[_ck_]

The news about bbPress on that blog is just rehashing news elsewhere (and it’s a month out of date at that). 2009 will indeed be a big year for *development* for bbPress 1.0 – but that doesn’t mean 1.0 should be adopted for use on live sites in 2009.

I don’t know how to explain it any further that 1.0 is not simply a continuance of 0.9, it’s about 50% rewritten. 0.9 was reaching a certain maturity but now virtually every major function has been changed in some way that makes it more complex (for the same functionality).

You’re not using code in 1.0 that’s been proven stable in 0.9, you are using code that’s been rewritten to mimic the functionality of 0.9 with complexity added to force the use of BackPress (essentially WordPress core functions). Not only does the added bulk slow things down, but it degrades the proven stability that was in 0.9 because the new code is not thoroughly tested.

You shouldn’t be nagging about 1.0 over here, the key question you should be nagging developers about is over on the WordPress side: When will WordPress use BackPress? If it’s not going to (anytime soon) what was the point in rushing to break a stabilized bbPress to make it use Backpress and why are people rushing to use bbPress 1.0 when it’s not finished?

I think there was only one problem: it’s that 0.9 never got support for the cookies in WP 2.7 so way too many people rushed to 1.0 despite heavy warnings not to do so, somehow thinking they know better, or worse, that they’d just nag about any problems they have and get some kind of priority fix.

I am considering releasing a plugin to make 0.9 work with WP 2.6-2.8 cookies to stop this nonsense once and for all however people still won’t be able to downgrade unless I also make another plugin to downgrade the database also. But it’s a lot of work and I have little motivation since I would never use WP 2.7+ myself.

[kevinjohngallagher]

I think we all love _ck_ for her plugins, and her attempts to help the community before and after she was made a Mod, but if she and other Mods have “had it up to here” with the same posts being made and the same questions being asked all the time; maybe it’s time to change the website which gives this the false /conflicting/confusing information?

We can’t tell people to look at Trac for info on bugs/releases/roadmaps, and then complain when they get confused by the conflicting information.

I’m also don’t find Joel’s blog too helpful, but that’s not to say that some project management isn’t necessary simply because it’s an open source project. But rather than taking the comments about leadership/ownership of the project on the chin, it’s apparently easier to discredit/deflect from the man making the comments – i mean, seriously, who cares if wikipedia doesn’t list Joel as a developer? Does that mean the man doesn’t know that keeping Trac/Gantt chart/documentation/bug list etc up to date greatly increases productivity and keeps a project focussed?

Or is it because he worked for “Microsoft, so he couldn’t be more opposite in thinking to open-source web based code development”. Are we just presuming now that if you happen to take a wage that you’re fundamentally against free or open source software? I take a wage for a company that wont be releasing it’s software, am i now in the “couldn’t be more opposite in thinking to open-source web based code development” simply because of my day job? Or is it easier to shoot down people making comments based on presumptions moderators have about anyone who places feeding their wives and children above working a 9-5 for an open source software foundation?

I see, it’s cos it’s easier to shoot down questions and comments rather than have a discussion.

(btw _ck_, the guy left Microsoft over 9 years ago. 9. years. maybe we can let that one go.)

@Ipstenu:

Hey dude, can i ask where you got his info from:

Now Lorelle (from Lorelle on WordPress, a name many folks may be familiar with) has intimated that this will be a ‘big’ year for bbPress.

It seems great news, but in the same way that Sam lets us know that he’s been focussed on non-BBpress projects 7 replies down a random forum post; it worries me that finding out this cool info is getting harder and harder.

Follow the bbPress blog. You’ll get your answer when you do

I kinda hope that’s tongue-in-cheek , with 5 posts in 6 months (and 3 of them within 3 days of each other), the BBpress blog isn’t quite the bastian of information you might think. All it does it tell us when there’s a new release. It’s not not a blog as much as a list of release dates.

[Ipstenu (Mika Epstein)]

I suspect _ck_’s had it up to here with the same people asking the same questions. It does get a little wearing and if I were to link to every post that someone asked this ‘How long…’ question… well I may find the practical limit to post length Exaggeration a little, yes, but not as much as you’d think.

FWIW, I read Joel on Software frequently, but I disagree with him when it comes to the Open Source Solution. Locked Down software, like Office and such, are a totally different beast, and most Open Source developments start out herky-jerky (like BB and WP) and eventually smooth out into a sort of update schedule. But you can’t do that until you have a baked product, and when you’re re-inventing things, you can’t give a firm deadline because there is no way you can quantify the time it takes to be inventive. Open Source created a new development roadmap, and that map is still very young and very tentative. It took a decade or more to get commercial software where it is today. Open Source has been around since the 60s, but it didn’t really become a ‘thing’ until 1998. And Open Source development, where anyone can pitch in? Whooof! A lot of folks never even saw that coming as more than a passing fancy.

Now Lorelle (from Lorelle on WordPress, a name many folks may be familiar with) has intimated that this will be a ‘big’ year for bbPress. What does that mean? Dunno, but I suspect now that WP is a grownup, it’s time to burn creative juices over on bbPress. Which still does not mean you’ll get bb 1.0/release any time soon.

Be patient. Read the posts people have already made. Follow the bbPress blog. You’ll get your answer when you do

[Sam Bauers]

The only gotchas with bbPress-1.0-alpha (up to alpha-6) are the less stable code and a few missing functionalities with regards to tag management. If you are doing “deep” integration then there are reported problems with language translation files not being loaded. There are some other sundry issues as well, most of which just need some quality time with a PHP person to fix.

[frooyo]

@ _ck_

Thanks for the reply.

Nope, I don’t use plugins.

As for that topic, your response makes it sound like a large reason why bbPress is slow to release is due to the fact that plugins will break.

Maybe I’m a little confused here but what’s the problem with that?

Plug-ins are just that, “plugins”. They are not part of the core product.

Just an observation, but it seems to me that something that is not apart of the core product, like plug-ins, shouldn’t slow down the release of the core product.

(Especially plug-ins developed for a non-stable, non-1.0 release)

Just my 2 cents

[sumit1988]

hey guys, just another idea:

what about integrate bbpress and wordpress that far (maybe with a plugin) that if registered and logged in users post a comment at a wordpress blog-post, this comment will appear in the profile of bbPress users under “user activity”.

And related to that:

WordPress users doesnt really have a profile page, so it would be nice if a user register and post a blog-comment, his name-link would open his bbpress profile page.

Hope you understand what i mean. I think it isnt that difficult. But too much difficult for me

greetings

Sumit

[_ck_]

You keep quoting other people and their nonsense lists.

Those are commercial programmers with commercial projects.

bbPress is free and makes no money for the people who make it available.

(Joel isn’t even a programmer according to Wikipedia, but was a manager on Excel for Microsoft, so he couldn’t be more opposite in thinking to open-source web based code development – he blogs about concepts to sell his company’s commercial, closed-source software so what he says is motivated by profit)

Let’s say bbPress 1.0 final was available tomorrow.

But half the plugins won’t work with it, so are you going to fix them?

Let’s say Sam gives into your pressure and releases bbPress 1.0 beta early – but because of the rush there are bugs or security issues – are you going to fix them? Are you going to adjust the plugins for bbPress 1.1 because of rushed release on bbPress 1.0 ? I’m not.

I can give you my timeline as far as plugins – January 2010 is my estimated completion date for plugin compatibility with bbPress 1.0 – this is not an exaggeration. Hopefully this will satisfy your quest for deadlines on free, non-commercial programs and let you plan accordingly.

So if you aren’t using any plugins, I guess you’ll be all set for the next alpha and beta releases, nag away.

[frooyo]

@ _ck_

How is this a pointless question?

Simply saying that bbPress 1.0 will be finished “when it’s ready”, is an absolute lack of leadership.

And using Trac’s Roadmap functionality but not updating it to be current, since it states bbPress is 6 months behind, indicates also a lack of commitment by the development team to push this project forward.

Also, don’t you find it interesting that you have had to make the comment before numerous times and say “people, please stop asking for a release date”.

https://bbpress.org/forums/topic/eta-of-bbpress-10#post-21764

I’m not even asking for a specific date, just a better understanding of the roadmap. If people are constantly asking you the same question over and over again, isn’t that a signal to you that people are: concerned with the current development state and/or unclear as to what the roadmap current entails.

Unfortunately, not everyone here is a developer. So simply stating “why don’t you help code” is not an option always. The best many of us can do is simply use the ALPHA version and report bugs if we see any … which we do.

P.S.

Also, one thing good about roadmaps is that it holds people accountable. Having a roadmap in Trac that, as you have stated before is “meaningless”

https://bbpress.org/forums/topic/yet-another-10-timeline-roadmap-question#post-22122

is a complete embarrassment to this development project. I hate saying that, truly, because I greatly enjoy bbPress.

But if you cannot even update a simply Roadmap, now 6 months out dated, indicates to me that bbPress 1.0 is vaporware … regardless of how many Trac ticket check-ins you have in any given week.

I’m not alone on this, Joel Spolsky include keeping Roadmaps up-to-date on his 12 steps for better coding

http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000043.html

[John James Jacoby]

Also don’t forget to copy over the code from the .htaccess file that bbPress semi tries to generate for you. Simply changing the setting in the drop down box isn’t enough.

[frooyo]

Curious to know how many more ALPHA builds to expect before the builds move into BETA.

We are currently on build 6, I see a soon to be released ALPHA v7 is in the pipe.

Not trying to hold the bbPress team to a specific # of releases or anything, just curious if we have just a few more ALPHA’s or like a dozen more before BETA begins

For what it’s worth, I have been using ALPHA v6 since release without any problems.

[matthijs]

I have wp and bbpress succesfully integrated. Now in my bbpress forum I’d like to display the wordpress pages. Basicly I want to replicate wp_list_pages() from wp. I know there’s a way to include wp in total inside bbpress. but that has a performance penalty and I’m also afraid it might cause bugs in the future.

So I’d prefer a simple query. What I have thus far:

global $bbdb;

$query = "SELECT wp_posts.*

FROM  wp_posts

WHERE wp_posts.post_status = 'publish'

AND wp_posts.post_type = 'page'

ORDER BY wp_posts.post_date DESC ";

$results=$bbdb->get_results($query);

foreach($results as $result) {

echo '<li><a href="' . $result->guid . '">' . $result->post_name . '</a></li>';

}

But I need a query which replicates wp_list_pages() closer. Where can I find that function in wordpress? Or how could I improve my query so that I get the subpages as well, for example?

[Ipstenu (Mika Epstein)]

You can change the post.php template page to make the avatar link to the profile.

I have it so the name links there and it works fine.

<a href="/forums/profile/<?php post_author_id(); ?>"><?php post_author(); ?></a>

As for the URL not updating, this is fixed in the Trunk build, but I don’t think it’s made it to the alpha yet. See https://trac.bbpress.org/changeset/1930

[John James Jacoby]

Yeah some of my users haven’t updated their profiles, and BuddyPress doesn’t recognize them until either they do, or I force the info (which I will probably do.)

@TeddyC, it took me installing WordPressMU 4 times before I followed the instructions correctly, and I’d recommend not doing it on Valentines weekend so your girlfriend doesn’t hate you for a few days, but otherwise I think it went as smoothly as it could considering I migrated 200 users from WordPress.org/bbPress over to MU. There’s a few places where I had to trial and error my way through the multi-blog switchover and the URL re-writing still isn’t perfect (categories and postnames are broken?) and I had to manually dump the DB and replace all the directory references for all of the uploaded media.

Otherwise the rest was just tweaking and tinkering. Lots of it.

I’ve got the forums FULLY integrated now with BuddyPress, so single account access, cookies, and users are able to post to group forums from within the group itself, and vice versa. It’s a neat little bridge and I rather like that it’s all playing nice. Hopefully upgrading to 1.0 or new alpha’s doesn’t TOTALLY break everything too badly, although I anticipate that it probably will. Yay!

I am going to be using BuddyPress to do a small social networking site for a non profit, that is going to be incorporating some school related content, so I will let you know how that goes and be sure to stay in touch as it progresses. I’ll link back to it here if we decide to incorporate bbPress.

[deadlyhifi]

$forum_one_topics = $bbdb->get_results("SELECT * FROM $bbdb->topics WHERE forum_id = $forum_id AND topic_status = 0 AND topic_sticky = 0 ORDER BY topic_id DESC LIMIT $limit OFFSET $offset");

updated to leave out sticky posts from the second loop (added AND topic_sticky = 0 to query).

If you leave out ‘$forum_id = 1;’ it will work on multiple forums.

I’ve done this so that my front page summary shows latest active posts, but my specific forum pages list by topic order.

[Alvaro Degives-Mas]

richcon: mah plezure.

chrishajer stated:

I still can’t figure out why people want integrated logins, why they have users that both post to a blog and post in a forum.

I’ll give you a real-life example. When WordPress is not used as a blog, but as a CMS, and its support for registered members serves to allow restricted reading access (so, not even posting!) to certain pages / posts (or portions thereof), those members need to log in, so as to be able to read those parts that are off-limits to guests. Now, let’s imagine such a blog-turned-CMS has a forum as well. And that said members were put through the hassle of logging in again on exactly the same site – just to be able to access a forum, where they “really” participate and exchange posts. No explanation on technicalities like “cookie synchronization” could undo their irritation, and frankly, I’ve joined their chorus. If only because the customer is king.

So, allow me to invert the perspective here: why on Earth would anyone even want to justify a klutzy non-unified login system that doesn’t recognize users who logged in on one part to access another of the same site, that is driven by software that, ordinarily, ought to be considered siblings?

Don’t get me wrong – I very well understand and accept the premise of technical difficulty. I have no problem in assessing it as merely the way it is, and patiently awaiting (and appreciating) the effort underway to address this issue. But I see no merit whatsoever in attempts to belittle the annoyance and inconvenience to users – remember: they make the site worthwhile – by way of questioning the validity of expecting a unified login. Human logic and behavior isn’t necessarily always linear in its expression, but it is what one has to deal with, in order to lead a practical and profitable (as in: rewarding) life.

And this inconvenient thing called real life is what made me, in the end, opt for a non-bbPress forum solution for a professional association: because I’m totally, utterly, radically done with dealing with complaints from non-technically oriented member users about “not being able to access” the site that they in essence (through membership of the association) paid for.

Is this a majority scenario? No, of course not. But it is very real. Hopefully now you understand why there’s interest in a unified login system, shared among WordPress and bbPress.

(Added afterwards: if you’re looking for the forum, you won’t see it until you logged in – it appears in the navigation menu only after you logged in as a member. And for the really curious: I opted for the SPF route to solve the login issue, while still remaining in the WP family.)

[chrishajer]

Looks fine in Firefox 3 or IE7 on Windows XP.

Does it happen with the stock theme?

Does your HTML validate?

http://validator.w3.org/check?verbose=1&uri=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.watchandtrain.com%2Fdogforums%2F

My guess is that it’s improperly marked up code causing it to do that to you. For example, you are using an unordered list <ul> in the sidebar, but you’re not using any list items <li>. That will surely cause problems. I’d fix the invalid markup before trying to fix this specific layout issue.

[richcon]

@_ck_: That’s one opinion on 2.7, but I actually like it. I really upgraded for security reasons (getting hacked will do that to you), but then I grew to really like the interface.

@nv1962: That’s the first time someone quoted me using the word “thusly”

@chrishajer: We want integration so people can use the same login to post comments to news stories and post in the forum. Maintaining two separate logins for the same site is asking too much of the casual visitor. I had the integration 100% seamless; nobody would have any clue that they’re looking at different pieces of software.

[jmilli]

I added a search box to header.php using this code:

<?php search_form( $q ); ?>

However, the search button shows up all the way on the right side of the page and below the input box. Does anyone have any suggestions?

Here is my (work-in-progress not live) forums site where you can see the problem.

http://www.watchandtrain.com/dogforums/

Thanks so much,

Jeff

[PJ Brunet]

@chrishajer thanks I’ll check that out.

But, I’d like to fix this problem because the URL of the “member” is very important to me. Should I start reading “https://plugins-dev.bbpress.org/&#8221; or? I’d like to help work on the code but I have no experience contributing to open source.

As it is now, the URL is not saved, it’s not even in the list on the profile page.

I’m guessing that’s the responsibility of the “bb_get_current_user_info( ‘id’ );” function?

I personally think clicking the member’s pic should take you to their profile, that would be more intuitive IMO. I wouldn’t expect to click the text “Member” to see a profile, and that makes even less sense if I give the member some custom name under his/her picture. Let’s say a member works for XYZ Inc. Now I want to show “XYZ Inc.” under his/her profile picture, a pretty typical use of the member’s custom title. To me it would make more sense to link “XYZ Inc.” to XYZ.com using the member’s URL. But the way you have it now, clicking “XYZ Inc.” takes you to his/her profile page, which doesn’t make sense to me.

[Ipstenu (Mika Epstein)]

Now, all this aside: I still can’t figure out why people want integrated logins, why they have users that both post to a blog and post in a forum. But, I don’t ask why.

On the blog, I (and my editors) post news stories of interest to the community. On the forum, everyone posts whatever. I use the same ID to moderate them all.

I suppose eventually I’ll end up with BuddyPress for some level of community, but right now people who want to chat with friends about like subjects hit the forums, people who want to comment on the news. It fits I agree this doesn’t fit every site, but y’know, that’s the beauty of the intartubes.

I can’t understand the benefit of cross posting the same blog post into the forum, personally I kind of see why people want to, but I’m not convinced it’ll work.

[johnhiler]

AFAIK, nobody’s worked out the WordPress 2.7/bbPress 0.9.x cookie/signin integration yet. If it comes, I’m betting it will take the form of a user-generated plugin… I don’t get the feeling that it’s on the official roadmap.

I agree that point upgrades to address compatibility would be nice! But I’m pretty sure that bbPress isn’t enough of a priority within Automattic yet to get the resources to make that happen. It sounds like that may happen within the next year tho.

As for the current state of things: I don’t think bbPress 1.0 is stable yet and more importantly, a good number the most popular 0.9 plugins aren’t yet fully compatible with 1.0. But that may change in a few months! In the meantime, I am hoping that bbPress 0.9 cookie/signin compatibility with the latest WordPress versions becomes possible with a plugin.

[chrishajer]

> Has anyone worked out the details in running WordPress 2.7

> with the current stable release of bbPress 0.9.x?

Not that I’m aware of. There was a reply describing someone going through the WordPress code to see what needed to change. I can’t find that reply right now.

[richcon]

I’m setting up a new web site, which is running WordPress 2.7. (Older versions aren’t an option because keeping them up-to-date with security releases is much harder.) The site’s going to need a forum, and I would like to use bbPress if I can.

Has anyone worked out the details in running WordPress 2.7 with the current stable release of bbPress 0.9.x? I know that seamless integration won’t be ready until 1.0 is ready, and if the developers say don’t use it yet, I won’t use it.

But if I do try to go with the current bbPress, what are the gotchas? Is there any integration possible at all, or do I have to wall them off as completely separate products with separate logins? If my client wants integration now, do I have no choice but go with something else like SMF?

There is one additional concern I have, though:

I had integrated bbPress 0.9 with a WordPress 2.5 site about a year ago, and loved how well they fit together — you guys really did an awesome job. Then 2.6 came out, and the incredible delay in bb’s WordPress integration seriously burned us. The web site got hacked twice due to 2.5.x security flaws that seem to be fixed in 2.7, and in the end we finally had to bite the bullet, delete the forum (it wasn’t getting that much use anyway), and upgrade WordPress. While the purist in me would love to work with bbPress again once 1.0 is available, I can’t shake this suspicion that when some future version of WordPress comes out, those of us who are using bbPress would get burned again because the developers are simply more interested in an ambitious future release that’s more than a year out. While 1.0 looks like an incredible release, a point upgrade to address compatibility would have been a really, really nice thing.

(Sorry if this sounds like a rant — I just would really like to trust this product again!)

Thanks,

Richard

[meinwalter]

Hi guys,

i want to have the same theme from WordPress in my bbpress forum. Therefore i add require_once('../wp-blog-header.php'); in my bb-config.php . Then i can load the bbpress forum but it have the old kakumei theme. What should i do ? Delete the last three lines from bb-config :

if  ( !defined('BB_PATH') )

define('BB_PATH', dirname(__FILE__) . '/' );

require_once( BB_PATH . 'bb-settings.php' );

But then the forum doesnt knoe the bbpress functions. Can somebody please help me?

Thank you in advance.

[OthelloBloke]

Hello

I use Eblah SQL Beta 4 for a few forums and so far it hasn’t let me down over ANY of the major forum packages out there.

But I want a php forum for various reasons. Has anyone written a converter? Or is anyone willing to look at writing one?

You’d have a very greatful bloke right here if so.