[ebiznet88]

I am glad to read this.

I too have been looking to replace my phpbb board and integrate my existing forum with WordPress.

I’m concerned with the slow speed of responses and development on bbpress.

I know the developers are all doing this voluntarily and in their spare time. There are no guarantees in life and so even though people and companies may say they are committed to something, it doesn’t mean its forever as things change so rapidly in this world. We just have to move forward in faith and hope that things improve.

[ebiznet88]

Thank you Adam for the work that you do.

This update you mention, would it happen to contain a converter for phpBB to bbpress as well (keeping fingers on both hands tightly crossed and holding my breath!)?

[ebiznet88]

Hi there Anointed One. I urgently wish to convert my phpBB forum to bbpress.

Can you give me a ‘rough’ estimate on when this plugin can also do phpbb conversions?

Many thank in advance!

[ebiznet88]

Thank you to wmnasef for this script!

I used the updated script provided by Abdessamad Idrissi at http://code.google.com/p/phpbb3-to-bbpress1-converter/downloads/list on my phpBB3 forum.

The conversion went smoothly and I could see the posts from my old forum appear in my bbpress forum.

However, all the posts had the authors listed as Anonymous, which means none of the users accounts were ported over.

Can someone help with this please? How did this happen and how can I fix this?

[jabbamonkey]

I gave up on BBPress, and just used PhpBB instead. It does everything I needed and was easy to setup. Also, BBPress has pretty poor support, and I’ve run into a ton of issues and customization difficulties with it.

[spabav]

After a couple of weeks testing bbpress and several other forum solutions, we are really hesitating in running bbpress as our forum.

From what we see the bbpress plugin, while not as feature-rich as stand-alone bulletin boards like vbulletin, phpbb or xenForo, does one thing outstandingly well, which is the integration into wordpress.

For that reason alone, it would be worth giving it a try.

Unfortunately – and here comes our biggest issue – it looks like the bbpress plugin is currently not given full (or any) attention from WordPress.

My question is very simple:

How many developers / coders are writing code of the bbpress plugin currently ?

Is @johnjamesjacoby the only one?

Is there anybody else “officially assigned/paid by wordpress” to work on the bbpress plugin and documentation or/and support ?

John is doing an excellent job, on all his help he gives especially in the bbpress forum. But since the community is small and John is also working on the buddypress project, we are really worried to put our eggs in a “one-man-show plugin” basket.

Please tell me that I got this wrong and that there are at least several people currently working on the bbpress plugin and documentation.

Would be great if anybody could shed some light on this.

[shooo]

hi all,

i have a phpbb forum with 150 000 replies, 12000 topics et 7000 members.

I want to try to upgrade on bbpress.

if i convert my phpbb forum on bbpress 1.1 and convert this bbpress 1.1 on bbpress 2.0?

do you think that is a good idea ? do you know a good plugin for convert phpbb on bbpress 1.1?

[Anointed]

Here is an example link showing the problem:

http://www.bbconverter.com/forums/topic-tag/phpbb/

*there should only be 1 topic tagged phpbb, of course it shows 12

**I can revert the template back to twentyten and the problem remains.

I have no idea what I keep doing on every site to cause this so that I could assist JJ in figuring out what the issue is, but I have no idea why this is happening.

[Argonisius]

Hi,

I just converted my phpBB database into bbPress with ForumConverter plugin. Everything works fine, but when I look at the forum widget on dashboard, there is “0 Forums”. But I have 4 forums already. How can I change that to show 4?

Thanks.

[Argonisius]

Hi,

Is there a way to import forums, topics and users from phpBB database to bbPress?

[Anointed]

Which converter are you using, the new bbConverter plugin?

If so, I’m pretty sure that the phpBB option says it is not yet supported.

I do know that Adam is working on a new vs. as we speak, but am not sure if phpBB has been added yet.

[Argonisius]

Hi,

I was trying to convert my phpBB database to bbPress with Forumconverter. When I start the conversion script, several lines flash on the screen (showing progress) and then the conversion stops at “merging user …”

Can you, please, help me what’s wrong?

Thank you very much.

[thetbasket]

Hi Travis,

Thanks for the response. My theme was different, as you had suggested, and I am working on it. Although I’m now in a little bit more of a complicated predicament because I am trying to use bbpress through buddypress, and on the buddypress install the forums options is not pointing the indicated page to the bbpress forums.

Anyway, I did misread or misunderstand your first suggestion – sorry about that. As far as creating a full-width template, I am nearly positive I did so (I created a template specifically for that page to be full width), but nevertheless I will double check next time.

I don’t want to get too deeply into this, but the fact that we use the word “blog” and “forum” already indicates that they are different even though they are both CMS’s. The issue is not that one is a CMS and the other is not, it is a matter of how the content is managed and it’s purpose.

A blog is a blog because, generally, one user is contributing the content that a multiplicity of users is commenting on. So a standard blog Write-and-Respond system works nicely, and works nicely even in a narrow space because it usually contains one article with comments on the article.

A forum, on the other hand, is a multiplicity of users creating multiple threads all scaffolded by an overarching structure of the forum and subforums. The way forums have been built thus far has been usually in a wide content format so users can see 1) The Thread title 2) The amount of replies 3) The last user that replied etc. etc. In other words, it is build upon a more horizontal management format, whereas the blog can get away with a more vertical format.

Of course now and into the future there will be all sorts of variations on this. But for the end user, I want a forum that is a forum, not a forum that is a blog. In other words, wide-formatted with the expected information that forums have traditionally contained up to this point.

The strong point of bbpress is its integration and especially it’s style integration. Anyone who has attempted to create themes for phpBB knows what a nightmare it can be. However, if you try to smush a phpBB forum in-between two or even besides one sidebar, see what happens. Not only that, but those sidebars from the blog are almost inherently irrelevant to the function of the forum. In other words — useless screen real estate being taken from what otherwise would be a smoothly functioning, articulated forum.

And I can understand that WordPress vanilla functions fine, and being opensource one could reprogram it into Duke-Nukem 3D, almost. As a user of wordpress, the most frustrating thing consistently is that I feel like I am hacking CSS and PHP files more than I am creating content, and perhaps this is because I am a bit persnickety and want a particular look, but a full width forum from a forum plugin? To me things like this (and there are enough) are just plain flaws in development. I shouldn’t need to hack anything to get a forum to operate in full width because that is how forums best operate according to contemporary standards. Perhaps you should need to hack to get something to operate somehow unique and fascinating, but hacking code to get something to perform as you would expect it to – from your hours and hours and hours of forum experience? To me this is on the development teams shoulders.

Again, thank you so much for taking the time to reply. I may be back after I have a chance to try what you had suggested.

By the way, after installing buddypress all of the groups, member pages, activity pages, etc. were ALL operating on full width. The only part of the entire install that persists in operating between my sidebars is bbpress, and it is the only one I am dissatisfied with. So now I have to go through hours of who knows what to get something working the way it always has worked.

Again, bravo for bbpress, it’s a great project with a great future, and there is a lot to be said for it. But that doesn’t excuse it from what needs work, and for those of us who want to deliver content, we would much rather spend our time on managing the delivery of content than on managing the content management system.

I’d rather be spending this time developing the forum, not on developing the forum development software.

[AWJunkies]

We are definitely here. I stated my direct contact info earlier in thread. You have a lot of questions and posts so be easier to address them all at once through a messanger. You are correct about the bbpress 1x and not needing the plugin after convert to convert passwords. That is for all other platforms.

Please contact me directly at:

skype: AWJunkies

AIM: AWJunkies

YAHOO: AWJunkies

Email: aellis@awjunkies.com

The phpbb is not currently complete as the file says I should have it done next week if nobody has tried to do the converter file yet. I also will be adding and editing a few things for speed.

[Stephen Edgar]

Not exactly what I planned on doing today whilst sitting in the back of a car! Though whilst browsing these forums I bumbed into this thread and have kicked it off on my iPad with a bbPress test site importing from 30,000 post PHPBB site, been running now for around 30 minutes.

I’ll add some follow ups on how the data Looks in bbPress when I have the right tools

EDIT: ~90 minutes after above

After ~60 minutes I have stopped it and had a look at the WordPress tables with myphpadmin and I cannot see any new posts in ‘wp_posts’ or ‘wp_users’

Is the ‘PhpBB_Not_Complete’ import tool active? i.e. Should I see more than nothing, nil, null as a result of trying this?

Cheers,

Stephen

[Ed]

AW, as i’ve jumped from punbb>phpbb2>phpbb3>bbpress1>bbpress2, I don’t think it’s worth sharing my setup – just too many variables to account for.

However, look forward to testing a punbb or phpbb version for you.

[Ed]

any eta for phpbb or punbb? thanks!

[Ed]

Hi Anointed, thanks for that. I really need to get my punBB moved to something else ASAP, and was hoping the bbpress might be the one.

Indeed, I just went from punbb > phpbb etc, as there is no direct conversion. It does seems that along the way, little things break – which in the end screw up the final conversion step.

Looking forward to a new release of your tool

[Anointed]

ED: Just talked to AWJunkies and he said this can happen when running multiple converters strung together.

From your post it looks like you need a way to go from punbb?

(guessing you are only going from punbb -> phpbb in order to get a roundabout way to bbpress)

We are going to add punbb and phpbb3 to the list of importers.

[Ed]

OK, I solved my mismatch problem by simply removing the top level forum category.

However, the blank posts still occur.

I’ve tracked it down to:

– at the BBpress1 stage, while the POSTs show the correct author, the actual TOPIC shows “Anonymous” for every entry.

– there is a duplicate entry in the DB, one which is the topic title, and then the actual contents.

things look fine with phpbb3, so I guess the error was with the “phpbb3-to-bbpress1-converter_v2″….

not your converter.

Anyhow, thanks for your great work!!! I just need to get my data in a state where it can be pulled in. Thanks.

[Ed]

Hi,

to help test this, I’ve moved my punBB forum over, and for the most part things work. However there is one major issue.

I’ve done the conversion by going from:

punbb > phpbb2 > phpbb3 > bbpress1 (standalone) > this converter > bbpress2

at the bbpress1 stage, I checked the data, forums, users etc and all looked good.

after conversion, when going through the ADMIN page/REPLIES, you see that each reply is linked to:

‘top level forum container’ (Mismatch)

and each thead that I look at, has an empty post at the start (i guess because of this issue?).

Topics are allocated correctly as they should be though.

My forum is setup as so:

– Top Level Forum Container

– forum 1

– forum 2

– forum 3

Any ideas how to fix this issue?

Thanks!!

[Ed]

any ETA on the PHPbb 3x option, and would you add punBB to the consideration list?

Thanks

[harryv]

I just started a brand new wp site. Initially, I was going to install a phpbb under

http://<url>/forums

After uploading the phpbb, I found bbpress plugin and activated it. Now all links to the forums are in the format

http://<url>/forums/forum/<topic&gt;

What is worse is that when I click to that link, it returns invalid. I tried removing the ‘forums’ and ‘forum’ and it still doesn’t go anywhere. I have since removed that /forums folder and the phpbb but the plugin still has the permalink saved despite removing and reinstalling the plugin.

How can I resolve this?

[wisemonkey]

Hello

I am in the process of making the switch from phpBB to bbPress (once the importer is out of beta). My two questions: how will the current catalog of bbPress plugins work within the new bbPress 2.0 (WordPress plugin)? How are they installed?

I searched for this info here and could not really find a definite answer.

Thanks in Advance.

[vatoloco2]

Are you accepting phpbb3 testers? I would like to test your plugin, too. Actually I am sticking with Orson’s phpBB3 converter and it works like a dream if you follow all instructions carefully. So I may also help here with some testing if you want