[Raize]

I’ve been looking for a solid forum software for quite some time now. vBulletin has a lot of features, but it’s too bloated…it’s “Web 1.0”

I explored Vanilla, EsoTalk, and now bbPress. I thought bbPress would be a good option, but it seems like the developer community has completely abandoned it over the past year. There are no themes, no plugins, and barely any updates to the core forum. As I kept looking for themes, I found this on bbShowcase:

The bbPress Showcase has been discontinued.

The removal of Sam Bauers and the halting of bbpress.org 2.0

was a clear and final sign that there is no interest in allowing

bbPress to become a mature, robust program and community.

By now bbPress 1.5 could have been in alpha but instead

bbPress development has been deliberately stagnated,

which should be a very alarming warning to everyone.

In addition, bbShowcase had only six donations in 2009,

which indicated to me there was no interest in my work.

My code will remain on bbpress.org as open source GPL

for those that wish to use it, however I caution you to

consider bbPress’s lack of leadership before continuing to use it.

Now I’m back at square one again. Not knowing which forum software to use.

[bb-lover]

Dear Developers,

I’ve recently use bbpages plugin.. its working fine..but i want one more thing in this plugin … here is url like my site

http://www.example.com/bb-page.php?page_id=3

i want to change it to

http://www.example.com/my-own-keyword.html

can any coder tell me how it possible?

i’ll be great thankful to you

here is plugins files

---

1. bb-page.php for root

<?php

require_once(‘./bb-load.php’);

$page_id = 0;

bb_repermalink();

if ( !$page )

bb_die(__(‘Page not found.’));

do_action( ‘bb-page.php’, $page_id );

bb_load_template( ‘page.php’, array(‘bb_db_override’, ‘page_id’) );

?>

---

2. page.php for template

<?php bb_get_header(); ?>

<?php if ( isset_id() ) : ?><?php if ( page_exist() ) : // Do not delete this ?>

<div class=”top_box”>

<h2><?php echo get_page_title(); ?></h2>

<div class=”bbcrumb”>“><?php bb_option(‘name’); ?> » <?php echo get_page_title(); ?></div>

</div>

<div class=”post-content”>

<?php echo get_page_content(); ?>

</div>

<?php else: // If there is no page with id=X in database ?>

<div class=”notice_box”><div class=”notice_content”>404 – I’m sorry, but this page does not exist.</div></div>

<?php endif; ?>

<?php else: // If page ID is not specified or it equals 0 ?>

<div class=”notice_box”><div class=”notice_content”>Page is not specified.</div></div>

<?php endif; ?>

<?php bb_get_footer(); ?>

---

3. bb-pages.php for plugin

<?php

/*

Plugin Name: bbPages

Plugin URI: http://astateofmind.eu/freebies/bbpages/

Description: Allows you to create static pages within your bbPress forum.

Author: F.Thion

Author URI: http://astateofmind.eu

Version: 0.0.2

license: GPL

donate: http://astateofmind.eu/about/support/

*/

function get_page_id() {

if ( isset ( $_GET ) ) :

$page_id = $_GET;

return $page_id;

endif;

}

function isset_id() {

if ( $_GET > 0 ) :

return true;

else:

return false;

endif;

}

function page_exist() {

global $bbdb, $bb;

$id = get_page_id();

$table_name = $bbdb->prefix . “pages”;

$query = $bbdb->get_results(“SELECT page_id FROM $table_name WHERE page_id=”.$id.””);

if ( $query == true ) :

return true;

else:

return false;

endif;

}

function get_page_title() {

global $bbdb, $bb, $page_id;

$id = get_page_id();

$table_name = $bbdb->prefix . “pages”;

$query = $bbdb->get_results(“SELECT page_title FROM $table_name WHERE page_id=”.$id.””);

foreach ($query as $rk) {

return $rk->page_title;

}

}

function get_page_slug() {

global $bbdb, $bb, $page_id, $page;

$id = get_page_id();

$table_name = $bbdb->prefix . “pages”;

$query = $bbdb->get_results(“SELECT page_slug FROM $table_name WHERE page_id=”.$id.””);

foreach ($query as $rk) {

return $rk->page_slug;

}

}

function get_page_content() {

global $bbdb, $bb, $page_id;

$id = get_page_id();

$table_name = $bbdb->prefix . “pages”;

$query = $bbdb->get_results(“SELECT page_content FROM $table_name WHERE page_id=”.$id.””);

foreach ($query as $rk) {

return $rk->page_content;

}

}

function list_pages() {

global $bbdb, $bb;

$table_name = $bbdb->prefix . “pages”;

$query = $bbdb->get_results(“SELECT * FROM $table_name ORDER BY page_order ASC”);

$status = array(

0 => ‘Draft’,

1 => ‘Published’

);

foreach ($query as $rk) {

echo ‘

<tr>

<td>’.$rk->page_id.'</td>

<td>’.$rk->page_title.'</td>

<td>’.$rk->page_date.'</td>

<td>’.$status[$rk->page_status].'</td>

<td>page_id.'”>Edit | page_id.'”>Delete | page_id.'”>View</td>

</tr>

‘;

}

}

function pages_panel() {

$action = $_REQUEST;

switch($action)

{

default:

?>

<h2>Manage Static Pages <small>(Create new page)</small></h2>

<table class=”widefat”>

<thead>

<tr>

<th style=’width:5%;’>ID</th>

<th style=’width:45%;’>Title</th>

<th style=’width:20%;’>Creation Date</th>

<th style=’width:10%;’>Status</th>

<th style=’width:20%;’>Actions</th>

</tr>

</thead>

<tbody>

<?php echo list_pages(); ?>

</tbody>

</table>

<h3>Please support the developer</h3>

<img src=”http://astateofmind.eu/uploads/donation.gif&#8221; style=”margin-right:10px” border=”0″ align=”left” />

Do you like this plugin? Do you find it useful? If so, please donate few dollars so I could keep develop this plugin and others further and further. Even the smallest help is greatly appreciated for a student in Poland .

<form action=”https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr&#8221; method=”post”>

<input type=”hidden” name=”cmd” value=”_donations”>

<input type=”hidden” name=”business” value=”wojciech.usarzewicz@gmail.com”>

<input type=”hidden” name=”item_name” value=”bbPages Donation”>

<input type=”hidden” name=”item_number” value=”bbPages Donation”>

<input type=”hidden” name=”no_shipping” value=”0″>

<input type=”hidden” name=”no_note” value=”1″>

<input type=”hidden” name=”currency_code” value=”USD” />

Type donation amount: $ <input type=”text” name=”amount” value=”1″ />

<input type=”hidden” name=”tax” value=”0″>

<input type=”hidden” name=”lc” value=”US”>

<input type=”hidden” name=”bn” value=”PP-DonationsBF”>

<input type=”submit” name=”submit” value=”Donate with PayPal!” alt=”PayPal – The safer, easier way to pay online!”>

<img alt=”” border=”0″ src=”https://www.paypal.com/pl_PL/i/scr/pixel.gif&#8221; width=”1″ height=”1″>

</form>

<p>Want to know what I’m developing right now? Follow me on Twitter, ignore 90% of stuff and learn a lot you will . And thank you for using my plugin!</p>

<?php

break;

case “add”:

global $bbdb, $bb;

if (isset($_POST))

{

$page_title = $_POST;

$page_slug = bb_sanitize_with_dashes( “$page_title”, “” );

$page_content = $_POST;

$page_order = $_POST;

$page_status = $_POST;

$table_name = $bbdb->prefix . “pages”;

$query = “INSERT INTO ” . $table_name .

” (page_id, page_date, page_content, page_title, page_status, page_slug, page_order) ” .

“VALUES (0, NOW(), ‘”.$page_content.”‘, ‘”.$page_title.”‘, ‘”.$page_status.”‘, ‘”.$page_slug.”‘, ‘”.$page_order.”‘)”;

$bbdb->query($query);

?><div class=”updated”><p>Page has been saved.</p></div> <?php

}

?>

<h2>Add new page</h2>

<form class=”settings” method=”post”>

<fieldset>

<div>

<label for=”page_title”>

Page title </label>

<div>

<input name=”page_title” id=”page_title” type=”text” class=”text long” />

<p>Page slug will be created automatically (don’t worry, it’s not useful for anything yet).</p>

</div>

</div>

<div>

<label for=”page_order”>

Page order </label>

<div>

<input name=”page_order” id=”page_order” type=”text” class=”text long” />

</div>

</div>

<div>

<label for=”page_content”>

Page content </label>

<div>

<textarea name=”page_content” id=”page_content” rows=”20″ cols=”80″ ></textarea>

</div>

</div>

<input type=”hidden” name=”page_status” value=”1″ />

<input type=”hidden” name=”page_id” value=”<?php echo $_GET; ?>” />

</fieldset>

<input type=”submit” class=”submit” name=”add_page” value=”<?php _e(‘Add page’, ‘add_page’) ?>” />

</form>

<?php

break;

case “edit”:

global $bbdb, $bb;

if (isset($_POST)) {

$page_id = $_POST;

$page_title = $_POST;

$page_content = $_POST;

$page_order = $_POST;

$page_status = $_POST;

$table_name = $bbdb->prefix . “pages”;

$query = “UPDATE “.$table_name.” SET page_content='”.$page_content.”‘, page_title='”.$page_title.”‘, page_status='”.$page_status.”‘, page_order='”.$page_order.”‘ WHERE page_id='”.$page_id.”‘”;

$bbdb->query($query);

?> <div class=”updated”><p>Page updated…</p></div> <?php

}

$table_name = $bbdb->prefix . “pages”;

$query = $bbdb->get_results(“SELECT * FROM $table_name WHERE page_id=”.$_GET.””);

foreach ($query as $rk) {

$id = $rk->page_id;

$title = $rk->page_title;

$content = $rk->page_content;

$order = $rk->page_order;

$status = $rk->page_status;

}

?>

<h2>Edit page</h2>

<form class=”settings” method=”post”>

<fieldset>

<div>

<label for=”page_title”>

Page title </label>

<div>

<input name=”page_title” id=”page_title” type=”text” class=”text long” value=”<?php echo “$title”; ?>” />

<p>Page slug will be created automatically (don’t worry, it’s not useful for anything yet).</p>

</div>

</div>

<div>

<label for=”page_order”>

Page order </label>

<div>

<input name=”page_order” id=”page_order” type=”text” class=”text long” value=”<?php echo “$order”; ?>” size=”10″ />

</div>

</div>

<div>

<label for=”page_content”>

Page content </label>

<div>

<textarea name=”page_content” id=”page_content” rows=”20″ cols=”80″ ><?php echo “$content”; ?></textarea>

</div>

</div>

<input type=”hidden” name=”page_status” value=”1″ />

<input type=”hidden” name=”page_id” value=”<?php echo $_GET; ?>” />

</fieldset>

<input type=”submit” class=”submit” name=”save_page” value=”<?php _e(‘Save page’, ‘save_page’) ?>” />

</form>

<?php

break;

case “delete”:

global $bbdb, $bb;

$id = $_GET;

$table_name = $bbdb->prefix . “pages”;

$query = $bbdb->get_results(“DELETE FROM $table_name WHERE page_id=”.$_GET.””);

$bbdb->query($query);

?> <div class=”updated”><p>Page deleted…</p></div> <?php

break;

}

}

function pages_admin_menu() {

bb_admin_add_menu(__(‘Manage Pages’), ‘administrate’, ‘pages_panel’);

}

function bbpages_install() {

global $bbdb;

$table_name = $bbdb->prefix . “pages”;

$bbdb->query(“CREATE TABLE IF NOT EXISTS $table_name (

page_id mediumint(9) NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT,

page_date datetime,

page_content text,

page_title varchar(255),

page_status int(1),

page_slug varchar(255),

page_order int(11),

PRIMARY KEY (page_id)

)”);

}

bb_register_activation_hook( __FILE__, ‘bbpages_install’);

add_action( ‘bb_admin_menu_generator’, ‘pages_admin_menu’ );

?>

---

Note: I want to mention here that the author of this plugin is no more active. He make this plugin but something is wrong with this pluing. he tell us wrong path for plugins files. But I’ve little bit knowledge of php that’s why i correct its path now the path of the plugins files which I’ve mentioned above is totally correct and working fine.

Now I really need to your help. If someone will not guide me then I’ll leave this software “bbpress” and I’ll move to vBulletin or phpbb after disheart….

So I’m waiting for positive answers from developers… Thanks … And Love you all

[Ben L.]

I don’t understand your logic. BuddyPress is a plugin for WPMU, which is a multi-blog version of WordPress. bbPress is a forum program. Not a plugin for anything, just a standalone forum.

Merging BuddyPress and bbPress would be like merging a car company and a grocery store. You can drive a car to a grocery store and carry groceries in it, but integration is as close as you can get to merging them.

Besides, no other major forum software (phpBB, IPB, VBulletin, SMF, etc) have a social network built in or are a plugin for a blogging program.

[Michael]

Greetings

I am glad to hear that an effort is being made into ensuring the continuity (and maturing) of bbPress.

If I could, I would help out a lot where I could. Unfortunately, I’m still in the learning phase with PHP and MySQL. This as I learn by experience.

In the long-term however, I would like to help out as much as I can. I do have a strong taste for interface design, and new ideas.

I’ve always said to myself that forum software seems to be all the same, from brand to brand. Already, bbPress is defying that. bbPress has a lot to offer, and I’d like to extend it somewhat.

In my case, I have released a development community forum (http://www.inniosoft.co.cc/devstation) using bbPress – so that shows one thing. Many people have different purposes for using forum software. With my community (which is still small – it’s new) I wish that it would be more socially interactive. I am in the middle of writing a plugin that will make user-profiles more interactive (ie Status updates, etc). In the long term, I’d like to cater for that kind of thing. Bringing new things into bbPress that don’t seem to exist any any other forum software. Of course, in this case, my idea would only be useful for those using bbPress as a standalone package (ie without integrating it with WPMU and BuddyPress).

I can see that bbPress will ba amazing software one day – competing with the likes on vBulletin and phpBB. If anything, I’d love to be involved with getting it there.

[sockmoney]

I’m a new bbPress user for about 10 months now. I’ve been promoting bbPress in all the other forums I participate in. Love the product and would love to help out in any capacity I could.

I work for myself as a web publisher. I’m a developer at heart (Computer Engineer), but I mostly do community management and marketing these days.

Would not even know where to begin in regards to where I could help. I would like to see the product get a bit more mainstream usage. Every forum I bring it up in or recommend it, no one seems to know anything about it. I find myself sticking up for it against the big hitters like vBulletin, etc. Perhaps a volunteer marketing/advocate role might be useful…

Regards,

Max

[paamayim]

I was exploring bbPress tables before importing data from vBulletin and noticed that post bodies contain <p>…</p> and I was wondering why this choice was made, wasn’t better keep plain text and then, only when formatting the output, applying the markups if needed?

[paamayim]

News about this? If there is already something like that I’ll try to use it without exhitation, but if it’s not, I’m gonna write one on my own.

[sbricchiLIN]

Jleuze,

It’s great news for me what you explain here.

Now my idea is just to stop at the first step. I’ll try migrating to vBulletin and stay there. I think it will be the best…

Thank you for sharing your experience.

[michayu]

@Kawauso

1. SimplePress looks better than BuddyPress did before Automattic has acquired it. I intent to emphasize rather business aspect, than technology one. It would be better for WordPress community if the resources will concentrated, not dispersed.

2. Try vBulletin4.0(beta). It’s “light, adaptable, etc”…

3. My company develops 4-6 [WP-based] sites (not blogs) a month. God bless WordPress!

CMS=ContentManagementSystem, isn’t blogging about content management?

And you’re right, hopefully, it’s CURRENT shortcomings will be overcame in 3.0

[Adam Harley (Kawauso)]

michayu:

1. SimplePress looks horrible, and the cleaner bbPress codebase is, the better. It also implements a lot of what in bbPress mentality would be plugin-based.

2. vBulletin is clunky and the opposite of what bbPress aims to be (light, adaptable, etc.)

3. WordPress IS a blogging platform. It has supplementary CMS features such as pages, and can be adapted into a CMS, but it’s primary focus and purpose is blogging. I pray it never gets turned into yet another CMS (and look on discussions on the WordPress support forums about its current shortcomings when used as a CMS if you want proof it’s not one).

[michayu]

Matt,

1. Automattic should to acquire SimplePress and to merge it with bbPress (just as you did with Buddypress – smart move).

2. The best forum software is vBulletin (and now they have a full-featured CMS). Look at vB, and you’ll see the roadmap of all the forum software.

3. Stop calling WordPress “blogging platform”. It’s a CMS, FYI! I even hope WP3.0 will become a CMF.

[xentech]

I was thinking about using vBulletin for this but it would be way too complicated, I’d rather have a light weight script I can hack about.

I want to create a forum split into completely seperate sections for each language (maybe 8 different ones). My first question is are sub forums allowed? I’ll presume so and continue. The main way I can think to achieve this is by using ‘parent’ forums with one for each language and then using the sub forum structure within those to create sperate forums using different language.

I also want each language to have it’s own sub domain.

I’ve never used bbPress before but I’m good with php so I’m sure I can figure something out but I’m just looking for feedback. I’m wondering if any other people know of any better solutions for achieving this..

The basic requirements are:

Different sub domain for each language

Seperate forum structure for each language

Global users for every language

Managed by same install

[mrmacmac]

I’m planning on launching a bbPress forum sometime in the months ahead, but want to add a few important features.

1) I’d like to add ‘avatars’ beside each forum, just like vbulletin and other forum setups let you do. Is this possible?

2) I’d like to tie-in ‘recent comments’, ‘new threads’, etc. lists in a widget on my blog. Something that updates in real time as posts are made… Just a way to funnel more folks from the blog into the forums… is this doable as well?

Any advice is greatly appreciated!

James

[Josh Leuze]

Hi sbricchiLIN, I did come up with a solution to migrate a forum from YAF to bbPress.

But I had to do a 3 step migration to do it: YetAnotherForum to vBulletin to phpBB to bbPress.

It’s a tedious process, and not perfect, but I got the forums converted!

Basically, in all my research the only converter for YetAnotherForum.NET that I could find it vBulletin. So that’s the first step. unfortunately it is commercial, and closed source, but a $100 is much cheaper than paying someone to convert it for you!

vBulletin has a tool called ImpEx that can import a YAF forum into vBulletin. But it is tricky since YAF uses MSSQL, and you want to convert to MySQL on vBulletin. I did all this on my local machine running Windows, with a MSSQL server to run the YAF database and WAMP to run vBulletin.

I did not have YAF installed locally and running, just the database. You probably want to get your YAF forums running on a local Windows machine as a first step. The YAF to vBulletin importer is old and totally unsupported, so it is crude, but better than nothing. I was only able to import about 80% of my forum content, and I lost a user account. But one user out of 600 seemed a small price to pay.

I think the loses were due to funky characters and long titles, so if you have a local install of YAF, you can fix those things before you import.

After you get the data into vBulletin, it is a much smoother process. There is of course a lot of converters for phpBB, and converting from phpBB to bbPress is pretty easy.

In the end, the migration went ok, I had some issues with the HTML code in the posts, had to convert some characters in the database, and install some plugins so that the HTML content in the old posts would work in bbPress. But it was all worth it to get away from YAF, the forum members all seem to be happy with the new forum, no complaints, just a few feature requests.

I have really been meaning to do several blog posts explaining how to do all this cause it’s one hell of a project, but who ever has the time to do everything they want to?

If anyone else takes the plunge and tries to migrate from YAF to bbPress and has any specific questions, let me know and I’d be happy to try and give a hand!

[chandersbs]

One of the things I try to do on my own bbPress-based forum, is trying to make it more and more user friendly. By saying user friendly, I want my users to click less, as that is really annoying. And give as much as information possible on the page they are.

Think of:

• Adding a search bar on every page

• Navigation should be visible from all pages

A few options that you’d need plugins for:

• Upload plugin, so users can upload images

• Signature, users love that too

• And PM system

Worth considering:

• AJAX replies (just like we have in vBulletin)

So if you’re gonna incorporate those things into your theme, think about the design.

[chandersbs]

I would like to code a plugin to prevent double posting in a certain period of time. For example, i’m adding this reply to this topic, and in 5 minutes i could add another. This plugin would take the second reply and append it to the first one, instead of making a new post (if no one else replied in those 5 minutes).

I’d love this plugin very much as well, I’ve seen this in action in vBulletin. It also prevents users for “artificially” increasing their post count.

[Olaf Lederer]

lol there are thousands I guess … (check the footer: Powered by vBulletin®)

[_ck_]

Interesting, my opinion would actually be the opposite.

bbPress is probably faster in a shared environment than the others (if tuned).

SMF and Vbulletin already take advantage of shared memory like eaccelerator/apc/xcache out of the box and have different levels of caching. Vbulletin is very bulky though.

The magic to bbPress is not performance, it has an “acceptable” rating in performance for 1.0, but what you can do with it and how quickly. You can customize bbPress like no other forum I’ve seen with quite a bit of ease, not just the look/theme but the actual functionality.

[Ryan Hellyer]

Hmm, well this all sounds promising’ish.

I asked Sam Bauers at WordCamp NZ how bbPress would compare speed-wise and server resource wise to other standard forum softwares like phpBB, SMF, vBulletin etc. He said that the others were probably faster on a shared hosting environment, but when mem-caching is running that bbPress leaps ahead in performance. Sam, perhaps you were referring to forums which REQUIRE mem-cache (ie: super large forums) running better on bbPress than the other softwares?

At any rate it sounds like for my purposes that I shouldn’t worry about these things too much and just stick with using it straight out of the box.

[Raize]

Simple Press Sucks

BBPress is too young at this point for it to be a permanent solution

Vanilla is too unstable to be a permanent solution

VBulletin is too clunky

Esotalk got abandoned.

THERE IS NOTHING LIKE WORDPRESS FOR FORUMS…YET

[Milan Dinić]

You didn’t understand. I know about what you talked but I’m asking for option where ID of post would be sent as a GET and then it will redirect to topic page with hash and topic ID (like in examples from vBulletin and SMF I posted above)

As I said above, I want to migrate from SMF and in SMF’s URLs there are IDs of posts and I want to redirect to correct one. When there is only one page of topic, then there is no problem with redirection that ends with named anchor, but for longer topics I can’t find number of page where post appear.

[Milan Dinić]

Is it possible to link directly to post except with link to named anchor (http://example.com/forum/topic.php?id=152#post-499) on topic page, just like in vBulletin (http://example.com/forum/showthread.php?p=1856440#post1856440) or SMF (http://example.com/index.php/topic,152.msg499.html#msg499)?

Why I am asking this is that I’m doing migration from SMF and there are many links which contains IDs of posts and I want to link directly to them in bbPress too (through mod rewrite), and this is hard when topics have multiple threads (how to find on which page is post in exampled SMF URL above?).

Thanks

[_ck_]

There are already sites running bbPress 0.9 with many more users than that.

http://bbshowcase.org/forums/view/top100

Only thing I would suggest as I have in the past is that if it’s a commercial project with income, you should always be considering vbulletin which is no-nonsense, high end features/performance right out of the box. But it’s not cheap and everything worthwhile for it is usually pay-only also.

bbPress is for do-it-yourself-ers who want to make something that either blends into an existing design or you want something fresh that doesn’t look like every other cookie-cutter forum.

[maxbmx]

Hi,

How stable bbPress is? Is it ready to hold 15k users (still growing) and 100u online in one moment?

How much faster/slower is it he in comparison to PHPBB3, vbulletin, ipb?

[rich! @ etiviti]

vBulletin allows you to have a simple “Buddy List” which links to a user’s profile. I think this would be a nice simple plug-in.