[kevinjohngallagher]

I’m a big fan of people speaking their mind, I probably do it too often, but if we’re being honest, threads like these aren’t going to change anything. Even if you got 90% of the people that are on these boards to all come out and say that they agree with you, nothing will change.

Can we talk openly about this? It means sharing some hard truths…

1) There are roughly (roughly), 25 -30 different people that post on these forums every week. I’m sure you’ve noticed its the same folks for the most part over and over. Each of these people (you and I) represent a tiny tiny portion of the BBpress users. Its not that your opinions aren’t valued, it’s just that unless you come up with objective reasons behind your arguments then you’ll never see any changes you want.

2) You’re not programmers. Harsh, i know. But you’re on a support forum saying that you’re unhappy about proposed changes to free software that you don’t contribute to.

3) When did private companies start listening to people taking “votes” on their support forums. Oh, that’s right, never.

4) I’m going to make an assumption here (apologies if wrong), but you’re not project managers or BA’s either. Making BBpress a WordPress plugin (while not something i am happy with at all), makes sense from [the company that owns bbpress] stand point.

5) Matt, et all, are human and just trying to do their best. If you think they’ve overlooked a point then tell them. But it has to be a point that will make sense to a company like [the one that owns bbpress], and that rarely involves the phrase “i want” or “my vote”.

Look folks,

BBpress as a WordPress plugin is not going to come around any time soon. In honesty, it’s not going to be this year. if you don’t want a forum software that is focussed on integration with WordPress that’s cool, that’s a personal preference, but have a look on the tag list on the home page, and see what stands out.

WordPress integration is the single most talked about issue on the BBpress support forums because it’s the reason that a large percentage of people came to BBpress for.

We all have a different Wish List of features for this lovely piece of software, but that doesn’t mean that if BBpress doesn’t go our own personal way that it it’s “bbpress back on track”. if we’re honest, BBpress hasn’t been “on track” by it’s own standards for well over a year, but if you’re not contributing code or testing time, then frankly, your opinion is never really going to count for anything unless you back your points up with really really good objective reasons.

[chrishajer]

I think you will be a good tester. You can add your experience here:

https://trac.bbpress.org/ticket/1244

I thought there was another ticket too but I cannot find it right now.

[Anonymous User]

Hello together,

i’ve just updated my installation of bbpress 1.0.2 to the trunk version 1.1-alpha. In the trunk version there is an new option called “Login-less Posting”.

Has anyone tested these function? Is it possible the change without problems from the plugin “Anonymous Posting” to the new core function?

Markus

[kevinjohngallagher]

Yo Gautam,

No tickets with patches should have been changed, 90% sure i checked for them all – really sorry if one slipped through.

Bugs on the other hand, I was selective about the reality of getting them fixed. Take Ticket 215: Post count bug as an example:

• Is it a bug? Yes
• Does it stop BBpress working in any way? No.
• Will it sap development time from getting this release out the door? Possibly.
• So I moved it

I’m definitely not in charge around here, so please, if I’ve moved something you (or anyone else) thinks should be in this Milestone, then please move them back. It’s just that smilies, youtube support etc. had been sitting there for weeks on end. With less fluff in trac for each milestone, hopefully we can get more people interested in testing (as one of the major gripes i hear often is “i don’t know where to start”).

Lets hope we get some of the patches in soon

[kevinjohngallagher]

Hi Matt,

It really is amazing that you’re helping out with BBpress, it’s clearly something you love as much as we do, and we desperately try not to sound ungrateful.

The issue is that when there is no project management, then it’s a bit like herding cats (to quote Jane @ WordPress ;-] ). We all know and apprecaite that you’re busy and that BBpress is going to take a back seat sometimes, that’s to be expected mate. But you can’t have it both ways.

You can’t have a project where the project lead, lead developer, decision maker and talisman disappears for weeks on end; and then also seem unhappy when that doesn’t go down well.

Can you imagine if you released a version of WordPress without beta testing, bulked up the code by 50%, made it 50% slower, broke most plugins, didn’t have any documentation, had all the development team quit, have all bar 1 moderator quit, then leave it for 8 months not entirely working… What sort of response would there be on the WordPress forums? Maybe a bit Chicken Little.

Matt, i’m not a popular guy around here, my french/celtic phrasing winds people up when it’s not my intention at all, trult i apologise if I’ve done that with yourself too. But you’re looking at this from someone who’s been really involved since November, while those of us who’ve been here through 0.9 and 1.02 have a different very viewpoint.

Matt, you have WP3.0, the WPfoundation, maybe BuddyPress1.2, WPcamps, travel, as well as the normal day to day stuff to deal with. Man, we know you’re hella busy and we appreciate your time. But maybe you have to manage expectations a little here. Set some dates, say some hard truths, y’know, actual information “Relax. We’ve done this before” is probably the scariest thing i’ve read on the BBpress forum.

We greatly apprecaite your time mate, maybe you could apprecaite ours by giving us a heads up every now and then, rather than after the fact. Some clever soul built a blogging platform to make it easy to post info on

============================================================

There is no date because it’s hard for me to predict how much time I have

-Matt

Versus.

“We take a page from the world of project management and we make a project plan before we jump into the dev cycle…and set a realistic release date that we stick to”

– https://wordpress.org/development/2009/12/setting-scope/

Take Care everyone.

[Gautam]

@matt

If you would like to contribute to 1.1, please test the two major feature additions to 1.1 and submit patches for improvements and/or bug fixes to those features.

There are dozens of patches lying in the trac which are not being implemented (maybe because of lack of attention/lead developer). And when any major commit is made, patches become out-of-date, so they should be added now. Many of them are bugs which really need to be fixed.

[sweetiessecret]

Hello,

I had someone setup the BBPress Forum integration with my WP blog. I have it setup as a private Forum. It was all working until mid December.

Now I get database connection errors and it lags a lot. Sometimes you click on something and it will fly through to the next page like it is supposed to work and other times it just sits there and it eventually times out and gives just a blank screen or you get that Database Connection error like this

“ERROR: Could not establish a database connection”

I am using GoDaddy with a Deluxe hosting account. I don’t have a huge amount of readers on the site but they are there most of the day. Still I believe my hosting account should be able to handle this setup.

I have contacted GoDaddy everyday for the last 2 weeks. They said that I have two separate databases, one for the blog and one for the BBPress install so there shouldn’t be any strain on the databases. They also test their server everytime I call and don’t see anything significant. I upgraded the account to get more simultaneous connections.

I also installed WP Super Cache to help and that did nothing.

I also had someone working on the problem and he can’t find anything on my side.

Maybe there is some setup incorrect on my site?

Has anyone had this problem who could help?

Wendy

[Matt Mullenweg]

“Even reading the blog, irc and this forum – it’s still unclear to me what should be worked on for the next release.”

Please read them again. In summary: 1.1 release will include email notifications and anonymous posting, both of which are in trunk and would appreciate testing and patches. After that it’s bug fixes, and release.

If you would like to contribute to 1.1, please test the two major feature additions to 1.1 and submit patches for improvements and/or bug fixes to those features.

There is no date because it’s hard for me to predict how much time I have.

[LizFilardi]

Hi:

I discovered an issue that I just wanted to share:

I installed bbpress in a subdirectory of WordPress without integrating. I used a new database and did not touch cookie integration. There are no plugins or content, as this installation is just for building a new child theme.

My WordPress child theme was designed using the Thematic theme framework. Now, I’m trying to design a bbPress child theme with the Hybrid theme framework.

However, my bbpress child theme will only refer to my WordPress Thematic child theme stylesheets in a completely different directory. This was even true when I tried to hardcode the @import lines in the bbpress child theme functions.php file.

I don’t know the solution, here, but thought I’d share for anyone else. If you want to test a child theme on your server, make sure you don’t install bbpress in a subdirectory of WordPress. I don’t know yet if it will work when I integrate WordPress and bbPress, but I assume it does since so many have already done that.

[chrishajer]

Email notifications are built in to the latest trunk version. You can “subscribe to topic” here, for example, and you will get an email when there is a reply to your post. It requires the manual step of you actually subscribing. There were also plugins to enable this in older versions, to email you when someone replied to a favorite of yours.

[James Kirk]

I can confirm that I’ve just had the similar scenario play out with the latest version 1.02 and also received the email not sent, failed to install message.

I popped into the bb_forums table, and added the actual data that I wanted for that first thread, and viola, the site comes up like a clickety clack.

Thanks for the insight!

[mzimmers]

Now, for something really cool…is there some magic php code that will let us test for whether we’re executing bbpress or wordpress, and make this function call conditional? Like:

if (we’re under the wordpress directory)

get_bloginfo(etc)

else if (we’re under the bbpress directory)

bb_get_option(etc)

end if

This would be extremely helpful in developing robust modules that are used by both wp and bbpress.

Thanks!

[Marius-]

Chrishajer thank you. I somehow managed to completely ignore that button. Dont know why. I have deleted him now.

[Gautam]

Here is a patch posted by me to mass-delete users, you may use it – https://trac.bbpress.org/ticket/1202

[chrishajer]

Marius- when I am using 1.0.2, and I view the profile of a user when logged in as keymaster, I have a “Delete User” button on the bottom of their profile page. Do you not have that? That’s how I delete a user if I have to (which almost never happens these days.)

Screenshot: http://twitpic.com/11zdpu/full

In addition to deleting them, you could just set their status to “inactive” as well, also on their profile page.

[johnhiler]

You should be able to block the user without any plugins…

[Marius-]

Chrishajer, what you mean just delete him in the admin?

There is no way to delete users in bbpress.

Not without mass delete plugin, which i had to delete, because it screwed up my forum.

[chrishajer]

Marius- – to remove him, just delete him in the admin.

[kevinjohngallagher]

Don’t you just love people that say “Bump” and dont add anything to the conversation?

I also love it when it’s their only post on the forum ever – way to give back

Deep integration is not supported by automattic, and apparently was never the intention of the BBpress developers. To that end, getting BBpress with a WP “deep integration”, to then call WP plugins is never going to be something that’s going to get any development time or priority.

I think this is a shame because we could make use of WP plugins that we’re effectively replicating in BBpress, but we shouldn’t be reliant on plugins for layout.

That said, i wonder if anyone has testing creating a call to a plugin function from inside an added function in the your WP’s theme’s functions.php file?

To reiterate though, try and avoid WP plugins for theming. What will happen if there is a WP upgrade that breaks the theme?

Also, every time someone bumps a thread, God kills a kitten. Please think of the kittens.

[Gautam]

There are many bots like this (made in VB, etc.) which stops when they see a captcha (or math problem or a clickcha), waits for the user to enter/click that and then it does the rest. A more reliable way to be to install Project Honey Pot for bbPress plugin by Ben (though that also blocks the admin sometimes).

[kevinjohngallagher]

Its been a while since i used this plugin, but as i recall it asked an X + Y = question (4+4 = .

Seems to me, as more and more people use this sort of protection, that spambots have become quite intelligent about reading the line before the <input> and seeing if it has a + in it. That seems fairly straightforward to do, i’ve done it myself when accessing a remote site using cURL to grab some data.

Either way, it’s hardly a “plugin fail”, because the plugin does exactly what its set out to do, not to mention, they could just be simply putting the answer “5” in every unknown field and eventually it would match.

You ask how is this possible, is it really beyond our imagination that a computer could answer a question about adding one digit to another? The only way to combat spam is to moderate constantly. Akismet, Human Test, Honey Pot and every other tool out there are just tools, they are not solutions. YOU are the solution.

[johnhiler]

Spambots are constantly evolving. Do you have the latest version of Human Test plugin installed?

[Marius-]

How is this possible?

I have had Human Test installed, and managed to keep spambots out.

The Mass Delete plugin caused trouble to my bbpress, so I deleted that, but still a spambot managed to register. How can I remove him now?

[yoyopop]

paul – I understand private messages aren’t part of the bbpress core, and I haven’t investigated all the possible plugins yet. If there could be an optional conversion that relates to a certain plugin, then of course that would be great. However, at the moment if I’m going to transfer my forum across, I was planning to inform my users before the move just to backup their PMs if they have anything important in them.

I just got a test conversion to work so will start to check out possible plugins etc next! Thanks for the help, hopefully bbpress can continue to grow!

[paulhawke]

@yoyopop – I have been looking at what is core to bbPress thus far. It hadnt even crossed my mind that private messages would want to be converted. But there’s a problem – if I convert them, what do I convert them to? Does the community feel that any one private messaging plugin should be endorsed over any other, and, does the private message plugin provide the code I need to create its raw data? If the answers are “yes” (or a ‘qualified yes’) then I’ve no problem working it in.

For those interested in beta testing, the plugin (at present) is grossly inefficient as far as memory goes and now that it works at a basic level, I’m looking at optimizing & reducing memory footprint.