[do7d]

@adv_user

please forgive me if this isn’t what you’re looking for, but im pretty sure i just created the forum @ http://www.USADriftTrikes.org the exact way you wanted to. it wasn’t too difficult, but took about a day of playing with to get where it is currently. let me know if i can help-

john

[Razasharp]

Hi, I’m thinking about converting a vBulletin forum over to bbPress and have a few questions I hope someone can help with.

1 – Are there any anti-spam measures on sign-up? (I just had to enter an email address to register here)

2 – Do you have to have wordpress already installed? (I was thinking of testing bbPress by itself first)

3 – When you have wordpress installed, can it load in ‘latest posts from the forum’ in wordpress pages? Such as on category listing pages or actual blog posts.

4 – Is bbPress server efficient? vB has always been good on that front.

5 – Is it easy to customise? The style I will want to port over is at http://www.gameslurp.com

6 – Does bbPress track unread/new posts? So any new posts can be shown in bold on the forum listing page if they contain new posts since the last visit/page refresh?

Think that’s it for now – any input from people who have converted a vB forum would be great appreciated too.

[LPH2005]

Well, this was a mess. I went to bed during a conversion and the computer went to sleep too.

Apparently, clicking restart checkbox actually restarts converting the same forums again and so there were duplicates created. I deleted everything via the admin panel and started without clicking the restart started the conversion at the same place I left off of the second attempt but the forum slugs used -2 after all of the forums. I tried again checking “clean out” but this did not fix this -2 problem because the script picks up where things left off….

Should I go into the db and clear things out and start again?

Update: I just looked in the database and wp_bb_ tables are all empty. So, where are these forums being kept?

This is a multisite. WP 3.3. Conversion was (is??) vBulletin to bbPress. vBulletin was kept in its own database, separate from WP.

[@ChrisClayton]

bbpress 2.0 allows you to have standalone forums (your normal forum style – vbulletin ect.) But, it doesn’t intergrate with groups. Yet.

[DiannaM668]

Hi ebiznet88, I agree, it does seem phpBB is the most commonly used board. In my attempts to try to get my conversion done, I looked into Invision and vBulletin to see if I could get my SMF or phpBB versions of my forum over into Invision or vBulletin and then use the converter. I’ve tried everything.

For those who have SMF, the conversion over to phpBB is very easy and clean cut and no issues. It’s a plugin for phpBB from their site that you use. I had no problems. So if the phpBB converter comes out, those who have a SMF forum like I did, can convert to phpBB and then use this converter for bbpress.

Yes, I totally agree with you.

I’m waiting with baited breath (or whatever that expression is…LOL)

So excited to see it come out if they (Adam, AWJunkies and/or whoever else is working on it) are able to have time to work on it.

I would be very indebted to them!

[ebiznet88]

I believe there’s a huge installed based of phpbb forum owners looking to convert over to bbpress because of the attraction of integrating seamlessly with WP. I believe the number is even bigger compared to the other forum platforms such as Invision and vBulletin as phpBB is free.

SMF is also free but its newer than phpBB and so I believe there are fewer of such boards around.

Because of this, I hope the bbpress crew can see where they want to put in their efforts to create or complete the converter for phpbb.

It would be a great step forward for the community of bbpress users, don’t you agree

[spiritfly]

This is a great idea, I can’t believe no one has ever done that for bbpress. Revenue sharing is something that made even vBulletin very popular, bbPress should have this.

[spabav]

After a couple of weeks testing bbpress and several other forum solutions, we are really hesitating in running bbpress as our forum.

From what we see the bbpress plugin, while not as feature-rich as stand-alone bulletin boards like vbulletin, phpbb or xenForo, does one thing outstandingly well, which is the integration into wordpress.

For that reason alone, it would be worth giving it a try.

Unfortunately – and here comes our biggest issue – it looks like the bbpress plugin is currently not given full (or any) attention from WordPress.

My question is very simple:

How many developers / coders are writing code of the bbpress plugin currently ?

Is @johnjamesjacoby the only one?

Is there anybody else “officially assigned/paid by wordpress” to work on the bbpress plugin and documentation or/and support ?

John is doing an excellent job, on all his help he gives especially in the bbpress forum. But since the community is small and John is also working on the buddypress project, we are really worried to put our eggs in a “one-man-show plugin” basket.

Please tell me that I got this wrong and that there are at least several people currently working on the bbpress plugin and documentation.

Would be great if anybody could shed some light on this.

[stellam]

I would like to be able to separate Members from spammers and put them on a listing so they will not be able to keep registering under the IP and email. Also this being the second forum moderation for this forum changeover from vbulletin. Though registration is supposed to be moderated by me somehow not all registrants are going through the approve and reject form.

I have been moderating this forum for more than two years this new switch is not much of an improvement on the old. I cannot get spammers IP’s until they post which is pointless even if I could as I cannot use this info. I used to submit to stop forum spam and get ahead of the game at times by having popular spammer IP’s listed. In any case I do have an IT for the forum but I don’t get much help so any upgrade would help as I can forward it on and make them implement it. Essentially I would like to delete all my banned persons and keep their information on a set up that would bar them access when the try to register and limit the amount of letters in email addresses to 15 and the username to 10 as I have previously. I have 500+ registrants and only 200 of them are legit members I need to get rid of them otherwise members will not come as I don’t know if members can see them but I can. If anyone can advise me I would love some help as I am a volunteer.

Thanks Stella

Co-moderator

[Anointed]

As a forum Vbulletin is miles ahead of BBPress at the moment. There is no comparing the two systems due to the shear number of plugins and addons available right now for vb.

However, BBPress has built everything around true WordPress standards which I am intimately familiar with. This makes building a custom forum solution much easier for me than what vb offers.

I was running a custom bridge setup to ‘hook’ together WordPress and Vbulletin. While this works great syncing users registration/login/etc there is no deep integration with the data side and frankly I didn’t feel like writing it.

Because BBPress stores everything in the WP db and standard formats, it makes it much easier to pull forum data into other templates than it is with vb.

(say I want a user profile page showing all users posts/topics/replies/custom post-types/etc.. very easy with BBPress)

Given enough time and energy, I don’t believe there is anything that vb does which wp can’t do better.

[Anointed]

We are doing final testing of a brand new importer, which we hope to have released early next week. It takes care of all the conversion including users that is needed.

So far we can import from

vbulletin

Phpbb

Invisionboard

BBPress 1x

Xenforo

Once final testing is complete we will make an announcement post with instructions for download and use.

[purplesky]

Hello Anointed, may I ask what were your reasons for shifting from vbulletin to BBpress?

Im still investigating if I should go with BBpress or vbulletin, so it would help me decide if you dont mind,

thankyou.

[Anointed]

I managed to migrate a vbulletin site with 300k posts and 40k users to bbpress 2x and have no problems. I am running dedicated servers, but really don’t see much difference in the server load after switching the forums over. Overall bbpress 2x should scale just fine.

[Justin Mason]

The forum software has been through several years of development. I’ve seen earlier versions of it used on high(er) traffic websites and it seems to do quite well.

The issue I’m running into is the lack of current version plugins for basic features, such as reply with quotes which seems to have last been updated like 4 years ago. I’m sure with BB2.0 and the integration between WP/BP/BB we should start to see some real life in this community. Vbulletin is great as a standalone board, but does not tie in well with wordpress.

Rule of thumb; Be sure to do lots of trial and error to make sure your plugins are working without issue before you go live on a production site.

[SRobbins]

Hi Jared,

So it was not on sadly… however.. what you said fixed it! THANK YOU!

One more question while I have you in my thread. How do I add forums to the nav bar? Right now its got the default Home and Sample page. I thought that would be under Appearance > Menus. So I added a “custom link”(being that there is no check box for plugins). But I have a feeling this is for some kind of pull down menu and not the nav bar.

BTW, is there a place for ‘noobies’ to go? Just googling these questions and not finding answers makes me feel like Im super noobie questions that are too noobie to be asked in the webs.

Im moving from vBulletin forums so excuse my stumbling. Cheers!

[Anointed]

@adv_user

I understand the problem. I only posted the snippet to show you that you can make the changes via simple css.

Given enough time it would not be that difficult to use css in order to make all the changes you are after.

I would suggest reading up on css a bit as it will really empower you to make the changes you are after. It’s actually rather easy to learn and quite fun to play around with.

I wish you luck

[adv_user]

Thanks for this suggestion anointed.

Unfortunately it is not so simple.

With this CSS will space, but the layout of the subcategories will not be pleasant.

And also a lot of spaces “tHead”. And do not appear the “Subforums” (need change the code of the theme)

#####################################################

Example:

[START FORUM]

[LARGE SPACE]

“Forum | Topics | Posts | Freshness”

[LARGE SPACE]

| Category 1

--- Forum 1 (0,0), Forum 2 (0,0), Forum 3 (0,0)

[CORRECT SPACE]

| Category 2

--- Forum 4 (0,0), Forum 5 (0,0)

[LARGE SPACE]

[FOOTER]

[END FORUM]

#####################################################

[Anointed]

I didn’t play with it much, and can’t confirm that this works across all browsers, but from a quick test it only took me one line of css in order to achieve what you were after.

.bbp-forums { border-collapse: separate; border-spacing: 2px 50px; float: left; width: 100%; }

**This is going to be much easier when working with a theme that does not use tables, as you can’t apply margins to table cells like you would expect with normal divs.

[adv_user]

In fact, if you see my posts, two years ago, I sought it, at the time that the integration with WordPress was difficult:

https://bbpress.org/forums/topic/sub-subforum-change-css

Now bbPress has evolved a lot, because it has become plugin an easily integrated with the WordPress and BuddyPress.

So I’m sure that soon this will be improved organization of categories.

@anointed:

https://bbpress.org/forums/topic/sub-sub-forums#post-11762

Joining the contents of these two topics that I passed the link, you can get what they want (as you yourself said, tks), but let’s be honest…

It is not easy for those who are only user

(not even a beginning programmer)

In other forums it is ready. Simply create categories and forums by default that the organization already does this separation. It should also be standard in bbPress.

If you do not want the separation of categories, will not do it, but it uses different categories is because you want to be separated for better organization.

So it is ideal to be implemented this improvement, and as you mentioned, many other features (as plugins).

And preferably, as plugins for WordPress, which can be installed and automatically updated directly by the panel without having to use FTP, as are separate plugins bbPress.

Suggestion:

is that all plugins from bbPress and BuddyPress, stay in the WordPress directory, thus it will be much easier to use them.

[Anointed]

It is currently possible with the default theme and does not really require any php knowledge. You will spend 90% of your time simply modifying the css in order to get the results you are asking for.

There are a few functions to move around in order to get the exact layout, but that is simply a matter of moving functions around the templates and not writing new functions.

*Now in order to get the full ‘functionality’ of the forums you are talking about, then yeah, that would take a considerable amount of coding work to write all the needed functionality. I fully expect to see many of those features coming in the form of plugins though.

[Anointed]

I am importing my vbulletin forum into bbpress and all is working perfectly. I do have one request though.

My old permalink structure is website.com/Community/forum-name/postname.html

I had no problem getting the Community to replace the standard ‘forums’ in the admin panel.

What I need help with is how to change the single post view url to the above scheme.

Currently bbpress does website.com/Community/topic/topic-name

I want to replace topics with the name of the forum the post is in, and if it’s a grandchild forum have it /forum-name/sub-forum-name/post-name.html

any advice?

[Gautam Gupta]

Yes, you’re right.

[adv_user]

John, thanks for the reply.

I’d like to contribute, but unfortunately do not have sufficient knowledge in PHP. But that is a important upgrade to the bbPress be used for large forums that have many categories.

So will a great organization.

Currently, to do this I believe that only with an own theme, right?

[John James Jacoby]

This will probably come down the pipe eventually, and is something someone can do and contribute back to core also. Any takers?

[adv_user]

Example:

Invision: http://community.invisionpower.com/

phpBB: http://www.phpbb.com/community/

vBulletin: http://www.vbulletin.com/forum/

I want to get this result with bbPress:

http://blogame.com.br/forum/

############################################

With the default structure of great forums:

Category 1

– Forum 1

— Subforum 1, Subforum 2, Subforum 3

– Forum 2

– Forum 3

Category 2

– Forum 4

– Forum 5

— Subforum 4

– Forum 6

############################################

With a “friendly space” between category 1 and category 2.

Because there are many forums.

I Would like a theme that had it, I do not need to change anything, just add the categories, forums and the Subforums in admin panel WordPress.

Tks.