[grahamgrocho]

Just tried again. Isn’t working. Everything works fine before the phpBB3 conversion, but then I can’t get any users to log in. I’ve tried all known passwords, etc. Can’t log in as bbpress Key Master either.

Here’s what I’ve done:

(1) Install bbpress standalone to same database/sql username/pass as phpBB3 forum

(2) Convert phpBB3 tables using this converter

(3) Go back to bbpress to try to log in as keymaster and it doesn’t work. i try other usernames from the phpBB3 and they don’t work. Mind you, my phpBB3 board only had for users. This board was only set up for my band to discuss new song ideas back and forth while we’re away.

Any help? I’m kind of a novice. I’ve gone into phpmyadmin console and see only 4 users in the bb_users file. In fact, it appears as if after I do the conversion, it’s overwriting my original keymaster login. that one is no where to be seen…

[grahamgrocho]

No dice. both are different and I just tried again. now it says my bbpress keymaster doesn’t even exist, and my php keymaster/admin’s password is incorrect. trying to reset says it sent me an email, but i am not receiving any (checked spam too).

hmmmmm

[OC2PS]

Before importing, make sure your key master login details (email and login name) for bbPress are different from those of phpBB keymaster. Then try importing and see of you get any luck…

[grahamgrocho]

Having trouble with this. I installed standalone bbpress just fine. Then when I convert, I can see at the login page that all of the data has successfully transferred. But then I’m unable to login as keymaster (or any other login). I’ve tried my old phpBB3 board login info, too, but that doesn’t work. I’ve reinstalled and tryied again to no avail.

Any help? Why can’t I login with my bbpress password? Or any password/login for that reason?

[OC2PS]

Jared, Thanks! I will check this solution out.

Regarding configurations: I don’t know if 347374 is an actual number or if you use it just to make a point, which I do get. If bbPress included everything in configurations, then there will be way too many configurations, and would delay next releases a lot. That’s fair enough.

But let’s look at it from the perspective of added value and break from forum convention.

bbPress is billed as a lightweight forum. Hence, when it breaks from forum convention to make it lighter (have fewer functions), that is at least understandable. e.g.

– No signatures in core (plugin exists)

– No icons (e.g. http://www.phpbb.com/community/styles/prosilver/imageset/forum_read_subforum.gif ) by forums and posts showing useful information (ripe for plugin)

– No emoticons in posts (ripe for plugin)

– No attachments in posts (ripe for plugin)

– No “topic started” date in list of topics (e.g. on forums page or topics archive page)

– No “read count” for topics (ripe for plugin)

– No forum specific search (plugin exists)

– No post count for posters

etc

However, when bbPress breaks with forum convention to add something without evident added value, that is a bummer. e.g.

– Freshness instead of Last post in list of topics (e.g. on forums page or topics archive page). I don’t understand the reasoning behind this. bbPress is making an additional calculation, bending over backwards, just to calculate how many seconds, minutes or days have passed since last post. Why? Why not simply display the date-time of last post like most major forum software do? I don’t see the reason and I don’t like it this way, but if it is like this then I assume that there are other bbPress users who do. Hence I say…perhaps this should be configurable.

– The notification This forum contains 5 topics and 7 replies, and was last updated by some-author 5 days ago. Why? What is the thinking behind this? What purpose does this serve? I mean, on the same page, topics are listed, there is pagination (and total number of topics) above and below the list of topics, the user can see which post is on top and who last updated it, so why is this notification important to have? I don’t get it. But since it’s there, I assume somebody does, and hence I request that it be a configuration.

– Similarly, I wonder if a lot is achieved performance-wise by not showing the name of OP in lists of topics, considering that date-time of original post is being retrieved anyway.

– Formatting/styling of original post and replies is different by default on the topic page. From a user perspective, I don’t see why. You don’t have different styling for original post and replies on bbpress.org or wordpress.org What makes you think that everyone else would want it? Perhaps there is not much additional work is being put into it because replies have to be assigned a formatting anyway, and this way bbPress users know that this is possible. But if so, then even if styling of replies has to be defined separately, it should be same as that of original posts by default, and users should be able to see in documentation that it is possible for them to have different styling. If, on the other hand, you have discovered that a large number of bbPress users want to have different styling for original posts and replies, then I say make it configurable.

– In freshness, the number of days/hours/minutes is linked. How does that make sense? (yes it takes to the last post, but linking hours is odd…phpBB’s approach where they have a tiny icon next to the date-time is better) If it does to a lot of bbPress users, I say make it configurable.

(Through all this, remember: There aren’t that many bbPress-supporting themes, and most of bbPress users will end up using bbPress with their generic WordPress themes)

Lots of people use WordPress despite the performance hit (as opposed to say, Drupal) because it is so easy to use and customize without having to do (or even know) any coding. All bbPress users are WordPress users and so there is a similar expectation from bbPress.

I know it’s not fair to compare bbPress to WordPress, which has so many more developers and contributors, not to mention forum moderators.

On the other hand, it is a fair expectation, for bbPress is billed as a forum software from the makers of WordPress. If Matt wants this to take on phpBB, vBulletin and SMF, he needs to put some resources behind it, instead of making JJJ toil alone.

[OC2PS]

#1 Would love to see that as well.

#2 Loved these little things in phpBB and missing in bbpress

#3 have you tried:

https://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/bbp-signature/

https://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/bbpress-bbcode/

bbPress.org plugin repo is useless for bbPress plugin, but you could check out https://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/tags/bbpress

These plugins are WP plugins for bbPress, and you can install from WP Admin just like normal WP plugins

[whereiswill]

Might of been answered before but I cant seem to find it on the boards. I apologize if this is common, I might of not used the best wording.

I installed bbPress on a test wordpress running 3.2.1 (or most current). Installed just fine and I proceeded to test it from a users perspective. I added a login and register links and pages, work just fine. However when I login or register, the function will login or create a user but the new URL causes a 404.

I’m using XAMPP on my personal machine and the directory of my wordpress install is

localhost/wep/wordpress

That works just fine as it should. However the URL that returns on successful login or registration displays as :

localhost/wep/wordpress/wep/wordpress/login/

which obviously throws a 404 as it’s non existant.

I had a phpbb install in the wordpress folder before I installed bbPress and believe I might of changed the folder path on install. I tried deleting bbPress to reinstall but it just gives me an activate/deactivate/delete option.

I’m assuming there’s somewhere in the plugin I can change that root folder pathing or whatever configuration is causing this error but I’m unsure of what and where.

Any help is appreciated.

[unholyfruitbat]

Okay, last series of questions for a bit.

How do I properly install 2.1 into a developmental BuddyPress site? I want to launch a site with everything, WordPress, Buddypress, and bbPress has to offer. Today I run a site that is based on Vanilla Forums (grumble) and another site that is phpBB.

The reason I ask so much about video and images is because these sites are based around music so with music you have a ton of photos of performances and video. I’d like to make it as easy as possible for users to share these media types in Forum posts since that is today where they classically have shared them.

Does this seem like a sound(pun?) approach or am I missing something?

[ExtremeSoccer]

which stylesheet? the one in plugins/bbpress/plugins/themes/twentyten?

[Jared Atchison]

This might help a little:

https://bbpress.org/forums/topic/bbp-plug-in-for-wp-scalable

[majamaki]

How is bbPress for a forum just shy of 200,000 posts and over 16,000 members? Can bbPress handle the growth to 500k to 1 million posts? Are there any good plugins/mods that help sync user data and unify the experience?

[Jared Atchison]

It is certainly possible but would require a custom theme built from scratch – there really wouldn’t be an “easy” way to go about it.

[Tompix]

How to make this:

http://i.imgur.com/X5vqs.jpg

Look more like this:

http://i.imgur.com/v5s7C.jpg

??

Is there any way?

[Jared Atchison]

jjj will respond when he has a chance, but I’ll say he does 3 different jobs so he doesn’t always have time to respond right away.

He is an Automattic employee where his full time role is head of “social”. bbPress and BuddyPress are his other projects that he does on the side.

I encourage you, when you have time, to listen to a recent interview with jjj http://wpcandy.com/broadcasts/community-interviews/002-john-james-jacoby – you’ll get an idea of just how much work he has on his plate – frankly I don’t know how he does it.

Both bbPress and BuddyPress are maintained by volunteers like jjj and myself. We contribute and help out as much as possible, but ultimately projects that “pay the bills” come first.

I’ll let jjj give his point of view, but I can tell you with 99% certainty that there is no easy way to make bbPress 2.x look like bbPress.org – they are simply two completely different platforms. bbPress 2.x was a total rewrite of bbPress, from the ground up, so that bbPress could be a plugin instead of a stand alone install.

And yes, when bbPress.org is upgraded – whenever that time comes – it will adopt the new bbPress 2.x look. I understand that some people like the 1.x look better however that all comes down to personal preference – personally I like the 2.x look but that’s my preference.

Googling for bbPress themes and plugins is hit or miss but is going almost be a miss if you are using 2.x. It’s been out only a year, so the vast majority of what you find is going to be for 1.x. Recently there has been quite a few nice plugins popping up that are for 2.x – you can find these in the WordPress.org plugin repository

https://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/search.php?q=bbpress

bbPress is actually quite well documented, however right now most of the documentation is in the actual code. Writing up documentation takes a lot of time and effort – WordPress.org codex is a perfect example – it’s fantastic but it is also maintained by 100s of contributors.

I’m sure jjj could spend some time writing documentation, but then none of the bugs that come in would be addressed in a timely manner, none of the features that people are constantly asking for would ever get written. Every comes down to volunteers – we just don’t have enough. Anyone with a user account can write and contribute documentation for bbPress so i think it’s unfair to expect jjj to do that on top of the dozens of other things he already does.

I do know that when 2.1 is released, which should be fairly soon, we are going to add some stuff to the bbP codex, however it’s night going to be something that appears overnight.

I’m not sure what you mean by “better standard theme” – the theme that ships with bbPress 2.x works well – the one that ships with the upcoming 2.1 is even better. Logistically it’s impossible to ship with a bbPress theme that fits everyones needs and works with all WordPress theme, but we try to make it as compatible as possible.

bbPress does a lot of great things “out of the box”. However it comes to a point that when certain customizations are needed you are either going to have to get your hands dirty with code or hire a developer to assist you – and that’s just the nature of the beast – for any open source project.

If you are looking for a forum application that has 100s of contributors, many of which focus on the project full time, then unfortunately bbPress may not be the best fit for you. Vanilla, phpBB, along with others are some great alternatives.

[OC2PS]

I have found that this plugin imports users AND imports topics, but doesn’t make the connection. So basically it imports users twice – once from user table and another time as authors of something (or nothing).

The usernames shown as post authors have imported_ prefixed to them.

So we have

username, and

imported_username

So I tried deleting imported_username using bbpress function of assigning all its topics/replies to username. The operation was successful and now I see username as author of those topics/replies, but one problem lingers: I still don’t see any topics/replies by username if I go to its profile page.

I can’t go the opposite way and delete username and then change imported_username to username as WordPress doesn’t allow changing usernames.

P.S. I imported from phpBB 3.0.9

[OC2PS]

Actually, I take that back.

If you click on “Activate Plugin” immediately upon installation from the Add New Plugin area, the plugin does throw up the error

The plugin does not have a valid header.

However, if I later to to installed plugins, and then click “Activate”, then I am able to activate and use the plugin.

I am also happy to report that I was able to successfully convert a phpBB 3.0.9 forum. It’s not perfect…I need to fix a few things here or there, but it is good enough…as good as can be expected from a general-purpose automated converter.

[Jared Atchison]

The problem with this is that bbPress is maintained by @jjj and a few other contributors. So the time and features have to be prioritized.

Writing an importer is a *lot* of work. Right off the bat a forum importer is going to be at least twice as much work as, say, a MovableType -> WordPress importer.

Now you have to take into account how many, ultimately, separate importers you would have to write. Let’s see here… vBulletin, phpBB, Vanilla, punBB, SMF, IPB… and those are just some of the popular ones. So 6 importers *might* cover most off people’s needs.

Then you have to keep in mind that the importers are constantly breaking because of software updates to the original forums packages. I’d say ever 2-4 months you can expect breakage due to an update.

Bottom line? You are looking at 6 importers (at least) to cover the popular forum suites, that not only would take a huge time investment to get off the ground, but would have to be constantly maintained and updated so they don’t break or get out of date.

Is it do-able? Sure. However, if you want @jjj to tackle this don’t expect to ever see another bbPress update or feature again – it’s just a matter of time.

This is really where contributors need to step in and help out. This would ideally be written and maintained by different contributors.

[OC2PS]

bbPress needs to face the fact that most people who want a forum, have already had a forum. The *new* market for forums is much smaller than the *installed base* of forums.

Consequently, most of the people who would want to use bbPress probably are already using another forum script and need help migrating. It is collossal mistake to leave this for community plugins.

If I have a forum software in a production environment, then one of the major factors influencing my decision regarding migration is whether or not there is a robust, stable, tried and tested and reliable migration path to the target software. This is extremely important for me. In fact, I would suffer a somewhat inferior software willingly rather than move to a better software if there is no clear migration path or there is a high degree of risk in migration.

It is a mistake on part of bbPress to leave migration to community plugin developers. Even if there were some plugins out there that did the job, it would be much less reassuring to prospective users compared to a migration/import path created by the bbPress team. As it happens there are only 2 import plugins ( http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/forumconverter/ and http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/bbconverter/) out there and both of them are broken and not supported.

WordPress does it right in building an importer directly into the core.

Over the next 18-24 months, I expect to see a mass exodus from phpBB as they rewrite the software from ground up ( http://area51.phpbb.com/phpBB/viewtopic.php?f=75&t=41583). If bbPress provide a good migration path, it stands the chance to capture some of fleeing population.

Task

I think it would be greatly beneficial to the project if the bbPress team build a bbPress importer that supports the top 4 forum software: phpBB, Invision, SMF and vBulletin.

Such a migration tool, importer or converter will:

i) import topics and forum hierarchies into bbpress

including the relations between forums, topics and replies

and slugs for forums, topics and replies

ii) generate an .htaccess to place in the old forum directory so that old URLs are 301 redirected to new ones.

iii) import users including profiles, passwords, signatures and roles

@jjj You have mentioned at http://bbpress.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/1740 that this is more appropriate for a plugin and that bundling that code in the core of bbPress seems needless for many users that are starting off fresh.

I believe that this function is too important to be left to the mercy of others. There is a huge trust issue…if I have to entrust my data to someone, I want to make sure that they are reliable, trustworthy, good enough, and understand the software well.

I take your point about not bundling the function in the core. How about a migration plugin by the bbPress team?

[beowshawitz]

Nah, I dropped bbPress and went with phpBB instead.

[OC2PS]

Just add

.bbp-forum-info .bbp-forums li {display:block;}

to your stylesheet

[Aemi]

hey, so all we need is to edit bbp_list_forums function?

can someone explain what exactly to do please?

[OC2PS]

@ebiznet88:

I’m checking out another possible solution to bridge phpBB3 to WP. Its a plugin available at https://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wp-phpbb-bridge/

Interesting.

But it sucks that in this plugin user management has been given to phpBB. WordPress has many more interesting options, like FB/Google/Twitter login, etc.

@ebiznet88: Hard Seat Sleeper is on topic and talking about bbConverter

[ebiznet88]

Hard Seat Sleeper, are you referring to Anointed and AWJunkies, or the phpBB-WP bridge fellows whose link I shared in my post?

At any rate, I have moved on from this bbconverter. I have wasted quite a few months and effort waiting for answers to my problems from AWJunkies. Too bad he isn’t willing to finish what he started.

[ebiznet88]

Doesn’t look like we’ll be receiving any responses from the creators. It looks like they have abandoned the project.

I’m sure they receive email notifications of replies to this thread, and there have been so many questions posed but they haven’t bothered to come in to reply. Even their website forum has been quiet.

I’m checking out another possible solution to bridge phpBB3 to WP. Its a plugin available at https://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wp-phpbb-bridge/.

I will be installing it as soon as I can squeeze a few hours in and hope it works.

Has anyone else tried this bridging plugin and care to give a review?

[jabbamonkey]

I’ve given up on using BBPress, and installed phpBB instead. Was having too much trouble customizing it for my needs. phpBB has alot more functionality that I needed and was easier to administer.

No more need to reply to this post. Consider it closed.