[theurbantwist]

I like a lot of you on here obviously want bbpress to be implemented into my site.

And I like a lot of you have been having issues getting everything installed and working correctly.

I’m writing this post because I got things going finally on my site and it really isn’t as hard as I was making it and some of you are from what I’m seeing.

I just wanted to share a few simple things that I learned along my journey and hopefully this post can steer some of you in the right direction.

My forum is located at http://www.theurbantwist.com/community by the way. Ignore banner at top of page as that’s just a placeholder for when I get my official forum logo designed.

First things first…

I followed the instructions to a “t” from this post:

http://bbpress.org/forums/topic/bbpress-20-theme-compatibility

I have a custom theme, so I copied all files over, created child theme and all of that jazz, and added theme support.

At this point I just knew that I was going to be finished because when I went to dashboard, it stated that my theme now had bbpress support. Everything was coming together just as how the instructions above would lead me to believe.

The feeling was brief as when I actually went to the forum page, it was completely blank other than the breadcrumb trail at the top…my header and footer was present but everything else in the middle (the content area) was gone.

So me being familiar with wordpress themes and because I’m so used to “pimping” out themes for wordpress…I tried to do the same with bbpress, so I dissected and went over the code in those files I copied over into my main theme as if it were a wordpress theme and changed some things around thinking I needed to add some template tags here and there to get forum to work.

I did all of that and guess what? Nothing changed…same blank space as before.

So I then went into the plugin file itself and tried modifying the theme from there.

Still…nothing changed.

So I went backwards through the steps and started deleting steps to get back to where I was at originally and along the way, after I removed the theme support for bbpress, the forum showed up on my page. The CSS wasn’t matching my theme, but at least I had a start.

I then modified my css file to match certain elements of the twenty-ten default bbpress theme and mow I’m making progress. The theme is pretty much right where I want it be.

The only thing that was missing was that I wanted a topic listing of all topics on forum front page.

And here is where things really got easy and I wish I would have done this from the start.

I simply created a page.

I named page “community” to match my forum settings and I added 2 lines of code.

[bbp-forum-index]

[bbp-topic-index]

And voila! Now I have forum just the way I want it barring a couple of graphical changes which I’m working on.

The reason I went in detail about how I came to a solution for myself is that sometimes we do a LOT of unecessary stuff to get to where we need to be. I’ve wasted a LOT of time trying to manipulate the plugins files and my theme’s files, when all I needed to do was to create a page.

Bottom line and this is definitely something you should try if you are having problems.

1. Install and activate plugin.

2. Add a Page

3. Add those 2 lines of code above.

4. Publish.

You then have your forum. And that’s a start.

Cheers!

[centrius]

We are using bb-wysiwyg-ckeditor as text editor for our forum but the formating is a bit messed up, for exampel, when you press ENTER the row for the next text line jumps down two rows instead of just one, and not everyone knows that shift-enter is needed to get the single jump.

anyone that can tell me how to fix this? im not the biggest wiss in this matter so hope for some help.

i know atleast its the text_editor.css that needs to be edited but have no clue what to write in the syntax. the only “help” i have is the http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-CSS2/ link but cant make much out of it.

hope someone can help out

[enderandrew]

I did a few different things a few different times. Initially I tried to follow the steps as best I understand them.

I copied all the single-*, archive-*, page-* files, as well as the bbpress, css and js folders into the root of my theme. For example:

wp-content/themes/Clockstone/single-forum.php

wp-content/themes/Clockstone/css/bbpress.css

etc.

I edit my functions.php file in my theme and add:

add_theme_support( ‘bbpress’ );

Then all forum pages return a 404. Are these not the correct steps?

Can you please clarify the instructions?

[woodwardmatt]

@John

Thanks for the quick response. Can certainly understand your rationale, sounds like one of those difficult choices had to be made and we are where we are. Thanks for clarifying for me (and all the other forum dwellers!)

From a branding point of view I think in my circumstances i’m going to have to jump into the approach you initially outlined at the start of this thread. I think this is probably likely for a lot of people sporting custom designs & brands etc. Otherwise you’d end up with a whole heap of templates in the core I guess.

That said, it would certainly seem sensible to have some key layouts defined in the core and provision for custom css styles as part of the main theme to cater for branding requirements. Was this the approach you were going for? (Just trying to get my head around it!)

[Anointed]

I would start by following the instructions at the top of this thread:

https://bbpress.org/forums/topic/bbpress-20-theme-compatibility

I don’t know how you ‘installed’ the plugin for the theme, but I did notice there is no bbpress.css stylesheet showing up in your theme. That is a huge part of the problem.

[webmasterfaqs]

I find it astonishing that there are a hundred template files with no explanation as to what any of them do.

I installed bbPress on top of WordPress. Can somebody help me out here? I’m trying to separate postings (space them apart so their not so close to each other) by using my CSS file, but for the life of me I can’t get it to work, although I am able to make other alterations.

Any suggestions?

Test board:

http://webmasterfaqs.org/forums/topic/another-topic/#post-159

[ja_santacruz]

http://www.retrobola.com/forum/topic.php?id=3&replies=1#post-6

See how the poll appears on the right hand side? I wouldn’t mind but you can’t see all of it. Can I change it to appear above the first topic response.

This is the CSS code within the plugin;

#bb_polls {list-style: none; width:35em; line-height:120%; margin:5px 0; padding:5px; border:1px solid #ADADAD; font-size:90%; color:#000; background:#eee; }

#bb_polls .submit {cursor: pointer; cursor: hand; text-align:center; padding:2px 5px;}

#bb_polls .nowrap {white-space:nowrap;}

#bb_polls p {margin:15px 0;padding:0;}

#bb_polls .poll_question, #bb_polls .poll_footer {font-weight:bold; text-align:center; color:#2E6E15;}

#bb_polls .poll_label {font-weight:bold; margin:1em 0 1em 1em;}

#bb_polls .poll_option {overflow:hidden; white-space:nowrap; margin:2px 0 -2px 0; text-align:center; font-size:11px; line-height:9px; padding:1px 0 0 0; border:1px solid #303030; color:#fff; }

#bb_polls .poll_option1 {background:red;}

#bb_polls .poll_option2 {background:green;}

#bb_polls .poll_option3 {background:blue;}

#bb_polls .poll_option4 {background:orange;}

#bb_polls .poll_option5 {background:purple;}

#bb_polls .poll_option6 {background:pink;}

#bb_polls .poll_option7 {background:olive;}

#bb_polls .poll_option8 {background:navy;}

#bb_polls .poll_option9 {background:teal;}

#bb_polls .poll_option10 {background:aqua;}

#bb_polls .poll_option11 {background:maroon;}

#bb_polls .poll_option12 {background:fuchsia;}

It is the blank 3 column theme. I am using bbpress 1.0.3

[enderandrew]

I’m using a custom theme (Clockstone) that is based on dark colors. The default twentyten theme doesn’t work for me.

So I copied all the single-*, archive-*, page-* files, as well as the bbpress, css and js files into the root of my theme.

So I have wp-content/themes/Clockstone/single-forum.php as an example

I editted the css file to fit my color scheme. But once I add:

add_theme_support( ‘bbpress’ );

to my functions.php then bbpress breaks completely, and all my forum links return 404 errors. If I remove that line, then the urls and forums work, but with the default theme.

I’m using the latest trunk as of today. Any suggestions?

[theurbantwist]

I think I finally figured this whole bbpress thing out somewhat…finally!

I just need a little help from the community here to add one last thing.

My forum can be viewed here:

http://www.theurbantwist.com/community

Nevermind the “Company Man Comic” banner that’s there now…it’s just a place holder til I get a banner designed strictly for this forum.

I’m used the bbpress plugin and the default bbp-twentyten theme that came with it…nothing fancy. I just updated some of the css code that would apply to make some of the tables fit.

My main question is how could I go about adding a “Recent Topics” list on the front page of forum as seen on this site?

Open Forums

It looks they’re using the same default theme that I am.

Just curious as to how I would list Recent Topics beneath my forum list on the front page. Like what theme files would I have to edit and such.

Appreciate the help.

Thanks

[pimarts]

You mean the reply form to actually reply to a topic? That seems like normal behaviour to me?

You could display:none it in CSS to hide it, but I can’t see the point to be honest. I’m probably not understanding you properly.

Oh wait, you mean you’ve got two textarea’s? One for comments and one for replying to a topic?

Sounds like a problem in your theme?

[adv_user]

Thanks for this suggestion anointed.

Unfortunately it is not so simple.

With this CSS will space, but the layout of the subcategories will not be pleasant.

And also a lot of spaces “tHead”. And do not appear the “Subforums” (need change the code of the theme)

#####################################################

Example:

[START FORUM]

[LARGE SPACE]

“Forum | Topics | Posts | Freshness”

[LARGE SPACE]

| Category 1

--- Forum 1 (0,0), Forum 2 (0,0), Forum 3 (0,0)

[CORRECT SPACE]

| Category 2

--- Forum 4 (0,0), Forum 5 (0,0)

[LARGE SPACE]

[FOOTER]

[END FORUM]

#####################################################

[Anointed]

I didn’t play with it much, and can’t confirm that this works across all browsers, but from a quick test it only took me one line of css in order to achieve what you were after.

.bbp-forums { border-collapse: separate; border-spacing: 2px 50px; float: left; width: 100%; }

**This is going to be much easier when working with a theme that does not use tables, as you can’t apply margins to table cells like you would expect with normal divs.

[adv_user]

In fact, if you see my posts, two years ago, I sought it, at the time that the integration with WordPress was difficult:

https://bbpress.org/forums/topic/sub-subforum-change-css

Now bbPress has evolved a lot, because it has become plugin an easily integrated with the WordPress and BuddyPress.

So I’m sure that soon this will be improved organization of categories.

@anointed:

https://bbpress.org/forums/topic/sub-sub-forums#post-11762

Joining the contents of these two topics that I passed the link, you can get what they want (as you yourself said, tks), but let’s be honest…

It is not easy for those who are only user

(not even a beginning programmer)

In other forums it is ready. Simply create categories and forums by default that the organization already does this separation. It should also be standard in bbPress.

If you do not want the separation of categories, will not do it, but it uses different categories is because you want to be separated for better organization.

So it is ideal to be implemented this improvement, and as you mentioned, many other features (as plugins).

And preferably, as plugins for WordPress, which can be installed and automatically updated directly by the panel without having to use FTP, as are separate plugins bbPress.

Suggestion:

is that all plugins from bbPress and BuddyPress, stay in the WordPress directory, thus it will be much easier to use them.

[Anointed]

It is currently possible with the default theme and does not really require any php knowledge. You will spend 90% of your time simply modifying the css in order to get the results you are asking for.

There are a few functions to move around in order to get the exact layout, but that is simply a matter of moving functions around the templates and not writing new functions.

*Now in order to get the full ‘functionality’ of the forums you are talking about, then yeah, that would take a considerable amount of coding work to write all the needed functionality. I fully expect to see many of those features coming in the form of plugins though.

[ineken]

Hi all,

I’m looking for a way to create a widget to mix the last wordpress comment with the latest responses forums.

This widget should be able to distinguish between two types of entry through a different CSS and enter the name of the user’s avatar, …

Could you help me?

At first I thought retrieve the 2 rss, yahoo pipes through the cross, but there is no avatar.

Thank you in advance for your help.

Ineken

Arf, i miss the categoriy of my topic, sorry :'(

[tnwinn]

Additional info:

I tried adding all the *single, *archive, and *page files to my theme’s folder, then added add_theme_support( ‘bbpress’ ); to the top of my theme’s function.php file. All that did was strip my website of its background, menu, and a few other features– and the forum stayed exactly as is.

(I should note that while I’ve learned to do some basic CSS and HTML coding over the last few months, I am no where near being any sort of expert).

Cheers,

GoGo

[tnwinn]

Hi, I am using a custom theme, which I am not the author of. I have, however, made quite a few changes to the css of my current theme. In order to try and fully integrate the bbpress plugin, I tried to set up a child theme (according to JJJ instructions), but it seems that my current theme just doesn’t support one. My question is, where do I go from here?

The other interesting thing is that I changed from a standalone bbpress to the plugin, and imported all of our topics, post, etc. just fine. What also appeared, surprisingly, was the custom edits we had made to our standalone bbpress forum. Can someone tell me how/where it is pulling these codes/styles from?

Thanks in advance!!

gogo-gringo.com

gogo-gringo.com/forum

[sureshdrim]

Hi Guys,

I am using facebook Like plugin on my forum. Its working perfect but when I validate my website pages with http://validator.w3.org it gives lot of css errors with facebook like button markup.

Isn’t there any version of this like button which is css validator compatible? I am validating my website because I want to make it search engine friendly.

Any advice in this regard will be highly appreciated.

[mvaginger]

Hello I have also Yen template and tryin to tune up the bbpress forum. I am not good in coding at all, all I can do is to read bit of html and php, but I am not good in editing stuff. I am fighting with CSS modifications to get the forum look good but not success check http://www.uspornaziarovka.sk/forum/diskusie

So have u managed to change a layout? a bit?

good day

marian

[mckn1]

Hi all,

I’m looking to change the css of the single topic page. I get to this page from the main forum by clicking a topic name. It is completely unstyled. I’m using the new bbpress plugin.

[ratsoid2]

To hide the “Home” link, just put this in your styles.css

a.bbp-breadcrumb-home {

display: none;

}

Also, I am displaying the profile link of commenters in the blogs comments using:

<?php if ($comment->user_id) { $user=get_userdata($comment->user_id); echo '<span class="forumauthor"> <XXXXa href="link-to-profile-without-username/'.$user->user_nicename.'">Profil</span>'; } ?>

remove the XXXX from the code.

[Ashish Kumar (Ashfame)]

You will have to deal with that padding anyway.

To change the avatar size, create a new theme by copying the bbpress-twentyten theme to your WordPress themes directory and changing its name in style.css and then at line 53 of the file bbpress/loop-forums.php (can be the wrong file) look for bbp_author_link function. You will see the size as 14 there, change it to a bigger size.

[ratsoid2]

Regarding the first issue, I haven’t looked into that and I don’t recommend changes right now, seeing that the last oficial release is still a beta.

Regarding the second thing, the same principles apply. You can remove the “tags” field from <your theme>/bbpress/loop-topics.php I think, form-topic.php, form-topic-tag.php, form-topic-split.php, etc. Just look into those.

But I repeat, you shouldn’t change thse files just yet, seeing that the twenty-ten theme of bbpress is not final. For example I have found this: https://bbpress.org/forums/topic/20rc1-loop-authorphp

Just stick with CSS right now, even if it’s not the ideal case. Who knows, maybe the final twenty-ten theme won’t use tables, just nice divs with css (one can wonder…). If not, I think I’m gonna convert the whole theme in divs with CSS when the final release will be available.

If you have any more questions, I will gladly respond.

[ratsoid2]

Every forum has an ID. In my case:

<tr class="post-3730 forum type-forum status-publish hentry even" id="bbp-forum-3730">

<td class=”bbp-forum-info”>

General

<div class=”bbp-forum-description”><div class=”pce-enabled-section”><p>Forum despre lucruri generale, ca poneii şi cunilingusul</p>

</div><!– PHP 5.x –></div>

</td>

<td class=”bbp-forum-topic-count”>7</td>

<td class=”bbp-forum-reply-count”>46</td>

<td class=”bbp-forum-freshness”>

2 zile

<p class=”bbp-topic-meta”>

<span class=”bbp-topic-freshness-author”><img width=”14″ height=”14″ class=”avatar avatar-14 photo” src=”https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/f862425c1c224dd9830b5f0878dea405?s=14&d=http%3A%2F%2F1.gravatar.com%2Favatar%2Fad516503a11cd5ca435acc9bb6523536%3Fs%3D14&r=G&#8221; alt=””> Mr. Edgar</span>

</p>

</td>

</tr>

So just add some css to each and single on of your forums (hopefuly you don’t have too many). My case:

tr#bbp-forum-3730 td.bbp-forum-info {

background: url("images/icon1.png") no-repeat scroll 10px center transparent;

padding-left: 75px;

}

The above code gives the first forum it’s icon. Replace “#bbp-forum-3730” with your #bbp-forum-NUMBER and the rest of the css I think it’self explinatory.

[ratsoid2]

Hello guys,

Well, after seeing that the final 2.0 is short to come, I took mathers into my own hands so I started working hard on a theme. With this thread, I am willing to share my knowledge. All I ask is to not waste my time by asking questions that are already answered in these threads:

http://bbpress.org/forums/topic/bbpress-20-theme-compatibility

http://bbpress.org/forums/topic/bbpress-20-shortcodes

So, the site I am referring to is http://futezatorii.ro/ and if you happen to be romanian, LUCKY YOU! If not, Google Translate will help you and so will I because I am better than Google.

Ok, first off, by clicking on the red button on top (Cont Nou), you will see a beautiful register page. This was done using Register Plus and Lightbox Plus, so having said that… it’s a plus. Also the login form and forgotton my password form are all in there. Did I mention they use BBPress Shortcodes? Well, they do.

By navigating to the forum ( http://futezatorii.ro/forum/ ) you will see a custom logo for the forum. This was done using conditional tags. Also you will see a different kind of front forums because I thought that if I was going to start a new forum, I mind as well make it NEW! so you don’t see any Freshness and Last Poster. This is an old format and I think it sucks. It may be one of the many reasons that forums are not doing so good in these times. Also, you can see the last replies in the widget.

Going forward at the topics page ( http://futezatorii.ro/subiect/meme/ ) you can see that the New Topic button (Topic Nou) has a nice sliding effect. Basic jQuery shit, but it looks nice. I figured that having the whole new topic form there is just bleh. The same idea is applied to the “new reply form”.

On the topics view, there’s nothing much there, but I will say this: I removed the tags (why the hell would someone use tags on a topic? Why complicate a thing so much?) and I also disabled adding favorite topics. The forum is fresh and I didn’t thought it was a good idea. Maybe in the future I will look it up again.

ONWARDS TO THE PROFILE PAGE!

My profile is here: http://futezatorii.ro/cont/rats/

You can see that there are a couple of buttons there… well, I added some new fields with Register Plus and called them in user-details. Thus, if someone adds their G+/fb/tw/yt/www link, a nice button will appear. I thought that having a profile with only the “Created topics” and “Subscribed topics” is boring. Having said that, the “Created topics” and “Subscribed topics” has the same sliding effect as the “New Topic/New Reply” form. Kind of buggy now, but I’m lazy. (* – on the bottom of this post I will like to add something about this particular page).

Now the profile edit page, that you can see in this screenshot (and only in this screenshot because you are evil): http://i.imm.io/7JFn.png you can see the custom fields I was talking about and the upload avatar thingie. Yes, I got that. I used the User Avatar plugin for WP and it works awesome.

So that’s basically it (but believed me, I worked for weeks for this forum to be as it is now), but I am looking forward for a few things also:

– as soon as this is resolved: http://bbpress.org/forums/topic/20rc1-loop-authorphp the commenters links will link to their profile (if they have one, if they don’t, tough luck) and (*) it would be great if there would only be a page for an user’s profile.

– a proper BB Code plugin

– fiuguring a way to connect some of the plugins with bbpress like: Pure CSS Emoticons, Lighbox Plus (and I think that’s about it)

– A SEARCH BOX! Please JJJ, I really need this. I know you are wondering how to implement it, and the answer is simple: make the WP Search Box just search in the forums. Why? Because the blog and the forums are two seperate entitites. If I wish to search for a street, I usee google maps and not google images. Those two shouldn’t be mixed!

If you need any tips and if I can help in any way, I will surely do so. I did not made this thread to spam or something like that (the site is in romanian, so yeah).

Sorry for any typos, any non-sense – english isn’t my native language and I’m in a rush.

P.S. There should be a preview button because I AM NOT SCROLLING UP TO SEE ANY MISTAKES.