[Sam Bauers]

If only it were that simple.

There are more variables than just the URL, the solution you describe only covers the simplest integration scenarios.

We are only starting to bring integration out into a more user friendly space, so there a bound to be a few things which need to be re-addressed based on user experience, but a certain amount of an integration setup is always going to be manual.

I appreciate far-reaching and big ideas, but right now I think we need more of an idea of what is a problem with what we have now. If it isn’t simple yet, then let’s fix and tune what we have. At the moment we need to remain realistic about how much we can achieve in this area. There has been a considerable amount of time spent to achieve the current solution and with limited community resources we simply don’t have time to devote to a complete rewrite (of something that was just completely rewritten).

I did consider your suggestion as a possibility when I started to bring integration into the install process, but the amount of time I would have spent writing routines to detect exceptional cases could not have justified the perceived benefit. Don’t get me wrong, I appreciate your input, but I would have liked that sort of input when I started rebuilding the installer (a process which was publicised in the dev channels) and perhaps a hand to make it a reality at the same time.

I hope I don’t sound too defensive by the way. I honestly like to hear feedback, I just want to give you an honest response and reasoning behind the decisions that were made with regards to the new installer.

[britneyimages]

DB Error: Bad SQL Query: SELECT i.image_id, i.cat_id, i.user_id, i.image_name, i.image_description, i.image_keywords, i.image_date, i.image_active, i.image_media_file, i.image_thumb_file, i.image_download_url, i.image_allow_comments, i.image_comments, i.image_downloads, i.image_votes, i.image_rating, i.image_hits, c.cat_name, u.user_name FROM 4images_images i, 4images_categories c LEFT JOIN 4images_users u ON (u.user_id = i.user_id) WHERE i.image_active = 1 AND i.cat_id = 475 AND c.cat_id = i.cat_id ORDER BY image_name ASC LIMIT 0, 12

Unknown column ‘i.user_id’ in ‘on clause’

Warning: mysql_num_rows(): supplied argument is not a valid MySQL result resource in /home/britney/includes/db_mysql.php on line 116

how do I fix this.

[Doobus]

The way the poll is applied is once you posted a new topic you are than asked if you want to create a poll, the poll creation is fairly straight forward: title of poll => choose if single or multiple votes allowed => you can place as much as 10 questions => submit. Hope that helps.

[_ck_]

I am pleased to have something to finally show for all my searching efforts.

This list is obviously unofficial and just in beta test, I am still adding features and making corrections:

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

http://bbshowcase.org/forums/view/top1000

There are roughly 1,000 sites listed, with the top 100 to showcase either sheer number of members/posts or user votes for style, etc.

Right now they are listed in order of total members (but you can sort). I will have it eventually list by a weight between members, posts and votes for style.

Also there will be user voting and preview thumbnails of the sites. (I was trying to use snap previews but it suddenly stopped working for me, so they might not have liked hundreds of links on a page, LOL – they are slow anyway and I want to learn to do snapshots via crawling code anyway)

Some interesting observations/conclusions from all my work on this (whew):

1. There are roughly 1000 public bbpress sites in existance

2. A great deal (>~80%) of these sites have less than double-digit members, hence I consider them “micro forums”

3. bbPress is being adopted worldwide in an impressive variety of countries and languages

4. SEO’er/search engine spammers/made-for-adsense makers seem to have found and love bbPress (unfortunately)

5. There are some really amazing designs out there

6. Apparently the people that participate on bbpress.org are a very small fraction of the people using bbPress!

7. At least several dozen sites had installed bbPress and uninstalled it a few weeks later

[_ck_]

Null, I am testing using opera 9 on windows.

I am using 0.24 of the plugin on the bbpress trunk.

I am able to create a new poll & vote with no alerts.

There is no problem with the css layout.

Make sure you create a NEW poll for testing with 0.24

Wait I just thought of something.

Are you using a personal firewall like Norton?

They sometimes filter javascript in bad ways.

I am also starting to think that php 5 is doing something weird with the data escaping since you say you get it in all browsers. Unfortunately I do not have a php 5 server to test on.

Can anyone else reproduce what Null is reporting or does it work?

ps. you can turn off ajax if you want to test it normally by changing the “use_ajax” option near the top of the code. Set it to “false”.

pps. Null, is this off the site in your profile?

Can you create a poll for me to see off one of the pages so I can see the bug in action?

[Null]

Hmm You took away the brake between the option for single or multy votes? Shame Ow and yes that caching in Opera is true, I always solve it to give it an unique time thingy to force Opera to reload instead of using cache.

Also I get this bug in Opera now:

You haven’t selected anything!

Well I DID select something Can’t vote at all now, keeps saying that message!

Also the other issue with the standard template isn’t solved yet!

[_ck_]

Ah I think I see the problem.

Unlike all the other browsers, Opera has taken it upon itself to cache the javascript request instead of actually fetching it each time (this is one way it cheats for speed).

Will add some code for a unique URL to force it to work.

okay, here you go, v0.24

http://ckon.wordpress.com/files/2007/08/bb-polls.txt?v024

should fix the issues with opera (and anything else caching)

I’ve also now added hidden near the top of the code a “test_mode”

If you change “test_mode” to “true” it will allow you do keep voting on any poll for testing purposes. You can switch back and forth to view/vote etc. Obviously change it back on a live site with members or people will be able to stuff the ballot box.

Keep in mind that previous poll data may have been made invalid by the bug in opera so start with a fresh poll. Do not keep re-using the old polls for testing with v0.24. I have not changed data structures but if the data got inserted wrong, it could be invalid for that topic.

(I’ll make a “delete poll” option soon for administrators.

The space it takes is trivial, so don’t worry about that)

[_ck_]

Yeah sorry about that.

I just checked opera on 0.22 / 0.23 and the ajax vote is broken on that. Works in IE + firefox though.

Opera still doesn’t have any level of javascript debugging does it?

I just realised there’s also a problem in that you can vote without anything selected which is something I somehow overlooked entirely.

[Null]

Hmm if I press Vote, nothing happens… If I refresh the page, the bar appears.

New tip:

If 0 votes still keep a bit of barcolor visible like:

[=========] 3 votes

[===] 2 votes

[] 0 votes

[_ck_]

That’s the default bbpress template right?

I have a very similar setup but not seeing any of that.

Can anyone else report on this issue?

0.22 will be out shortly, I have ajax voting done.

Gotta fix how it calculates totals for multiple answer votes.

[Null]

Still not good here (also deactivated all other plugins):

http://www.sourceskins.com/pollbug2.gif

Also plz remove the capitals:

VOTE NOW -> Vote

SAVE POLL -> Save Poll

No need to shout

I also miss a Cancel button when creating a poll

[_ck_]

I am pleased to announce that v0.19 now supports ajax-ish™ behaviours on all actions except form submits (saving data). The view poll results actually happens with a real update, if votes happen while you are waiting to vote and you go check, they will increase. I might even add an auto-refresh to it (every 30 seconds?) to freak people out.

http://ckon.wordpress.com/files/2007/08/bb-polls.txt?v020

You can also turn off ajax entirely in the settings and if there’s no proper javascript support it falls back to regular actions of course.

I’ve only tested on firefox out of exhaustion right now, so I’ll need feedback from other browsers. Ajax on submits will take quite a bit more research for me, never done it before and I’ve heard it’s problematic on different browsers.

@mazdakam, sorry about the float:left – I used it to try to make it behave with some other templates I was testing. I realise now how that would messup your configuration…

[_ck_]

The CSS is fully editable for the bar colours. You can even make the bars fancy images if you so desire.

I guess I am going to have to make a proof-of-concept to show people that it doesn’t have to look anything like my default. I can even make it look like polldaddy.

ps. @fel64 v0.17 now tricks bbpress in keeping the poll data completely unserialized until the plugin actually needs it (easy fix). It still has bbpress cache the data with the topic for fast loads. What’s nice about this is the topic title “[poll]” can still tell if the topic has a poll by just checking for the object without deserializing it (ie. $topic->poll_options) – oh it’s also completely compatible with any currently saved poll data and can deal with it already being unserialized, it just fixes it on the next vote

[Null]

Some AJAX could be:

When clicking vote, see the results (without page refresh)

When clicking see results (and not vote) and see the results

When seeing the results, but being bulid up and the bars move to their final width

Like:

Start

=

=

=

Fase 2

==

===

=

Fase 3

====

=========

==

Final fase, final status

======

============

===

But I wouldn’t recomment this, cause it gets irritating after the WOW factor is gone

[_ck_]

mazdakam thanks for the screenshot! It’s facinating to see it in Right-To-Left.

By the way, the newest version let’s you change the word “poll” to whatever the proper word is in your language (Farsi?)

I can see I also need to allow the word “votes” to be changed. Will add that tonight.

[howtogeek]

I agree with fel64 that a bb_votes table would be a much better option for scaling.

[fel64]

Can someone demonstrate what the polls are like? Has someone got one live to look at?

_ck_, you’re storing who voted for what in the topicmeta, right? You mentioned that unserialising stuff was a huge performance hit earlier, wouldn’t this be an issue especially with a large number of voters? What are your thoughts about implementing a bb_votes table to record who voted and how? (I’m not saying that’s better, I’m just wondering what your thoughts are on this because it interests me )

LOL! so why did everyone cry out for a poll plugin then?

I’m not sure everybody did.

[_ck_]

v0.13 adds better level control and a few other tweaks

note that default settings are now set to everyone can view, any member can vote, only moderator+ can add

(you can edit these of course, but just a caution)

http://ckon.wordpress.com/files/2007/08/bb-polls.txt?v013

[_ck_]

Installing it will definitely answer all your questions.

Many answers are yes. The current options near the top will give you an idea.

I designed it from the start to allow votes on multiple selections or single section – the poll creator can decide.

bbpress cleans up the topic meta on its own, so if the topic is deleted in theory the meta is deleted (but bbpress doesn’t really delete topics yet, it just flags the differently)

you can decide if polls close with the topic or not

you can also decide if the poll is shown on each page of the topic or just the first

only members can vote – I do not have any plans to implement non-member voting, it defeats the purpose and makes the code much more complex

Eventually I will do more than horizontal bars which will make a higher load (I am sure I can find an existing easy library). Bars are currently done in pure CSS which makes it lightning fast and completely customisable with colours and even rounded corners with images.

[Null]

Some questions:

Vote, more then 1 option possible option? (max setting like classic (just 1 option possible) 2 options, 3 etc

If a topic is deleted, does it clean-up the poll as well? (since a real deletion isn’t happening in bbPress, this wouldn’t be a problem for now)

What happends if a poll is deleted? (but topic still excists)

Who can vote? All? Members?

If a topic is closed, automaticly close voting aswell?

Results are in horizontal bars? Perhaps option to show them like a pie (or even vertical bars) Even better if a user can choose this when seeing the results:

Option result 1: ===============

Option result 2: =====

Option result 3: =========

Show as bars | Show as pie

Would like to see a demo, cause can’t test this at work

Greetz

[_ck_]

Okay anyone wanna see a prototype?

You can’t vote yet, but you can create a fake poll and see what it looks like so you can give me feedback and ideas.

I gave up on migrating an existing poll program after realising all the issues with custom bbpress integration, even from a wp port.

I’ve locked the demo to moderators (and higher) for now so even when you create a poll, no one else should be able to see it, or the options.

http://ckon.wordpress.com/files/2007/08/bb-polls.txt?v001

rename .txt to .php, install, activate

create a new topic of any sort and then look below the meta at the top for the option to create the poll

try creating one with a few options, it should be saved and then you’ll see some randomised results for a little colourful demo.

[Sam Bauers]

Isn’t this discussion more valuable than a poll? With polls people tend to vote first then read the thread. Maybe you can make the poll itself appear last, after the discussion. My 2 cents on your actual proposal I suppose. I’m not too interested, but good luck with it. If you get stuck, throw a question up in this topic and I’m sure people will help.

[_ck_]

You mean the one by GamerZ S010?

I’ve watched him improve that over the past year or two, actually sent some bug fixes and improvements. Still doesn’t do quite everything I’ve seen in other advanced polls but he’s got the multi-vote option so that’s good.

It uses the metadata so it would be fairly easy to convert, the only problem is his creation and management menus are all meant for the admin interface so a new creation routing would have to be written for the regular user interface. Then there is the problem of the trigger and attachment. I guess it gets attached to the topic-info box.

Now if we could only get him to switch from simple machines forum to bbpress we’d have a shedload of new bbpress plugins within a month

[annathea]

I took Bruno Torres’ converter script as a foundation, and re-wrote it to work with the Punbb database architecture. Also, added in a tiny bit of string clean up, since Punbb allows foreign characters in the username field, and BBPress does not.

Here’s the code to look at:

http://utopian.net/code/punbb-importer.phps

And in a handy .zip for download:

http://utopian.net/code/punbb-importer.zip

A few important notes, since this is NOT at all pretty –

1) It uses a lot of memory, so make sure PHP has access to at least 16mb in php.ini. If I had more than 20 minutes to devote to this, I’d look into that and try to improve it, but hey.

2) If you’re importing a lot of data, you may need to split up the resultant sql file into smaller files less than 2mb in size. Add this to the list of things I would automate if I needed to use this script more than once.

3) I am using BBPress integrated with WPMU and included lines for importing into the WordPress user tables. After I noted and fixed the problem converting Punbb’s lax, apostrophe-laden usernames to nice and sanitary WP-friendly ones, the script ran like a charm. Seriously, if I’d known it would be this easy I would have done this six months ago.

4) The forum-parent to forum relationship imported correctly into the database, but displayed a little funny, so I manually re-ordered the forum items in the database and massaged the template a little bit to recognize forum parents a little bit differently, more PunBB style.

5) A clean WPMU and BBPress install is ideal, but I already had ten existing WP users, half of whom had a user account in the PunBB data I was merging. For such a small data set, it was very easy to manually correct this by deleting the PunBB users and making sure that the imported topics and posts for those users pointed to their current id.

Hopefully this will be a good start for those of us looking to move existing PunBB forums to BBPress & WordPress. Good luck, and let me know if you use it!

[Sam Bauers]

bbRatings plugin allows the rating of topics and could probably be modified to allow rating of each reply too.

https://bbpress.org/plugins/topic/6