[Ashish Kumar (Ashfame)]

bbPress #ftw

all your mentioned needs can be satisfied easily by bbPress

[DigitalGdn]

If you use WordPress, then bbPress is going to be a really good long-term option as it will soon mean the best integration with your website.

My main experience is with both phpBB and SMF and they feel like archaic pieces of software that are a pain to integrate and design for. Both also have big spam problems unless you customise the registration form. I think bbPress is protected by Akismet which is a different league to what the others have.

Another option similar to bbPress is Vanilla http://vanillaforums.org

My current preference is bbPress, but only if you don’t need to install too many plugins as it increases the chance of things going wrong when updating.

[DigitalGdn]

If you use WordPress, then bbPress is going to be a really good long-term option as it will soon mean the best integration with your website.

My main experience is with both phpBB and SMF and they feel like archaic pieces of software that are a pain to integrate and design for. Both also have big spam problems unless you customise the registration form. I think bbPress is protected by Akismet which is a different league to what the others have.

Another option similar to bbPress is Vanilla http://vanillaforums.org

My current preference is bbPress, but only if you don’t need to install too many plugins as it increases the chance of things going wrong when updating.

[Willabee]

1. Some plugins need some editing, but its usually minimal and with details on how to. Most plugins however do not need editing or knowledge of php.

2. Right now Automattic is working on a bbPress plugin for WordPress their main blogging platform. I’m guessing most support will go too that. But some support remains on the official bbpress.

3. All populair forum software has spam problems.

4. Core changes arent neccesairy, just hook it in. Although this will require some php knowledge.

[Willabee]

1. Some plugins need some editing, but its usually minimal and with details on how to. Most plugins however do not need editing or knowledge of php.

2. Right now Automattic is working on a bbPress plugin for WordPress their main blogging platform. I’m guessing most support will go too that. But some support remains on the official bbpress.

3. All populair forum software has spam problems.

4. Core changes arent neccesairy, just hook it in. Although this will require some php knowledge.

[kamimado]

Hi. I run a community for several groups of people learning foreign languages and I NEED SOME ADVICE on which bb platform to use. The bb/forums are the most active part of our website, so this is a very important decision. I would greatly appreciate any advice or comments you can offer.

1) I’m attracted to the fact that bbPress seems “lightweight” and that features are added as plug-ins. But is it EASY to add plug-ins? Can they be added automatically, through a wizard, or does it require knowledge of PHP and manual cutting & pasting of code?

2) Is it popular enough that there is plenty of support available online?

3) Is it secure? I used to run our forums on phpBB2 and they were eventually overrun with spam. No matter what anti-spam mods I installed, it never seemed to fix the problem.

4) When I ran the forums on phpBB2 it was terribly difficult to install Mods, keep track of changes, and perform maintenance on the site unless I kept very careful records of what parts of code I was changing. Does bbPress make this easier and more user-friendly? Have any of you had issues with it, or been disappointed by it being overly complicated?

THANK YOU VERY MUCH for your time. I look forward to your replies.

Regards,

R.S.

(considering bbPress, SMF, and phpBB3)

[Myphone Duo]

Cool. But will have some time though to implement those. I’m still trying to figure out bbpress. I am used to phpbb though

[Myphone Duo]

I have an old phpbb forum till i found the flexibility of bbpress. I ever wanted to transfer my phpbb database to bbpress but i’m always no luck and really findit hard to do. Or is it me because i’m new into programming.

[scorpio0679]

I am pretty much in the same position as the OP but don’t need to go live for a few more months (March-ish). So I think I’m going to wait a bit. After looking at phpBB, vBulletin, and a few other options, I am going with bbPress because of the way it will integrate with WordPress and BuddyPress which I’ve chosen as the basis for the two sites I’m building.

[scorpio0679]

I am pretty much in the same position as the OP but don’t need to go live for a few more months (March-ish). So I think I’m going to wait a bit. After looking at phpBB, vBulletin, and a few other options, I am going with bbPress because of the way it will integrate with WordPress and BuddyPress which I’ve chosen as the basis for the two sites I’m building.

[Corsari]

@ Ashfame: I thank you, but in the mean time I suppose your answer is directed to all the readers, ’cause obviously that one is the first site I’ve found while searching for bbPress themes.

The issue is that none of the two themes bundled with bbPress and none of the themes you can find out there is structured and logical as the one that any new potential bbpress user finds on the bbpress.org forum.

Two columns https://bbpress.org/forums/

on the left forums like a navigation menu

in the middle, recent topics

on the left bottom the rest

At least, for non-gurus, the staff should provide the instructions on how to customize the position of those “areas” (if they don’t want to share their theme – and I warn them that this is against any product-spreading-logic)

The best is to provide a really similar layout maybe with other colors and fonts.

To give you an idea, if you goto phpbb community forum, “what you see is what you get” and this is the correct approach… meant as prevent yourself hurting who will try out your product.

I hope you understand this is a kind suggestion to bbPress staff.

And again @ kevinjohngallagher, you should consider that those who may spread your product, most of the time, are not coders nor html-css-php experts. So, no layouts available and no easy customization instructions means no spreading, that as obvious consequence, could lead to no success of bbpress.

Robert

[Corsari]

@ Ashfame: I thank you, but in the mean time I suppose your answer is directed to all the readers, ’cause obviously that one is the first site I’ve found while searching for bbPress themes.

The issue is that none of the two themes bundled with bbPress and none of the themes you can find out there is structured and logical as the one that any new potential bbpress user finds on the bbpress.org forum.

Two columns https://bbpress.org/forums/

on the left forums like a navigation menu

in the middle, recent topics

on the left bottom the rest

At least, for non-gurus, the staff should provide the instructions on how to customize the position of those “areas” (if they don’t want to share their theme – and I warn them that this is against any product-spreading-logic)

The best is to provide a really similar layout maybe with other colors and fonts.

To give you an idea, if you goto phpbb community forum, “what you see is what you get” and this is the correct approach… meant as prevent yourself hurting who will try out your product.

I hope you understand this is a kind suggestion to bbPress staff.

And again @ kevinjohngallagher, you should consider that those who may spread your product, most of the time, are not coders nor html-css-php experts. So, no layouts available and no easy customization instructions means no spreading, that as obvious consequence, could lead to no success of bbpress.

Robert

[gadamiak]

We need to create a basic import plugin. — This I have done, it’s experimental and I’d like some more eyes on the code before calling it “done”

I’ve looked for it but haven’t found it. I guess it hasn’t been published yet?

I ask for help in making a single-use script to import topics and posts into existing BBPress installation.

I need to import a legacy Q&A (hundreds of them) stored in a flat file. I need to handle fields missing in the source, which contains: Q poster, Q poster’s e-mail (optional), Q post date, Q content, A content. I want to import those and fill the missing fields with arbitrary values.

I chose to use API to do the task, which is a right choice, what was pointed above. I converted the source file manually and imported it into a multi-dimensional array. Then I want to use functions bb_insert_topic and bb_insert_post in a simple loop:

$topic_id = bb_insert_topic(array(...));

bb_insert_post(array('topic_id' => $topic_id, ...);

The problem is: I can create topics/posts only for current user. Any poster_ parameters passed to bb_insert_ are ignored. In other words, I can’t create anonymous topics/posts with poster credits I specify. I guess I’m missing a setting or constant?

The PHP script is located in the root folder of BBPress. I do require('./bb-load.php'); and log in to my keymaster user in the browser. All of $bbdb, $bb and $bb_current_user are populated (I used FirePHP to debug).

What am I missing?

[Snat]

Well, if phpBB has a RSS feed to allow exporting a certain user’s post you could use RSS to export everything that you did.

I am guessing the URL is – http://www.sos-audition.org/forum/ and if so, I do not recall there is even RSS feeds on phpBB 2 so sadly it seems either a copy and paste job, see if you can get the database another way (maybe pay them ?) or say farewell to that data.

Other then RSS, database or copying and pasting, I do not see a quick way to do what you are looking to do sorry.

[Snat]

Well, if phpBB has a RSS feed to allow exporting a certain user’s post you could use RSS to export everything that you did.

I am guessing the URL is – http://www.sos-audition.org/forum/ and if so, I do not recall there is even RSS feeds on phpBB 2 so sadly it seems either a copy and paste job, see if you can get the database another way (maybe pay them ?) or say farewell to that data.

Other then RSS, database or copying and pasting, I do not see a quick way to do what you are looking to do sorry.

[Laurent Matignon]

Hi people,

I’m running a (french) WP (3.0.1) site :

http://www.oreille-malade.com

There is a (not integrated) bbPress (1.02) forum :

http://www.oreille-malade.com/forum

I used to participate a lot in a forum dealing with same kind of topics (hearing issues) : http://www.sos-audition.org (phpbb)

Today one of the admin of SOS-audition.org told me they decided to close their forum in a near future. This is very sad as there is a lot of good informations on this forum. I don’t want it to disappear completely from the web !

These people don’t agree to let me import all their datas because they think it would not be “correct” for users but they are OK for me to import all topics I participated in. In other words, I am allowed to import SOME of their content.

I let more than 2000 posts on this forum those days so you can guess it would be a loooooong task for me to do it all manually.

But as they completely abandon the forum they don’t want to do anything to help me do this. So no way for me to get my hands on their phpbb database

So here is my question :

is there a (quite simple) way to import this content and export it to :

1. either posts on WordPress

2. or topics on bbPress

Any help would be much appreciated !

Best regards

[Rebaz_Barznji]

Hi,

i have looked at the language pack and i haven’t seen kurdish language for this portal!

and i see it is really great and modern portal there is translation for many other portal and cms and forums in kurdish sorani like(wordpress,phpbb,punbb,php-fusion,joomla)

so as a name of click to open link in new window website we want to translate this portal to kurdish sorani after your agreement of course, and we will support it in kurdish language

kurdish sorani is rtl language, and it most be UTF-8

please tell me if we can start the translation?

[kiddbin]

WordPress and phpbb so people can use their account from one, with the other. Say I used WordPress with phpbb, and then used wp-united to link the two. One day the wp-united team ceases support, and their latest version is incompatible with the new phpbb/WordPress. Now what happens to the huge install base I’ve developed? Do new users now have to register twice? Is my database going to be completely screwed up? bbPress eliminates this problem by having seemless integration with WordPress, but it just shows an example of how plugins can be both a good and bad thing, and how some features (like poll creation) need to be made a part of the main software despite, ‘less code being more’.

Friendship jewelry wholesale

And lastly, arguably the number one issue preventing me from using bbPress, is the state of bbPress itself; the development of this software is up in the air with there being two completely different places to discuss it’s progress (this being one of them), and the other claiming talks of turning bbPress into a BuddyPress plugin. So the people new to bbPress, such as myself, don’t know what to do.wholesale tiffany Should we install the software now? Or wait until it’s a plugin? If we install now and they change it to a plugin, what happens to the standalone installations? Do they get screwed? Are they forced to install BuddyPress and switch everything over? Now I’m only human. I have no problem admitting when I’m wrong, I make mistakes. But even if not all my facts are straightwholesale Pandora

[kiddbin]

WordPress and phpbb so people can use their account from one, with the other. Say I used WordPress with phpbb, and then used wp-united to link the two. One day the wp-united team ceases support, and their latest version is incompatible with the new phpbb/WordPress. Now what happens to the huge install base I’ve developed? Do new users now have to register twice? Is my database going to be completely screwed up? bbPress eliminates this problem by having seemless integration with WordPress, but it just shows an example of how plugins can be both a good and bad thing, and how some features (like poll creation) need to be made a part of the main software despite, ‘less code being more’.

Friendship jewelry wholesale

And lastly, arguably the number one issue preventing me from using bbPress, is the state of bbPress itself; the development of this software is up in the air with there being two completely different places to discuss it’s progress (this being one of them), and the other claiming talks of turning bbPress into a BuddyPress plugin. So the people new to bbPress, such as myself, don’t know what to do.wholesale tiffany Should we install the software now? Or wait until it’s a plugin? If we install now and they change it to a plugin, what happens to the standalone installations? Do they get screwed? Are they forced to install BuddyPress and switch everything over? Now I’m only human. I have no problem admitting when I’m wrong, I make mistakes. But even if not all my facts are straightwholesale Pandora

[jefferisp7]

Hi folks, doing a forum install for client on a WP site, and trying to use phpBB, which has all the features they need, but the integration leaves something to be desired… outdated plugins, header errors, failed installs, etc.

Would be nice to see in a features list table what bbpress can and cannot do, with or without extra plugins…

Thanks

Jeff

[Briian]

Have you tried Simple:Press WordPress forum plugin. It is just like bbPress, but it seamlessly integrates with WordPress, has almost all the features of phpBB or vBulletin, and excellent support.

—

Content Managment Reviews

[Briian]

Have you tried Simple:Press WordPress forum plugin. It is just like bbPress, but it seamlessly integrates with WordPress, has almost all the features of phpBB or vBulletin, and excellent support.

—

Content Managment Reviews

[zaerl]

Dear “Random Guy Says” let me write in in more simple words. bbPress is a free software, free as in freedom and free as in “free beer”. Maybe you don’t know what this means. Now we will see what the GPL states. I will only report the short form cause the entire license is too long.

<one line to give the program’s name and a brief idea of what it does.>

Copyright (C) <year> <name of author>

This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify

it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by

the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or

(at your option) any later version.

This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,

but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of

MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the

GNU General Public License for more details.

You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License

along with this program. If not, see <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/&gt;.

This is the base of the entire open-source movement of the last 21 years. You get the software _as it is_. You don’t like the software? The developer stop supporting it? Then modify it, you are free to do it. (addendum: Automattic doesn’t provide any kind of official support for bbPress and when someone has a problem he comes here and ask with the hope that someone will solve the problem and as you clearly can see I’m trying to do my best and I’m not one of the official developers).

If you have a web domain I assume that you have an FTP client as well as phpmyadmin as well as a text editor. You don’t know how to change the default number of forums? Write a couple of lines here and someone will answer you back.

But like I said, these are basic forum elements that are missing – for instance, if you have more than 10 topics, by default your forum is now 2 pages long … And to a degree, I agree with that, where the ability to customize the software’s appearance to suit almost anything is a huge reason why I considered it

You know what? There is a feature, a big one, called “templates”. In a template you can change everything you want and there are gazillion of functions that you can call. Why should a forum software must have an option for changing the number of forum displayed? It’s one of that “set it and forget it” option. Change a line (an operation that can be accomplished in nearly 20 seconds) on the template and enjoy your board.

But as Kawauso said, even if the bbPress team made their own optional plugins supporting these basic features (again e.g. polls), at least we wouldn’t have to worry about them losing support.

Akismet and PollDaddy are two service that have premium account.

The plugin idea is what drives the modern days cause it’s far more simple to add a plugin to a repository than sending a core patch to the official dev teams. Plugins are the key features of all successfull modern software. Some example:

1) WordPress

2) Movable Type

3) The entire Mozilla software line (Firefox, Thunderbird, etc)

4) Joomla!

5) Drupal

5) and many, many other

Modular design is the present and the future and thanks God a lot of bloatware are disappearing.

I don’t say that bbPress is an easy to use software. It’s not an “upload and run” software. It suffers the fact that it’s a pretty young software and you must know a bit of php in order to set up it for being the base of a medium-sized community. That’s true. But I think that an administrator must be bit skilled in php/mySQL/mambo-jumbo. I choosed bbPress cause I was frustrated by phpBB and then I was frustrated by bbPress as well but this is the damnation of the system administrator. I have written 7 plugins in order to accomodate my needs and the needs of the community (zaerl Editor, zaerl Visibility, zaerl Post Permalink and zaerl WordPress 3 fix over all) and then I am happy with my system.

Conclusion: it’s ok if you don’t want to use bbPress. I understand your difficulties with plugin/themes and in general the personalizations at code-level. But I can assure you that once you do that couple of changes you will enjoy a great system.

Have a nice day.

[zaerl]

Dear “Random Guy Says” let me write in in more simple words. bbPress is a free software, free as in freedom and free as in “free beer”. Maybe you don’t know what this means. Now we will see what the GPL states. I will only report the short form cause the entire license is too long.

<one line to give the program’s name and a brief idea of what it does.>

Copyright (C) <year> <name of author>

This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify

it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by

the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or

(at your option) any later version.

This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,

but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of

MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the

GNU General Public License for more details.

You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License

along with this program. If not, see <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/&gt;.

This is the base of the entire open-source movement of the last 21 years. You get the software _as it is_. You don’t like the software? The developer stop supporting it? Then modify it, you are free to do it. (addendum: Automattic doesn’t provide any kind of official support for bbPress and when someone has a problem he comes here and ask with the hope that someone will solve the problem and as you clearly can see I’m trying to do my best and I’m not one of the official developers).

If you have a web domain I assume that you have an FTP client as well as phpmyadmin as well as a text editor. You don’t know how to change the default number of forums? Write a couple of lines here and someone will answer you back.

But like I said, these are basic forum elements that are missing – for instance, if you have more than 10 topics, by default your forum is now 2 pages long … And to a degree, I agree with that, where the ability to customize the software’s appearance to suit almost anything is a huge reason why I considered it

You know what? There is a feature, a big one, called “templates”. In a template you can change everything you want and there are gazillion of functions that you can call. Why should a forum software must have an option for changing the number of forum displayed? It’s one of that “set it and forget it” option. Change a line (an operation that can be accomplished in nearly 20 seconds) on the template and enjoy your board.

But as Kawauso said, even if the bbPress team made their own optional plugins supporting these basic features (again e.g. polls), at least we wouldn’t have to worry about them losing support.

Akismet and PollDaddy are two service that have premium account.

The plugin idea is what drives the modern days cause it’s far more simple to add a plugin to a repository than sending a core patch to the official dev teams. Plugins are the key features of all successfull modern software. Some example:

1) WordPress

2) Movable Type

3) The entire Mozilla software line (Firefox, Thunderbird, etc)

4) Joomla!

5) Drupal

5) and many, many other

Modular design is the present and the future and thanks God a lot of bloatware are disappearing.

I don’t say that bbPress is an easy to use software. It’s not an “upload and run” software. It suffers the fact that it’s a pretty young software and you must know a bit of php in order to set up it for being the base of a medium-sized community. That’s true. But I think that an administrator must be bit skilled in php/mySQL/mambo-jumbo. I choosed bbPress cause I was frustrated by phpBB and then I was frustrated by bbPress as well but this is the damnation of the system administrator. I have written 7 plugins in order to accomodate my needs and the needs of the community (zaerl Editor, zaerl Visibility, zaerl Post Permalink and zaerl WordPress 3 fix over all) and then I am happy with my system.

Conclusion: it’s ok if you don’t want to use bbPress. I understand your difficulties with plugin/themes and in general the personalizations at code-level. But I can assure you that once you do that couple of changes you will enjoy a great system.

Have a nice day.

[RandomGuySays]

I understand what you’re saying. But like I said, these are basic forum elements that are missing – for instance, if you have more than 10 topics, by default your forum is now 2 pages long as opposed to giving the option to choose what’s visible so you can prevent this problem from happening the way other bulletin boards do – without having to edit code. Polls and the like are also standard forum material that are absent with bbPress. As I’ve said before, I understand the premise of the bbPress software – less code is more. And to a degree, I agree with that, where the ability to customize the software’s appearance to suit almost anything is a huge reason why I considered it. But as Kawauso said, even if the bbPress team made their own optional plugins supporting these basic features (again e.g. polls), at least we wouldn’t have to worry about them losing support.

And rjeevan, you’re right, there’s always a risk. Say I install bbPress and one day they stop development. I already have the risk of whether or not a plugin providing a basic accustomed feature will just get discontinued one day, now I have to worry about losing the entire forums too. You’re argueing that there’s always risk, but missing the fact that with software like bbPress (and to a lesser extent, phpbb) there’s more risk. Things like this are in my opinion what’s holding open source software back, when Kawauso provided a simple solution that could in turn please everyone (provided the plugins are developed and maintained by their respectable counterparts).

Ben – For the record, you not reading the EULA on any forum you joined is exactly why an EULA is needed.