I have to agree it’d be good for bbPress to add support for more basic forum functions like merging topics. As it stands, it’s rather silly to need plugins for such basic things. The majority of use does seem to be with bbPress as part of a community package with buddyPress and WordPress though.
It’d be nice too if WordPress (plugin) support could be implemented through an interface layer or something similar that could be added as a plugin or similar to bbPress when it was installed via WordPress, so keeping the core codebase as clean as possible.
bbPress 1.0 was already written to use BackPress functions (WordPress essentially) so I’d imagine it’d just be a case of changing how it outputs content and handles URLs when under WordPress.
michayu:
1. SimplePress looks horrible, and the cleaner bbPress codebase is, the better. It also implements a lot of what in bbPress mentality would be plugin-based.
2. vBulletin is clunky and the opposite of what bbPress aims to be (light, adaptable, etc.)
3. WordPress IS a blogging platform. It has supplementary CMS features such as pages, and can be adapted into a CMS, but it’s primary focus and purpose is blogging. I pray it never gets turned into yet another CMS (and look on discussions on the WordPress support forums about its current shortcomings when used as a CMS if you want proof it’s not one).
Thanks for the answer Matt, looking ahead for a great future of bbPress. 
Wow, I can’t believe the “Matt” actually wrote back to me.
One of the reasons why I went with WordPress is the strength of the plugins and community. I toyed a bit with Joomla but the interface stinks, and it’s too difficult to use and not pretty behind the scenes. People say that it’s stronger than WordPress and more adaptable but I think WordPress is quickly surpassing it as the defacto blogging/CMS building tool. New users like me can get up and running quickly and it’s fun to use!!! Joomla was nothing but a nightmare, ugly and not enjoyable at all. The people in their community are ok to deal with but many are tech-snobs. Thank you WordPress!!!
Any other information on BBpress is appreciated, including a timeline of features to come and integration. Please give us a peek to what the future holds…
It definitely needs to be inside the <?php ?> code block, or it’s just HTML to the browser. You probably didn’t have it in a code block if you saw it displayed.
A syntax highlighting editor helps a lot with this. It helps you see what is code and what is plain text.
Hi Guys.
It seems there isn’t going to be an integration in the near future:
https://bbpress.org/forums/topic/there-isnt-going-to-be-an-integration-of-bbpress-with-intense-debate
Maybe if more of you will make “sound” someone will budge
Hopefully.
Tal
Thanks. I will ahve to try it again as once when I used it in my footer.php I actually saw the /* and */ on the page itself. I might have inserted it the wrond way.
Thanks.
Can you give us an update on the revamping of the bbpress.org website? Sam was about to launch that when he left.
Currently, the Plugins tab is on a separate bbPress version than the Forums tab (so you have to sign into each separately), and there’s no Codex for documentation…
Thanks!
The Warning message is because forwards depend on sending headers. Different headers are sent automatically however if there’s any text returned by a PHP file that’s loaded, which is a common problem created by whitespace around the <?php ?> tags. If text headers are sent, you can’t send a redirect header, thus the warning and the breaking of redirects.
Nevermind… I figured that part out. 
@HSeatSleeper: Can you talk a little bit more about the special care you gave to the admin account? When testing, I got locked out of my blog as well, and couldn’t figure out why (my wp_1_capabilities were set correctly, as was user_level).
Can you easily list the steps you took to secure the admin account? Thanks!
Yes, just open front-page.php in your template and move the blocks of code around to arrange them however you want. Put the discussions on the bottom and the forum list on top.
For a single line of PHP, you can just do this:
// echo $phone;
And that single line will be commented out. If what you’re commenting spans more than one line, use the /* commented code */ method.
Yes, you can comment out a block of code in between the <?php and ?> by using /* commented this part */. For example,
<?php
echo $user;
/* echo $phone; */
?>
The phone would no longer be displayed because you commented it out. It won’t even appear in the source of the page when viewed in the browser, unlike a HTML comment <!-- commented this part --> or CSS comments (which are always visible.)
I’m afraid I don’t take on paid work, since I simply can’t guarantee the time needed to write code on demand, ensure it’s to a standard expected of paid work and to be honest, I don’t need the money anyway.
As I said, I’d be more than happy for someone else to use my code as reference on how to implement such a feature, since it’s pretty much just butchered up parts of core bbPress code, but as it stands I simply don’t have the time to work on the plugin and guarantee it’s to a production standard, paid or not.
As to the requesting login details later part, I think that was requested before, and I did look into doing it, but because of the way bbPress is structured internally, you have to bypass so many checks against the referring page and carry over the post data to be passed later on. Do-able yes, but not really a 5 minute job, since as far as I know you’d still need to re-do the post function as I did previously.
It’s nice to know there’s still interest in this though, and I’ll look into trying to implement it more cleanly later on with requested features. Having pulled and learnt the login and post system once, it should be easier a second time. Really, really wish we had a bbPress codex, so it could be documented more.
Thanks for the answer, Matt.
A few people have reached out to me and I just wanted to let everyone know that bbPress is still an important project for the WP community. (It powers our forums and plugin directory, for one thing!) It’s not going away.
Strategically the most important thing we need to figure out is how to integrate bbPress better with WP more for people who want that — right now it’s easier to use one of the WP plugins for forums than bbPress.
As to where bbPress goes in the future, I’d be curious to hear who wants to help with that. The world is our oyster.
You have a space or a line return around your code tags.
@johnhiler – Yes man, everyone leaving. Sam’s post is about “1 month old”. How many plugins are updated last month?
I wrote Matt some hours ago …
I really hope bbpress will thrive from this transition! Go Bbpress! 
Marius – Everyone’s leaving? One person has left… the lead developer, Sam. And he worked crazy hard to get version 1.0 out the door (you can see all his code checkins on Trac).
bbPress is definitely in a state of transition now. I’ll reach out to Automattic and see if we can’t get some clarification on where things are. If they’re not going to actively develop the platform, we can fairly easily fork the code since it’s open source…
Can you post the full code of exclude-forum.php please? If it’s too long, use something like pastebin rather than posting here.
http://pastebin.com/
If you post here, be sure to wrap code in backticks `, usually above the tab key on a US keyboard.
In CSS I use /*………*/ for a few lines of code or ……..// for just a line so that code is skipped or avoided. Will this work in a .php file also? I would like to skip code to test it out without deleting the original code. Just want to mask the original code so I can go back to it if I make a mistake.
Thank you.