[timskii]

I’ve been “testing” 1.0 out privately over the last week, primarily by re-writing my custom code and templates, and then working through every user operation (to check both my changes, and the underlying software). So I’ll try and play devil’s advocate to _ck_’s “don’t upgrade!”

From the user’s perspective, little has changed. The most significant feature to pull out is the use of Display Names. That’s a huge plus on an “international” forum, because users can now set their names to contain non-English characters. And there’s no need to workaround empty display names in WordPress (when a user registers via BBPress).

Templating is similarly unchanged. About the most significant change is that the contents of tag-form.php can no longer be altered via a template – which was likely never required anyway. Semantically, existing oddities remain (like the profile edit is still a table), and usability can be clunky in places (when you register successfully, there’s a message that tells you to log in, but nothing immediately helpful, like a login screen).

Plugins very much depends on how deep they go. The only place I stumbled was in user roles, where the underlying code had completely altered. But I’m not using many plugins, and the custom code I had been using, I’d been prepared to rewrite. (Most of it was a mess anyway!) A clear “your mileage may vary” caveat, and particular risk if one doesn’t understand enough programming to work round anything that breaks.

Technically, 1.0 feels fairly solid. I have found glitches, but nothing worse than some of the 0.9 versions. 1.0 does perform many more database queries. Like 50 on certain pages. Although it is hard for me to assess the load implications without running it on a public site. Integration worked OK as an upgrade, once I’d realised that the upgrade did not automatically add the new cookie-related keys (which needed to be added manually to the existing config files). The whole package feels more “bloated”, but that may be more the fault of WordPress than BBPress. I just hope BBPress doesn’t evolve into the messy, feature-overloaded forum software I had been trying to avoid.

So, if I was just running BBPress, on balance I’d stick with 0.9, at least until the dust settles on 1.0.

But. There’s a but.

If nobody uses 1.0, hardly anyone is debugging it, hardly anything gets fixed, and so on. There’s a danger of putting 1.0 on the shelf, waiting for someone else to finish it, and then wondering why the bugs never get found. So even if you aren’t running it on a live site, it might be useful to try it out privately.

Rightly or wrongly, WordPress 2.5.1 makes me increasingly nervous: As times goes on, I’m going to find plugins and templates that aren’t designed for that version. And while it is claimed that 2.5.1 has no security flaws, if almost nobody is using it, the chance of any flaw getting found and reported is also low. In contrast, the latest version is sure to get picked apart and patched back up very quickly.

And then I started to look at BuddyPress, and… I don’t even know if it’s possible to run that on top of 2.5.1. But you can see the way I’m starting to think: An old BBPress is itself rooting me in the past. And while I knew it was unfinished software when I started using it, I had rather assumed it would at least keep pace with WordPress, not get left a year behind.

So right now, it’s a rather person decision. All other things being equal, I tend to agree with _ck_.

However, I see a lot of WordPress 2.7+ blogs with phpBB forums hosted alongside. And naturally no integration between them. In the near future, that’s the first big, obvious “market” for BBPress. Yet almost all those people need compatability with the latest WordPress. For us “early adopters” that’s important: Some of those new BBPress users will write plugins and templates, and they won’t bother trying to support outdated code. Once that starts to happen, old 0.9 users will find they are missing out – which will probably be the time for most existing users to upgrade.

[woodlandstar]

The complexity of discussion boards simply exceeds my patience level for user “Unfriendly” software. I have played with a few of them (phpBB, SMF,bbpress) and have concluded that they are just to damn difficult to integrate into a web site. Most will install easy enough, and the default themes are about as ugly as you can get. Every one of them claims to have easy configuration etc. What a pile of crap. The worst of the lot is the BBpress board. Which is surprising since their blog is so easy to install and changing themes is a snap.

The “how to” support pages for all of them must have been developed by computer geeks who rarely speak English. Instructions which should be simple are garbled and about as user friendly as a wet cat.

My intention was to attempt to integrate a discussion board with my blog (http://woodlandstar.net/WSblog/): something Word Press should have developed a long time ago. How difficult can it be to extend Comments into a simple discussion board? Until something is developed that easily installs and easily integrates with the existing web site, I will hold off on using BB.

[Gloria]

Hi.

In my web site, I have a mybb. I would like to trasform it in bbpress.

What are the steps to this transformation?

I imagine there isn’t a converter, but, can I convert mybb in phpbb and then in bbpress?

If it is yes, how?

Thanks.

[AndrewRH]

Thanks. I guess my point was really that the ‘out of the box’ program didn’t format things nicely (as I would have expected it to do, without needing to hack around in CSS). I don’t mind doing that, just that one of the benefits of bbpress is its simplicity (and why I want to switch over from phpBB3 to it).

Thanks again,

~Andrew~

[dawormie]

Problem is, where would you find a site that talks about new software? BLOGS!

Review sites are blogs essentially if you think about it

I mean, I don’t recall seeing phpBB in the news anytime recently..

[Derek Herman]

Obviously this is an old post but it didn’t really give any answers and the link is to a PHPBB install.

Can anyone tell me how to add a dropdown to change between forums? The function below lists the forums in a select options list, but I need a way to submit the options to a form that would switch forums. What would the action and method be? I’m running short on time and need to get this working asap so any help would be awesome.

<?php bb_forum_dropdown(); ?>

[Ivaylo Draganov]

No, not the wiki-post. We want to be able to output a message under any post that has been edited by its author or by a moderator. phpBB has that functionality and it prints something like:

“This post has been edited [number-of-edits] times. Last edit by [username] at [time].”

And since bbPress has the option to edit posts it will be good to have some kind of indication about edits. It’s a forum board and integrity of posts is important.

[webrulon]

Can someone please help me out with this, I’m willing to pay anyone who can solve my issue.

Thanks,

Russell

[webrulon]

matiaspunx I am receiving the same error as gavinj77, I tried to download your fix at http://www.mediafire.com/?nmmymgg0z0j but the file was no longer available. Could you kindly repost the updated file?

Thanks,

Russell

[Ben L.]

Actually, BuddyPress uses bbPress, so it could be argued that bbPress is a modification for BuddyPress.

BuddyPress is a modification for WordPress MU.

[John James Jacoby]

I think BuddyPress is the best modification for bbPress.

[Ben L.]

Bavatars is ready!

[johnhiler]

Yah I can do all that account stuff myself… it’s just starting to take a half hour a day or so, so was starting to think about self-serve options…

[Ben L.]

You can deactivate accounts in the profile editing screen if you’re an administrator or keymaster.

[johnhiler]

Thanks for the feedback!

I guess for the username/password stuff, I’m just mentioning what we get emails from our users about. We get requests almost every day from users who forgot their username or want to reset their password.

Rather than deleting the account, maybe a username shutdown would be a good compromise? The account would have signin disabled, and the profile would show “this username has been shut down”. Old comments from that user would still appear on the site, and link to the “shut down” profile page.

[johnhiler]

Thanks for the feedback!

I guess for the username/password stuff, I’m just mentioning what we get emails from our users about. We get requests almost every day from users who forgot their username or want to reset their password.

Rather than deleting the account, maybe a username shutdown would be a good compromise? The account would have signin disabled, and the profile would show “this username has been shut down”. Old comments from that user would still appear on the site, and link to the “shut down” profile page.

[Ben L.]

Other than changing and deleting their own username, those are all great ideas! Changing usernames messes up lots of code, and deleting your own account?!

The Role Manager has been submitted to the bbPress Plugin Repository – in some future version, it will have 0.9 compatibility (if 1.0 isn’t released first).

The BuddyPress PM plugin is for WordPress MU, not bbPress, so you’d be switching over from a forum to a blog hosting social network. The existing PM plugin probably needs to be scrapped — it would be easier to start over (for me, at least), but importing the old data would help everyone that had Private Messaging installed.

The avatars plugin (in my opinion) is doing the right thing the wrong way. By making the plugin a “real plugin” (no editing core files, no putting files into other directories) and splitting the avatars into separate folders, the plugin would be a lot better.

As for resetting passwords, or for that matter, the entire password system of bbPress as a whole, the idea is already being discussed.

[johnhiler]

A good role manager would be awesome. Right now I have to create a new plugin every time I create a new Role… kind of a pain.

If someone took the existing PM code and then refactored it and removed security holes… that would be huge. It’d be particularly awesome if it used the same database model, so the old PM’s were still readable! I’ve heard BuddyPress is working on a PM plugin, so I was considering just switching over to that (if I could use it without installing BuddyPress).

The Avatars plugin out there is hard to configure (there are at least 3 separate files you have to install in different places), and it dumps all avatars in a single folder (not sure if that scales). It’d be fantastic if someone could clean that up.

Fundamentally, bbPress needs better user account management. Users can’t easily reset their passwords or look up their usernames… and there’s no ability to change or delete your own username. Those would be huge additions.

Thanks for asking!!

[Ben L.]

Okay, I’ll try another, less confusing question.

What features are missing from bbPress that in your opinion, a good forum software should have?

(Can a mod please add that to my first post?)

[Ipstenu (Mika Epstein)]

Yes but defining ‘better’ is really subjective!

Look, better for ONE of my sites is a barebones bb. Better for the other is Invision. It has to do with what you, as an admin, want to support, what kind of users you have, what you need to integrate your site with, etc etc etc.

In short: Any answer you get will be based on the specific individual needs.

You’re never going to get a definitive answer. Instead, you need to ask a better question: “What features do you feel are important in forum software?” Then you get a list of the default features in each board software and list them all.

From THAT, you can make a breakdown of ‘Who handles which plugin better?’ and have multi-choice.

Which would kind of be a cool app to help people pick the right forum software, but it still rolls back to ‘what’s right for you?’

[Ben L.]

There have to be some features that phpBB does better than bbPress. Otherwise, everyone would be on bbPress and nobody would use phpBB! I just need to know what they are.

[Ipstenu (Mika Epstein)]

Better is subjective.

I don’t want a cash mod. I don’t want PMing. I don’t need a full role manager.

So I vote for ‘other’ as ‘none’

[supratwinturbo]

Thank you John. I just didnt see it…too used to phpBB.

[Ben L.]

http://poll.fm/xxa8 Vote here if you’re too shy to post.

[Ben L.]

Now, before you say “it isn’t”, I’m not looking at the forum software as a whole. My plan is to make all of the important features of phpBB available to bbPress users.

So far I can think of a few things:

• The Cash Mod – I accepted this project over a year ago and I still haven’t released the first version.
• A private messaging feature that doesn’t have 24512 security vulnerabilities
• A full role manager