these popped up in my alerts:
bbPress plugin project saw serious progress during Google Code-in
2011: A New Kind of Forum Software is Born
It’s a shame that topic split/merge had to wait until the plugin version to be done in the API and not in the previous few years for the standalone.
Neither of the writeups mention the impact of database queries and the size of the codebase so I will have to explore that next week. I suspect they are high. It’s easy to pile on features but hard to make them efficient.
ps. Gautam is only 15 ?! Wow, amazing work for such a young age.
And these popped up in mine – http://gaut.am/2011-a-new-kind-of-forum-software-is-born/comment-page-1/#comment-2667
[2791] [2792] 
Edit: Oh.. I read the rest of your comment later..
Well, yes the query count has gone up, there would have to be an optimization round.
Thanks for the age comment, though! 
Most certainly agree Gautam, you are accomplishing a lot for your young age, your future prospects should be very good indeed!
@Gautam 15? Simply brilliant! If only I could breath code like you do.
Unfortunately, I just break, test and report things and that’s all.
The query count is high and needs and audit. We’re using internal WP functions for 99% of queries, so we thoroughly reap the benefit of the WP object cache.
The size of the codebase is largely due to the amount of phpDoc and inline documentation. I expected there to be a lot of eyes on this code from both bbPress and WordPress audiences, so almost everything is described in detail.
The size of the codebase is largely due to the amount of phpDoc and inline documentation. I expected there to be a lot of eyes on this code from both bbPress and WordPress audiences, so almost everything is described in detail.
And I certainly appreciate it, but is there an easy way to minify it then?
There is no need to minify PHP comments, they are dropped by opcode caches.
However reducing query count is not going to be easy.
I’ll do a 3rd party analysis on the queries (and file count) next week or so, I suspect there is going to be little that can be done to reduce the load because of how this is now being done. It is likely any bbPress plugin install is going to have to be heavily cached on any reasonably active site, just like WordPress now absolutely requires a complicated cache like W3 Total Cache.
But what people don’t realize is you cannot cache an active forum like a blog, they work very differently. Blogs are write-once, read many times and then the comments can be isolated with periodic updates. But on a forum it’s write-many-times and constantly changing. So there will always be many cache misses and the mysql engine will get a huge workout.
Try using WP3 these days on an active site where there are cache misses, the server will fall apart. You cannot rely on the miracle of caching and ultra-fast hardware to get around fundamental design problems.
Try using WP3 these days on an active site where there are cache misses, the server will fall apart. You cannot rely on the miracle of caching and ultra-fast hardware to get around fundamental design problems.
Too true.
So fundamentally the problem is with WordPress’ design?
loving the dev going on here…I’ve been playing with the plugin on my local site and managed to get a lot working…including an import (albeit hacked to bloody hell) from http://www.iteisa.com/phpbb2bbpress. All my posts have been imported ok (still working on replies) and the counts all work on the forum front page…but if I click on a particular forum I get the, “Oh bother! No topics were found here! Perhaps searching will help.” Even though it says there’s 168 posts…
If I search for a post, or click on a user and show all their posts they show up fine.
This isn’t the case if I actually post something…they show up fine…it’s the imported stuff. Nothing I can see in the DB shows me that I’m missing something (although I obviously am…)
Any pointers?
Cheers,
Brian
mobious74: Try going to Settings -> Permalinks and press save changes.
Gautam: no effect…using /%category%/%postname%/ and have tried /%postname%/
I’m just a little confused about how the themes work for this. Does there need to be a separate bbpress theme for each wordpress theme you want to use? Or can you use a default bbpress theme that will inherit the wordpress theme in use?
Along the lines of what CK is talking about, the issue is one of DB structure. WordPress only gives us post_parent to help with post relationships, which leaves us with postmeta for everything else. That’s forces us to rely on the object cache and to try to predictively preload data that would otherwise be queried selectively and only as needed. A fully tricked out install with widgets and sidebar can fore the query count into the hundreds on pages like the user profile, with the object cache still missing quite a few.
Compared to bbPress 0.9, the current incarnation of the plugin will be abysmal query wise. Caching helps tons with this on the reads end of things. I’ve gotten it down to 1 cache miss on most pages, with auto cache refresh on writes. But this is one area where more eyes will be helpful. Like CK said, there probably isn’t a whole lot that can be optimized but I’d love to see it.
@ Cashman
The bbpress plugin includes a standard theme which should work for most themes I suppose.
But if you want a perfect theme that fits you’ll have to make a child theme of the wordpress template your using atm.
I know y’all are in super-dooper alpha state right now but be sure to put on your list to test the plugin under windows (try the 1 minute xampp lite install for testing).
I’m not even sure where to start with some of the errors, I’ll try to debug.
ps. can an admin please turn off the hash-to-trac link plugin that’s running on bbpress.org? It’s incredibly annoying because it makes no effort to determine if it’s really a ticket reference.
I test on windows, to some extent, with EasyPHP.
@_ck_ – Will do. I have a VM I can test on when I get back from Tybee next week, and will see about getting anyone on Windows to play with it. I know when I started, I was using IIS on Windows 7 and it was working fine, but much as changed since then.
I don’t test with IIS… We could always put a call out on the hackers list if needed.
I have been testing the bbPress Plugin on Windows, well I was up until about a month ago when I hit a few PC problems, but like JJJ said … much has changed since then!
Will “highlighting” of threads with new posts since your last visit be included? I’m running the stand alone bbPress right now, using the Unread Posts plug-in, which works okay, but it only seems to notify you of threads with new posts that you’ve posted in, instead of any thread with a new post since your last visit.
This ia big THANKS for the ninja-awesome inline documentation. It makes reading the plugin files significantly easier
Also, I see above that there may be an alpha released in the next week or two. Do you think that would be suitable for running on a live site? I’m not adverse to having to fix bugs and problems here and there, so long as I don’t find myself stuck eternally on some old version without a semi-easy upgrade path. I don’t mind minor upgrades on upgrading, templates malfunctioning etc., but losing usernames, passwords and/or posts/topics would be quite disastrous.
I’m contemplating launching a forum within the next month and would rather use some semi-dicey alpha software than having to use one software for a few months, then upgrading to bbPress once it’s more stable.
Sorry to just barge in and shout out a random question, this has probably been answered before:
Will the plugin come with a front-end login/signup form? Or will it make use of existing WP plugins?
I’m running the latest version in a test environment, and this function seems to be missing – or is it me who missed something?
Thanks
@rootside – Placeholders for the login and registration pages are in the current bbp-twentyten theme, but they don’t work yet. The goal is for the bbPress plugin to include these pages as WordPress page templates and short-codes, to allow for maximum flexibility in configuring your site.
Any idea when we’re going to see a release beat or otherwise? It’s cool that it’s get updated a lot but it makes doing anything awkward.
