[kgosser]

Hey all,

So I’ve been checking out various forums to use for my business’ site, and I’ve got it paired down to bbPress and Vanilla. I’m leaning towards bbPress, but I have a few questions that I’m seeking answers to first. If anyone can help me out, it would be greatly appreciated!

(1) Is it available either by default or a plug-in to allow users to post <embed> or <object> snippets to show Flash files?

(2) Is there a plug-in available to allow image uploading to our server, or are all the ways to get an image to display within a thread by bb [img]code or the “Allow Images” plug-in?

(3) Would you consider bbPress’ theme customization to be about as equal (or easier) than WordPress’?

(4) Are there plug-ins to allow for either digg-style voting or normal 5-star voting? Being able to host community-driven contests is important for this project.

Thanks a lot in advance. One of the reasons I always use WordPress for my projects is because the community is one of the best on the Web, so I hope it rubs off a little bit for bbPress! Thanks again!

[kevinjohngallagher]

Hi Ipstenu,

I’m going to disagree with you a little mate, and try not to take it off topic too much.

Yes, each adjective is subjective to ones perspective. “easy” and “alot” etc. can mean different things to different people. That said, lets look at them a sec.

“extensive plugins?”

There are just under 120 plugins for BBPress.

Over 1/3rd haven’t been updated in a year. I’d wager a good few of them don’t work anymore.

And the ones with latest comments 6-12 months ago, usually don’t work either.

Also from what i’ve seen about 1/4 of them are redundant or useless in 0.9 / 1.0alpha.

So we’re looking at maybe 40-50 plugins.

Does anyone think that’s “extensive”?

I know it’s subjective, but, um, well you can make up your own mind.

“You CAN redesign the hell out of a bbPress site”

To a certain extent i’ll agree and disagree with it. To redesign a bbpress forum so that it doesn’t look like this theme actually takes a bucket load of work. I’ve done it for 3 websites, and every time it’s involved me writing full on plugins just to output the right code, or W3C acceptable code, or overwrite the damned code thats stored outwith the templates (why is that btw?).

Can i stop and ask that? WHY does a theme designer NEED to write alot of non basic php code as a separate to their theme plugin, just to over write HARDCODED design output? Since when was hardcoding design output into the core of a theme-able piece of software a good idea?

What you can’t do with bbpress, is hand a Designer/ HTML coder your template files and expect to get anything back that’s not a flat output of a table. It’s a point I raised a while ago (and i’ll not bang on about it) but BBpress works at doing one thing. Outputting a flat list from a database.

In terms of your all forums kinda look the same , i have to agree in this instance. Most forums, ipb/vBulletin/phpBB etc do all look the same. but guess what. bbpress doesn’t look much like them. I’ve stated before BBpress’s horrific handling of parent/children with categories etc. is bloody woeful; but if you’re talking about usability, then bbpress starts to fall down a little.

What it outputs is simple, yes, to the user, but it’s not very perceptive. Finding a specific post or vital information (say that 0.9 = WP2.5 – you know , something you’d expect to be on the documentation or download page but is actually on page 3 of a topic started 1 year ago) , is a disaster. It’s reliant on the user

who posted the content using TAGS appropriotely and ofc it requires a better search function.

Lets not forget that ‘tags’ are fairly new, and really only web savvy people use/know about them. A huge chunk of this software’s cross-pollination and iteration is taken out of the developers hands and placed smack bang in teh hand of the end user (whom we know nothing about nor can reply on).

Just because something is simple/plain, does not make it inherently usable.

Think Boo.com.

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

Anyway, there are a number of things we’d all like to see fixed in bbpress. Some more vital than others. we’ll all agree and disagree on many, but my over riding feeling is this:

Our Clients, customers, friends, colleagues, schools, own sites, will at some stage like to, nah need to, be updated to the latest version of WordPress. it will vary from person to person, but at some stage you know that a wordpress upgrade is probably in the pipes.

But if you’re using BBpress, then you’ve been forced to hold off upgrading for over half a year. We will be/are a whole version behind, and surely someone can see that it’s got to be an issue.

I suppose what i dont understand is, and maybe i’m the only one, so please 100% feel free to explain it to me like an idiot.

if The most requested topic on this website is “wordpress integration”, and the singular fail point of the software is “wordpress integration”, and teh company that owns this software also own wordpress, and it happens to be your singular initial selling point of the software, um, well, WHY THE HELL HAS IT NOT BEEN THE ONLY PRIORITY AND FIXED IN THE 3 MONTHS SINCE 1.0ALPHA CAME OUT?

We’ve had other fixes, new code, new features, a facebook page (see i hadn’t forgotten), but yet without even a hint of when this base level feature might appear, we’re told it’s a moving target.

Please, explain it to me like a 5 year old, that hasn’t read the blog posts linking to the $29 million dollars investment, that also lead to Sam being taken on as a full time developer on bbpress (i.e. dont say no time/resources).

[Joss Winn]

Well, I wouldn’t be so harsh… It’s not even 1.0 software yet and I’m looking to integrate two applications from SVN trunk, ideally using a third-party LDAP plugin I didn’t really expect it to work but hopefully reporting my findings might help us along the way…

I’ve spent enough time on it for now, but will watch for progress and help test with interest.

[hhberthelsen]

Sounds awesome, will test it one of the next days. We have nearly 200.000 posts – will be interesting to test, and surely on my own dedicated server 😮

Any concerns regarding subforums or “hidden” forums, that i should be warned about?

[Klark0]

I’ve been tryin them out on my test site, but I get the same cookie problems. Just wait it out until they’re final. mu2.7 is kinda buggy right now.

[John James Jacoby]

I’m actually testing this as we speak. The plug-in itself is written rather poorly and is ultimately just a WordPress widget. I will report back once I have more experience with it.

[chaslie]

This topic has been marked [resolved] when it isn;t for me (with the greatest of respect for the forum administrator) so has continued the discussion on another thred about the same topic. Thanks.

[_ck_]

I just disagree with promoting a product before it’s even usable.

bbPress is very usable, just not finished. But it’s certainly *not* being promoted. All we have is this support forum. If it was being promoted, it would be listed on WordPress.org/WordPress.com and there would be hundreds of thousands of users. bbPress currently has less than 10,000 active installs. That should change by this time next year.

bbPress was originally written by Matt to simply give a support forum for WordPress (WordPress.org). Everything from there was just Matt releasing the source. There never was a general plan after that until Matt started talking about TalkPress which is still very far away by my best guess.

bbPress’s greatest strength is it can be integrated in many websites easily and made to look like them easily. But it’s still a growing child and very young. If you are looking for a polished product, you need something with over half a decade of development like phpBB, vBulletin or SMF. The downside to them is they are very rigid and hard to develop for. bbPress is incredibly easy to develop for, I only learned PHP a few years ago and look what I’ve managed to do. Just imagine what a person who knew what they were doing could do

[_ck_]

If you have your own server make sure you setup your mysql cache properly and even more importantly make sure you install some kind of PHP opcode cache (eaccelerator, xcache or APC). Even the fastest server will greatly benefit from an opcode cache.

[_ck_]

The full template can be confusing to non-coders.

This concept has been covered several times around here, it’s quite simple.

Just replace

<?php topic_last_poster(); ?>

with

<a href="<?php topic_last_post_link(); ?>"><?php topic_last_poster(); ?></a>

in the front-page.php, forum.php, view.php and tag.php templates

[Bharat Karavadra]

Sometimes forum topics are so interesting that they get many replies and bbPress v0.9.0.2 does not have any links to the latest reply when you go to a topic.

So I created one as you will see when you go to any of the topics in the Set Forever forum.

Here’s a link to the code update to the Kakumei theme for the topic.php file:

http://www.setforever.org/blog/2008/bbpress-v0902-how-to-add-a-link-to-the-latest-posted-reply-message-in-a-topic/

[_ck_]

Have you tested it in Firefox on Windows?

The column float is not working correctly and pushes the middle down below the left.

[wiseacre]

I know what is SVN, man And use it every day, for bbpress tests too. But alphas are good for bug reports, help others and wordpress integration testing. We sould discuss one named pie of code. I love digits (rev numbers are digits too), it’s my job, but the people is normal guys collection.

[thetimediva]

Hi John,

That sound like a nice feature… two ways to use a sticky.

Unfortunately, that was not the problem. It wasn’t stuck to the front originally.

I did unstick at your suggestion and click “stick topic” and it shows up in the latest discussions and not in it’s forum.

I unstuck it again… click “to front” and it displays differently in the latest discussion section – The word stick appears next to it and the font is bigger and no it doesn’t display in the forum.

It appears the “to front” is functioning fine… but not the basic “stick topic”

We still have a problem.

Thanks

Ann

[wiseacre]

Ok, guis, WP 2.7 is here. Give us bbpess alpha 3 to test it.

Because of … there are only 59 active tickets

[thetimediva]

I’m new to using bbpress and installed version Version 1.0-alpha-2

In one of the forums, I did a post and made it sticky… I other forums the sticky is always the first post(s) with all the other post underneath.

The main forums is showing 1 topic and 1 post. When I click on the forum, it isn’t there…. The only place the post sticky shows is in the latest discussions and not in forum area.

Is there some way to make the sticky topic show up in its forum?

Thanks

Ann

[John James Jacoby]

I would like to only display 10 topics on my front page, but 40 when viewing each forums individually.

Is there an easy way (within the theme maybe?) to limit the front-page.php latest discussions to a smaller number than the items per page assignment in the admin panel?

[John James Jacoby]

It isn’t about it being a regular basis, it’s about it being possible.

In my testing and installing of bbPress, I usually bounce back and forth between a KeyMaster, an Admin, and a Member test account, and sometimes I am logged in and make a post under the wrong one.

It’s more for convenience and possibility sake than it is for daily use or practicality.

Forums with many users would just have a million entries in the drop down. Heck I dunno man I just thought of this idea!

[pertinax786]

I have it working ok with the plugin, but testing reveals it fails to work with multipage threads, eg:

http://domain.com/forums/test/your-first-topic/page/2

breaks and redirects to //

I had a look at the rewrites and similar but it seems ok (though I am not an expert), so I am at a loss. Is anyone else having this problem? Any ideas on a fix?

[_ck_]

The approach Digg uses is very simple and would not need such an advanced plugin like “promote to front page”.

All you need to mimic Digg is allow voting on topics and then replace the part of your front page that shows the latest-discussions with the list of topics by highest rank.

In fact there is already a topic voting plugin that does that, you’d just have to edit your front-page layout. You could then go further like Digg does and restrict highest rated by date – 24 hours / 7 days / 30 days / all time

[John James Jacoby]

Looks good enough to me, although I haven’t checked the source to see exactly how you did it.

[_ck_]

bbPress Plugin Index, A – M

– A –

• Accurate Post Time
• Add Titles to Replies
• Admin add user
• Admin Can Post Anything
• Admin Drop Menus
• Admin Instant Menus
• Ajaxed Quote
• All Settings
• Allow Images
• Approve User Registration
• Automated Forum Moderation
• Avatar
• Avatar Upload

– B –

• BB Anonymous Posting
• bb Gzip
• BB Moderation Hold
• BB Scrippets
• bb SVN Tracker
• bb Topic Views
• bb-avatars
• bb-emoticons
• bb-Lightbox2
• bb-myAvatars
• bb-NoSpamUser
• bb-Scripture-Links
• bb-twitter
• BBcode Buttons
• BBcode Lite for bbPress
• bbFlickr 0.1
• bbPages
• bbPress Attachments
• bbPress Benchmark
• Bbpress Latest Discussion
• bbPress Polls
• bbPress Signatures
• bbPress Sitemap Generator
• bbPress Smilies
• bbPress Theme Switcher
• bbPress Username Extended
• bbPress-Mobile
• BBPress:Live Comment
• BBPress:Syntax Hiliter
• bbRatings
• bbRusToLat
• bbSocialize
• bbSync
• bbVideo

– C –

• Censor
• Comment Quicktags for bbPress

– D –

• Disable Display Name

– E –

• Edit History
• Enhanced Registration
• Enhanced Tag Heat Map

– F –

• Fix Admin Access
• Fix bbPress
• Force Login
• Forum is category
• Forum Last Poster
• Forum Redirector
• Forum Restriction
• Forums Moderators
• Front Page Topics

– G –

• Gaming Codes
• Google Analitycs
• graphic-display-ranks
• Gravatar

– H –

• Hidden Forums
• HTTP authentication for bbPress
• Human Test for bbPress

– I –

• Ignore Member
• Indicate New Posts
• Instant Password

– L –

• LDAP authentication for bbPress
• Limist Latest Discussion

– M –

• Mass Edit – Moderate Posts
• MD5 insecurity for bbPress
• MediaWiki wikitext Filter
• Memberlist
• Mini Stats
• Mini Track
• Mouldy old cookies for bbPress
• My Views

[_ck_]

One plugin that I’ve been meaning to create for quite some time is a “promote to front page” tool where admin can mark a topic for special promotion, with their own custom summary that superceeds the title and first post and replaces (or suppliments) the Latest Discussions on the front page with the list. The list could then be re-ordered even further, independent of topic time.

I think such a plugin would change how bbPress is used in a positive way. Just can’t decide how to best interface it with how topics work and how to give the admin full access to existing formatting tools and other plugins within the summaries. It would probably be mostly like Wiki Post.

[_ck_]

Let’s put that all together – this should work right inside any wordpress template:

<h2>Latest Forum Discussions</h2>

<ul>

<?php

global $wpdb;

$query="SELECT * FROM bb_topics WHERE topic_status=0 ORDER BY topic_time DESC LIMIT 10";

$results=$wpdb->get_results($query);

foreach ($results as $result) {

echo "<li><a href='/forums/topic.php?id=".$result->topic_id."'>".$result->topic_title."</a></li>";

}

?>

</ul>

[_ck_]

Did you already figure this out?

They look very well matched.