[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

[Ben L.]

From my point of view, bbPress is easier to use than other (more popular) forum software.

For example, in phpBB, plugin installation is measured in minutes. In bbPress, plugins get dropped into a folder and that’s it.

[saint-1]

im a phpbb user and im eally digging this bbpress software. figured i would give it a shot on a new forum i started.

is there an SEO modification or even a way to add some meta tags to the header of the pages so a search engine bot can gather up some info or even pull from the tags? or is this already included into the software?

[H]

Yes, this works very well. Just google phpbb2bbpress

[kensav]

Is there a way to import a forum that is already established using phpBB?

I think this would be a huge feature for all the people out there suffering from forum spam using phpBB.

Anyone have any success doing this?

[gavinj77]

I’m dealing with 2 databases for my site, one for wordpress and a different one for the forum.

I have converted my phpbb3 forum to bbPress recently, (they were both installed on the same database to enable the conversion).

When I tried to integrate my WordPress blog with my bbPress forum it went bad. I want to backup my bbPress forum via phpmyadmin (as a sql file) and start all over with the install. I’d like to install bbPress on the same database that WordPress is on & also integrate it with WP when I install.

Is there a way I can restore my sql file of my bbPress forum so I don’t lose anything? If so, how do I restore do the restore into bbPress? I’m unable to access the control panel of bbPress now because of the failed integration. I’m still able to log into WordPress.

[John James Jacoby]

Flies only live for 15 days; females for 26 if they’re lucky. We probably want people to stick around for a little longer…

Opinion: What *Press needs is some visual and code consistency to re-align everything back to the basics of what made WordPress awesome in the first place.

Opinion: Right now all the automattic apps look and feel like totally different programs, but lets be honest… On the surface, bbPress is basically WordPress without topics being able to have multiple categories; On the surface, BuddyPress is basically the user-profile area that phpBB has had for 6 years but arranged to tap into the MU way of thinking. Under the surface the code and the methods are totally different, but the end result is pretty close to existing webware.

Opinion: The only thing left for automattic to do is a shopping cart, which we can take a bunch of osCommerce experience from and apply to WordPress methods pretty easily if automattic ever wants to venture into the e-commerce market.

Opinion: From a developers perspective, trying to keep up with and remember all of the WordPress, WordPressMU, BuddyPress, and bbPress classes and functions and ‘isms is getting really, really hard…

Defense: PLEASE don’t get me wrong… It’s also exhilarating, exciting, totally 150% fun, and I wouldn’t trade it for the world, but holy crap lets sit back and look and say that there a whole meta ton of a lot going on lately…

Matt, do you have an ulcer by now? Because I think I might... Ha!

Defense: And hopefully I haven’t made myself out to be a total ass here; I hope that TalkPress helps to accelerate the .org thought process behind integrating both the user portion and the template portion of these awesome apps together in a more transparent way… Including my TalkPress.com forum into my WordPress.com blog would be pretty killer.

Round Up: With BuddyPress 1.0 on the horizon, bringing the social networking abilities that people usually make plugins for WordPress and bbPress to emulate, *Press automatic applications really do stand to evolutionize the way that people use the internet in a major way…

Summary: I for one am totally pumped to see what TalkPress looks like and works like… When a new version of *press comes out, it’s like Christmas morning to me and I download it and poke my head around the new code and find all the cool new little additions…

Please don’t hit me for my long winded and slightly off topic response. Probably wouldn’t expect anything less from me now would you?

[gavinj77]

It worked! Thank you guys for your help! I realized I forgot to delete the bb_ files via phpMyAdmin, (from the first time I tried the conversion without the edited file from matiaspunx. I had removed the files via FTP only.

Thanks again!

[matiaspunx]

oh! what version for bbpress are you trying to convert?

this file just works with a new fresh install of “0.9.x”

the converter finished without problems?

[gavinj77]

I checked via phpMyAdmin and all my bbPress files start with bb_ . I didn’t change any files from the install. The phpbb3 files all begin with phpbb_

[chrishajer]

Are you using bb_ as your bbPress table prefix? Maybe the bb_ table prefix is hard coded and it does not match up with your installation.

[gavinj77]

Thank you for the file. I used the file, (did not edit it at all because I have no idea what I’m doing). I get this error when I try to access the forum

bbPress database error: [Table ‘db279681361.bb_topicmeta’ doesn’t exist]

SELECT meta_value FROM bb_topicmeta WHERE topic_id = 0 AND meta_key = ‘uri’

Warning: Cannot modify header information – headers already sent by (output started at /homepages/34/d279666578/htdocs/forums/bb-includes/db-mysql.php:130) in /homepages/34/d279666578/htdocs/forums/bb-includes/functions.php on line 2271

Is this a simple error to fix? If not, I’m going to have resolve myself to using phpbb3, (which I don’t want to do of course). Thank you again. I appreciate it.

[swaymedia]

yeahs but BBPress is for coders to hack it together and make it suitable for a WP theme… that’s what its selling point is… its not just “another forum”… otherwise people would go for Vanilla or phpBB or other light forums.

The reason people come to BBPress is becuase of the intergration possibilities… and limiting the deep integration is the most Counter-Intuitive thing against its own selling point… utterly contradictory and frankly stupid… The majority will want deep intergration either now or later on… Regardless what type of user you are… there will be a point in that users time when he/she wants deep intergration.