[DELETE ME]

I should have actually updated that I worked it out. If you can leave this topic open, I will post the exact change I made which I hope will help others too. It is 0539 Hours here and I must rest up – been up since 48 hours. I will be sure to post a detailed update within 24 hours.

[areaphoto]

Nothing!?! I’m kind of freaking out now, thinking their is someone else controlling my content. I’m wondering if something was happening with the private and public setting. Mine was public too but I changed it to private, updated, then saved it back to public. Maybe try that?!?

[Jared Atchison]

Thanks for your response.

I’m going to take a look at that plugin and see why it’s not working and see if I can fix it.

I’ll try to get the author to updated the plugin with a fix, if not I’ll fork the plugin.

Anyways thanks for the kind works and I’m glad you are taking a fancy to the bbPress project

Please let us know whenever you have any questions and we will do our best to help!

[deanso]

I forget to mentioned I am using bbPress 2 and WP 3, all updated and running fine.

I would appreciate help on this topic please

How to get nice looking page with latest threads, topics and reply on the custom homepage. Not on the WP page.

Where can I find php code that could pull this from bbPrss 2?

Thank a LOT!

[ExtremeSoccer]

I am curious because there are A LOT of plugins that have not been updated in years and no longer work with the current bbPress. Why are they still listed? There are even some plugins that go to a 404 error page? Curious if bbpress is still being maintained…

[solarpower]

bbPress says its there:

http://composthere.com/forums/forum/compost-bin-available/

Topic posting visible:

composthere.com/forums/forum/compost-bin-available/canada/

Not visible:

http://composthere.com/forums/forum/compost-bin-available/canada/vancouver-bc-area/

“This forum contains 1 topic and 0 replies, and was last updated by Compost Happens 32 mins ago.

Oh bother! No topics were found here!

You must be logged in to create new topics.”

Any suggestions welcome.

CH

[solarpower]

bbPress says its there:

http://composthere.com/forums/forum/compost-bin-available/

Not visible:

http://composthere.com/forums/forum/compost-bin-available/canada/vancouver-bc-area/

“This forum contains 1 topic and 0 replies, and was last updated by Compost Happens 32 mins ago.

Oh bother! No topics were found here!

You must be logged in to create new topics.”

Any suggestions welcome.

CH

[Jared Atchison]

The problem with this is that bbPress is maintained by @jjj and a few other contributors. So the time and features have to be prioritized.

Writing an importer is a *lot* of work. Right off the bat a forum importer is going to be at least twice as much work as, say, a MovableType -> WordPress importer.

Now you have to take into account how many, ultimately, separate importers you would have to write. Let’s see here… vBulletin, phpBB, Vanilla, punBB, SMF, IPB… and those are just some of the popular ones. So 6 importers *might* cover most off people’s needs.

Then you have to keep in mind that the importers are constantly breaking because of software updates to the original forums packages. I’d say ever 2-4 months you can expect breakage due to an update.

Bottom line? You are looking at 6 importers (at least) to cover the popular forum suites, that not only would take a huge time investment to get off the ground, but would have to be constantly maintained and updated so they don’t break or get out of date.

Is it do-able? Sure. However, if you want @jjj to tackle this don’t expect to ever see another bbPress update or feature again – it’s just a matter of time.

This is really where contributors need to step in and help out. This would ideally be written and maintained by different contributors.

[Larry LaSalle]

Is there any easy way to determine if this is BBPress specific code that would need to be updated, vs. the code for the BuddyPress Activity Stream? If I could at least narrow down that much, that might help me troubleshoot this on my own. Thank you!

[David Decker]

The plugin was recently updated to version 1.4 – added more resource links, plugin support etc. — just check it out at:

https://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/bbpress-admin-bar-addition/

Thanx, Dave

[kowalski]

I think you misunderstood me. I have compensate their work by paying for platform pro. So i expect their bbpress plugin should be updated as new version of bbpress has been relased in the meantime as many people still use platform pro and are not willing to upgrade it. Am i wrong? I think you have been also trying to solve this problem on this forum, didn t you?

[funnycat777]

I have a problem with translating an English phrase to Japanese because the variables are already containing the words behind the number.

For example, there is a phrase called, “This forum contains %1$s and %2$s, and was last updated by %3$s %4$s ago.” in BBPress. In the po file, I have translated to a phrase, “この掲示板は%1$s, %2$sが投稿されています。最終アップデートは%4$s前の%3$sさんによる投稿です。”

The translation for this shows as “この掲示板は19 topics, 136 repliesが投稿されています。最終アップデートは27日前の ABCさんによる投稿です。” in the frontend website. This is not good because the term “topics” and “replies” are built into to %1$s and %2$s, Same thing happens for below phrases.

A. This topic has %1$s, contains %2$s, and was last updated by %3$s %4$s ago.

B. This category contains %1$s and %2$s, and was last updated by %3$s %4$s ago.

Can you advise how to make it so that phrase work as “This forum contains %1$s topics and %2$s replies, and was last updated by %3$s %4$s ago.” so that I can convert the terms “topics” and “replies” to Japanese as well?

[SK]

Actually, it doesn’t. I think bbPress is a pretty good piece of software.

But while I have your attention, allow me to share my perspectives as someone who has been using Opensource Bulletin Board software for many years, but is just starting off with bbPress.

It’s great that bbPress can leverage WordPress’s autoupdate function to update itself and its plugins. phpBB (http://www.phpbb.com/mods/automod/), SMF (http://docs.simplemachines.org/index.php?topic=93) etc. are still trying to figure it out…they have some rudimentary patches, but nothing as elegant as WordPress’s system.

Another brilliant thing is the ability to use seo/pretty URLs/permalinks. Amazingly, at phpBB (http://area51.phpbb.com/phpBB/viewtopic.php?f=105&t=35616) they are fighting over whether this is even desirable!

But what’s pure genius is the ability to use any WordPress theme! bbPress ships with a bbPress TwentyTen theme, and if your active WordPress theme does not have special support for bbPress, that is ok, because bbPress will use bbPress TwentyTen’s styling to present the forums in your active theme. Genius! Pure genius!

Add to this the fact that because bbPress is a WordPress plugin, there are additional benefits such as: SSO with WP, ability to use WP plugins (like Use Google Libraries), extendability, lightness, etc.

It is a massive shock to me that the number of people are using bbPress is incredibly smaller than what it should be.

I’ve thought about my experience, and think that the following factors could be critical in this regard:

1. Discovery: Discovery is an issue. I don’t know what the relationship is between Automattic/Wordpress/bbPress/BuddyPress, but I am sure you have considered putting bbpress.org link in wordpress.org’s “See also:” footer and decided against it. But what I do struggle to understand is wy wordpress.org would not even permit you to put a credit line (Powered by bbPress) in wordpress.org forums. That is a bit harsh. To add insult to injury, if I search for forum on wordpress.org forums (http://wordpress.org/search/forum?forums=1), Mingle is at the top and Vanilla forums show up on page 1, but bbPress doesn’t.

Google SERPs aren’t much better. bbPress is not on 1st page for any of “forums script”, “opensource forums script” and “php forums script”. I’m sure that would change if you could convince wordpress.org to show you a little more love.

2. Freshness: Even if someone chances upon bbPress plugin on wordpress.org (http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/bbpress/), there is little joy. The bubble is burst as soon as the explorer clicks on forum posts (http://wordpress.org/tags/bbpress?forum_id=10). There doesn’t seem to be any support and users appear to be completely lost without a paddle.

Of course the main reason for that is that you handle most support here at bbpress.org but the poor visitor doesn’t know that. He looks at wordpress.org forums for bbpress, concludes there is lack of support and goes away.

I think unifying support in one place (at wordpress.org forums), will be good for the community. You can have a clearcut, loudly stated division – bbpress WP plugin support at wordpress.org forums, legacy bbpress standalone support at bbpress.org

http://bbpress.org/forums/topic/why-separate-forums

http://wordpress.org/support/topic/plugin-bbpress-why-separate-forums

3. Migration: bbPress needs to face the fact that most people who want a forum, have already had a forum. The *new* market for forums is much smaller than the *installed base* of forums.

Consequently, most of the people who would want to use bbPress probably are already using another forum script and need help migrating. It is collossal mistake to leave this for community plugins.

If I have a forum software in a production environment, then one of the major factors influencing my decision regarding migration is whether or not there is a robust, stable, tried and tested and reliable migration path to the target software. This is extremely important for me. In fact, I would suffer a somewhat inferior software willingly rather than move to a better software if there is no clear migration path or there is a high degree of risk in migration.

It is a mistake on part of bbPress to leave migration to community plugin developers. Even if there were some plugins out there that did the job, it would be much less reassuring to prospective users compared to a migration/import path created by the bbPress team. As it happens there are only 2 import plugins (http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/forumconverter/ and http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/bbconverter/) out there and both of them are broken and not supported.

WordPress does it right in building an importer directly into the core.

I think it would be greatly beneficial to the project if the bbPress team build a bbPress importer that supports the top 4 forum software: phpBB, Invision, SMF and vBulletin.

Over the next 18-24 months, I expect to see a mass exodus from phpBB as they rewrite the software from ground up (http://area51.phpbb.com/phpBB/viewtopic.php?f=75&t=41583). If bbPress provide a good migration path, it stands the chance to capture some of fleeing population.

4. I18n: 80%+ translations of bbPress are available in 13 languages, which is nothing to be scoffed at. But delivery is shambolic.

It is a nightmare trying to figure how to get bbPress working in a language other than English, even if you do the translation yourself.

There are 2 places to find translations: http://svn.automattic.com/bbpress-i18n/ and http://translate.wordpress.org/projects/bbpress/plugin

You can also use the .pot file found in /wp-content/plugins/bbpress/bbp-languages folder to create a translation, or you can translate at http://translate.wordpress.org/projects/bbpress/plugin with proper access.

It still doesn’t work. Very frustrating.

As it turns out, what you need to do is go to http://translate.wordpress.org/projects/bbpress/plugin, download language file by exporting to .po file, use poedit to covert to .mo, and upload it to wp-content/languages/bbpress/ (not to /wp-content/plugins/bbpress/bbp-languages which has the .pot file or /wp-content/plugins/bbpress/languages as most other plugins would). And the name of the file should be somewhat like bbpress-de_DE.mo not the standard de_DE.mo

Who would be able to figure that out? There’s not a single word about this in the documentation.

What a mess!

While some of the sharpest web developers comes from non-English-speaking countries, a high proportion of non-English-speakers are quite venturesome and decide to handle the technical aspects themselves as site owners, instead of farming them out to expensive developers, who are busy charging high rates for remote work.

These are the people that greatly appreciate the simplicity of WordPress. And these are the people who are a captive audience for bbPress, only if bbPress could make life a little bit easier for them.

bbPress should either be delivered in multiple language-specific packages like WordPress, or should be delivered with all translations included like most other plugins.

The .pot as well as language .po .mo files should be located in /wp-content/plugins/bbpress/languages

5. Documentation: This is another disaster area that is dragging a good software down. Documentation is just plain bad.

First of all, bbPress should clearly mention on the home page (http://bbpress.org/) and the download page (http://bbpress.org/download/) that while standalone version continues to be supported, it is not being actively developed.

Secondly, all the current documentation (http://bbpress.org/documentation/) is about the standalone version, and doesn’t say anything helpful for plugin users. This should be reversed.

6. Lack of basic features: Forum users, whether or not they own/manage forums, have come to expect certain basic features like:

– quote, multiquote

– topic view stats

– unread posts link

– Signature

– Profile photo/avatar

– bbcode

– WYSISYG editor

– forum search, context search

– uploading images

– members online

– private messaging

– smilies/emoticons

– forum moderation

– user registration approval

etc.

I understand that bbPress is built to be modular, and I think bbPress is right in leaving this functionality to plugins.

However, there are 2 problems:

– On wordpress.org plugin directory (http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/) there is no good way of listing all bbPress plugins. Perhaps you should create a special nomenclature or special tag that bbPress plugins should use?

– If you look at bbPress plugin browser (http://bbpress.org/plugins/), most plugins are quite old…updated in 2010, 2009, even 2008! This is not very reassuring or confidence inspiring. Now, many of the old plugins may still be working fine, but when I see the “last updated” date is June 2010 for a plugin, I assume it is outdated, not developed and not supported anymore. I perceive that this will be a trouble plugin if I install it, and consequently end up with less functionality than I want. And I blame bbPress for it, saying bbPress doesn’t have all the features I want.

My suggestion is this: Every time there is a new version of WordPress or bbPress, the bbPress plugins should release a new version too, even if the only difference is to add a comment line that says “compatible with version so and so”. This will go a long way in reassuring prospective users that can install the plugin with confidence.

7. Forum sidebar: There is a plugin called bbPress WP Tweaks (http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/bbpress-wp-tweaks/). What it proposes but in my experience fails to do should be part of the core software. bbPress WP Tweaks was created so that the admin could relace the WordPress standard sidebar with a forum-specific sidebar on forum pages. This, in my estimation, would be useful for 90%+ of all bbPress users.

8. Custom fields: One of the most powerful features of WordPress is custom fields. bbPress should not disable this for forum pages.

9. Custom headers code field: bbPress should have provision for a custom header code field, wherein the admin can put in some code, which bbPress then inserts in the header on forum pages. In one flick, this would make bbPress customization so much more powerful.

To sum up, it takes a lot of persistence and determination to love bbPress. This is not great to attract new users. The software has a lot of potential, and I believe the number of installations can be increased multifold if the above issues are tackled in earnest.

Thanks for listening to my ramblings. And if you went tl;dr I have only myself to blame.

[itryit]

Hi all,

We’re working on a new bbPress forum that needs to have new user registration and anonymous posts tick to accept the sites privacy and terms.

I’ve tried the TOS bbPress plugin, it failed on install (it hasn’t been updated for a long time).

Can anyone advise on how to achieve this?

Thanks

[andrei.oniga]

Hi,

What I’m looking for is to format the top message visible on a topic page (the one that says “This topic has x voices, contains y replies, and was last updated by zzz 1 day ago.”) so that I can give it a different wording. In this case, I need to change “voices” with “participants”.

Which files should I be meddling in?

Thanks in advance!

[johnny-rocket]

Wondering if anyone has an easy solution to problem i’m having with integrating the most updated versions of bb-press and wishlist member.

I created a forum which i would like only available to paid subscribers. When i visit my forum page as either a logged in member or a guest (non-member) I get the following message:

Oh bother! No forums were found here!

I can view the forums perfectly as an admin.

Any one having these issues? Any solution?

[Chantal Coolsma]

Hi,

I installed bbPress 2.0.2 on WordPress 3.3.1. Embedded it in the site of a customer. There are some forums created. All are Forum, Open and Public. Some topics are added by an Administrator. So far everything ok.

When a user with role Forum Participant logs in, it can access the forum, but no topics are shown:

This forum contains 4 topics and 0 replies, and was last updated by xxx 1 min ago.

Oh bother! No topics were found here!

Administrators do see the topics. What is happening here?

[SK]

All that Firebug has to say is:

syntax error

);

options-general.php?page=fc-options&settings-updated=true (line 304, col 2)

[LabSecrets]

When you are actively using the plugin already, the bbPress admin area is under Settings/Forums. When you initially wish to install bbPress sitewide forums, you do that from the BuddyPress Tab, under Forums.

Setup is rather easy, and you can actually use both bbPress sitewide as well as the original BuddyPress Group Forums. Follow these important step however:

1) Install Group Forums as usual, from BuddyPress. Instead of using the original slug of “Forums”, please instead create a new page called “Group Forums” (or anything other than “Forums”), and select that as the active page to host Group Forums;

2) Go to your Pages area in WP and DELETE any “Forums” page. Be SURE to also delete it permanently from the TRASH because otherwise the slug is still being reserved and can’t be used by sitewide forums;

3) If you have not done so yet, go into BuddyPress tab and the Forums sub menu, and click on the option to install bbPress Sitewide Forums;

4) Go into your Appearance / Menus menu and manually create new menu item that has “/forums” as the url and whatever name you prefer (such as “Forums”). Save this menu item and add it to your primary or other menus.

5) Go into Settings/Permalinks and hit “Save” to be sure you have updated your permalink structure.

When you reload your page you will find that you now have bbPress AND BuddyPress Group Forums. Voila!

Cheers!

Spence

http://LabSecrets.com

[rpetersn]

jloosli,

I just spent the bulk of my morning trying to figure this out and finally came up with a solution that involves creating a child theme to my current theme (not necessarily a requirement to do it this way, but I wanted to keep the BBPress files organized and separate from the rest of my theme).

In the child theme I copied over all of the BBPress template files the ship with the plugin and then updated my site to run from the Child Theme. This allows the appropriate template files to be picked up and the forum snapped back to life.

You could also just copy in the necessary template files to the root of your theme, a bit messier, but that’d work as well. Anyway….I’m finally getting back to work on the thing (cleaning up all of the default templates) now after a 4-5 hour detour.

Oh…and you’ll need to enable theme support for ‘bbpress’ too in your functions file if you go my route (either child theme or using your ‘main’ theme):

// Add bbPress theme support

add_theme_support( ‘bbpress’ );

Wish I knew why it worked before and suddenly stopped, that still has me stumped…but at least I understand the structure of how this all goes together now:

BTW, if you haven’t already seen it, this helped a ton:

https://bbpress.org/forums/topic/bbpress-20-theme-compatibility

Hope you get further down the road too!

[Martin]

Oh right, gotcha.

Yeah, the v2 bbPress forums look nowhere as good as the standalone ones.

I thought something might have been fixed in an updated bbPress release – not to be

[mjescobar1]

I installed the bbpress okay without incident. I created a forum, looked at it in preview, updated it so the forum was created. I created a page so the permalink would show the same as the forum but it won’t pull up the identical url. I manually entered it. Not working. Any suggestions. I just need to link a menu tab/button to my forum. Wondering why the settings doesn’t create the page and link it.

Thanks. nationalpreppersassociation.org

[drewdavid]

Hi Zofar,

Thanks for your guidance.

I was hoping to be able to set this without the use of another plugin, but I will use both for now.

…Until the documentation is updated this (hopefully) will be a working solution!

Best Regards,

Drew

[redsavior]

Is it safe to upgrade to WP 3.3 with BBPress 2.02 or should I wait for BBpress to be updated?

[billnanson]

Resolved – I updated the standalone from 1.02 to 1.1.

Re-ran the import and it was flawless.

Thanks