FB connect for a sec) is that things like Voices, gravatars, profile pics, profile occupations, location, and other features are part of the core and that is a very good thing! It makes it easier for bbPress to be more widely used because a separate plugin is not needed for each (good for newbies, stability, and so community can further flesh them out via plugins or themes) There is less danger of those features breaking (they are now features of the Core, not separate plugins). The use of those features is standardized so plugins and themes can be developed to make use of those features without requiring a plugin to use each.

In a nutshell, I think things like bbcode, topic views, and some other plugins should sit alongside Voices, gravatars, etc as features that should be incorporated into the Core.

kevinjohngallagher, I love your passion. I am someone who is probably not as skilled as you are with computers and technology (17FB accounts…you sound busy!) I’m not a developer, just some newbie that taught himself how to run WordPress and bbPress by messing around with the stuff.

We aren’t going to agree on Facebook-connect (it’s a tougher sell than some of the others), but I would wager that there is probably a popular plugin or two that you might also agree should logically be part of the core for stability and out-of-the-box-feature issues. Thoughts?

[chrishajer]

Q1 – many people want to share user details, share WordPress and bbPress functions and get a similar look between WordPress and bbPress.

Q2. Yes. One problem arises when you want your navigation from WordPress to be present in bbPress. Most people want to do that with wp_list_pages or get_header or something, and those functions aren’t normally available in bbPress unless you integrate somehow. If you just want a link back to the WordPress site in bbPress, you can just edit your template files. Getting current navigation in bbPress that matches your WordPress site is harder and some people like to do “deep integration” to have access to WordPress functions in bbPress. If you don’t care about that, don’t integrate.

Q3. Yes. It’s a little harder but will probably have a better end result. There were a couple of bbPress <> WordPress plugins, but they’re out of date now. If you post what you mean by “integrate posts” someone will help with how to do that without resorting to integration.

[pittsleyb]

Is the only reason people want to integrate the two is for cross users? If I dont care about sharing the database for users then cant i simply edit my bbpress theme to match my wordpress theme and then cross link them?

Can I integrate posts without integration and sharing the database?