[_ck_]

I’m not an official voice by any means but IMHO bbPress at this time is more of a do-it-yourself type project that is definitely non-commercial in nature. It’s also in a pre-release state which means in general it’s not ready for “primetime” if you can’t deal with working out quirks.

If you need something commercial, especially in a hurry and have little technical experience, you need a commercial solution like vbulletin. Just be cautioned however you’ll need a more powerful server to host it’s bulk and since it’s commercial, everything for it will be cost – support, addons, etc. There’s always a trade off.

[Olaf Lederer]

Hey trex33, the bigger forums are using vbulletin

[toxicshocktv]

I’m going to try a fresh reinstall and see if I can get it working, otherwise I’m off to Vbulletin.

[jimmyjames300]

Is there built-in functionality or a plugin that allows you to add a small thumb or icon next to each forum?…

I have a WP forum and am looking for a great forum package… I’ve used vbulletin for years and it is so powerful, but if I can find something that is almost as powerful, and ties in nicely with WP I will use it…

[_ck_]

You can’t compare one of the most popular commercial forum programs with 7 years of development and thousands of ($$$) extensions to a fairly new open source project that’s not even a 1.0 release yet.

If you are running a small non-commercial forum, vbulletin is too much. If you are running a large forum that needs many powerful features, bbPress (currently) is too little.

Virtually all of the features you are asking for are possible on bbPress, with a bit of work and sweat. None of them are available without 3rd party plugins, some of which are not complete or bug-free.

[Nola1974]

that matrix seems to be fairly outdated as many of the items are blank when they should be ‘yes’ or at least ‘plugin’ for bbpress.

[chrishajer]

http://www.forummatrix.org/compare/bbPress+vBulletin

[mrmacmac]

Hi there… I’m a vBulletin veteran, but am considering a switch over to bbPress to use in tandom with wordpress. Can anyone out there tell me the advantages of using bbPress compared to vBulletin? Is it just as powerful? Does it tie into WordPress seemlessly?

I also need to know if some features I require are available in bbPress… Here is my shortlist:

– Ability to act as forums admin (edit everything)

– Ability to add moderators to specific forums

– Custom avatars and signatures for users?

– Spam and ‘bad word’ filters?

– Private email/messaging system?

– Can I create categories/subcategories?

– Can I create little thumbnails for these categories?

There’s more but that’s a short list… Any help anyone can give would be greatly appreciated

[_ck_]

Oh! Sorry, no I don’t have that kind of data.

I only started collecting the sites at the start of August

and I don’t plan to check the sites more than once a month.

Right now there really are only 50 or so highly active bbPress sites so that kind of data simply is meaningless at this point. It’s not like vbulletin where you have a massive installed userbase.

Big Boards doesn’t bother to track bbPress sites (yet) so I thought my list would be a good idea to help promote adoption of bbPress.

[fabianzaf]

Hey man.. thanks for your reply. And yes I’ve went extensively through all the hacks. (By the way you made some wicked ones… without your contributions bbpress wouldnt be so awesome)

Vbulletin might have been around for a very long time but its so generic it makes my head hurt. Every vbulletin site you come across looks the same and its pretty hard to customize. Sure you can edit the templates quite heavily but it still heavily depends on tables and executes one massive css file.. even though most of their style attributes is stuck on tables @_@ Sure bbpress uses tables but definitely in a more elegant way.. (frankly I wouldnt want any tables on my page to start with.. will make a theme later thats css only)

I like the idea of having a very small bare bone forum install that can be extended from there.. I’m sure in no time the plugins will be in the core where its just a matter of switching it on in the admin panel. Either way, the plugins are pretty easy to install anyway.

As for my problem.. I made a relatively elegant fix!

add this at the top of your header.php

<?php if ( !bb_is_user_logged_in() ) { ?>

<?php

header("location:http:/......../wp-login.php?redirect_to=%2F");

exit;

?>

<?php } ?>

Got my site almost sorted now.. just need to find a way to make a tickbox in “post-form.php” that sets the thread to go to favourites

As well as perhaps a tickbox next to the comment button

[_ck_]

Well vbulletin is king-of-the-hill for a reason, many years of development, but it costs, costs, costs for everything.

But like I keep trying to suggest around here, bbpress’s easiest audience will be wordpress users, then next anyone who wants a more custom forum that doesn’t just have a vertical “brick” style.

In any case, if you poke around here you’ll discover there are have a dozen hacks and plugins you will need to make wordpress and bbpress work together more perfectly, but they are available and “proven” at this point. Look for the integration tag. I’ve been meaning to try to put them altogether in one post but keep getting distracted with stuff like paying the bills so the lights (and computer!) stay on… LOL

Forcing all logins through wordpress is possible (I do it on two sites now) but it requires a little bit of core hacks, which means the next time you upgrade it will have to be hacked again.

Forced login for entirely member only forums is also very possible, I believe there is a specific plugin or hack around here for it.

[fabianzaf]

Hey folks,

Wow.. I don’t even know what to say.. when I stumbled on this I felt like bashing my head against my desk repeatedly. As an avid user of Vbulletin for about 2 years+ and spending hundreds of dollars for plugins and the package itself; bbpress.. being opensource and not even at version 1 makes VB look like a crock of shit!

I’ve been using WordPress on a couple of my sites and have tried to find something that can be well integrated with my favourite blogging software ^^

I’m completely inlove with WordPress and BBpress.. all that is left is to complete the integration. So far I’ve got it to share users.

What I need to know now is how I can get BBpress to use wp-login and whether I can get BBpress to be locked down with this WordPress plugin.

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/registered-only/

Shot,

Fab.

[_ck_]

Finally a thread to use this page I was saving:

http://photomatt.net/2004/12/29/bbpress/

Matt doesn’t want bbpress to have features.

He actually recommends punbb if you want more features like file attachments.

[bbpress] is never going to have a tenth of the features of phpBB or vBulletin … bbPress is not going to have avatars, or put post counts next to your name

What he wants is pingbacks so a million spammers, er, I mean a million micro-forums, can add posts to your site without ever visiting it or following topics. He wants to de-centralize any sense of community.

(if you don’t get my humour, I disagree with his logic but don’t get me wrong I still respect him – bbpress is growing on me far more than punbb – also note that punbb is at least a year older than bbpress and has far more developers – bbpress has not even approached any kind of critical mass yet – punbb does not have built in private-messaging, polls and file attachments either)

ps. compare

[_ck_]

Well there’s isn’t any forum development issue that is urgent in a firetruck sort of way (but that’s a cute expression).

Maybe I’m just being impatient, maybe it’s far too soon for bbpress to attract a decent base of plugin developers/users. I’d just like to see it sooner than later. 0.8.2.1 added some critical features, with just a few more it’s almost ready to hatch.

Let’s look at the finish line, one possible goal for bbpress. Take a look at a typical Simple Machines forum aka SMF (PHP+mysql, open source)

http://forums.lesterchan.net/ (that’s GamerZ)

look at the useful features on the page.

Now look at the lovely low query counts down below.

I’m a big vbulletin fan but that works better than vbulletin IMHO.

I wouldn’t call that forum “heavyweight” and I wouldn’t call SMF “bloated”. So what’s going to be bbpress’s niche then if it’s not going to do what SMF does?

(ps. poke through the menus on SMF 2.0 too http://www.simplemachines.org/community/ oh and then look at the insanely low query count at the bottom of a full page of posts)

[_ck_]

I guess part of my concern is how casually it’s either told or assumed that BB integrates with WP, and that BB is ready for primetime. There’s good reason why it’s set at a pre-1.0 version number.

Many people here are integrating micro-forums with a handful of members, never more than a few people on at the same time. If there’s a problem, it can wait as it’s not an active website.

But my experience with BB was that tried integrating BB with several hundred members on a WP site. I eventually had to take it offline a week later. Here’s why:

First it took a day or two to find the plugin to fix spaces with usernames. Eventually I found out spaces were not the only problem, dots were not covered so I had to patch that.

Then I found out that many people had their cookies set to “remember me” which means even when you fix the cookie path so it off the root, it’s useless because the old cookie will never delete. Had to deal with dozens of emails and complaints and give them all individual instructions. Then there’s the problem of hundreds of people making hundreds of posts without any mods.

Unlike WordPress, the bbpress moderation tools are non-existant. It’s a non-issue for a micro-forum because you’ve literally got a 1 to 10 mod to user ratio. But now multiply that by 700-800 very active members. You’d then need 70 to 80 mods since every message posted has to be read by hand, by going into the thread and dealing with each one!

The ideal ratio is maybe one mod to 100 users or higher would be better, but you can’t do that without the right tools. There’s no way to browse through all posts at once and moderate immediately or setup some kind of automation process.

There’s no working badwords filter, there’s no way to limit posts that are too short or too long, there’s no post merging tool, there’s no adjustable posting rate per user, there’s no way to keep in touch with moderators. All this has to be added in with plugins, many not fully debugged yet or working correctly with 0.8.2.1 Some of them were not improved until just recently after I made feature requests after trying to use them.

It was exhausting and depressing so I took bbpress offline. But I am trying to help improve bbpress, not just complain. I think it’s about to hit critical mass with the growing number of people using it and more powerful plugins available and it has a lot of potential.

If I had a commercial forum with ads and made money off it, I’d go buy vbulletin as it’s the king and has years of trial and error and getting it right. But most people who use bbpress won’t be doing it for commercial reasons.

So that’s why I’m curious when I read that someone walked away from another forum program and switched to bbpress…

[_ck_]

I had forgotten about this site, they did an incredible job programming it. Facinating to compare:

http://www.forummatrix.org/compare/bbPress+miniBB+phpBB+SMF+vBulletin

(I picked those top five but you can choose from like 25 others)

But I can easily spot some missing things from the bbpress chart that have been added in the core or via plugin, so they need an update…

[_ck_]

Yeah I’ve already hacked the core code to make it say “Track this topic in your forum favorites” to make it sound different than adding to your bookmarks which every site nags the visitors to do and so they ignore it.

Too much hacking needed to change the term “favorites” everywhere unfortunately and it was the first thing I sadly had to touch the core for. After hacking up wordpress so much that I cannot easily upgrade it, I swore not to do that on BBpress, especially since it’s so early in alpha/beta

It’s also going to be a problem eventually that a tracking level is not set for each “favorite”, so now they can only get every topic emailed, or none at all.

When in doubt, study vbulletin as a model I suggest…

[mr_cynical]

Is there any plugin available to give users titles based on their post count (as in phpBB or vBulletin) – e.g. 0 posts has a ‘noob’ title, 10 posts ‘fledgling’, etc.

[Trent Adams]

Can you export vBulletin over to a phpBB format? That seems to be the best common thread to imort into bbPress from forum packages that don’t have importers written yet. There is a great phpBB importer here in the forums that might be able to bridge the gap!

Trent

[arthurk]

I am not a developer, so that I can’t write something like a converter!

And I also have a paid license for vBulletin. But BBPress seems to fit much better to my needs. That is why, I look forward for somebody to help us switching!

Common, vBulletin (at least in Germany) has 60% market share!

[fel64]

1. Unfortunately there’s nothing I can find. No-one on these forums has posted about switching from vBulletin yet, presumably because they’ve invested in it. I can’t help since, well, it’s licensed. Maybe you can look at the data structure yourself and write a converter?

2. No idea, but my guess is far better for performance. That’s one of the main reasons for bb’s existence – to provide even faster forum software than the best the WordPress people could get their hands on.

[arthurk]

Hello!

I use currently vBulletin 3.6.5 and would like to switch to bbpress. 2 questions:

1) Is there an importer? For threads / forums / users?

2) How does it look like with performance? Is it comparable? Especially with larger boards (300-500 users online)?

Thanks!!!

[fel64]

I’m not sure how it’s handled, but it might be worth looking at how phpBB or vBulletin or any other forum software does it.

[Morbid]

I have done a complete site re-design and have been debating between using vBulletin, which I own, or bbPress. I decided to try out bbPress purely from the simplicity and low-maintenance aspect. But I am having a registration issue that may be cookie related, but I am not sure.

I have bbPress installed within my WordPress directory. I also have bbPress integration as well as WordPress integration to keep users synced between the two (I hope that is what I was supposed to do).

My WordPress register page seems to be working:

http://www.dreamindemon.com/Blog/wp-login.php?action=register

But my bbPress does not:

http://www.dreamindemon.com/Blog/forum/register.php

I have verified that registering in WordPress does integrate the user automatically into bbPress.

Any ideas on what I should be looking at to resolve this?

[Null]

Don’t think so. Vbulletin is obsoleet even phpbb3 (more then 1.5 years late) isn’t as fast and need as bbpress is. I don’t think 1000 post will be a problem since bbpress is “build” a differnt way (don’t know the english terms to explain it right)