[John James Jacoby]

Love it. Similar but different. I also love the icons, as it is “bee bee Press” after all. Plus, if we’re going to over think this, Bee’s and hives represent a colony, and forums are basically the same thing; a colony of users.

Or, maybe you guys just love sweet, sweet honey… Just a bunch of Pooh Bear’s surrounded by empty glass jars hoping Matt will send another shipment this month to keep you motivated.

[John James Jacoby]

DennisH, it sounds to me like you want BuddyPress + bbPress + WordPress. If you’re not using all three, then you’re really not going to get what you want.

Also, if phpBB just has too MANY features, you could trim some of phpBB’s code out, no different than you can add code to any *Press product.

It also is a relatively new concept (Within 1 year) of having all of these platforms working in unison together. BuddyPress has taken giant strides towards providing a personality to the users on your site, to give your bbPress users profiles and information beyond the basics.

Regarding the “promise” of integration, it’s possible to do within a few minutes, with integrated logins, profile info, etc… The major difference is that you can’t expect it to look like a typical forum is going to look, at least not at its current stage of development.

When you consider that phpBB is 3.0.5, and it stayed in the 2.0 branch for over 7 years, apply that logic to bbPress that JUST turned 1.0 a month ago… There’s still LOTS that can be done, but for now bbPress is a stable and powerful product that is a developers dream platform for forum software to start with. You can mold and shape it to handle just about any task (wait until you see what BuddyPress is going to do with it )

Long story short, I’m sorry you’re disappointed at the moment, but I’m willing to bet you won’t always be. If you need something besides bbPress right now, no one’s feelings are hurt, but my suggestion to you would be to make friendly with it now so you can be better prepared to use it later, when it better meets your expectations.

[teamamy]

@Ipstenu

I’m trying to have a central signon at my site, where users must sign onto WP first and access bbPress via a page link. The logic you’ve provided looks like it can be incorporated to include the bbPress login page, is this correct?

Also, I’m waiting for the revised Admin SSL plugin to be published for WP. This should allow be to secure the WP site and hopefully the bbPress. Are there any other backdoors or pages users can directly access from the outside that may need redirection?

[teamamy]

Wow! The future bbPress looks incredible. Fantastic work Sam!

Is there a planned target date set for it?

[Burt Adsit]

Simon,

Looks to me like the code in wp and bbpress says you need NONCE_KEY in wp and BB_NONCE_KEY in bbpress to match. Then the salts BB_NONCE_SALT and NONCE_SALT have to match. If the salts don’t exist, wp and bbpress generate random ones. Of course they will not match.

[DennisH]

@Ipstenu: Deep Integration worked nearly out of the box for me on BuddyPress. I don’t do it on WP because really I don’t need it when I can easily reproduce my theme for bbPress. But still, no hacks were needed, just a tweak of the bb-config.php and some jiggering of a theme. Took me all of an afternoon.

We have lots of glitter text and animated gifs of unicorns on our site so it may take more than a afternoon.

@Ipstenu: Gravatar works fine.

Gravatars are great for some sites, but I was looking for more of a custom solution. I think customizing their profile even if it’s just a avatar gives members a sense of belonging and therefor more likely to comeback.

[grosbouff]

I have mydomain.com

My bbpress is at

mydomain.com/bbpress

but I use a subdomain

forums.mydomain.com which redirects on it.

I put an .htaccess file inside /bbpress with this content

Redirect 301 /register.php http://www.mydomain.com/wordpress/wp-login.php?action=register

Redirect 301 /bb-reset-password.php http://www.mydomain.com/wordpress/wp-login.php?action=lostpassword

But it does nothing. Chmodd is 755.

I try too with

Redirect 301 /bbpress/...

and

Redirect 301 (no start slashes)

and it does not work either.

Any idea ?

Thanks !

Any idea ?

[Ipstenu (Mika Epstein)]

I’m talking about having to hack almost every bbpress php file to include the wp header and footer or having to hack the config files.

Deep Integration worked nearly out of the box for me on BuddyPress. I don’t do it on WP because really I don’t need it when I can easily reproduce my theme for bbPress. But still, no hacks were needed, just a tweak of the bb-config.php and some jiggering of a theme. Took me all of an afternoon.

As far as Avatars I’m using the wp-united on the live site (phpbb avatars). For BB I have not found a solution yet that will work or integrate into both BB and WP.

Gravatar works fine.

[Ipstenu (Mika Epstein)]

You have the WordPress plugin for bbPress installed?

[batrachoid]

Risking putting my foot in my mouth again but…

modifying _ck_’s plugin here: https://bbpress.org/forums/topic/how-do-i-remove-the-posters-ip-address-from-the-post-display#post-55575 (thanks, Ipsentu) will probably do the trick.

[DennisH]

At this point I’ll take 1 out of 3.

I’m not talking about plugins. I’m talking about having to hack almost every bbpress php file to include the wp header and footer or having to hack the config files.

The phpbb solution at the time (a year ago)was a HUGE F@#*ING HACK, but now that phpbb has a automod (or whatever they are calling it) it’s basically as easy as a plugin.

I’m not looking for the login form (I’m building a lightbox for that), I’m talking about:

“Welcome, _ck_ ! View your profile (Admin | Log Out) 5 New Private Messages”

As far as Avatars I’m using the wp-united on the live site (phpbb avatars). For BB I have not found a solution yet that will work or integrate into both BB and WP.

[grosbouff]

Got this problem too and it doesn”t change anything when I re save the role map…

With #1.0.2.

[_ck_]

“Easy integration with your blog” <- if that’s the biggest problem you have with what bbpress promises, you are doing great. I actually have a problem with two of the three words in the upper right hand corner of every page on bbpress.org due to 1.0

Why is it hard to put a bbpress login box in wp? Pull up the bbpress login page in your browser, view the source and copy everything between <form... </form> and paste it into WP wherever you’d like and add a little bit of PHP code to detect if the user is logged in or not to offer them the form. 10 minutes tops.

What are you using now for avatars in WP?

Plugins are not hacks. Hacks are when you hack the core.

Is the phpbb solution a clean copy of phpbb with plugins or is it’s core heavily hacked, hence cannot keep up with upgrades/security fixes easily?

[DennisH]

Buddypress group forums run on bbpress. Besides, wp-united hooks into more than the user table.

I would hope that Automattic would at the very least see where there is user demand and make some effort to fulfill that demand. After all it’s their users a developers that are responsible for their huge success. I guess I can understand them feeling that we give you the software for free so you shouldn’t complain, but those users/developers create, extend, promote and for the most part supply customers service for them.

Nevertheless, statements like this can lead to the wrong impression:

Easy integration with your blog

WordPress and bbPress are siblings, and they get along together a lot better than you and your brother did when you were kids!

I don’t think I’m alone in this. Just look at your tags.

We have been able to pull off much of what I described here. We have integrated bbpress into our theme. We have converted phpbb forums posts and users and have integrated them. We have been able to list new posts in WP. We have been able to do about 75% of what we need so far. Avatars are still a issue. And I can’t see why it’s so hard to put a bbpress login box in WP.

So its not that much of this can’t be done. I just fear with so many hacks it could be trouble down the road.

[_ck_]

As far as I know, bbPress adds no special abilities or requirements to BuddyPress, it’s simply able to use the usertable directly, so you in theory should be able to use your phpbb solution with BuddyPress too.

You have to understand bbPress was never designed originally to deeply integrate into WordPress, only use the user-table. Deep integration was an afterthought – years after it was originally released and a mish-mash of legacy was established. Matt had a 180 degree turnaround on that process with bbPress 1.0 being rewritten to use BackPress instead. If WordPress ever is redesigned to use BackPress itself (don’t hold your breath, it could be years) deep integration could be even easier and much lighter weight.

I’m not saying this to be mean or unfair, but very simply, if you don’t like something you see in bbPress 1.0, don’t adopt it now thinking it will change sometime soon, it won’t and you’ll only be very disappointed. bbPress development is quite obviously NOT developed around user requests, it’s developed around Automattic requirements. It’s the exact same thing for WordPress and nothing new policy-wise. Everything else is left to plugin developers.

That said, I would stop using bbPress in heartbeat if they started throwing in many of the features that people are demanding be included as built in. I already have a big enough problem with many of the hardcoded “features” already.

[melat0nin]

Hi all

I’m looking into creating a kind of online consultation system using bbPress. The idea is that the body doing the consultation will create the topics which they would like people to give their views on/discuss, but they don’t want users to be able to create topics themselves.

So, there’ll be a few subforums (one each for a project) and within them a few threads, say up to 10, each being a question or topic within the project that views are sought on.

Here’s an example of the kind of thing I’d like to create: http://talklaw.co.nz/topic/are-you-being-watched

(alas the software used for that site costs £14,000 and we’d like to do is F/OSS if possible!)

Does this sound reasonably easy to set up with bbPress?

[DennisH]

@_ck_: So are you using that phpbb3 integration?

If it works so well, I am curious why you are here?

It does work well.

There are several reasons I’m here.

First, although it has been recently taken over and updated that mod was abandoned for over a year by its creator . During the period it was MIA we where locked in and it was very had to upgrade to new versions of WordPress. It wasn’t compatible with 2.6. All that has changed recently and upgrading and installing is much easier. But, even though it is “under new management” I didn’t want to be held hostage by one developer.

Second, I wanted a lighter site. Phpbb is great but it can be overkill sometimes.

Third, at some point in the future we want to move to Buddypress. I thought moving to bbpress would get us ready for that next step.

Forth, we are adding about 500 new members each month so if we where unable to move those users and posts it was better to start over now rather than later.

Fifth, Although phpbb was well integrated in terms of users and themes there was still a sense of 2 different sites. I was hoping that because bbpress was made by the same people as WP we could better integrate both style and function.

I knew going into this that WP-United was currently a better option, but I was willing to overlook those smaller details in order to be with a platform that would grow with us. Now my fear is that bbpress will grow in the wrong direction (if at all).

PS

I want to thank you personally. Your contributions are a main reason we decided to give this a try… and continue to try.

PSS

The reason I bring up WP-Untied is not because I want people to drop bbpress for phpbb. I bring it up as and example of what bbpress could be or at least inspiration for new plugins.

[still giving]

Thanks. Sorry, that was my typo.

I have ‘define( ‘BB_LANG’, ‘ja’);’. The language files are installed and they are recognized.

I am trying to build in dual language support for the 1.0.1.

Its seems that neither bbPress Language Switcher by _ck_ nor User Languages by alex work on v.1.

Does anyone know if there is a work around for this?

Manually, I can define either, say, ‘ja’ or ‘en_US’ … but it does not seem possible to do any switching at all, either via user admin or Switcher bar.

I really am sorry to discover this as I was looking for dual language WordPress/bbPress integration and to be free of the bloated phpBB for ever.

Thank you.

[dudenas]

I confirm that after converting from phpbb 3.0.4 to bbpres 1.0.1 the user passwords don`t work anymore..

[_ck_]

I just realized today if you are using a bunch of plugins that have their options stored in the bbpress meta, your query count has jumped on every page in bbPress 1.0.x

Apparently 1.0 now has a reserved list of option names that are pre-loaded, instead of *all* of them like 0.9 could. Plugins have to add their desired names to the pre-caching option, which of course 100% of all pre-exisiting plugings are not aware of, so they all cause an extra query in 1.0

This isn’t a magic bullet by any means but you can at least fix this behavior. There isn’t any flag you can turn on to cache all (that would be far too easy) but you can fool the routine by loading all the options before it gets around to it.

Simply make the below into a mini-plugin, or right click here

and save as _load-options.php in your my-plugins/ directory

I strongly suggest you save it with a leading underscore so it auto-loads.

<?php

/*

Plugin Name: Load Options

*/



global $bbdb;

$results = $bbdb->get_results( "SELECT meta_key, meta_value FROM $bbdb->meta WHERE object_type = 'bb_option' ");

foreach ( $results as $options ) {

wp_cache_delete( $options->meta_key, 'bb_option_not_set' );

wp_cache_set( $options->meta_key, maybe_unserialize( $options->meta_value ), 'bb_option' );

}

?>

[DennisH]

I got the following error when converting:

General Error

SQL ERROR [ mysql4 ]

Data too long for column ‘post_text’ at row 1 [1406]

An SQL error occurred while fetching this page. Please contact the Board Administrator if this problem persists.

I solved this issue. It was the © symbol in some of the posts causing the error.

Another question: any ideas on redirecting perm links from the old phpbb to bbpress?

[johnhiler]

A lot of those features do exist… although you’re not going to have much luck getting all those features/plugins to work on bbPress 1.0. bbPress 1.0 is a very new release, and most of the plugins won’t be upgraded until later this year.

That said, I get the feeling that you would like WordPress and bbPress to interoperate more? I don’t just mean integrated signins – some of your points suggest that plugins would ideally work on both systems interchangably… I don’t think that’s on their product map. Even having more interoperability between the two themes systems seems pretty low on the bbPress priority list.

It’s all good to have concerns about bbPress! I have many concerns myself. I’m staying on bbPress for now, because it is the only option for a lightweight forum with a plugin model. I’m very concerned about the 1.0 path though, and am starting to think through whether or not I want to stay on the bbPress platform in the long term. So I especially appreciate hearing your concerns.

[johnhiler]

Could the URL be linked from somewhere as https?

https://bbpress.org/forums/topic/https-vs-http-for-bbpress-url

[arnet7]

bbPress is running on it’s own using php. No other software is being used. (no WordPress) Here are the server settings from my end ( I don’t know what the guy having problems signing on is running)….

General server information:

Operating system Linux

Kernel version 2.6.9-67.0.22.ELsmp

Machine Type i686

Apache version 1.3.41 (Unix)

PHP version 4.4.9

MySQL version 5.0.67-community

[DennisH]

@gardenfl: My main complaint would be that sifting through this site for solutions it is sometimes difficult to figure out version compatibility.

Yes, searching for solutions is really frustrating. Like most people trying to decide if they should jump in I looked trough the plugins and other mods only to find out later many/most are out of date. Installing a older version of BB isn’t a real option when you want a forward looking cms. This is of course no ones fault (at least not the plugin developers), I am very thankful for what is there.

@chrishajer: bbPress is not right for some people, but it’s just fine for a lot of others.

But how do we define “a lot of others?” I think there are huge numbers of users out there looking for a truly integrated solution. I don’t see many people using bbPress as a stand alone community forum. There are other forum platforms that fulfill that need. I believe most of the adapters of BB will be users that want to integrate a forum into their current site. BB may be good for someone that just wants a support forum (or something along those lines), but the true market is site owners that want to add more community features…. and that means true integration.

@johnhiler: I agree that bbPress lacks many social features… but that’s not really the scope of the project, which is more focused on forums? If there’s a specific feature you’d like to see, let us know in the forums!

A forum is a “social feature.” Now that does mean it has to be Facebook, but it should have some basic features.

These are some of the features I would love to see some day (I know some can be done with plugins and hacks, but I would like to see more “stable” solutions):

bbPress “login box” in WP (with new private messages and profile link).

Integrated bbPress in a WP page that strips out the bbPress header and footer (theme integration)

Integrated Avatars

Blog Comments listed in bbPress profile

Current forum topics/replies in WP

Integrated bbcode in WP comments

Facebook Connect, Twitter, OpenID etc.

I’m sure I can think of more, but those are the ones that come to mind.

Here is a good list of features I would like to see:

http://www.wp-united.com/features/

The reason i decided to post this is to help voice concerns that may one day lead to a better BB and that will in turn lead to more developers and users. Not yet being knowledgeable enough to create these add-ons myself my voice is all I can currently contribute. Although, I soon hope to share how I overcame some of these issues and provide some inspiration and tips for others.