[Robin W]

Jimi,

Nice to have you aboard, and I hope that you’ll help in improving bbpress. More UX help is welcome.

I think bbpress users split into two groups.

1. The users that just want a simple forum as part of their web.

Those that visit the support forum usually only need a couple of changes. this is the vast majority of bbPress users

Biggest issues for these are

getting it working with their theme – usually because the theme has a highly complex page.php, and these users are not code savvy, and many don’t know FTP
registration and logging on – really a wordpress issue, but it’s the first time they come across needing to do this, as before they were the only user
Adding simple features – since each one varies these can only ever be bespoke, and again since these people are not code savvy you need to show them child themes and functions files first

2. Users who typically want bbpress to look like someone else’s feature rich forum

They want all the features, look and functionality of another bb, but on wordpress. Some then complain on the forum that they don’t like the software, and why doesn’t it look exactly like xx, which is much better, much easier and has better documentation. Which kinda grates, and surely it would be better to complain to xx’s forum as to why they don’t make a version of their fantastic software to work on wordpress, rather than complain that bbpress’s software doesn’t look like theirs. This to me is a bit like complaining to Ford that their cars don’t look like Nissan.

The issue here is that bbpress is just a plugin, written by some guys to do forumy stuff. Like all software it could be better, the docs can always be better, but the philosophy of the somewhere is to keep it light.

So I s’pose the challenge is to help improve it so that it can work for both camps. So I really do hope you stay and add expertise, maybe go into the codex and improve the documentation – anyone can, but most don’t !

[Jimi Wikman]

@robin-w I know the feeling. It’s been that way for me as well and mostly it just get frustrated when I try to find answers or try to figure things out, like why do the forums and the forum index not behave the same and what do I need to do. So I just toss BBPress in the trash and get frustrated.

Documentation is always a problem and it’s not easy keeping it alive, or find the time to update it during development cycles. I know as it’s the same in any project and that is why most companies include it in the tasks as part of its progress.

I know that BBPress work with Trac, which is a system I personally find horribly lacking compared to systems such as Jira and Confluence. The fact that I have to spend time to actually find the link to it or any information on how to get involved in BBPress is a sign of the problem I Think BBPress is suffering from: It’s just not approachable or easily understod because it’s lacking UX and structure from a user perspective.

Just the fact that this site does not have breadcrumbs so I can navigate or see where in the page structure I am make my blood boil to be honest…especially in the forums.

Fortunately there are progress happening and I think everyone is doing their best, so I am sure we can improve together 🙂

[Stephen Edgar]

I agree with and echo Robin’s sentiments above.

The plan is to update, including breaking up many of the current docs to separate sections based more along the lines of a “Table of Contents” similar to how BuddyPress have done in recent months.

You can see BuddyPress’ planned “Table of Contents” linked from https://codex.buddypress.org/ on Google Docs here.

So the plan will be for bbPress to go down a similar road as BuddyPress and WordPress with their upcoming handbooks (e.g. plugins, themes).

Again this is all a time thing and as always, contributions are always most welcome 🙂

[Jimi Wikman]

Some of the things that are missing in the core:

.WYSIWYG for input field. I know there is a plugin for it, but it should be in core and you should have the option to turn on and off in admin.

.Organisation for forums. Forum grouping has been a standard since 1999.

.Topic and forum indicators for new topics. Finding new topics should be at a glance.

.Moderation should be available for all forums individually and on a board basis.

.Permission masks per usergroup to control who can read, reply and post in different forums.

.Content approval for new posts and to take individual posts offline for review.

.Warning system for handling member mayhem.

.Report center where moderators and admins can handle reported threads/posts/members.

.Private messages should not require Buddypress. It should be in BBPress.

.Custom Profile Fields should not requires Buddypress…

.Notifications should not require Buddypress…

.Buttons to take actions at the top of the thread and post is also standard since 2003.

.Out of the box functionality so there is no need to create additional pages like bbpress.php to actually make things look the way you are.

…and so on 🙂

[Robin W]

I sense that there are more developers than UX people around here, am I right?

I suspect you are. There are probably less than a dozen ‘helpers’ who come on here to help others, and probably only 1/2 dozen regulars. I am not a bbPress developer, but have written several plugins for it, and enjoy the challenge of answering others’ Q’s.

Most bbpress users want it as a tool, so only visit the site when they have an issue or want it to do something. Once fixed they are happy and don’t revisit, and are highly unlikely to contribute to improving documentation.

The codex is a community project, and anyone can go in and help improve it. Amongst many others I have tried to make it more UX (user experience – I had to look it up !), but I have limited time, and lots of other commitments.

If you could outline a more useful structure I’d be all for it.

[Robkk]

Any luck finding out how this reply feature is accomplished?

@marximusmg i havent really dug into it ive been busy

but heres is the show lead topic function , throw that code into your child themes functions.php

bbp_show_lead_topic

im sure all you got to do is add the call for the reply form code somewhere right at the bottom in the lead topic template.

I also would love to know how to (also seen on High Existence) implement the “reply” option on the top right of each post within the topic, which when clicked accordions out the reply form directly beneath that post.

they use threaded replies, so if you go to bbpress forum settings then click threaded replies you should get that.

[Robkk]

BBPress however is not really a forum in my opinion yet

you know i never get when people say that

what is bbpress missing that really should be implemented to make it a guaranteed forum??

if i would i suggest something , for looks i guess would be color coordination for forums and topics, if you switch to topic freshness instead of forum archive.

so the layout would be

title of topic
started by: (user) in (color of forum) title of forum

or just the title of the forum with the color of the forum as a background/

imo thats the only suggestion i really want , but i mean there is also a plugin that already does this kind of thing.

[Jimi Wikman]

It’s because you still have the sidebar column in the code.
You can try to chase it down or just hide it with CSS. @aussiestar14 you can fix your forum by doing this:

add a class to .content-wrap and set the width to 100% (I think if you do it directly on .content-wrap it will mess upp other pages?). Then create a class named .bbpress #sidebar-subsidiary and set display:none in it.

That way you hide the sidebar column and make the content stretch 100%

Hope that helps.

[Jimi Wikman]

I don’t know why, but for some reason I decided to punish myself on my latest project (ekatana.se if anyone wan to look) and I went ahead and installed BBPress along with Buddypress. Now I have done this a few times before in the last 3-4 years and it has always been a very painful experience.

This time was not so bad and I actually got most things working pretty much instantly with just som minor CSS changes. BBPress however is not really a forum in my opinion yet and I had to go through a ton of posts and articles with half baked solutions and snippets just to get anywhere near what I think a forum should look like and behave.

Now I admit that I am biased, having worked for many, many years with IPB which is the best forum out there and I have been working with forum software since 1996…

However, BBPress have really taken a leap forward in the last few years and I look forward to see it go even further, in fact i hope to be able to lend som assistance in the UX and design department should it be needed. Since I am a systemtester as well, I hope to be able to break stuff on a regular basis as well 🙂

I really look forward to the forum grouping I see is already pretty much done and which is working just fine on my forum as far as I can tell. When time permit I will give more input into what features I see as necessary, both in the frontend and the backend and util then I just want to say that I am far from impressed, but I see hope for BBPress.

Keep up the good work!

[Robkk]

i know this is possible there is some function to display usermeta

webpage: there is a website field in contact details in bbpress profile , that i think it gets that from wordpress profile information and just displays it frontend.

about me: there is Biographical Info under About Yourself so its possible to call it using a display usermeta function i think.

send me an email: you can make a link with php inside of it so it would end up with mailto:(user-email), i dont know for sure if thats a safe way to do it though.

and you just put all that code and display on the frontend where the forum role and user stats are.

[Robkk]

What is feed in bbPress?

RSS feed

[Robkk]

use a certain plugin that sends notifications to certain user roles, like moderators

https://wordpress.org/plugins/bbpress-notify-nospam/

[Nicolas Korobochkin]

Yep. Maybe it’s time to make a first public plugin for wordpres.com?

But question about feed is still actual. What is feed in bbPress? (see previous messages)

[watstyl08]

I just used this code, to no avail. It causes an error on the site – check it out.

<?php 

get_header(); // Loads the header.php template. ?>
 
	<?php if ( is_bbpress() ) { ?>
 
		<header class="entry-header">
			<h1 class="entry-title"><?php single_post_title(); ?></h1>
			<?php echo apply_atomic_shortcode( 'entry_byline', '<div class="entry-byline">' . __( 'Published by [entry-author] on [entry-published] [entry-comments-link before=" | "] [entry-edit-link before=" | "]', 'spine2' ) . '</div>' ); ?>
		</header><!-- .entry-header -->
 
		<?php while( have_posts() ): the_post(); ?>
 
			<?php the_content(); ?>
 
		<?php endwhile; ?>
 
 
		<footer class="entry-footer">
			<?php echo apply_atomic_shortcode( 'entry_meta', '<div class="entry-meta">' . __( '[entry-terms before="Posted in " taxonomy="category"] [entry-terms before="| Tagged "]', 'spine2' ) . '</div>' ); ?>
		</footer><!-- .entry-footer -->
 
	<?php } else { ?>
	<div id="content" class="hfeed">
 
		<?php get_template_part( 'loop-meta' ); // Loads the loop-meta.php template. ?>
 
		<?php get_template_part( 'loop' ); // Loads the loop.php template. ?>
 
		<?php get_template_part( 'loop-nav' ); // Loads the loop-nav.php template. ?>
 
	</div><!-- #content -->
 
<?php get_footer(); // Loads the footer.php template. ?>

[rzelnik]

Update to my previous post: I have tried to debug the wp_mail input via WP Mail Log plugin. It seems that the bbPress doesn’t respect the e-mail settings. I have set outgoing (from) email address via WP-Mail-SMTP plugin. The rest of the WordPress email functions respect this setting, but the forum/topic notifications send the mails with default outgoing/from address (<noreply@domain.tld>). In addition, the recipient/to address of the sent emails is also noreply@domain.tld, despite the fact, that the recipients have their own email addresses set in their user profiles.

[kopperwoman]

I’m having a similar problem to dustinarmstrong. But its not exactly the same.

I’m trying to fix a broken forum set up for a client. I did not do the forum installation (he did it himself) AND the forum is installed on a live site that gets lots of web traffic so I don’t want to do anything that might impact the website overall.

Here’s my situation:
1) BBPress was installed (I don’t have details about when and how),
2) a page was created with the [bbp-forum-index] shortcode on it
3) the forum didn’t work, so my client contacted me to fix it
4) I went into settings > forums and changed the forum root slug from the default “forum” to “travel-forums” (the name of the page where the shortcode lives. The error message “Possible bbPress conflict: Forum slug” showed up next to the slug field after saving the settings.
5) I also changed the single forum slug from the default “forum” to “travel-forums”. The error message “Possible bbPress conflict: Forums base” showed up next to the slug field after saving.

In my case, the forum page DOES show up at http://foobar.com/travel-forums but it is empty except for the welcome text that I had entered into the forum main window. (So it just says “Welcome to our forum” without any of the discussion topics showing up.

Also, I have the “Recent Topics” widget enabled on my sidebar and my three test discussion topics DO show up there. When I click on any of them they take me to the correct URL but the pages are blank. So, for example, when I click on “test topic” in the widget I land on http://foobar.com/travel-forums/topic/test-topic/ and the page displays the topic header “Test topic” and the topic question “what do you think about travel?” but it doesn’t display any of the posts.

I’m not sure if this behavior is related to the slug conflict error messages or if something else is wrong.

I’m trying to follow the advice that Stephen Edgar gave.

First up, I think this is probably true in my case:

most likely you have something else either titled or using the slug discuss and this includes any items in trash as even though they are in the trash they still reserve that slug and it is not released until the item is removed from the trash.

This is probably a stupid question but How do I empty the trash to make sure that the old slug is removed?

Second, I’d like to try this:

To fix this try resetting your permalinks. In your WordPress Administration Screens navigate to Settings > Permalinks, select a different permalink structure and save. Then select your preferred permalink structure and save again.

but since my website is live and has been for a long time (and has lots of blog posts using the custom structure already) I’m concerned that this could permanently break the existing links. Any thoughts on this?

[nolimit966]

I have this exact same issue with BBPress and Wishlist members.

Does anyone know how we can fix this properly without showing all.

Thank you

[cybarmitzvah]

#2 I have noticed a new problem on the forum, astronomertalk.com,

you need to join to see it, but I changed the submit button,

using this code:

#bbpress-forums .submit {
background-color: #000073;
color: #FFFFFF;
float: center;
vertical-align: middle;
border-radius: 2px;
height: 35px;
width: 80px;
font-size: 18px;
}

but it also influenced the update profile button which now looks screwed up…

You need to join to see it, but it looks bad.

Does anyone know a fix?

Best,
JB

[ttmt]

Ok so I see in the back of wordpress bbpress settings I can deselect subscription to post and tags but this deletes it for all users.

How can I allow subscription and notification emails is only allowed for Moderators

[ttmt]

Hi all

I have bbpress set up so new users are Spectator

As Spectator they see the subscribe btn at the top of the post and the ‘Notify me of follow-up replies via email’ at the bottom.

Is there a way to change this so only Participant can see the subscribe and Notify buttons.

[MarcoDiModena]

Hi there same problem here, I use Buddypress and bbpress, I installed BBpress post rating and now I have the “like” and “dislike” in the topic post but as the user have buddypress page in profile thats cut off the Karma. There’s a way to integrate BBpress post rating with Buddypress profile? Thanks in advance for any suggestion. marco

[MilliR]

I am using forums.php as my custom template to modify bbpress. I copied content of archive-forum into it and modified it a bit. Thing is, the forum lists shows up as expected. But no topic or list of topics is shown on following the links. This is all I get.

Oh bother! No forums were found here!

Using the default page.php gives no problem.

Here’s the code for forums.php

<?php

/**
 * bbPress - Forum Archive
 *
 * @package bbPress
 * @subpackage Theme
 */

get_header(); ?>
<div id="main-content">
	<div id="millir-header-feat">
		<div class="container">
			<h1 class="entry-title"><?php bbp_forum_archive_title(); ?></h1>
		</div>
	</div>
	<div class="container">
	<div id="content-area" class="clearfix">
		<div id="left-area">
			<?php do_action( 'bbp_before_main_content' ); ?>

			<?php do_action( 'bbp_template_notices' ); ?>

			<div id="forum-front" class="bbp-forum-front">				
				<div class="entry-content">

					<?php bbp_get_template_part( 'content', 'archive-forum' ); ?>

				</div>
			</div><!-- #forum-front -->

			<?php do_action( 'bbp_after_main_content' ); ?>
		</div>
		<?php get_sidebar(); ?>
	</div>
	</div>	
</div>
<?php get_footer(); ?>

[khansariamirreza]

Hi to everyone and sorry for my English
I installed bbpress on my site and now wondering is there this futures i wan’t:
1) Is there any user role plugin or tweak for posting restrictions i wan’t to let all peoples ask their questions on my site but the topic or their reply not published until i approve (somthing like contributer role in wordpress)

2) Is there any captcha for bbpress?

[Stephen Edgar]

Can I bring with me the anonymous posts from deleted and anonymous users?

I have just added support for this to a handful of bbPress’ importers, I hope to finalize some bits for compatibility with all of bbPress importers by the end of the week and release the code for people to test out. 🙂

Importing Avatars

This is kind of a complex issue because of PHP timeouts, if we can’t find an avatar via ftp/http how long do we wait, what if the remote avatar no longer exists.

@cybmeta Has written a Joomla Kunena Forum Attachments converter for the GD bbPress Attachments plugin.

I’d like to play around one day when I have some time up my sleeve to base an avatar and attachment importer that we could use as a separate plugin to import these into WordPress media library for use with bbPress.

https://github.com/CybMeta/kunena-attachments-to-bbpress

Kunena converter for bbPress 2.4

Kunena converter for bbPress 2.4

[Nicolas Korobochkin]

In file bbpress.php I find this code:

// Topic-View Pagination|Feed|View
add_rewrite_rule( $view_slug . $paged_rule, 'index.php?' . $view_id . '=$matches[1]&' . $paged_id . '=$matches[2]', $priority );

add_rewrite_rule( $view_slug . $feed_rule,  'index.php?' . $view_id . '=$matches[1]&' . $feed_id  . '=$matches[2]', $priority );

add_rewrite_rule( $view_slug . $root_rule,  'index.php?' . $view_id . '=$matches[1]',                               $priority );

What is it? What is feed? /forums/view/feed not open.