[John James Jacoby]

You know, I’ve thought about this type of thing, and I think that bbPress really tries to hide the forum layout as much as possible. It doesn’t surprise me that it would work this way, as super stickies tend to really act like forum wide announcements than as stickies. That being said, showing them in a forum that’s already halfway hidden is a little redundant.

bbPress really does work much differently than your typical forum, and it takes a little massaging to make it feel like phpBB or vBulletin.

[eclipsenow]

Thanks, that’s a really useful post.

Almost won over.

However, that installation + configuration video did freak me out a bit. I remember something about copying over cookies looked quite intimidating? How do I store the WP cookies the way the install video did, that didn’t seem clear?

Also, what’s your favourite theme been? I note that this thread alternates between grey and white, and that’s nice, but what happens when people just want it to be one colour and have quotes in some other colour? (So you can automatically tell, phpbb3 style, that someone is quoting someone else and replying to them specifically.)

[Ipstenu (Mika Epstein)]

The answer can only be found in what you want to do with your site.

If you want an all in one, integrated what not, you need a CMS. If you want a blog, I’d say you want WordPress (or similar). Functionality is the name of it all. Sometimes you find a tool you love so much you’re willing to forgo integration for features. Other times you decide you have to have it all be on. I’ve run Drupal, WordPress, bbPress, Gallery, PostNuke, PHPNuke, phpBB, SMF, InvisionBoard, MediaWiki, and more. They all fit the needs I had for the site I was designing at the time.

Figure out what you want to do, and what will be more important. If you have to have native integration, use a CMS. If you don’t, then your choices are infinite.

[Ipstenu (Mika Epstein)]

The answer can only be found in what you want to do with your site.

If you want an all in one, integrated what not, you need a CMS. If you want a blog, I’d say you want WordPress (or similar). Functionality is the name of it all. Sometimes you find a tool you love so much you’re willing to forgo integration for features. Other times you decide you have to have it all be on. I’ve run Drupal, WordPress, bbPress, Gallery, PostNuke, PHPNuke, phpBB, SMF, InvisionBoard, MediaWiki, and more. They all fit the needs I had for the site I was designing at the time.

Figure out what you want to do, and what will be more important. If you have to have native integration, use a CMS. If you don’t, then your choices are infinite.

[eclipsenow]

Yeah, point taken. And I have to say, I’m attracted to the design of WP and BBpress. But Malice, what didn’t you like about Joomla?

Honestly, I’m not here to troll but am keeping an eye on all developments across the Joomla / WordPress / Drupal divide. (But Drupal gives me the shudders because I don’t know php language).

Joomla has new extensions being developed all the time, and there’s a whole new 1 click blog installation coming out to. The “Agora” module is truly revolutionary with it’s 1 click installation into Joomla with complete integration. Also, the current “ugly” Agora forum templates are getting a total work over after version 3 is introduced. Agora is a complete package that does something like 70% or 80% of everything phpbb3 does, and so I don’t need to go hunting down 20 extensions.

So Malice, what’s not to like? I’m almost beginning to think that it’s what one encounters the best community support with first. “First impressions” matter, much like joining a new community, church, or whatever. Good experience first time and some small measure of progress made = lifetime member, and all other competing opportunities screened out as “too hard, I’ve made my choice”. It’s just the way it seems I function and many others… newbies that is. Maybe long term professional web designers and developers have made their choices on more rational grounds.

[eclipsenow]

Hi,

I am using phpbb3 for now, but I’m not really good at database stuff and admin stuff. I love all open source projects, especially phpbb3, bbpress, wordpress, Joomla, Drupal, etc… even though I’m not very “Geeky” yet and am only just beginning to learn the basics of CSS (let alone php etc).

So… I am speaking from the perspective of a non-technical forum administrator frustrated by various interactions of various software. I don’t mind doing the grunt work of setting things up IN the software, but don’t know the code to work ON software. EG: Once phpbb3 is installed, I can easily set up forums, permissions, etc. It’s just easy point and click stuff. But messing around in mysql and database stuff still terrifies me, I’m afraid of breaking something. It’s all too big. I just want to install it and have it work.

I appreciate that there are various philosophies behind each style of software, but here goes…

MY ULTIMATE WISH LIST

1. Nothing to do with you guys, but number 1 on my list is to have Fantastico (or something equivalent) that can make installation of WordPress / Joomla / Whatever EASY! (My client is a volunteer campaigning group that just happened to choose Brinkster which don’t use Cpanel, let alone have Fantastico).

2. After EASY fantastico installation, I install WordPress.

3. Then within WordPress I browse across to the various add-ons pages in the WordPress Control Panel (A VERY cool new feature of WordPress that Drupal and Joomla should add to their systems!) and then click “INSTALL FORUM?” and WordPress suddenly installs a completely compatible forum, just like that, with all the power of phpbb3 built-in.

4. I then choose 1 of say 20 or 30 “looks” (templates, themes, whatever) that are already pre-configured to allow sign-in of users on all pages, especially the forum page. If I want to change the colour of a background element or use a new image in the header, I just point and click to template editing and do it ala Blogger. (No CSS required).

This sort of software is on the way. Joomla now has “Agora” which is already fairly advanced. Once Joomla is installed through the 50 second Fantastico installation, Agora only takes about 50 seconds to install as well. EVEN I CAN DO IT! But the Joomla / Agora combination does not yet have Step 4, which is killing me… I have to muck around with all sorts of plug-ins and extra bits to get a horizontal log-in menu I can put up just under my header (so it’s in the same place no matter what template I’m in).

I saw the video of how to integrate WP and BBpress, and ran a mile screaming! It just looked very intimidating.

So anyway, the Joomla / Agora combination is hardly perfect, but as you know these things keep on developing and Hazzaa over at Agora is MANIC in the rate he’s developing his product. Version 3 is nearly out, and it’s only been 10 months.

Just thought I should give you guys the heads up. The competition is great, because it forces us all to evolve.

EG: I LOVE the sound of WordPress’s new one click upgrade function, and hope Joomla gets that soon! (It’s just me and database stuff again… eeerrgh!) Combine that with easy forum upgrades, backups, etc, and software that’s Mac-like in that it “just works”, and I’m a happy camper.

PS: I forgot to check this thread in case there were replies, because I automatically get an email from every other forum I belong to. Old habits die hard. Agora has an automatic emailing function built in, it’s not a plug in.

[deadlyhifi]

just found this post regarding the ‘inactive’ thing, although their fix hasn’t fixed my issue.

https://bbpress.org/forums/topic/successful-convert-smf-gt-phpbb2-gt-bbpress#post-14831

[Sheer Progress]

I know all about databases, I’ve been working with MySQL for years, have had 3 different sites, all with autonomous forums. I’ve had occasions to uninstall and reinstall after removing database tables. Plug-ins shouldn’t leave hidden files like that. Once you remove the tables, they should all be gone, and that’s not the case here. There are still items in my tables that have %bb in them and I’m afraid to delete them because they are so integrated with word-press. I switched to Simple Press and have found it much more user friendly and their support outstanding. I’m having a couple little issues and I’m convinced they have to do with the installation of this plug-in.

I appreciate what goes into development, so please don’t get me wrong. I just think people should heed the warning before proceeding.

[chrishajer]

Hopefully, with an active blog, you have a good database backup.

I’m confused on this point:

my bbpress tables are inside of wordpress (obviously)

That’s not obvious to me, at all. Do you mean the bbPress tables are inside the same database where your WordPress tables are? That’s OK. You can put as much stuff as you want into a database, so long as you use different table prefixes for the different applications. For example:

WordPress: wp_

bbPress: bb_

Joomla!: jos_

etc

You can call your database whatever you want, then just keep loading tables into it for different application, like WordPress and bbPress.

If you integrated WordPress and bbPress, then your bbPress installation used two existing WordPress tables: wp_users and wp_usermeta. That’s to allow integrated logins.

Regarding where you put bbPress files, you said you put them into the phpbb directory. Does it look like this?

/var/www/htdocs/website/phpbb3/

/var/www/htdocs/website/phpbb3/bbpress/

If so, someone else recently found that bbPress finds an existing config.php (the one for phpbb3) and won’t go any further. In that case, just rename the phpbb3 config.php to something else for just a minute, so installation can continue.

There is some confusion about database names, table names and folders, for me anyway. Any information you can post to help clarify will help. Thanks.

[wmnasef]

am talking about database tables. both phpbb3 and bbpress should use the same database.

first, get a backup of all of your files, so you can restore everything back if anything went wrong.

now install a new copy of bbpress, make sure you use the same database as the current phpbb3 installation is using.

finish the installation then run the converter, and there should be no problems.

[Sheer Progress]

I see there are a bunch of bb_files hidden inside the database and I don’t know what to remove and what to keep. Please, please tell me what to do to remove them all. I have an extremely active blog and this is making me quite nervous. Thank you.

[Sheer Progress]

Great. I removed all the bbpress database files from mySQL and all related bbpress files from my control panel. I reuploaded bbpress into the phpbb3 directory and it won’t let me install, says there is an old config.php file. Now I can’t use bbpress at all. Any suggestions?

[Sheer Progress]

OK, before I go and mess with this whole thing, are you telling me I should install bbpress inside of phpbb3? I want the tables to be inside wordpress, not phpbb3…I will eventually remove phpbb3. Please confirm that I should be uninstalling the other copy and putting the new one inside of the phpbb3 database and then tell me how that will affect my integration into wordpress and the removing of phpbb3. Thank you.

[wmnasef]

bbpress and phpbb3 tables must use the same database for the convertor to work!

[Sheer Progress]

I am looking at mySQL and my bbpress tables are inside of wordpress (obviously) but with the bb_ prefix, so what would I be changing it to? There are no bb_ tables inside of phpbb3, which is what that error code indicates, or am I thinking of this wrong?

[wmnasef]

i think you are using different prefix for your bbpress tables. if thats it, just modify line 17 in phpbb3tobbress.php into the prefix you used.

again, i wrote that converter assuming the conversion is done on a new empty bbpress installation, not even integrated to wp. integration can be done after conversion according to this post.

[Sheer Progress]

Everything went fine until I went to truncate and then got this message:

Table ‘robpr3_phpBB3.bb_forums’ doesn’t exist [1146]

I had all ready installed and integrated bbpress with WP. Does this mean I have to start from scratch?

Thanks.

[chrishajer]

@eclipsenow – why not just use phpBB3 then?

[johnhiler]

@eclipsenow – For now, the bbPress philosophy is to keep those 20 features in plugins and out of the core. But judging from how WordPress has grown in features over time, I’m sure bbPress 2.0 will have all 20 features in the core!

[eclipsenow]

Personally, I want most of the functionality of phpbb3! If bbpress only had a “phpbb3 emulator and converter pack” I’d be won over. I just can’t be bothered installing bbpress only to have to turn around and add 20 plug ins to give it the essential features I need, like email notification on reply to post, and a million other basics. Also, WYSIWYG formatting, smilies, etc… it’s all just basic configuration stuff that users expect from a forum and I don’t know why BBpress hasn’t made a core version that automatically installs all. Could have bbpress “lite” and bbpress “full”. That’s what I’d do if I ran bbpress.

[nextical]

looks like its gone. And now using phpBB..

[marky]

Just wanted to send a quick “thank you!”

The queries worked perfectly, as far as I can tell. (I had to change some of the table names from wp_ to bb_, since I’m not using integration, but other than that it all worked flawlessly.)

Some of my spam users went as far back as 6 years from when I imported everything to bbPress from phpBB, so it was definitely time for some housecleaning.

Thanks again for the assistance.

[WarrenScott]

I have the exact same problem but even when they login to wordpress 2.7 they are shown “You don’t have permission to view this page”.

I have to manually change their role to subscriber which is not ideal at all. It seems to me that bbPress should make a user who registers through the forum a “subscriber” in wordpress but it’s not. I think bbpress should have the same roles as wordpress to cut the confusion down. The whole purpose of using bbpress was because it intregated with wordpress but if it doen’t habdle the roles automatically, I may as well install phpbb or vbulletin.

I love bbpress, but if I have to perform task manually, what is the benefit of using bbpress?

[WarrenScott]

Same problem here. The bbpress roles need to match those of wordpress roles. I played with this for hours to the point I’m ready to ditch bbpress and just install vbulletin or phpbb. I love the intregration though. Everything else works great except when user register through bbpress.

[walkerevans]

So, I finally got the revamp of my site launch completed on January 1st. The “News” portion of the site is driven by wordpress, and the “Messageboard” portion is bbpress with some marriage between the two.

We migrated from a phpbb2 install that was using phpbbfetchall for pulling “News” to the front page. I think the new set up is much better.

I’m still ironing out glitches and adding features, but I thought I’d share it here to show it off so far. We get between 10,000-12,000 unique visitors to the site per day, and bbpress is handling that traffic beautifully.

http://www.columbusunderground.com/forums/