[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.

[SK]

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

[SK]

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.

[SK]

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.

[SK]

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?

[SK]

@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.

[ebiznet88]

Hi Anointed and AWJunkies, is there any update on the issues with the phpBB conversion that many users on this thread have highlighted?

Right now, I’m stuck in no-man’s land and would love to get a resolution of sorts.

If there is no further support or development into this plugin, then please let us know so that users like me can look at other solutions for our forum boards.

I appreciate all the work that has gone into this, but as it is, its not complete and not usable to anyone.

If anyone has successfully converted their phpBB board to bbPress using this converter, I’d like to hear from them.

Thank you in advance for any replies and help!

[SK]

https://wordpress.org/support/topic/plugin-bbpress-help-me

Tried this?

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

[SK]

Actually, it doesn’t. I think bbPress is a pretty good piece of software.

But while I have your attention, allow me to share my perspectives as someone who has been using Opensource Bulletin Board software for many years, but is just starting off with bbPress.

It’s great that bbPress can leverage WordPress’s autoupdate function to update itself and its plugins. phpBB (http://www.phpbb.com/mods/automod/), SMF (http://docs.simplemachines.org/index.php?topic=93) etc. are still trying to figure it out…they have some rudimentary patches, but nothing as elegant as WordPress’s system.

Another brilliant thing is the ability to use seo/pretty URLs/permalinks. Amazingly, at phpBB (http://area51.phpbb.com/phpBB/viewtopic.php?f=105&t=35616) they are fighting over whether this is even desirable!

But what’s pure genius is the ability to use any WordPress theme! bbPress ships with a bbPress TwentyTen theme, and if your active WordPress theme does not have special support for bbPress, that is ok, because bbPress will use bbPress TwentyTen’s styling to present the forums in your active theme. Genius! Pure genius!

Add to this the fact that because bbPress is a WordPress plugin, there are additional benefits such as: SSO with WP, ability to use WP plugins (like Use Google Libraries), extendability, lightness, etc.

It is a massive shock to me that the number of people are using bbPress is incredibly smaller than what it should be.

I’ve thought about my experience, and think that the following factors could be critical in this regard:

1. Discovery: Discovery is an issue. I don’t know what the relationship is between Automattic/Wordpress/bbPress/BuddyPress, but I am sure you have considered putting bbpress.org link in wordpress.org’s “See also:” footer and decided against it. But what I do struggle to understand is wy wordpress.org would not even permit you to put a credit line (Powered by bbPress) in wordpress.org forums. That is a bit harsh. To add insult to injury, if I search for forum on wordpress.org forums (http://wordpress.org/search/forum?forums=1), Mingle is at the top and Vanilla forums show up on page 1, but bbPress doesn’t.

Google SERPs aren’t much better. bbPress is not on 1st page for any of “forums script”, “opensource forums script” and “php forums script”. I’m sure that would change if you could convince wordpress.org to show you a little more love.

2. Freshness: Even if someone chances upon bbPress plugin on wordpress.org (http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/bbpress/), there is little joy. The bubble is burst as soon as the explorer clicks on forum posts (http://wordpress.org/tags/bbpress?forum_id=10). There doesn’t seem to be any support and users appear to be completely lost without a paddle.

Of course the main reason for that is that you handle most support here at bbpress.org but the poor visitor doesn’t know that. He looks at wordpress.org forums for bbpress, concludes there is lack of support and goes away.

I think unifying support in one place (at wordpress.org forums), will be good for the community. You can have a clearcut, loudly stated division – bbpress WP plugin support at wordpress.org forums, legacy bbpress standalone support at bbpress.org

http://bbpress.org/forums/topic/why-separate-forums

http://wordpress.org/support/topic/plugin-bbpress-why-separate-forums

3. Migration: 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.

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.

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.

4. I18n: 80%+ translations of bbPress are available in 13 languages, which is nothing to be scoffed at. But delivery is shambolic.

It is a nightmare trying to figure how to get bbPress working in a language other than English, even if you do the translation yourself.

There are 2 places to find translations: http://svn.automattic.com/bbpress-i18n/ and http://translate.wordpress.org/projects/bbpress/plugin

You can also use the .pot file found in /wp-content/plugins/bbpress/bbp-languages folder to create a translation, or you can translate at http://translate.wordpress.org/projects/bbpress/plugin with proper access.

It still doesn’t work. Very frustrating.

As it turns out, what you need to do is go to http://translate.wordpress.org/projects/bbpress/plugin, download language file by exporting to .po file, use poedit to covert to .mo, and upload it to wp-content/languages/bbpress/ (not to /wp-content/plugins/bbpress/bbp-languages which has the .pot file or /wp-content/plugins/bbpress/languages as most other plugins would). And the name of the file should be somewhat like bbpress-de_DE.mo not the standard de_DE.mo

Who would be able to figure that out? There’s not a single word about this in the documentation.

What a mess!

While some of the sharpest web developers comes from non-English-speaking countries, a high proportion of non-English-speakers are quite venturesome and decide to handle the technical aspects themselves as site owners, instead of farming them out to expensive developers, who are busy charging high rates for remote work.

These are the people that greatly appreciate the simplicity of WordPress. And these are the people who are a captive audience for bbPress, only if bbPress could make life a little bit easier for them.

bbPress should either be delivered in multiple language-specific packages like WordPress, or should be delivered with all translations included like most other plugins.

The .pot as well as language .po .mo files should be located in /wp-content/plugins/bbpress/languages

5. Documentation: This is another disaster area that is dragging a good software down. Documentation is just plain bad.

First of all, bbPress should clearly mention on the home page (http://bbpress.org/) and the download page (http://bbpress.org/download/) that while standalone version continues to be supported, it is not being actively developed.

Secondly, all the current documentation (http://bbpress.org/documentation/) is about the standalone version, and doesn’t say anything helpful for plugin users. This should be reversed.

6. Lack of basic features: Forum users, whether or not they own/manage forums, have come to expect certain basic features like:

– quote, multiquote

– topic view stats

– unread posts link

– Signature

– Profile photo/avatar

– bbcode

– WYSISYG editor

– forum search, context search

– uploading images

– members online

– private messaging

– smilies/emoticons

– forum moderation

– user registration approval

etc.

I understand that bbPress is built to be modular, and I think bbPress is right in leaving this functionality to plugins.

However, there are 2 problems:

– On wordpress.org plugin directory (http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/) there is no good way of listing all bbPress plugins. Perhaps you should create a special nomenclature or special tag that bbPress plugins should use?

– If you look at bbPress plugin browser (http://bbpress.org/plugins/), most plugins are quite old…updated in 2010, 2009, even 2008! This is not very reassuring or confidence inspiring. Now, many of the old plugins may still be working fine, but when I see the “last updated” date is June 2010 for a plugin, I assume it is outdated, not developed and not supported anymore. I perceive that this will be a trouble plugin if I install it, and consequently end up with less functionality than I want. And I blame bbPress for it, saying bbPress doesn’t have all the features I want.

My suggestion is this: Every time there is a new version of WordPress or bbPress, the bbPress plugins should release a new version too, even if the only difference is to add a comment line that says “compatible with version so and so”. This will go a long way in reassuring prospective users that can install the plugin with confidence.

7. Forum sidebar: There is a plugin called bbPress WP Tweaks (http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/bbpress-wp-tweaks/). What it proposes but in my experience fails to do should be part of the core software. bbPress WP Tweaks was created so that the admin could relace the WordPress standard sidebar with a forum-specific sidebar on forum pages. This, in my estimation, would be useful for 90%+ of all bbPress users.

8. Custom fields: One of the most powerful features of WordPress is custom fields. bbPress should not disable this for forum pages.

9. Custom headers code field: bbPress should have provision for a custom header code field, wherein the admin can put in some code, which bbPress then inserts in the header on forum pages. In one flick, this would make bbPress customization so much more powerful.

To sum up, it takes a lot of persistence and determination to love bbPress. This is not great to attract new users. The software has a lot of potential, and I believe the number of installations can be increased multifold if the above issues are tackled in earnest.

Thanks for listening to my ramblings. And if you went tl;dr I have only myself to blame.

[SK]

Oh, I see that in changelog it says phpbb is now supported

https://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/bbconverter/changelog/

This is important info and should really also be included in description

https://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/bbconverter/

where it still says “We are working on phpBB”

What does this in the description mean:

“This plugin runs in the background and converts passwords for your users when they log in, so the process is seamless even if your old forum uses different encryption methods.”

Does this mean that I should not uninstall the plugin after the conversion is complete?

[morgan-wick]

For me, it wouldn’t be enough to simply display subforums of a category on the main page. I’d like them to actually display the same way they would if they were parent forums.

[White Phoenix]

PowerNick, they are trying Orson’s Forum Converter. It sounds to me that it doesn’t work very well. I need to convert my phpBB3 forums too. But now I am thinking that WordPress and bbPress are not the answer. Even if the converter worked the idea that I would need a converter doesn’t really set well.

Yeah, I think I will ask my host to find something else.

[Kaenim]

No, I never did. I ended up switching to phpBB, in fact. For what it’s worth, it looks like I’ll have better luck; I’ve already seen a few mods that do this for phpBB, I just need to try them out for myself.

Best of luck to you!