[enfotoad]

Lets just say if I need to switch. Will I be able to then?

[_ck_]

There are bbpress sites running with hundred of thousands of posts, and at least one with over a million posts. You won’t need to switch to vbulletin unless you want to for some other reason.

[enfotoad]

Hi there!

I am going to use bbpress for my websites forum. Before I do so I would like to know if it is possible to switch to vbulliten when my forum becomes huge.

[block]

Hey there, I’ve been poring over things looking for documentation on any “advanced” search options, like searching by user, showing only threads with replies, etc. Pretty much any supported options outside the stock text string search. (Dreaded vBulletin example here: http://www.vbulletin.com/forum/search.php)

Haven’t really found very much so far, except that it’s supposedly something that’s only theme-enabled. Can anyone point me in the right direction for docs, examples, or anything else?

[John James Jacoby]

I think that the user experience ultimately should define itself as the audience grows.

I recently just witnessed a GIANT misstep on one of the larger forums I’ve been involved with. They moved from ZeroForums to vBulletin, and of the 1.2 million active members and COUNTLESS posts and topics, it managed to work pretty alright on ZeroForums. It was simple and people got used to using it the only way they could on such a large forum; they had a link to the topics you’ve posted in or are watching, and you can keep track of new posts there.

That’s it.

It was so simple but it worked so well. It let you peek your head out and scour some forums for new content if you wanted to, but it allowed you to stick inside the topics you were the most comfortable with and related the most to.

vBulletin totally removed that link, and because it handles searches differently, it’s taken 2 days so far and the search functionality still isn’t working because there is so much data to catalog.

Basically they had a forum that worked for what it’s users needed it to work as. The theme was so simple and stripped down but allowed for basic BB tags and had a good distinction between those tags. It had just the right balance of user profile customization (signature, avatar, etc) without making a social networking site.

I think what bbPress does, is it allows the administrator to decide how much of what type of emphasis can be placed on what areas of the discussion, and to add or remove those things via plug-ins without hurting the data.

I personally think that end users have no idea what they want, and regardless of what you serve them they won’t be happy. The idea is to provide them 1 option and force them to adapt to it without ever feeling like they are learning something totally from scratch.

How many times have you asked someone what they’re hungry for and they say “Oh I dunno, you?” If you said “Hey I want pizza, is that cool?” they will probably say “Sure.”

In the dinner choices of life, bbPress is a pizza crust and the plug-ins are the toppings.

[ebizdude]

In just installed BBpress on http://www.midnightedition.com/buzz and it looks so beautiful and elegant. Its simply the best forum I have seen till date. I prefer this over vbulletin and all others. All junk is out. Simple Elegance.

I am however facing 1 problem.

http://www.midnightedition.com/buzz/ is the place forum is on.

BUT if i click on any link its leading to 404 error

http://www.midnightedition.com/buzz/forum/midnightedition-community

or on any profile even

http://www.midnightedition.com/buzz/profile/puneet

In all probabaility its a .htaccess file I need to add something. Can someone please tell me what I shd add to my .htaccess file to make this work.

Or any other suggestions.

I love BBPRESS. its simply SUPERB.

[_ck_]

I’m curious about this issue as performance problems always intrigue me. You must be using 0.9 as 1.0 has an index on stickies by default.

As far as fulltext search there is a trick I use because of the multiple issues with fulltext (not only speed but fulltext can’t do words less than 4 characters until you customize and rebuild mysql). The trick is to use regex and do a two pass query where you first exclude all the posts without the words and then allow mysql to do a regular scan of the remaining posts.

Query example from my Super-Search plugin:

WHERE post_text  LIKE '%".$term."%'" AND post_text  REGEXP ':<:".$term.":>:[^']' "

Compare the performance of that against a fulltext search that uses "MATCH post_text AGAINST $term" I don’t have enough data to do a huge benchmark but some simple tests with the cache off shows 0.4 seconds for the trick and 0.9 for the fulltext.

The only downside to the trick is you cannot do partial word searches that way. ie. $term="cat" will only return posts with the exact word “cat” and not “cats” or “category”. But it should be way faster.

Searching a huge number of posts is a non-trivial problem. It’s been known to crush other forums like vbulletin which has fancy code to prevent users from searching too often/too quickly and even disable search temporarily on high server load. Sites like Wikipedia have to go through several technically complex tricks to keep the search fast on that much data.

Many large sites end up using sphinxsearch to replace fulltext search. You could interface it to bbPress via their PHP api.

You can read more workarounds on the mysql fulltext search page (with far more knowledgeable people than me) http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.0/en/fulltext-search.html

[pab1953]

In vBulletin, if I want to pay $180, I could get the Porsche (reportedly) of message boards. In phpBB, if I want to grapple with a sizable infrastructure, I could get perhaps the most seasoned of the free forum systems.

What do I get with bbPress? Is it secure? Will it get spammed to death? Is it stable? Is it designed for personal sites or can businesses use it with confidence?

Here’s one very specific question: How do I add a link to bbPress to take people back to my WordPress home page?

BTW, the installation was a breeze.

[RossB]

Yeah – good point. They’re now talking about having a section of the forum password-protected. Think I’ll just tell them it can’t be done. Thing is, I have seen password-protected sections on vBulletin forums. Maybe an idea for a future bbPress plug-in?

[_ck_]

Well each forum matrix is maintained by someone from each project. I recently had MDA update the settings for bbPress but there are still some things that are incorrect due to the limitations on that website (for example “plugin” is not an option on some settings).

In other related news, Wikipedia decided to delete the page on bbPress last week which really upset me:

http://ckon.wordpress.com/2008/08/08/wikipedia-overlords-delete-bbpress-page/

Virtually every other forum software is on there, so I don’t know why they felt that was necessary:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Internet_forum_software

[himagain]

Posted a year ago and no action!

*I* just found it here.

Not sure who if ever anyone else will see this – but what a job those people did on that chart!

Cheers!

Himagain

[chrishajer]

I see it now, thanks.

I think this is how they do it on vBulletin:

http://www.vbulletin.org/forum/showthread.php?t=65152

I haven’t seen anything like that yet for bbPress.

[_ck_]

SMF has had over five years of development. vBulletin has had over eight. phpBB, eight years. punBB, five years. Vanilla, four years. Invision, six years.

I wish people would compare by software development time. bbPress is just over a year old, just imagine what it will be like in five years!

Development has been slow this year so I understand the frustration but technically it’s not even 1.0 yet so anyone using it is considered an “early adopter”.

[_ck_]

Again, I’m not an official voice for bbPress, but I don’t see how any of the points listed above are incompatible with the idea that bbPress isn’t a finished program. All of the points are true, it’s a useful and usable program, but it’s not done yet.

Over time, based on feedback and user code contributions I am very confident that integration will become virtually painless and almost instantaneous.

bbPress is only a year old in code development. I’m not sure if you realize that. Polished products like vbulletin are EIGHT years old (and $85 a year plus support plus most plugins and themes are commercially sold)

If you are curious about future features you can always browse the TRAC which will give you a rough idea (ignore the date schedule, they’re just vague estimates). Remember, it’s a community project, you can suggest features and contribute bug fixes too via TRAC.

[755833]

I’m not meaning to be rude or anything but I’m struggling to understand why two bits of software made by the same company are so hard to integrate? I’ve never managed to get integration working fully and I always get to the point where users who registered through the forum post on the WordPress blog show up as Anonymous… which basically renders the whole process pointless. I’ve managed to get WordPress and vBulletin to integrate seamlessly, but not bbPress.

bbPress and WordPress are both great pieces of software in their own right, but when it comes to integration with each other they are pretty weak. For example, the new bbPress isn’t compatible with WordPress 2.6 because of an issue with cookie management in WordPress… for the integration to work we now have to wait for bbPress to release an update which according to a moderator on here will be a while away.

There are also so many unsolved integration threads here that it’s very difficult to find any one collection of possible solutions. I appreciate the amount of work that goes into this kind of software and time required to provide support. I’m just feeling a bit frustrated

[NetOperator Wibby]

Hey everyone, I’m new here. I’ve found out about this awesome forum a while back but didn’t have the time to make a forum for my site. Anyhoo, I was wondering if bbPress could be integrated with Social Engine. I know integration with vBulletin and phpBB is possible but bbPress seems much more superior.

[melvitax]

ok, i downloaded the latest trunk and i was able to get it working although it threw this error out:

Warning: in_array() [function.in-array]: Wrong datatype for second argument in /home/cristian/public_html/foros/bb-admin/upgrade-functions.php on line 537

any thoughts?

[melvitax]

is there a way to see where the databse update script is getting stuck in?

[melvitax]

hey guys,

i am trying to por t a vbulletin forum to bbpress. i’ve managed to port it first to phpbb2 and then to bbpress 0.7 via converters, but know i am stuck unable to upgrade bbpress to 0.9.

0.7 seems to be working fine on first glance and i can login i can see user posts. but when i try upgrading to 0.9 i get stuck in the database conversion with a time out error. i have a dedicated server and i have changed the timing restriction from 600 to 6000 but i still get that error after hours of execution.

can anyone lend a hand? i’ve spent countless hours now trying to get this thing up and running to no avail.

thanks,

melvin

[Trace]

Yep, site is down…. not encouraging.

[Beer]

Your site isn’t loading. Can you provide a script that will convert an IPB forum to bbPress?

[jimluu2]

Hi. Can you help design a simple vbulletin theme that matches the default wordpress theme? If you know of one that looks similar already please let me know.

Thanks.

[bryan868]

I think the most important feature for bbPress’ future will be importers / converters.

People are going to want to integrate their forums with WordPress. And those of use already running vBulletin or IPB are going to want to convert to bbPress!

[ejraven]

Hi,

I’ve been working with bbPress, vBulletin and Invision Power Board since each one of them made their debuts and I’m very good at integrating them into many CMS, mainly our beloved WordPress blogging software and Joomla.

So I’m offering my integration services to those fustrated souls fighting to integrate bbPress, vBulletin and Invision Power Board into your WordPress blog.

Check out my site http://invisionbridge.com for the latest guides on how to integrate bbPress, vBulletin and IPB into your WordPress.

Integration guides, demos, tips and bridge scripts: http://invisionbridge.com

[deesdogcare]

Yes, thanks. vbulletin is actually who I found. Their base forums and blog with a month of phone support was what I quoted above ~~~ the blog is an add-on. However, I found that one of their members created a hack that SEEMS TO BE a ‘click to install’ type thing andwill integrate with wordpress ~~~ so I may only have to rework my forums template. Also, their base template has everything I want for now, except a blog. I never was trying to build any massive forum structure ~ just good working forums that people could upload their pics to and PM each other and that gave each user a title based on number of posts

I was just surprised, given that several people here don’tmind taking very small donations that no one wanted to make a couple of hundred to help. No issues though. I’ll do as you suggested and go buy the vBulletin.