[Andrew]

I just set up a bbpress forum and use the WP user database. It works well though plugins are needed and some hackery of bb-config is required (see here.

I use the private forums plugin. There is another plugin that blocks all access to the site. You could always make ma minor mod to bbpress source to force login and not rely on a plugin.

I’ve seen some discussion on WP about BBpress. I believe they changed the way they handle tags in order to not step on bbpress.

[Ziyphr]

I’ve monitored bbPress for some time and plan to use WP for a big site and would need to convert a phpBB(2) forum over to bbPress. What’s the latest on:

1) WP integration – last I heard you had to fiddle with cookie settings and some usernames wouldn’t work on the forum login. I’d be wary of using plugins as this could cause problems upgrading in future.

2) phpBB(2) conversion – is there any script that will convert everything perfectly?

3) future plans – is there a new version in development or is everything on hold for now? (i.e. should I just go and install the current version or wait another month or two)

4) private forums – an essential feature for me is to have a staff board that is 100% secure. Again I didn’t really want to rely on a plugin for this and last time I think I read it wasn’t secure because of an RSS problem.

5) lastly – is bbPress compatibility high on the list when new versions of WordPress are released? (i.e. could a new WP break by forum?)

Cheers.

[Ziyphr]

Vanilla seemed great for a while, but I found integrating it very annoying. Writing your own extensions is extremely hard unless you’re doing something very basic. Having said this Vanilla is good if it can do everything you want straight away. Just make sure you’re capable of theming it properly as it’s annoying seeing yellow posts on every Vanilla install. But their community was very friendly, if a little nontechnical, but this was +6 months back.

[gh3]

Hi, i tried to find a contact mail on the homepage but i haven’t find it, so i ask this there.

At this very moment i need to request to add another user to a plugin project ( http://bbpress.org/plugins/topic/48?replies=5 ) that i started, in particular i need to permit this user to access the svn server to upload its improvements as a new user.

Is possible to it? If so how to request for this?

Thanks in advance.

[kjted]

Hi fel. I’ll post up later today the process I went through. I’ll get the latest version of the class right now! Thanks for the heads up.

I’ve also done some work with CodeIgniter and Flash integration which I’ll post a link to later in case anyone does CI development (off topic I know but still valuable).

[ameriblog]

i just downloaded and installed bbpress. everything worked fine. i have the most recent release of wordpress installed in my main site directory and bbpress is installed in the /forums/ directory.

when i go to http://www.mysite.com/forums/ it displays the main page, but with no images/styles. when i try to view my css file in the browser (http://www.mysite.com/forums/bb-templates/kakumei/style.css) it displays my main wordpress page.

i have pretty permalinks running on both and would like to keep it that way.

[fel64]

Oh, sorry. Yeah. I getchoo. Yes. The filter you want to use is bb_title. The way filters work is that you tell bbpress what you want to filter, bbpress gives you the input and you return the output. In this case:

<?php

/*

Plugin Name: Title Modifier

Author: You

*/

add_filter('bb_title', 'titlemodify');



function titlemodify( $title ) {

//your code that does something to $title;

return $title;

}

?>

Paste this into an empty text file, save it as whateveryouwant.php, edit the code so it actually does something with $title, then upload and activate.

[fel64]

Coolio. Few problems recently (apart from Sneaky ) so I uploaded. No topic for it yet but I expect there will be at https://bbpress.org/plugins/topic/56

[Edit] And it is! Rate it please

[fel64]

It is funkin’ brilliant. I hope you downloaded the latest release ( https://trac.bbpress.org/browser/trunk, at the bottom of the page is the Zip Archive link to the latest) because it has a bunch of fixes and changes.

Can you detail anything you had to do to make it work, for future people who want to do this stuff?

[fel64]

This means their bbpress login will mysteriously fail.

No it won’t. No matter what cookies users have, they will not prevent them logging in.

schmitt, must say I really liked your site. Not at all interested in things financial but it was engaging nonetheless.

You could put these lines at the top of your bb-login.php:

header('Location: http://www.example.com/');

exit;

Obviously changing the URL to that of your wp-login.php. I don’t know how else you’d do that. This may have all sorts of crazy adverse effects because I haven’t tried it myself; maybe ck can say how he did it?

[fel64]

the old cookie will never delete

bb logs you in for a week, wp if you set it to ‘remember me’ for a year I think.

If you take the forum software online before really knowing what it can do and what you need to do, that’s also your problem.

For the moderation tools, something you may have found useful is doing what all the automattic forums do – keeping an RSS feed of threads tagged, by members, ‘modlook’. But I don’t want to get into a debate on the relative merits of moderation mechanisms, this is just an aside.

I guess part of my concern is how casually it’s either told or assumed that BB integrates with WP, and that BB is ready for primetime. There’s good reason why it’s set at a pre-1.0 version number.

It _does_ integrate. It _is_ ready for a lot of primetime; look at wp.com and .org, 9rules and technorati. But if you think that means that it toasts your bagels too, you’re wrong (and it’s your fault for assuming or believing that). It _is_ a pre-1.0 release, and if you use it and expect a 1.0 feature set, you’ll inevitably be disappointed. I don’t really get your bitterness about it – or at least, what comes across to me as bitterness.

[kjted]

The BB_Query class is funkin’ brilliant! I now have abstraction class to communicate between Flash and bbPress.

[Inquirer]

#profile-menu {

list-style: none;

position: absolute;

left: 200 px;

}

It fixes to the left.

I have tried varaiations.

The style_old.css has the same code for the profile menu.

I wonder how it got out of wack.

[kjted]

This is probably something that might help me out with what I’m trying to do…

[kjted]

I just noticed I can actually download it from the Roadmap in the development section…

https://trac.bbpress.org/ticket/657

Without documentation I guess it’ll be a case of figuring it out myself lol.

Will the new version of bbPress have any structural changes to the database? I’m hoping I can use this class with the current version of bbPress.

[kjted]

I’m really anxious to get my hands on the BB_Query class because it looks like it’ll help me a lot with my quest to integrate Vanilla into a Flash movie clip. Does anyone know when the next version of bbPress will be released as the blog states it will contain the new BB_Query class.

Cheers

KJ

[Andrew]

Yes, but users reading the above… make sure to replace the MD5 hash with the one from your site. Do not simply cut and paste.

[kjted]

I did think about using the RSS feeds to parse in Flash, however I’m also going to have a flash form that people will fill in to create a thread or reply to an existing thread… so I’ll still need to access the functions.

I’ve used AMFPHP to access functions from other applications in the past which then returns the data to the flash movie for processing. I’m hoping that it’s possible to do something similar with bbPress and AMFPHP.

[kjted]

Hi,

I’m basically wondering if there is API documentation to help me with my quest. I’m wanting to show discussions in a flash movie so essentially I just need to access the appropriate functions to access thread data in the database but I don’t know where to start.

I’m hoping for some pointers in the right direction. Essentially what I want to do is use bbPress as a backend and display discussions in a flash movie.

So to sum-up, I need the ability to access thread and post information from Flash.

Thanks for your time

KJ

[_ck_]

Since bbpress.org doesn’t have a “tips and tricks” I’ll post this here.

If you’d like to tweak your profile.php template to show the total posts and topics started by a user, add this code under “bb_profile_data()”

<?

echo "forum posts: <b>".$bbdb->get_var("SELECT COUNT(*) FROM bb_posts WHERE poster_id = $user_id AND post_status = 0")."</b> &nbsp; "

." topics started: <b>".$bbdb->get_var("SELECT COUNT(*) FROM bb_posts WHERE poster_id = $user_id AND post_status = 0 AND post_position = 1")."</b>";

?>

I’d make this into a plugin but I don’t know how to append information within the profile (ie. attach to bb_profile_data)

[_ck_]

I would like to suggest this forum would seriously benefit from:

1. “Tips and Tricks”

2. “Integration with WordPress”

as two new sub-forums

[_ck_]

This plugin now has an official page in the plugin browser:

https://bbpress.org/plugins/topic/55

so check there for latest version.

[_ck_]

I would encourage you to put this into the bbpress svn so it can be found under the plugin browser by the masses trying to integrate WP + BB

(if I figured out how to use the SVN, anyone can!)

[_ck_]

There is an obscure cookie control plugin for wordpress that I found somewhere around here I think:

http://www.2diabolos.com/blog/plugins-pour-wordpress/setcookieparams/

the bbpress config options you want are like this:

$bb->wp_table_prefix = 'wp_';  // WordPress table prefix.  Example: 'wp_';

$bb->wp_home = 'http://example.com/blog';  // WordPress - Options->General: Blog address (URL) // Example: 'http://example.com'

$bb->wp_siteurl = 'http://example.com';  // WordPress - Options->General: WordPress address (URL) // Example: 'http://example.com'



$bb->usercookie = 'wordpressuser_ab1b1c8b2de0ca2b381c25a6b6e812a1';

$bb->passcookie = 'wordpresspass_ab1b1c8b2de0ca2b381c25a6b6e812a1';

$bb->cookiedomain = 'example.com';

$bb->cookiepath = '/';

you also obviously want this plugin:

https://bbpress.org/plugins/topic/2?replies=3

and less obviously this one is a must for WP integration:

https://bbpress.org/forums/topic/usernames-with-spaces-do-not-work?replies=24#post-7904

unfortunately it’s not setup here as a formal plugin but it should be – see my dot fix at the end

[_ck_]

I guess part of my concern is how casually it’s either told or assumed that BB integrates with WP, and that BB is ready for primetime. There’s good reason why it’s set at a pre-1.0 version number.

Many people here are integrating micro-forums with a handful of members, never more than a few people on at the same time. If there’s a problem, it can wait as it’s not an active website.

But my experience with BB was that tried integrating BB with several hundred members on a WP site. I eventually had to take it offline a week later. Here’s why:

First it took a day or two to find the plugin to fix spaces with usernames. Eventually I found out spaces were not the only problem, dots were not covered so I had to patch that.

Then I found out that many people had their cookies set to “remember me” which means even when you fix the cookie path so it off the root, it’s useless because the old cookie will never delete. Had to deal with dozens of emails and complaints and give them all individual instructions. Then there’s the problem of hundreds of people making hundreds of posts without any mods.

Unlike WordPress, the bbpress moderation tools are non-existant. It’s a non-issue for a micro-forum because you’ve literally got a 1 to 10 mod to user ratio. But now multiply that by 700-800 very active members. You’d then need 70 to 80 mods since every message posted has to be read by hand, by going into the thread and dealing with each one!

The ideal ratio is maybe one mod to 100 users or higher would be better, but you can’t do that without the right tools. There’s no way to browse through all posts at once and moderate immediately or setup some kind of automation process.

There’s no working badwords filter, there’s no way to limit posts that are too short or too long, there’s no post merging tool, there’s no adjustable posting rate per user, there’s no way to keep in touch with moderators. All this has to be added in with plugins, many not fully debugged yet or working correctly with 0.8.2.1 Some of them were not improved until just recently after I made feature requests after trying to use them.

It was exhausting and depressing so I took bbpress offline. But I am trying to help improve bbpress, not just complain. I think it’s about to hit critical mass with the growing number of people using it and more powerful plugins available and it has a lot of potential.

If I had a commercial forum with ads and made money off it, I’d go buy vbulletin as it’s the king and has years of trial and error and getting it right. But most people who use bbpress won’t be doing it for commercial reasons.

So that’s why I’m curious when I read that someone walked away from another forum program and switched to bbpress…