[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.

[zaerl]

Exactly. And zaerl is the perfect example of what happens when you skim through something instead of actually reading it. There’s a reason it’s lengthy, so next time read the whole thing before complaining about it.

Dear “random guy says” when you choose a software, like when you choose a car or a banana you look at the thing you will buy and then you choose.

There are a lot of bulletin software out in the wild and you have a lot of alternatives. As you can see from the main page of bbPress that particular piece of software has been built in order to be the most light as possible and to let the users expand it the way they want.

Now you are in the “bbPress Support Forums” and you are saying that you can’t choose bbPress. It’s ok, I accept your position but your post isn’t exactly a “feedback” but just a rant from a user that doesn’t understand the philosophy that drive bbPress as well as WordPress as well as every modern CMS-like system used nowadays.

I have read your entire post and you are just saying that you can’t choose bbPress cause it isn’t shipped with everything you want and that you are afraid by the fact that plugins are third-party software and that the mantainer can stop supporting it. Then you know what? Install phpBB. It is a gargantuan software full of every feature your mind can even imagine. But it’s slow, bloated, full of double-flip hack in the code and you need a ninja server when your userbase grow up a little. Or buy vBullettin. It’s slightly better that phpBB and you have also phone assistance. That’s what you’re searching for.

But answer me: why do ranting on the bbPress forum regarding the bbPress/WordPress philosophy? You think that you will change something? Or that you will add something valuable?

I dare to make an analogy: you are like a customer that enter a Tesla Motors reseller saying that he will not buy the new Roadster 2.5 cause you like the smell of gasoline in the morning.

[zaerl]

Exactly. And zaerl is the perfect example of what happens when you skim through something instead of actually reading it. There’s a reason it’s lengthy, so next time read the whole thing before complaining about it.

Dear “random guy says” when you choose a software, like when you choose a car or a banana you look at the thing you will buy and then you choose.

There are a lot of bulletin software out in the wild and you have a lot of alternatives. As you can see from the main page of bbPress that particular piece of software has been built in order to be the most light as possible and to let the users expand it the way they want.

Now you are in the “bbPress Support Forums” and you are saying that you can’t choose bbPress. It’s ok, I accept your position but your post isn’t exactly a “feedback” but just a rant from a user that doesn’t understand the philosophy that drive bbPress as well as WordPress as well as every modern CMS-like system used nowadays.

I have read your entire post and you are just saying that you can’t choose bbPress cause it isn’t shipped with everything you want and that you are afraid by the fact that plugins are third-party software and that the mantainer can stop supporting it. Then you know what? Install phpBB. It is a gargantuan software full of every feature your mind can even imagine. But it’s slow, bloated, full of double-flip hack in the code and you need a ninja server when your userbase grow up a little. Or buy vBullettin. It’s slightly better that phpBB and you have also phone assistance. That’s what you’re searching for.

But answer me: why do ranting on the bbPress forum regarding the bbPress/WordPress philosophy? You think that you will change something? Or that you will add something valuable?

I dare to make an analogy: you are like a customer that enter a Tesla Motors reseller saying that he will not buy the new Roadster 2.5 cause you like the smell of gasoline in the morning.

[Ben Sutcliffe]

Heys,

I have to disagree. bbPress is the exact alternative to other forum software, and that’s why it’s great. It’s lightweight and really easy to fiddle about with. You do need to know PHP and an understanding of how other Automattic products work comes in handy, but the end result is that bbPress is a great base for dynamic forums.

I’ve used it to create forums that don’t really look like they ever were bbPress, and I think that’s the beauty of the software. There’s very little point in Automattic creating another phpBB – the market is already flooded, and services like vBulletin already “do that”.

bbPress doesn’t do a lot of things by default: it’s behind WordPress on things like threaded replies and the like, but it’s damn easy to create that kind of thing, without excessive code. If you want it all done for you, use something else; bbPress gives you the platform to take code and build on top. Add threaded replies if you so wish, require users to sign up using Twitter or FB Connect if you want to keep the robots out, and create templates and designs that are truly yours. You don’t have to use whatever pre-defined nonsense is held within phpBB.

If you want to get rid of links, you can comment them out or delete the link altogether in the template. The simplicity and lightweight nature of bbPress make it truly flexible. With plugins bbPress can do anything. I’ve never had to deal with a single element of spam on any forum I host, and I have a lot of posts on one of them. Akismet keeps spam down, like it does on WordPress, and ReCAPTCHA is a beautiful and highly functional tool for keeping robots out. It’s a little like WordPress: if you want a ready made blog you use Blogger or Tumblr, if you want to take more control, WordPress allows you to (simply) control anything.

Finally, why do you need a EULA? KISS – a terms of use page linked to from your footer works just as well. I’m not sure I ever actually read the EULA on any forum I joined.

Ben

[Ben Sutcliffe]

Heys,

I have to disagree. bbPress is the exact alternative to other forum software, and that’s why it’s great. It’s lightweight and really easy to fiddle about with. You do need to know PHP and an understanding of how other Automattic products work comes in handy, but the end result is that bbPress is a great base for dynamic forums.

I’ve used it to create forums that don’t really look like they ever were bbPress, and I think that’s the beauty of the software. There’s very little point in Automattic creating another phpBB – the market is already flooded, and services like vBulletin already “do that”.

bbPress doesn’t do a lot of things by default: it’s behind WordPress on things like threaded replies and the like, but it’s damn easy to create that kind of thing, without excessive code. If you want it all done for you, use something else; bbPress gives you the platform to take code and build on top. Add threaded replies if you so wish, require users to sign up using Twitter or FB Connect if you want to keep the robots out, and create templates and designs that are truly yours. You don’t have to use whatever pre-defined nonsense is held within phpBB.

If you want to get rid of links, you can comment them out or delete the link altogether in the template. The simplicity and lightweight nature of bbPress make it truly flexible. With plugins bbPress can do anything. I’ve never had to deal with a single element of spam on any forum I host, and I have a lot of posts on one of them. Akismet keeps spam down, like it does on WordPress, and ReCAPTCHA is a beautiful and highly functional tool for keeping robots out. It’s a little like WordPress: if you want a ready made blog you use Blogger or Tumblr, if you want to take more control, WordPress allows you to (simply) control anything.

Finally, why do you need a EULA? KISS – a terms of use page linked to from your footer works just as well. I’m not sure I ever actually read the EULA on any forum I joined.

Ben

[zaerl]

From the bbpress main page:

Have you ever been frustrated with forum or bulletin board software that was slow, bloated and always got your server hacked? bbPress is focused on web standards, ease of use, ease of integration, and speed.

We’re keeping things as small and light as possible while still allowing for great add on features through our extensive plugin system. What does all that mean? bbPress is lean, mean and ready to take on any job you throw at it. So let’s get started.

Plugins

1) bbPress has a lot of plugins that cover nearly every single feature that other bulletin board bloatware (phpbb, vbulletin) have

2) all those plugin are free as in “freedom” and “free beer”

so stop ranting cause you haven’t paid a penny.

[zaerl]

From the bbpress main page:

Have you ever been frustrated with forum or bulletin board software that was slow, bloated and always got your server hacked? bbPress is focused on web standards, ease of use, ease of integration, and speed.

We’re keeping things as small and light as possible while still allowing for great add on features through our extensive plugin system. What does all that mean? bbPress is lean, mean and ready to take on any job you throw at it. So let’s get started.

Plugins

1) bbPress has a lot of plugins that cover nearly every single feature that other bulletin board bloatware (phpbb, vbulletin) have

2) all those plugin are free as in “freedom” and “free beer”

so stop ranting cause you haven’t paid a penny.

[RandomGuySays]

Don’t get me wrong, I want to. bbPress looks wonderful, I love the simplicity and ease of use, as well as it’s integration features which are a huge plus to me. And while I acknowledge that bbPress is going through some tough times (being semi-new and through my understanding, the project lead leaving), I cannot choose bbPress for my site. The worst part about my specific situation is that I’ll most likely end up using it in the future once it’s matured, and knowing that is even more of a kick in the pants.

A lot of times with software, the more simple it is to use, the less features it has to be used. However, bbPress lacks basic bulletin board features – like poll creation, simple appearance settings such as customizing visible forum structures, and even a pre-made registration EULA. Other bulletin boards include prepared terms and conditions to protect your site, bbPress simply asks for your e-mail which with the lack of spam prevention filters like Captchas, even with the right plugin becomes an open door towards floods of spam. Other bulletin boards also give you the ability to, for instance, change the number of how many subforums are visible: Say you have a video game forum, organized as follows: Games (Category), Console/PC (Forums), Microsoft/Sony/Nintendo (Subforums), Xbox/Xbox 360 (Sub-subforums), Hardware/Accessories (etc.). On most forum software, the appearance settings default to showing one set of subforums per-page – e.g. when you click, ‘Console Games’, the next page displays only, ‘Microsoft/Sony/ Nintendo’, and you go from there. bbPress however, defaults to listing them all at once, resulting in enormously long forum pages that can only be changed by editing code. This may not be a problem for a lot of people as it should only require changing one or two lines to fix, but as a basic feature found in most other bulletin boards, to expect people to know how bbPress’ code works would just be wrong, and as such becomes a huge turn off.

In my opinion, one of the biggest bottlenecks and double-edged swords of open source software such as WordPress, bbPress, and even other open source forums, are the plugins. I remember reading a blog discussing the state of bbPress where the poster used the phrase, ‘there’s a plugin for that’. Plugins can be great, but they should also be considered an added bonus and not relied on for basic features. Most plugins are created by a third party, or even people like us. Just for talk sake, lets use wp-united for example. Wp-united is a plugin that links accounts between 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’.

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. 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 straight, the fact that doing the research lead to this whole scenario makes for quite the first impression.

I didn’t post this to bash bbPress, I just hoped it would clear some of the confusion and thought it might in some way shape or form help bbPress and it’s users by getting these issues out in the open.

[Ricardo]

Altough i’m waiting for the next bbpress version i can recommend one forum script that has a importer for phpbb2 and others, its MYBB, they’ve got a great comunity forum with international support.

http://www.mybb.com/downloads/merge-system

i like mybb but it has too many options etc, nothing wrong with it, if you use phpbb i think you’ll find it simpler but i prefer it even simpler like bbpress.

ps: i tested the importer a few weeks ago, imported from phpbb and smf and the importer worked perfectly (tried it on wampserver with dummy forums)

[Ricardo]

Altough i’m waiting for the next bbpress version i can recommend one forum script that has a importer for phpbb2 and others, its MYBB, they’ve got a great comunity forum with international support.

http://www.mybb.com/downloads/merge-system

i like mybb but it has too many options etc, nothing wrong with it, if you use phpbb i think you’ll find it simpler but i prefer it even simpler like bbpress.

ps: i tested the importer a few weeks ago, imported from phpbb and smf and the importer worked perfectly (tried it on wampserver with dummy forums)

[mpesgt01]

regarding the link above, bbpress seems to need way too many plugins to arrive to my needs. I m exact ?

Can we switch easaly from phpbb2 to bbpress ?

[mpesgt01]

regarding the link above, bbpress seems to need way too many plugins to arrive to my needs. I m exact ?

Can we switch easaly from phpbb2 to bbpress ?

[mpesgt01]

Hi

I am using phpBB 2 with 2300 users

I was okay for a while with that forum… I want to change and update… not sure I do like the phpBB3 tough, so I did a little search. Even tough I am using WP on my article side of site, I am not sure that bbPress is the best choice for me

What forum would be a good choice for

– 2300 user

– french or english

– send PM

– RSS

– Forums and sub-forums

– need to be able to “embed” a youtube video when members are posting

– Profiles

– Avatars and signatures

I use this to try to help me

http://www.forummatrix.org/compare/bbPress+Invision-Power-Board+phpBB+SMF+vBulletin

[cichlid]

I had this functionality in my phpBB installation before I switched to BBpress,. A friend of mine wrote me a piece of code which does essentially the same thing. Don’t ask me to extend it. I’m not a programmer.

What does it do:

It will automatically replace keywords and link them to a page you have specified.

Example use:

Deep linking to affiliate products or articles on your website.

How to install it:

1) Open the file “Text2Aff.php”. Specify the keywords and links.

2) Upload it the folder “text2aff” to “my-plugins” folder.

3) Log in to your admin panel and activate the plugin

Version: This is version 0.1 and has been tested with BBpress 1.02

Planned:

Would be great to have some sort of admin panel to manage the keywords and urls. Moving this into the database. You are welcome to extend it. Any comments appreciated.

Credit: Jason from http://www.sourcegps.com

Download URL:

http://sourcegps.com/txt2aff/txt2aff.zip

[Eric]

Well thank you both for your responses. I ended up getting frustrated with it, both wordpress and bbpress. As they both want to work as their own individual platform, I could not get them to communicate the way that I needed. Nor, at least copy the theme over to make it a fluid site. I ended up deleting the whole site and I’ll start from scratch with maybe Phpnuke and PhpBB since they can be integrated. Just a pain to configure the way I want.

Basically, I like the ease of WordPress, however, it lacks certain functionality even with all the widgets. BBPress, is new, I’d like to see a functional WYSIWYG editor, the ability to private message, and integrate it into a wordpress site using the same css styles and mainly the header. Right now, its too obvious that you are navigating to two different sites and it lacks a certain possession.

[cichlid]

I just want to say thank you to the following people who contributed plugins and made my life much easier.

Thomas Klaiber

Eduardo Graells

Michael Adams

Nightgunner5

_ck_

Rich Boakes & Frédéric Petit

Rhys Wynne

Francesco Bigiarini

Well, thats out of the way.

I switched from phpBB3 to bbpress 1.0.2 because I couldn’t stand the huge administration section and the constant spam. In addition I had problems integrating phpbb with wordpress (yes, I tried, wp-united and hated it).

It took me roughly 2 days to implement the forum and wordpress the way it is now and I converted the data from phpbb to bbpress. Lost a lot of users because they couldn’t convert for whatever reason but I managed to keep all the data.

Forum Address: http://www.cichlidexplorer.com/forum

It still needs work!!

[Ricardo]

Hi

Personally i prefer the 1.0.2 version, both of them are fast and light, some say 0.9.2 is faster but even if it is faster i can´t really notice it.

with version 1.0.2 i can switch the pretty permalink function on very easily, i was unable to do that with version 0.9.2, in fact i was unable to turm it on and spent a good amount of time in the support forums trying what everyone said (multiviews, htacess etc etc etc), the permalink structure is a bonus point for me in any forum script (i dont like all those cripthgraphic urls).

visually (user side) there aren’t many differences, from the admin prespective version 0.9.2 has a “wordpress retro look” version 1.0.2 looks like wordpress 3.0 .

version 1.0.2 added a few functions/pluggins to the core that were missing or needed a pluggin in 0.9.2.

if you use wordpress, version 1.0.2 can be integrated a lot easier than 0.9.2.

There’s been some talk about forking it but in my opinion the next version (pluggin) will be what everyone wanted, better integration at several levels, no backpress dependency, bbpress admin area inside wordpress etc etc)

i tried several forum scripts and i think nobody will be angry if i write a few lines about them:

1- phpbb3 – fairly simple to setup but way too much options in the admin area, nothing difficult as it is understandable but no “pretty permalink structure”, there was a pluggin but you need to reinstall it with every new version and its a pain to even set it up.

2- SMF – simple to setup but its kind of complicated to get around all those options, to much stuff.

3- PunBB/FluxBB – Original forum script and fork – both were a breeze to install, PunBB had native permalink structure and FluxBB had a pluggin but in my opinion the community has lost his “power” forking PunBB split the community but i could be wrong.

4- Simple press – the best forum pluggin for wordpress, had most stuff i wanted (clean urls, integration with wordpress at all levels, theme, users etc) nice community forum, international language support but it was sluggish, there were a few tips on how to optimize its speed but never managed to optimize it, otherwise a great forum script for wordpress.

5- MyBB – easy to instal with a easy to understand administration area, great community, lots of pluggins, themes, international support, fast forum system, clean urls (through pluggin) etc, if the bbpress project doesnt take off in next version it willprobably be my choice.

Hope this helps you.

[_ck_]

@ms420 that’s not how they do it here,

you just post your contact info and then we close the thread.

[Ashish Kumar (Ashfame)]

Contact me – ashishsainiashfameatgmaildotcom

[ms420]

I want to hire an expert to import my PhpBB forum and other contents from a PHP/MS SQL based website into bbPress and integrate with WordPress.

If you are interested please respond to this thread.

Thanks in advance.

[ckwalsh]

Um, wow. I’ll admit I’m quite astounded and I’m not quite sure what to say, but I’ll try.

Actually the PHP version kinda proved my point about content caching.

It’s taking 3-4 ms.

The front page index on most of those forums is taking 20-25ms

Uh… no they aren’t. http://bb-bench.com/benchmark/1#section_p_index

That’s impossibly fast, it definitely means content is not being regenerated. If the cache was defeated it would have to re-render the whole thing and the page time would be significantly higher.

No, it’s not impossibly fast. I have not perused the code of most systems, but I can guarantee phpBB does not cache the output of its pages. They are retrieved every page load. Sure, there is a caching system in place, but it doesn’t catch the output of a page, only stores a few variables that don’t even improve performance particularly. As for caching at the apache level, you would see a much bigger difference in speed than you do see. Without special configuration, apache should never cache the output of a php page, since that would entirely defeat the purpose of a dynamically generated page.

Caching page output is near impossible for forums in general, due to forum permissions and session specific information. It would be kind of bad if my “One private message unread” were cached for you. The only other form of caching is the sql cache, which is contained entirely within MySQL, and is automatically activated for all queries, regardless of software.

bbPress doesn’t even save the tag cloud between pages, it will re-render it each and every time, which is at least 1/4th of the page render time (that can be changed via a plugin).

Sounds like that’s a big area for bbPress to improve. But it still doesn’t make the result invalid: bbPress is slower.

So 265ms vs 78ms

bbPress 0.9 is “only” 187ms slower than statically served PHP.

Do your math again. It’s 260ms slower than a static page. It’s still damn slow, and if someone installs bbpress and *pick another board* side by side, the bbpress one will not perform better. While technically correct, it does nothing to affect the overall results.

@ckwalsh, Your benchmarks are incorrect this way. _ck_ is right about it

Can you please paraphrase what his arguments are, and perhaps add a little bit more? I’m getting the feeling that you posted here to support _ck_ since the results I found were unfavorable to bbPress, and you don’t have anything to add, or even understand the discussion. Not to say I only want to talk to experts, but blind bandwagonning always frustrates me on the internet.

Basically I’d want to see a simulated load with logged in users being served different content – ie. unread posts for different users

Certainly apache bench isn’t perfect, however, it does show the relative performance of those 3 pages, which are almost guaranteed to be responsible for the majority of requests to a forum. I have been considering how to build a better tool, but have not gotten a chance to do so yet.

But plugins can still do content caching themselves. For example I realized awhile back that the Hot Tag cloud that bbPress renders is taking at least 1/4th of the total page render time, and it does it each and every time, regardless if there are new tags added or deleted. So my Hot Tags Plus plugin caches the tag cloud as static html (as well as add many other features to it at the same time).

If you think that will drop load time, it seems to be something anyone can add – I’d certainly be willing to install it for my tests.

Overall, you seem to be upset that bbPress performed so badly, leading you to say the benchmark is wrong. While it isn’t perfect, what it does show it shows rather precisely. In the current state of forum software, bbPress does appear to have a long way to go. It doesn’t matter if it was rewritten. It doesn’t matter if it doesn’t have caching (if so, that is a failure of bbPress, not an unfair advantage to other software). When comparing the same functionality between software, those are the results, like them or not.

[ckwalsh]

I just ran some tests, with an html file and a php file, both containing “Hello World”. You can find the apache bench results here: http://pastebin.ca/1934137

Clearly they are much faster than any forum software, handling 5000+ and 9000+ requests per second each (I had to run apache bench with 100,000 hits to get a semi accurate reading)

As for a write once, read many times situation, blogs do exhibit such behavior more so than forums, I’ll admit. However, forums are certainly more read heavy than write heavy.

Take a look at phpBB.com’s support forum, http://www.phpbb.com/community/viewforum.php?f=46 . You will be hard pressed to find a topic without at least 5 times as many views as posts, and many of the sticky topics have over 100 times as many reads as posts. Show me any forum with more writes than reads and I will be impressed.

I’ll be running bbpress 0.9 later tonight, along with some changes to SMF that they suggested.

[ckwalsh]

I’ve built a site to collect software benchmarks of various bulletin board software, found at http://bb-bench.com/ . I’m trying to setup boards under the exact same conditions – forums, topics, posts, users, to show how they scale under various forum loads, to provide users fair, quantifiable claims regarding performance. All of the boards are setup with their stock configuration options (with the exception of phpBB with HipHop for PHP, which I’ll admit to having an unfair advantage)

I would love your comments. What other combinations of forums/topics/posts/etc you would be interested in seeing? Any additional pages?

Additionally, since there are obviously optimisations that can be performed on any forum software, perhaps you can suggest some that might improve the results of bbPress.

[George Appiah]

Joel Spolsky has released StackOverflow to replace the current WordPress forums (powered by bbPress)

I’m also frustrated with the slow pace of work on bbPress, but “replace” what? The Stack Overflow folks have simply launched their own WordPress support (questions and answers) site, using their own technology platform, Stack Exchange. How does that “replace the current WordPress forums”?

FWIT, I run a WordPress support site using PHPBB3!

[cyberskier]

Thanks for the suggestions. (Yes, you see phpBB there – I wanted to see if it was a bbpress issue or a server issue. I moved bbpress over from the forum directory to the bbpress directory – still the same problem, although phpbb installed fine).

It looks like it was the permissions issue- I changed the bbpress directory and the bb-admin directory to 755, and the install.php file to 644, and the installer came up! I’m off to see if it works now.

Thanks again for your help!