[chrishajer]

Steven, here is the exact way to do it if you still need help:

<?php include("/www/yoursite/forum/my-templates/your-template/sidebar.php");?>

Then the file you are including just goes in sidebar.php in your template folder. Write the sidebar once, use it anywhere.

[Steven Hodson]

@Taeo Ya I realize that bbPress doesn’t have the same sidebar ‘functionality’ as WordPress. What I’mm looking for is more of hte code re-use idea .. write one (or two) sidebars.php and then just include them so thanks on the PHP confirm – I am pretty much a PHP n00b …..

[chandersbs]

Last night and this morning and the whole day, I’ve been busy trying to figure out where new users where going.

After the integration I noticed that all users where showing ‘anonymous’, I did some reading and I discovered that it was possible that it wasn’t reading the appropiate database.

But I checked and checked, and I know that it IS reading the appropiate database, since the admin account is ONLY available in the wp_users table. I have been able to login with it, in both my bbpress area and my wp area.

My existing accounts, I couldn’t login with that. I kept getting User does not exist.

I created new accounts to see where those went. I couldn’t find them.

I just realized that the new accounts, they replaced random old accounts. But just the USER_NICENAME in the forum, if I check my database, I still the original name corresponding the account ID.

To summarize it:

Integrated wp + bbpress. It was an existing bbpress website.

Integrating went kind of OK. after the integration, I noticed its not reading the users, hence the ‘user does not exist’, all users are showing anonymous.

I really really would love it, if someone could help me out

Anyone?

[Olympus]

Theme integration can still be performed without having to turn bbPress into a plugin, and in fact, it can be done via a simple CSS trick ( that means that the default CSS of bbPress should be rewritten so that it becomes more flexible, and every element ( forum tables, forms etc… ) should act as “objects” which can be automatically stretched vertically independently of their parents or I don’t know, where the parents will be objects in the WP stylesheet ) . So again, for theme integration, NO NEED TO TURN BBPRESS INTO A PLUGIN, because it’s just a CSS issue ( + little PHP coding, nothing serious ) !

Connecting the Admin sides of WP and bbPress ? This can be easily done via an OPTIONAL plugin ( or via XML-RPC calls, so that you can handle your bbPress forum even if it isn’t in the same host ) .

Turning bbPress into a plugin would be a nightmare, think of all the unnecessary WP calls … Why did I choose bbPress again ? To have a light forum or to have TWO frameworks ( WordPress and bbPress ) + unnecessary calls and files ?

The reason I choose bbPress at the beginning ( 3~4 years ago ) is because it’s from the creators of WordPress, so I hoped that it will be as easy to customize as WordPress, and that’s what I got ( even though, at the beginning it was really hard for me because I had to guess the function names, as there’s no Codex for bbPress ) and I’m very satisfied . I had the choice between bbPress, PunBB and Vanilla ( the lightest forums out there, and at the time, Vanilla had a greater number of plugins than bbPress ), but I stick with bbPress because it’s the easiest one to customize . So for those who think that bbPress can’t compete in the light forums market, you’re wrong !

[kevinjohngallagher]

The code is also 1 year old mate, and for a version of BBpress long since given up on since the RC1 was rushed out with no beta testing and very little alpha testing.

[Jim R]

I moved from an SMF forum, using SSI to distribute content through a handful of PHP pages. Making any theme changes was a nightmare. I was introduced to WordPress in the summer and loved it. I spent a month looking for a good forum that I obviously wanted integrated, but that was not easy. I found bbPress and was very disappointed it wasn’t more easily integrated. In fact, in the beginning, I couldn’t get it to work.

(side note) GerikG was one who helped me a lot, and the odd thing was I was doing everything properly, but as we troubleshot the issues, we found a simple mistake, there can’t be a www. in the URL’s. (/side noate)

I’m four months into WordPress, and I have switched forums twice. I came back to bbPress with the assumption it would eventually be more integrated with WP.

To me, someone who isn’t much on the coding side but understands it a little, the WP / bbPress integration isn’t an issue of whether it’s a plug-in or separate. It must be about these features right out of the box:

1) Unified login.

2) Theme / navigation integration

3) Post / Tag synchronization

4) Widget integration

As a code novice, I could never understand how these issues weren’t present out of the box. (Much the same as I don’t see how WPMU could be born separate from WP code.) It’s not like the people who designed these products are dumb, so maybe there was a reason for it that made sense to them, but as someone coming into it just never made sense.

Other things it should include, and to my understanding this would be inherent in any PHP based system, the ability to handle WP conditional and template tags. Admin integration would be nice as an option. In my case, I would use it. I know the plug-in makes it possible, but a simple setting would ask, “Would you like to use bbPress admin panel in your WP admin panel?” That would come with an obvious explanation of what bbPress is.

All of that said, without a strong opinion on plug-in vs. stand alone, if the above features are ready to go out of the box, I’m not sure why it couldn’t remain stand alone. But again, I’m a complete code novice.

I mean my gosh, with the PHP widget and Widget Context, I can do just about anything to my WP pages. It’s very nice. No reason bbPress can’t be that simple too….for users. (wink)

[citizenkeith]

I posted this in the bbPress Attachments thread, but thought it would get a little more exposure here….

I have a small community of musicians who are collaborating on music. We decided to start using bbPress Attachments to share Torrent files. This way, we can use Bit Torrent to share large WAV files (40-100MB each).

I would love to be able to extend this plugin to display the contents of the torrent file. As it is, one person might share multiple files in one upload and we need a way to navigate the torrents. Since there are ten of us sharing files, you can imagine that it is getting confusing. You have to download every torrent just to find one file.

I realize _ck_ isn’t working on bbPress Attachments anymore, but am hoping somebody in the community has the ability to add this functionality. I suppose one could even re-use code from bbPress Attachments to write “bbPress Torrent” or something…

I found some php scripts that will parse torrent data, but I’m no programmer.

[windyjonas]

I had problems with the “search in forum” feature. The “select” input control is displayed, but it seems as if the value i choose isn’t used by the code.

When I press submit, this is he URL that is sent to the web server:

http://my.hostname.com/forum/search.php?search=nisse&forum-id=2

In this example, the forum restriction does not take effect.

However,

if i manually change the URL to:

http://my.hostname.com/forum/search.php?search=nisse&forum_id=2 (note the underscore; forum_id)

then it works!

I can track it down to the file:

/bb-includes/class.bb-query.php

and this code:

if ( $forum ) {

$r .= "t<div><label for="forum-id">" . __('Forum') . "</label>n";

$r .= "tt<div>" . bb_get_forum_dropdown( array( 'selected' => $q_forum_id, 'none' => __('Any'), 'id' => 'forum-id

' ) ) . "</div>n";

$r .= "t</div>nn";

}

Changing forum-id to forum_id here fixes the problem, but I would prefer not to tamper with core files.

[Steven Hodson]

is there the ability to use the WP type INCLUDE in bbPress in order to include an custom php file? What I want to do is take the repeating “sidebar” code into a separate file so I don’t have to update all the files that include the sidebar code

[plutopsyche]

Thanks, I tried it with the default theme and it worked. I compared side by side and still couldn’t figure out what was causing the problem, but scrapping what I had and starting from scratch again seems to have resolved the problem.

Can’t wait until there’s a codex.

Thanks!

[buddha-trance]

I tried what Ben L. suggested and it works fine even with a forum with no topics (in which case there is no topic title shown because there is none, and it shows a view count of 0)

I implemented it this way:

<td class="num"><a href="<?php $topic = $GLOBALS['topic'] = current( get_latest_topics( array( 'number' => 1, 'forum' => get_forum_id() ) ) ); ?>"><?php topic_title(); ?></a></td>

[buddha-trance]

I would also prefer if bbPress and WordPress stay separate. That would make bbPress much more powerful.

What we need for new users is very clear instructions on how to integrate. The login cookies was the nightmare part when I first set it up, because of so many different threads and inconsistent advice on how to do it, so it became a trial and error thing, with a great loss of time. The same could be done with clear instructions on how to integrate a WP matching theme. If all the steps are defined clearly, and there is a codex like WP has, having bbPress as a standalone would allow for a lot more customization and expandability than if it were a plugin. Many would rather use certain plugins on WP, and others on bbPress, without bloating either one (and possibly avoid plugin conflicts between the two).

[Ben L.]

Oh! I see the problem! (Or at least one of them)

Try <?php $topic = $GLOBALS['topic'] = current( get_latest_topics( array( 'number' => 1, 'forum' => get_forum_id() ) ) ); ?>

[chandersbs]

I tried the code, it’s not working.

Anyone?

[gerikg]

<tr<?php bb_forum_class(); ?>>

<td><?php forum_icon(); ?> <?php bb_forum_pad( '<div class="nest">' ); ?><a href="<?php forum_link(); ?>"><b><?php forum_name(); ?></b></a><br /><?php forum_description( array( 'before' => '<small>', 'after' => '</small>' ) ); ?><?php bb_forum_pad( '</div>' ); ?></td>

<td class="num"><?php forum_topics(); ?></td>

<td class="num"><?php forum_posts(); ?></td>

<td class="lastp"><?php $topic = $GLOBALS['topic'] = get_latest_topics( array( 'number' => 1, 'forum' => get_forum_id() ) ); ?><small>by <?php topic_last_poster(); ?><br />on <a href="<?php topic_last_post_link(); ?>"><?php echo date("D M j Y G:i:s", strtotime($topic->topic_time)); ?></small></a></td>

</tr>

results in

by

on Wed Dec 31 1969 19:00:00

[plutopsyche]

Thanks, but I’ve already tried that, it still doesn’t seem to work.

[plutopsyche]

I’m still unclear as to why I shouldn’t be putting my custom template in /my-templates/ rather than /bb-templates/. It’s often said that you shouldn’t, but when I put it in /my-templates/ most of the tags stop working, like the one listed above. I still haven’t got it to work.

The code to get topic titles and so forth don’t seem to work outside of the /bb-templates/ directory either?

Thanks.

[Ipstenu (Mika Epstein)]

You could just make the WP install part the ‘about this site’ page, or use it for a FAQ. Most forums I’ve seen end up using some plugin to force that anyway, so the loss is a little negligible.

What about having WP bothers you so? I mean that sincerely, since I suspect a good, logical argument would be beneficial to the development. You say you can’t afford a WP install, but I don’t know why (security risks? just don’t like it…)

Speaking as a coder/programmer/developer/whatever, I think that BB is most often used in concert with WP, and the integration is superficial right now. You can easily get user integration, but login can have issues and themes are often separate. While I had only minimal issues setting it all up, the difference between setting up WP and BB versus WPMU+BuddyPress+BB is obscene! It’s all of a click and done for the later, and there’s really no reason it can’t be that easy for WP. That kind of integration would really help BB get out there and be used.

This is a 5 year old app, it’s barely in V1, and it needs an injection to get it back on track. If the developers feel it’s easier, better and work on and support, well, I trust them. As far as forums go, there are other, better, stand-alones out there. If the dev team don’t want to complete against those, and want to make a niche app, that’s not a bad idea.

The forums at wordpress.org and mu.wordpress.org and wordpress.com are all using bbPress, which I suspect might be the driving force there.

[Olympus]

@gerikg : I think that only works in their site ( Facebook ), but what a great progress ! So soon, we will only need _ck_’s OpenID plugin

[Olympus]

The problem is that some people ( me for example ) don’t want to install a blank WordPress blog integrated with the bbPress forum just for the Facebook Connect support .

Oh and, I think it’s a really bad idea to make bbPress a WP plugin, if it’s gonna happen, there will be two choices for me : either leave bbPress and search for another easy to design forum software, or stick with the 1.0.2 or something like that and avoid to update . Because I can’t afford to install a WordPress blog just to use bbPress !

So, I think Matt is wrong when he’s saying that bbPress can’t compete in the forum software market ! IT CANS ! Just do some little improvements like default theme rewriting ( so that newbies will be encouraged to use it ), and write a Codex so that everyone sees how easy it is to customize bbPress, then, when bbPress becomes mature, try to link the two sites wordpress.org and bbpress.org together ( well yeah, when I visit WordPress.org, I don’t see any mention of bbPress ! ) to have a greater user base .

Matt had two choices :

• Listen to the non-coders ( who are requesting to make bbPress a WP plugin, because they find it “too hard” to integrate in the WP theme ) .
• Listen to the coders ( who are saying that bbPress should stay a standalone application ) .

Matt made the wrong choice ( the first one ), so I think that many coders will leave bbPress .

Sorry but… If someones wants a WP plugin, there are tons of them : SimplePress is a great example !

So please, leave bbPress as a standalone application !

[buddha-trance]

@chrishajer, glad it works!

I did use the template of 1.0.2 for reference.

For 0.9.0.4 one can try to adapt it from that original template.

The reference file is tags.php of the Kakumei theme.

Add the bb_load call on top to create the page, and take off the 80 limit.

Hopefully, it will work the same way. The basic idea is to take that limit off when tags are called.

[gerikg]

plutopsyche not yet, but they are going to work on it (codex) by 2010.

Any other suggestions?

[Michael]

Hi

I have made a post at my forum, Dev:station:

“The problem with bbPages is that the customized pages are stored in an SQL Table within your bbPress Database. In effect, and based on the way it loads, the PHP code will not execute.

If, however, the plugin saved the custom page as a PHP file, it would work.

Once bbPress starts to mature with a new version, I may create such a plugin.”

[Gautam]

Thanks Michael

[Casemon]

Sorry, that’s:

# BEGIN BBPress

<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>

RewriteEngine On

RewriteBase /forum/

Options +MultiViews

</IfModule>

# END BBPress