[Stagger Lee]

Thank you. Dont mind my writing. I know developers dont like topics like this. Despite everything, even if you dont do anything about it I stay on bbPress because it is so fun. Much more fun than SMF or phpbb.

Talk to your friends from bbPress core circle on your private channels. And see if they have time for some plugin. Report just back to us results. It they are bussy with private projects nobody will be mad about it. Just to know.

Or announce on the WordPress Slack that you are underpowered and ask for some help from other core, other strong plugins developers. There is no shame in it.

[Robkk]

Dont want to talk about design and style. It would ruin all from my title.
But yes, bbPress is ugly as hell when installed and takes lot of time to design. Better to keep written notes what you do and how, to be able to use it next time.

email me then, I actually do want to talk about design.

Dont know what to say about buddyPress serving as “Jetpack”. I like to install buddyPress along with bbPress and think they do better with design. Guess it is up to them, will they be standalone WP plugin or serve as filling gaps for bbPress.

Really just design? Only design I can think of is the companion stylesheets? Other than that it has a plain layout look like bbPress. Not the groups, @mention autosuggest, members page, attachments api, more advanced profile fields, ability to change/crop avatar?

Back to your question. Cannot point exactly what is hard for begginers and users. It is all small bits and parts making it difficult. Even to me is hard and takes lot of time to have one bbPress forum ready for live server.
Guess it is huge amount of time spent searching on Google and forums howto. I made those mistakes on my first 2-3 instalaltions and noticed it is impossible to continue this way. Now I have searchable and filterable database with bbPress, buddyPress snippets. Just for bbPress circa 150 of them and some tutorials. But not many people will do this. When they spend half day searching on Google how to solve something they will simply go to phpbb, SMF forum and it is one user less.

It is easy to get a bbPress forum set up. It will definitely get hard to make bbPress work like other forum solutions? It would be pretty difficult to make something like phpbb turn into something like discourse for example.

Most of this time lost is fixing and tweaking third party plugins, using their adapted code in functions.php, etc.

What plugins? Tell me what plugins to adopt if you need to fix them? Email me this too.

In matter of fact price of one bbPress installation and customization goes easy to level of one very advanced web shop. Only know it is not sustainable and should not be this way.

Dont want to talk about money, just took it as example of how many hours and days bbPress takes to be finished and looks professional.

Yeah this would probably be level of skill vs cost for time to do it. It is easy for me and I might say I have a moderate level of skill. This is just my opinion though.

[Stagger Lee]

Thanks Robby.

Dont want to talk about design and style. It would ruin all from my title.
But yes, bbPress is ugly as hell when installed and takes lot of time to design. Better to keep written notes what you do and how, to be able to use it next time.

I have some ideas of making bbPress more acceptable to Pods or ACF. It would open many possibilities. Some of them could be, polls, attachments (very regulated and narrowed), SVG icons, reply title (it is just text input field), avatars, etc..

Dont know what to say about buddyPress serving as “Jetpack”. I like to install buddyPress along with bbPress and think they do better with design. Guess it is up to them, will they be standalone WP plugin or serve as filling gaps for bbPress.

Anything that is the same as Jetpack. Lots of modules all deactivated on default, to not force people use what they dont need and want. And without connection to wordpress.com.
If you make some better cooperation with Pods you get automatically mass of new developers and possibly mass of custom tweaks shared around. Same would be with bbPress “Jetpack” or buddyPress if they want it.

Back to your question. Cannot point exactly what is hard for begginers and users. It is all small bits and parts making it difficult. Even to me is hard and takes lot of time to have one bbPress forum ready for live server.
Guess it is huge amount of time spent searching on Google and forums howto. I made those mistakes on my first 2-3 instalaltions and noticed it is impossible to continue this way. Now I have searchable and filterable database with bbPress, buddyPress snippets. Just for bbPress circa 150 of them and some tutorials. But not many people will do this. When they spend half day searching on Google how to solve something they will simply go to phpbb, SMF forum and it is one user less.

Most of this time lost is fixing and tweaking third party plugins, using their adapted code in functions.php, etc. Design OK, but usually easy to find answer on Google.

In some way I try to imagine how would it be to charge a client for a bbPress installation and customization. I dont do it for money, i spend time on it because I think it is fun. But so many spent hours and days is impossible to charge. Hence, nobody will setup bbPress forum for living and earning. Web companies goes to other solutions.

In matter of fact price of one bbPress installation and customization goes easy to level of one very advanced web shop. Only know it is not sustainable and should not be this way.

Dont want to talk about money, just took it as example of how many hours and days bbPress takes to be finished and looks professional.

[killer_x10]

Hello there Sir, I have found something but the shortcut adds the new topic and you have to manually select which Forum you want to post the Topic. I have created some Categories and in those Categories some Forums, so I wanted that once I go to the Forum Page, a New Topic Button will appear and the bottom new topic form will be hidden, then once I click the New Topic Button, it will just display the Form that was before and I do not have to select the Forum I want to post to, it will post to the Forum where I have clicked the Button. So, like phpbb

Example http://gramziu.hekko24.pl/demo/viewforum.php?style=22&f=2

Is that possible to do? Thank you

[Robkk]

Because I see potentioal and how WordPress self can make bbPress powerfull. Or buddyPress, I install it all the time together.

I know a lot of users who ask for more features like other forum solutions are like this because they all do see potential.

But, one thing is very specific for bbPress. I would not dare to touch it as average User, who installs and setup phpbb or SMF forum without big problems. It is extremely hard for beginners

In what ways is it difficult? Is it anything about user experience, or from just going from one to another?? Any ideas to improve it for beginners?

At least take those 10-12 plugins from Github and put them in WP repository. Dont ask developer, it is GPL. Developer had 2-3 years or more to decide to do it byself, and he did not wanted it.
Problem there is notification about updates.
Just one example, lost many hours to see why Live preview stoped to word and by chance checked on Github versions. If it was in WP repository I would be notificated directly there is an update for it.

There is some plugins on Github but that doesn’t mean everybody should use them. Some plugins on github were made from developers from jobs they did for people(might contain specific db table names for a specific site), are just some custom plugins they use on their site(might contain several referances to a site), custom projects for themselves(just playing with stuff/learning development). There is a difference between building a plugin for yourself, and building a plugin for everybody to use. When you begin to build one for everybody to use, you definitely take into consideration some plugin conflicts that might happen(I think GD bbPress attachments and bbp live preview comes to mind). There are some plugins on there that actually should be considered to be on WordPress.org, so I will keep that in mind.

Just to not be missunderstood. I personally dont have any problem whatsoever with this list above. Implemented with help of code tweaking and those plugins all of this. And much, much more. All except proper Polls. For this I cannot find a solution.

The polka polls plugin is the best plugin for polls for bbPress. It does require use of shortcodes, I do not think you have to whitelist the shortcode or anything, I think it just works. I guess it could get inspired from some ideas of the bbPress polls plugin for v1 that _ck_ made.

I am not telling about design, despite this too is hard for Users beginners to tweak.

Please say any issues you might have on this, I have ideas for users to make design for theme compatibility easier.

Github should never be primary source of plugins. Additional OK, but only and one never.
I know there is a plugin that makes updates from Github possible, but demands some lines added by author in plugin self.

It isn’t, any plugins listed on the featured plugins list are really just plugins that might have functionality similar to what might be suggested to core. Github was never really a plugin repository for WordPress, mostly development. Some of the information why some plugins might not be in what I already said above. Plus some plugins were pretty neat not to leave in.

Something like Jetpack for bbPress would be a killer, perfect. But I do understand when you say there are not many developers of bbPress. Wish just you start discussion about it and report back to us how it went. Jetpack probably started with few developers, and with years come to number of 46. It doesnt have to start great, developers are attracted later to all good staff by itself.
Do you know what all those names behind Jetpack say to me ? Not in the first hand anything about code quality, but about security. I know it will flow huge amount of years before this plugin is abandoned. And with all new WP versions they adapt code before new version get out.

If we are talking about Jetpack as a plugin full of features, then BuddyPress could be something like that. There is also another plugin but it is paid (has minimized free version) that has several other features like bbcode, attachments, quotes. Creating another plugin like that I will keep in mind.

[tkse]

Hi!

I can’t seem to find a plugin that allows me to add what I think are called profile fields in phpBB, for bbPress. I don’t want a bridge plugin. I’m looking to completely swap out phpBB for bbPress, but having users be able to link their Twitter, Website, Skype etc. is a huge deal for my website.

Basically I want my users to be able to add their social media in the user settings and have it show up in their description on posts.

Any recommended plugins for this job?

[Stagger Lee]

You see, I am not saying bbPress is bad or cannot do this and that.
Just that third party plugins community is a bit backward and not well. One can find plenty of explanation for this, I have mine. Dont necessary mean mine are right.

Some short explanations of mine opinions:

– I am not telling about design, despite this too is hard for Users beginners to tweak.

– Yes, you could “sell” bbPress better if you made an outstonishing design here on forum, and showed most of the functions. But it is OK for me, I dont have any problem with this forum. Telling this from “selling” bbPress standpoint. It is only CSS, page load is the same, no harm done if you make modern and elegant design.

– Github should never be primary source of plugins. Additional OK, but only and one never.
I know there is a plugin that makes updates from Github possible, but demands some lines added by author in plugin self.

– Something like Jetpack for bbPress would be a killer, perfect. But I do understand when you say there are not many developers of bbPress. Wish just you start discussion about it and report back to us how it went. Jetpack probably started with few developers, and with years come to number of 46. It doesnt have to start great, developers are attracted later to all good staff by itself.
Do you know what all those names behind Jetpack say to me ? Not in the first hand anything about code quality, but about security. I know it will flow huge amount of years before this plugin is abandoned. And with all new WP versions they adapt code before new version get out.

I dont say you should work hard as they do on Jetpack. It is here just for comparation, and for bbPress something like this would demand much less of time.

I dont know. I would go live with bbPress all the time before I go with some other forum platform.
Used and tweaked SMF forum for many years, phpbb for short time.

But first associations about bbPress as newcomer and beginner would be: hard to setup, bad design, third party plugins not so live community.

OK now, dont want to expand discussion to all possible. Let us stick to the plugins.

[Stagger Lee]

I dont ask anything of this be in the core. Just to find some other solution because this now doesnt work well.

Dont ask plugin developers. Is it GPL ? Yes. Use code as you wish and make completely new plugin if you need. Just some of your names stand as Author of plugin.

I see tendencies to become little Joomla community. They dont want to piss off developers of very popular extensions and they never add anything good in the core (dont let “core” confuse use, using it just as example here).

I personally have tweaked bbPress to unimaginable level. It is localhost, but still one Kunena import with many Users, topics and posts. Good for testing. spent huge amount of time on it. Not for the money, nobody would pay all those lost hours, impossible. Because I see potentioal and how WordPress self can make bbPress powerfull. Or buddyPress, I install it all the time together.

But, one thing is very specific for bbPress. I would not dare to touch it as average User, who installs and setup phpbb or SMF forum without big problems. It is extremely hard for beginners, and all those important plugins depending of how will it go in private life of (one) developer, make it much more difficult to touch and maintain.

At least take those 10-12 plugins from Github and put them in WP repository. Dont ask developer, it is GPL. Developer had 2-3 years or more to decide to do it byself, and he did not wanted it.
Problem there is notification about updates.
Just one example, lost many hours to see why Live preview stoped to word and by chance checked on Github versions. If it was in WP repository I would be notificated directly there is an update for it.

[Stephen Edgar]

You’ll actually need a couple more bits and not just the 2716 patch, if your working locally you can download the “development branch” of bbPress 2.6 and this includes everything you need.

https://bbpress.trac.wordpress.org/changeset/5804/trunk?old_path=%2F&format=zip

This version of bbPress will NOT allow you to update to the next version or revision of bbPress, you’d have to delete this version of the plugin and replace it with the official release when released, it also has the potential of breaking in other ways not related to importing phpBB, in other words it may be full of other bugs and if you decided to use it it’s the use at your own risk disclaimer 🙂

[Robkk]

I thought in my search of the forums here I had found something saying they no longer supported 3.0.x conversions and now only supported 3.1.x.

It the opposite for the current version , but when 2.6 comes out 3.1 will only be supported.

And the link you sent, what is that for? Is that just showing how to amend the phpbb conversion film? I’m not quite clear.

Basically you needed to see the reply to the topic. Use the patch and see if it fixes your import.
Of course try this first on a test site to see if everything is working fine.

[OscarGuy]

Sorry. I didn’t see the reply from that old post. No one had responded so I had given up on it. I thought in my search of the forums here I had found something saying they no longer supported 3.0.x conversions and now only supported 3.1.x. It was some trouble ticket someone had linked.

Anyway, will creating the columns impair the conversion process? And the link you sent, what is that for? Is that just showing how to amend the phpbb conversion film? I’m not quite clear.

[Robkk]

Did you read the reply I linked to on your last topic?

I believe this is because of DB differences between phpBB 3.0x and 3.1x.

Current import only supports phpBB 3.0x

I was able to get rid of the error messages by creating the columns it complains about.

You can also try this: https://bbpress.trac.wordpress.org/attachment/ticket/2716/2716.1.diff

If you did try the patch and it did not work, I can contact the devs for that because some other user had an issue also.

[OscarGuy]

I’ve been trying for weeks now to import a version of phpbb 3.1.5 to my bbPress 2.5.7 version on WordPress 4.2.2. I can’t seem to get past a particular set of errors. I do not know what this means. Is this a wordpress issue, a bbpress issue or a phpbb issue? I can’t seem to find any support topics in the forums that address this and the last couple of posts I’ve made haven’t gotten any replies. Do I need to open a repair ticket of some kind to have it looked into? Someone please help. I’d rather not continue using phpbb, but if I can’t get this resolved soon, I’m going to have to abandon bbPress altogether.

WordPress database error: [Unknown column ‘topics.topic_replies’ in ‘field list’]

SELECT convert(topics.topic_id USING “utf8”) AS topic_id,convert(topics.topic_replies USING “utf8”) AS topic_replies,convert(topics.topic_replies_real USING “utf8”) AS topic_replies_real,convert(topics.forum_id USING “utf8”) AS forum_id,convert(topics.topic_poster USING “utf8”) AS topic_poster,convert(posts.poster_ip USING “utf8”) AS poster_ip,convert(posts.post_text USING “utf8”) AS post_text,convert(topics.topic_title USING “utf8”) AS topic_title,convert(topics.topic_status USING “utf8”) AS topic_status,convert(topics.topic_type USING “utf8”) AS topic_type,convert(topics.topic_time USING “utf8”) AS topic_time,convert(topics.topic_last_post_time USING “utf8”) AS topic_last_post_time FROM phpbb_topics AS topics INNER JOIN phpbb_posts AS posts USING (topic_id) WHERE posts.post_id = topics.topic_first_post_id LIMIT 0, 100

[Robkk]

Read this persons answer to another similar topic.

phpbb3.1.3 to bbPress – Installation database error

[Robkk]

There might be a way. I think there are a couple of hooks to change the users forum role??

But if phpBB added/removed forum participation capabilities then you might need to hire a develop to create this for you.

If it was just a rank then you can use this. I am not sure if its the points system that changes the rank or posts made.

https://wordpress.org/plugins/mycred/

There might be another plugin that ranks by just post count though.

[sd17]

I believe this is because of DB differences between phpBB 3.0x and 3.1x.

Current import only supports phpBB 3.0x

I was able to get rid of the error messages by creating the columns it complains about.

You can also try this: https://bbpress.trac.wordpress.org/attachment/ticket/2716/2716.1.diff

[sd17]

Hello,

As the topic says, i’m having issues importing from an upgraded phpBB v2.x forum.

I have approximately 4200 users, 1900 topics and 4400 replies on a phpBB v2 platform. I was able to successfully upgrade to v3.0.x and v3.1.x. As far as the phpBB upgrade goes, everything works, including authentication.

I am now trying to import into bbPress. I’ve tried using version bbPress 2.5.7 and 2.5.5. I’ve also tried using the new patch file that supports phpBB 3.1. I’m running WordPress 4.2.2, but also tried with 4.2. All on fresh installs with bbPress as the only plugin installed and activated.

I can see the passwords in user_meta. But I can’t login. No error other than the password is incorrect.

Would anyone be able to help? Am I out of luck coming form version 2.x of phpBB? If i’m out of luck, is the “Lost your password?” link the only route to fix passwords?

Thanks!!

SD17.

[ConfGen]

Is it possible to automatically change the user role based on the number of post in the forum?
In the past I was using phpBB and there you could do that. New user were catagorized as “beginner” and after eg. 100 posts they automatically became “Advanced”.
This did not change anything in their permissions but gave them some kind of status.

Thanks
Thomas

[Robkk]

Is there then a way to merge users? So that if someone registered on the WordPress site and separately on the forums that afterwards they can be combined?

You can delete a user then attribute their content to another user

We have a members-only section for our forums. I understand these forums will be made public and we would need to hide them, but is there a way to set up users that have access only to certain sections while the general public has access to everything else? I don’t want to assign all of our members the ability to edit content on the site, just have access to a members only forum.

There are a couple of membership plugins that are compatible with bbPress, you could also use the bbPress private groups plugin.

Will this create two separate MySQL databases? Will the old phpBB still be there and operational? Can the two be used simultaneously and will content posted in one cross-post to the other once merged to bbpress?

Your phpbb data will be imported into the WordPress database where bbPress would usually be. Cross posting I’m not sure. You should test this out on a test site to make sure everything is working okay and to your expectations.

[OscarGuy]

Thanks for that. I didn’t see that FAQ before. Here are some questions not specified here:

Is there then a way to merge users? So that if someone registered on the WordPress site and separately on the forums that afterwards they can be combined?

We have a members-only section for our forums. I understand these forums will be made public and we would need to hide them, but is there a way to set up users that have access only to certain sections while the general public has access to everything else? I don’t want to assign all of our members the ability to edit content on the site, just have access to a members only forum.

Will this create two separate MySQL databases? Will the old phpBB still be there and operational? Can the two be used simultaneously and will content posted in one cross-post to the other once merged to bbpress?

[Robkk]

Read this

https://codex.bbpress.org/import-forums/phpbb/#users

[OscarGuy]

If I use the bbPress import tool to import the database of an existing phpBB board, will it pull over the users and their passwords or will it require new usernames and passwords for everyone who signs up? I’m concerned that old posts won’t be attributable to their original posters.

[Henk070]

Hi Stephen,

I think I’ve read about every post on importing a phpBB forum into bbpress, but to no avail. I have managed to find above info in the php.config file and used these in the import settings in bbpress import (I was quite sure I finally found what I was looking for, because I first used user:’root’ and password ‘root’), but I’m getting the exact same result as above: “no users to convert. no passwords to clear, etc. etc.

This is what is running:
I have bbpress 2.5.7 No forums created
WP version 4.2.2
phpBB 3.0.x
Clean install of MAMP 3.2.1.

This is what I did:
I made an export of the phpBB database to be imported.
I am running MAMP
Created a new database on MAMP with the same name as the exported one, then imported the database into MAMP
Use ‘localhost’ on port 3306 (same as on MAMP) and dbname, user, password and prefix as found in the php.config file from the phpBB install.

No luck: “no users to convert. no passwords to clear”, etc. etc…

Your help would be much appreciated!

Thanks!
Henk

[Robkk]

Just so you guys know WordPress comes with its own emoticons and also since the latest version you can post emojis.

wp-monalisa is a good plugin for custom smilies and stickers though.

It also has a cool feature to import some phpBB smiley packs.

[Stephen Edgar]

Ha… Using bb_ as your table prefix really did throw me 😉

If you look at lines 59-60 for your topics your selecting the forum_id from the phpbb_topics table and inserting it into post_parent

https://gist.github.com/anonymous/8d1cb71e69d52ac69f5d#file-gistfile1-sql-L59-L60

The same needs to happen for replies, so you should be able to get the topic_id that the reply is for and then insert that into the reply post_parent

https://gist.github.com/anonymous/8d1cb71e69d52ac69f5d#file-gistfile1-sql-L59-L60

The following should do it, assuming that topic_id is actually in the phpbb_posts_text table.

INSERT INTO
	bb_posts(post_title,post_excerpt,post_name,post_content,post_type,post_parent)
	SELECT post_subject, post_id, post_subject, REPLACE (post_text, CONCAT (":", bbcode_uid), ""), 'reply', topic_id FROM phpbb_posts_text;