[kevinjohngallagher]

Marius mate,

Testing these things on a local/development enviroment first is really going to help you. bbPress plugins sometimes require quite a bit of web-dev knowledge, and being able to work out all the hic-ups on your own machine before letting your users see it will make your life alot easier

By the looks of it, yourself and JohnHiller could be on different timezones, I’m on all day fixing the last few bugs in the bbProgress admin section, so shout if it goes back up and we’ll try and help.

[kevinjohngallagher]

Hi Tom,

Apprecaite the update mate, thanks

This is actually great info, as we had no idea that the documentation section was actually being edited, i personally haven’t looked through it in 6 months.

[Marius-]

I got like thirty users who are all twelve year olds, it would have been a mess, sorry. I can turn it on again tonight, when they have all gone to bed

[johnhiler]

Marius- That’s an option in the admin: “Ask for poll during new topic creation? (requires AJAX on)”.

Set that to yes, and also this one: “Use AJAX-like actions if javascript enabled?”… and it should work!

[Marius-]

Nightgunner, if you read this – I had to delete this plugin instantly.

First of all, theres no admin panel. So I dont really know what Im installing or not with your plugin.

Second of all, I tried to recode the format to UTF-8, which supports Norwegian character ÆØÅ. This resulted in error messages from the server, about headers and stuff I have no clue about.

Thirdly, when hitting the back-button, it returns you to the front page, which confuses members.

I just wanted one plugin that makes people write longer posts. But this one said nothing about posts being too short as Ben L. implied. It said “You have to actually submit some content”, which educationally demoralises a users will to post. They might think their posts are stupid, which in all truth, they are, but to get a successfull forum, you cant tell people that, you must encourage them. And being an idiot at PHP, I found no way to make this happen in the code.

[Ashish Kumar (Ashfame)]

In your front-page.php

<div id="hottags" role="main">

<h2><?php _e('Hot Tags'); ?></h2>

<p class="frontpageheatmap"><?php bb_tag_heat_map(); ?></p>

</div>

bb_tag_heat_map() is what you want to avoid.

A function call means some processing, involving database queries etc. You surely wants to remove all the unused stuff for top notch performance

[Marius-]

Damn damn damn. That CSS code worked like a charm. Had to try two times before it worked, place it in the beginning of Structure in the CSS.

Everything is gone!!! Great!

[Jeremy Winter]

I am working on a plugin to allow the following tags to be inserted into post by users.

<video>

-src

-type

<source>

-src

-type

Are their any security concerns I am not thinking of at the moment? I could make the plugin only work for Admins, but that is just not as much fun

[johnhiler]

I came across some disturbing bugs with Bozo, including the “random users are being marked as Bozos” one mentioned above… I don’t know if it’s fixed now, but it caused so many problems I figured I didn’t need the headaches.

Akismet comes and goes in terms of quality: it’s usually fairly reliable, but then it will freak out for a week or two and produce lots of false positives. That’s why I’ve come up with so many ways to route around it…

I still find it useful, but Akismet probably shouldn’t be checking posts by Admins or users with lots of posts already in the system… that’s just begging for problems!

[Submachiner]

Not sure about her being hit with Bozo. But after looking up the link you provided, that could be the culprit. But if it is, why would the system go and label a user as spam? Especially when the user has never made any kind of spam content.

I don’t see much point in Akismet considering lately its been spamming non-spam then spam. But would there be any repercussions of turning the system off? And maybe if there is something more “suitable” that can replace the spam system?

I’ve forwarded this over to the admin. Hopefully this helps. Thanks for the reply and support

[johnhiler]

I’m not really clear on the advantages of 1.0 using BackPress… it seemed like a huge amount of work, and I’m not clear at all on the benefits – especially since last I heard, the WordPress release wasn’t fully using BackPress yet.

Has that changed – are bbPress and WordPress using a shared BackPress codebase?

[paulhawke]

“bbPress without backpress” is not the same as “bbPress 0.9”

In version 0.9 there was bbPress specific code to perform a variety of functions. Those method calls were migrated to use a sub-set of the WordPress codebase (“backpress”). That became version 1.0 … and what was done was to move from “a subset of WordPress” to “the whole of WordPress”.

A more accurate statement would therefore be that bbPress specific code was dropped, it moved to using WP features divorced of the rest of WP, and then was made to work with WP as a whole — a continuation of forward momentum and not a step backward at all.

[Scott Kingsley Clark]

r-a-y,

Thanks for your interest in the project! It’s definitely heading in that direction

[kevinjohngallagher]

So this will be another of my unpopular posts, i’ve had a whole week of working on bbPress, so this is my 3rd of the week – apologies to all.

It’ll really help this conversation if you read http://bbpress.org/forums/topic/future-of-bbpress#post-60022 which is written by the wonderful Andy Peatling who has integrated bbPress with BuddyPress (and therefore into WordPress). Basically, he is the authority on the matter.

I bring this up because I thought today, what the heck are we doing? WordPress integration is the single most asked for feature, it’s the reason a large number of people choose bbPress, and according to Matt:

Strategically the most important thing we need to figure out is how to integrate bbPress better with WP

-http://bbpress.org/forums/topic/future-of-bbpress

Ok, but if we look at what Andy has said, in order for this to happen we need to remove BackPress from bbPress. Except… 90% of the changes from bbPress0.9 to bbPress1.0 was adding BackPress.

So, if integration is the plan (even as a plugin), and integration = no backPress, then whatever platform we build the fully integrated bbPress out of is bbPress without BackPress, or as we commonly call it bbPress0.9.

So then why are we building on top of bbP1.0, when we’re going to have to port that code back to 0.9 in the future or worse, attempt to combine the two. Why are we focussing on features that are already in WordPress as standard, given that they will work as via the WP functions once integrated.

How far down the rabbit hole are we going to go before we take a slightly longer term look?

Anyone have any thoughts for a Friday evening?

[kevinjohngallagher]

Any webmaster that isn’t really tech savvy…

bbPress is not aimed at non-tech-savvy people. Infact the same with WordPress really. Editing of files and the ability to use FTP is a must or the thing won’t work (you have to edit and upload a config file).

Editing or changing anything involves some basic-PHP knowledge really, and this is pretty much always going to be the way of it – if you don’t got for a premium theme/framework/plugin.

It’s unbelievable actually in this day and age.

We hear this from time to time, and i can’t understand why it comes up. But it comes down to “basic” features and what is now considered “standard” features for forums. The difference is that “basic” features are things that forums need to do it’s job. “Standard” features are from a personal perception based on what other forum solutions have – that doesn’t make them any less valid as feature requests.

bbPress is always going to be feature-less in comparison to other forums out there, with the reliance on people writing plugins or editing the code to customize things for themselves – thats an aim, not a side effect. As much as the people on this forum try and help out those that are new or not quite sure, the realism is we’re years away from a free “out of the box” solution for 90% of the requests people make.

[af3]

Dailytalker, i’m not a coder, so i hope this will point you to the right direction:

1. i’m running wpmu+buddypress+bbpress and installed bp-fbconnect plugin

2. for bbpress, i followed the fbconnect instruction in facebook website; it has a step by step instruction how to get the fbconnect installed in a page (meaning, hack your bbpress theme files).

[Ashish Kumar (Ashfame)]

Integrate them so that user tables are shared

http://blog.ashfame.com/2009/07/integrate-bbpress-10-with-wordpress-28/

In WP setting, change the setting that only required users can comment

and then in bbPress disable registrations or redirect them to WP register page

http://blog.ashfame.com/2009/11/disable-bbpress-registrations/

Hope that helps!

[jonto]

I agree. It’s unbelievable actually in this day and age. I have been unable to get the plugin working yet.

[chrishajer]

You could rename the tables with the prefix that works, to get around this. But you’d have to update the data in the tables as well, I think there are permissions maybe that refer to the table by name.

Or, you could further troubleshoot connecting to that database and selecting data from the tables with the prefix you currently use.

I’ve not heard of that problem before, but there probably aren’t many people who upgraded from .9 to 1.0 AND had a custom table prefix. The fact that it wants to perform a new installation when the bb_ tables don’t exist makes sense, since bbPress does not know there is a current installation.

I haven’t looked at the upgrade code to see if maybe there’s a bug where the database connection fails due to a non-default table prefix, but you could check that as well.

[admingsc]

Hi, all. Is it possible to change the wording on the registration page through the Admin dashboard alone? I’d like to add additional instructions for users, but I don’t know how to code (the BB was built by a design team, and I’d like to avoid having to pay them to make such a small change.)

My theme is Navigation for bbPress 1.3

Thanks!

[elforesto]

I’m attempting to do an upgrade of bbPress from 0.9.2 and get the following error every time I attempt to access any bbPress pages:

ERROR: Could not establish a database connection

I did some experimenting and found that when I change the table prefix from the one I’ve been using back to the default of bb_, I’m prompted to perform a new installation. The problem with this is that I don’t want to lose the existing contents of the forum.

Any advice or suggestions would be most appreciated.

[paulhawke]

Where are we now?

Aside from the questions surrounding integration with WordPress, another of our big questions is “how do I import from _____” (insert a different forum product of your choosing)

Right now the approach is ad-hoc at best: We are handing a PHP script around hand-to-hand that is able to convert a phpBB v2.0.x forum over to bbPress v. 0.9, and if you want to convert a different forum (say, SMF) the accepted wisdom is to install phpBB, convert to that, then convert to bbPress 0.9 and then upgrade.

The official coding standards for WordPress state:

Avoid touching the database directly. If there is a defined function that can get the data you need, use it. Database abstraction (using functions instead of queries) helps keep your code forward-compatible and, in cases where results are cached in memory, it can be many times faster.

As it stands bbPress imports clearly violate that principle by using the script we are passing around.

Solving the problem

Importing data clearly is an example where a strategy pattern solves things in an elegant fashion.

The strategy pattern (also known as the policy pattern) is a particular software design pattern, whereby algorithms can be selected at runtime.

The strategy pattern is useful for situations where it is necessary to dynamically swap the algorithms used in an application. The strategy pattern is intended to provide a means to define a family of algorithms, encapsulate each one as an object, and make them interchangeable. The strategy pattern lets the algorithms vary independently from clients that use them.

More concretely, this means creating a bbPress Import plugin which provides an overall multi-step process, and delegates to an external sub-plugin to retrieve the external datasource specific steps. I would argue that this ought to be a plugin (and remain a plugin rather than being pulled into the core of bbPress) because once you’ve imported from a given external forum, you can deactivate and uninstall the “import” code as its no longer required.

Roadmap

1. We need to create a basic import plugin. — This I have done, it’s experimental and I’d like some more eyes on the code before calling it “done”
2. We need to create import strategies for external forums, starting with phpBB2 — This I have done, by extracting SQL from the script we all pass hand-to-hand. Again, it needs more eyes on the code as a QA step.
3. We need to create import strategies for other external forums, specifically SMF and phpBB3 — this is where the strategy pattern comes into its own – each can be developed independently and combined later. Its also a great place for community input.

Looking further out

The import plugin relies on calling the internal bb_new_post, bb_new_topic, bb_new_forum and to a certain degree the bb_new_user methods. As we move toward bbPress being a plugin to WordPress, these will become the only way to import data, as the script we pass around will become evermore obsolete.

Secondly, WordPress itself has an import framework. I suspect that any “import plugin” we write now will become somewhat obsolete in that timeframe. That said, if we do things right, the import strategies we create might migrate over. What I dont know is the timeframe. Is the bbPress-as-a-plugin-to-Wordpress change close enough on the horizon that we should simply target the WordPress import framework directly?

Thoughts / comments?

[Ashish Kumar (Ashfame)]

No worries! You are at the right place

[Ashish Kumar (Ashfame)]

BuddyPress 1.2 can install on normal WordPress too and BuddyPress itself offer integrated bbPress forum.

Try WP 2.9.2 + BuddyPress 1.2

[jasbg]

Hi

Been trying to install Buddypress onto a clean BBPress instalation – but it keeps giving me an error:

---

Warning: require_once(WP_PLUGIN_DIR/buddypress/bp-core.php) [function.require-once]: failed to open stream: No such file or directory in C:wampwwwbbpressmy-pluginsbuddypressbp-loader.php on line 19

Fatal error: require_once() [function.require]: Failed opening required ‘WP_PLUGIN_DIR/buddypress/bp-core.php’ (include_path=’.;C:php5pear’) in C:wampwwwbbpressmy-pluginsbuddypressbp-loader.php on line 19

---

Does anyone know if this installation is at all possible (clean BBPress + BuddyPress forum) ?

I would like to avoid using WordPress Mu – to keep things as lean (simple) as possible !

Thanks in advance for any advice on the subject !

Jens

btw. – I have for a couple of weeks been doing research on how to run the best and most sufficient frontend bases open posting site (or almost open) – and has ended with bbPress (has 12 different test systems running on wamp and easyphp – among them Word MU – Drupal version 6 and 7 and others. It’s close to chaos for sure)