[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!

[chrishajer]

I see phpBB installed there now?

[phillcross]

915     function phpbb_username($id) {

916       global $phpbb_tables;

917       $sql = "SELECT username FROM " . $phpbb_tables['users'] . " WHERE user_id=$id";

918       $result = mysql_query($sql);

919       if ($row = mysql_fetch_object($result)){

920         return $row->username;

921       } else {

922         return false;

923       }

924      }

What am I missing??

[phillcross]

I got the memory increased – php.ini

BTW – On a single site you can create / edit .htaccess and add

php_value memory_limit 64M (or whatever)

Still having trouble with the supplied argument?

[phillcross]

I read through all this here are my errors:

1.Connected to the phpBB database host

2.Selected the phpBB database

3.Exporting forums...

4.Exporting users...

5.Exporting user metadata...



Warning: mysql_fetch_object(): supplied argument is not a valid MySQL result resource in /home/singer/public_html/phpbb2bbpress.php on line 920



6.Exporting topics...



Fatal error: Allowed memory size of 33554432 bytes exhausted (tried to allocate 33030274 bytes) in /home/singer/public_html/phpbb2bbpress.php on line 373

How do I increase my allowed memory? That should resolve # 6

What supplied argument is invalid??

I appreciate the assistance.

[andrusch]

Hi, I’ve made some tests and I have seen that the topics are not loading (links not working) when the permalinks are set to be name based.

[aspen102]

Example:

Let’s say front-page.php lists 3 categories

Fruits

Veggies

Meats

If you were to click on Fruits; I’d like the next page to show the subforums of that parent excluding veggies, & meats forums. Any comments appreciated.

Basically, I want categories with sub-forums but in a format/structure that you would find in phpbb where subforums are cleanly kept on the next page. Why? Because showing everything in one location can get a bit messy. Especially with subforums.

I have searched through the bbpress forum for this and was able to get the following to work related to the front-page.php portion. Now I just need to get the 2nd page to show the children of the category. Currently it isn’t doing that.

*****front-page.php which works in only displaying the categories****************

<?php foreach( $forums as $forum ) : if( !$forum->forum_parent ) { ?>

<tr<?php alt_class(‘forum’); ?>>

<td>“><?php forum_name(); ?> <small><?php forum_description(); ?></small></td>

<td class=”num”><?php forum_topics(); ?></td>

<td class=”num”><?php forum_posts(); ?></td>

</tr>

<?php } endforeach; ?>

---

Now I would like the child accounts to show up in forum.php

Any suggestions? Or where I could look? Once you click on the parent forum it just takes you to that category forum.php page, with no children. i need the children to show up but only for that parent.

*****forum.php which I need to show the children*********************

<?php bb_get_header(); ?>

<?php if ( is_bb_profile() ) profile_menu(); ?>

<?php login_form(); ?>

<div id=”main”>

<div id=”forums”>

<h3 class=”bbcrumb”>“><?php bb_option(‘name’); ?> » <?php forum_name(); ?></h3>

<?php if ( $topics || $stickies ) : ?>

<table id=”latest”>

<tr>

<th><?php _e(‘Topic’); ?> — <?php new_topic(); ?></th>

<th><?php _e(‘Posts’); ?></th>

<th><?php _e(‘Last Poster’); ?></th>

<th><?php _e(‘Freshness’); ?></th>

</tr>

<?php if ( $stickies ) : foreach ( $stickies as $topic ) : ?>

<tr<?php topic_class(); ?>>

<td><?php _e(‘Sticky:’); ?> <big>“><?php topic_title(); ?></big></td>

<td class=”num”><?php topic_posts(); ?></td>

<td class=”num”><?php topic_last_poster(); ?></td>

<td class=”num”><small><?php topic_time(); ?></small></td>

</tr>

<?php endforeach; endif; ?>

<?php if ( $topics ) : foreach ( $topics as $topic ) : ?>

<tr<?php topic_class(); ?>>

<td>“><?php topic_title(); ?></td>

<td class=”num”><?php topic_posts(); ?></td>

<td class=”num”><?php topic_last_poster(); ?></td>

<td class=”num”><small><?php topic_time(); ?></small></td>

</tr>

<?php endforeach; endif; ?>

</table>

<p>“><?php _e(‘RSS feed for this forum’); ?></p>

<div class=”nav”>

<?php forum_pages(); ?>

</div>

<?php endif; ?>

<?php post_form(); ?>

</div>

</div>

<?php bb_get_footer(); ?>

</div>

******************************************************************************

Thank You —

[zaerl]

There isn’t a converter for bbPress neither for more advanced and used forum software (e.g. phpBB) as far as I know. You must write one.

[zaerl]

There was things I could have done much better

for sure man. Mass email = 99.998% flagged as spam.

The only way to avoid been flagged as spam is to send the notifications into batches that by default are no more than 50 addresses per email like what happens in the “Mass Email” functionality of phpBB. (addendum: a lot of hosts allow you to only send X email per hour.)

I have built a lot of newsletter-like server-side software that sends the newsletter out to X of them every Y minutes using a cron job, with X and Y adjusted from host to host.

Right now there isn’t a plugin that provide this functionality but it can be easily achieved as ashfame suggested but you need some PHP+bbPress knowledge to code what you want.

[pagal]

@Kralletown this search will also useful for you.

[edited by chrishajer]

Happy Searching.

Thanks,

Pagal

[kevinjohngallagher]

Hi Kralletown,

You will lose some data in the transfer (attatchemnts as I recall was a biggie for some folks), but in theory none of the important data.

It also depends on how much you want to integrate with WordPress whether this is a good idea or not.

I’d loook at:

https://bbpress.org/forums/topic/phpbb3-gt-bbpress-converter-beta-release

A phpBB to bbPress database converter

Good luck

[Kralletown]

Hello.

I searched the forum for an answer, but I couldn’t find any up-to-date answer to my question. I’m doing a website for a mate who has a phpBB-forum which I’d like to integrate with a WordPress theme – and my first choice would be to import everything into bbPress. Is this possible without losing any information?

Thanks in advance,

Kralle

[Space]

@Josh – Thanks for posting this. Massively useful, I was unaware of a the conversion script.

@Sincever – I think the script will convert the SMF/phpBB users to bbPress users. You could then move all the tables into a single database, but that in itself wouldn’t change which table bbPress uses for users. This answers your question, but if you’re referring more to WordPress users vs bbPress users and reconciling that, I can’t comment as I’ve not tried the integration before.

[yoyopop]

just wanted to bump this because I found it very useful just now after doing a phpbb 2 conversion and having user IDs starting at 1000000000!

[copperblade]

Nothing special, just a black theme based on old phpBB2’s subBlack color scheme.

Example site

Download

I would have uploaded a screenshot, but I’m not sure how to do that with Google Code just yet.

[XU3E]

Honestly, I really like idea give bbPress more functionality to core. Mainly unread post like phpBB has (All post mark as read and etc.) and more specific permission for some user rules and category. I dont know how many people wants this. We should vote, need polls,… but… Oh yes bbPress doesnt have any polls, we need plugin for this. Is there any plugin workign for my release? Damn…

Of course, for someone Its not important but forum without that its just guestbook with searchbar and topics. Really messy and pure.. Bleh!

Maybe the best solutions could be official bb-plugins supported by developers for every release (but its really hard task for developers). But eveneryone will be happy. Light-weight core and pack of plugins ready to go…

Everytime when i am downloading new plugin i prey: Will that plugin works with my new release? And what the next new release? Its terrible for every user. Sometimes i try fix some bugs but i am not php guru, and its real pain for me…

And for the people that love really light-weight solution. They can still use _ck_ 0.9 fork or another old realease of bbpress. Its up to them but official bbPress need to be pushed.

I love the way bbPress is made. I love functionality, simple look similiar to WordPress (i really love wordpress). But bbPress has so many holes at funcionality. Light weight forum like punBB? No… perhaps more sophisticated solutions with witdgets, gridtables, better sorting by speciphic parameters, quoting, better slug manipulation (like WP has), category manipulation, permissions and mainly integration with WP.

But everything should be fast as could be. Just look at MyBB. Or Perhpaps phpBB. Yaeh, its really fast… its just about optimizing. Why i dont switch to them back? They didnt have support for buddypress or wordpress… I mean native support – everything under one roof.

Conclusion…

bbPress should be disscussion board – right now i am really disapointed. So we can google for forums or helpdesks and find inspirations. If i am wrong, just kick me to my ***

[calilarincon]

Thank you very much for this script, I’ve been trying to used it, but I get the following error:

SQL ERROR [ mysql4 ]



Data too long for column 'topic_poster_name' at row 1 [1406]

Any ideas?

I’m not an expert, but I’m doing my best. Thanks!