You can now become a “fan” of bbPress on FaceBook…

http://www.facebook.com/pages/bbPress/37285629283

Go nuts!

[@johnjamesjacoby Keymaster 16 years ago]

I ask that you excuse the general tone of this post as I’m dealing with a next-door-neighbors dog that has been barking for 3 months straight morning, noon, and night, but at the risk of sounding like a snot, I think I’ll become a fan of bbPress once integration works correctly.

My opinion on this matter is that maybe your efforts could have been better focused elsewhere.

I know that we all need a break from the grind, but if one of my clients had an integral operation issue with my product, even if it was free, there’s an obligation to resolve it. Just because it’s the best thing out there doesn’t exactly make the lack of response or attention to the broken integration acceptable.

I’ve checked the trac and scoured the forums flailing my arms all the way, and so far no one seems to have figured it out or given a time-line to a resolution. I would settle for a quick and dirty fix or even someone that could point me in a more obvious direction on how to resolve it myself.

That this is what the bbPress development team feels is the most important thing to do just seems like bad timing on someones part. In a time where world economies are suffering, I think it’s probably more important now than ever before to stay focused on the task at hand, because there’s always someone waiting to do a better job at your job for less pay.

And lets face facts, everyone that is a fan of bbPress, is already here. I personally don’t think we don’t need another place to go quite yet. I don’t disagree that it’s a good idea, but maybe get a working 1.0 version out there first?

[@_ck_ Participant 16 years ago]

I have no use for facebook myself but johnjamesjacoby I think you are missing the point that bbPress is not even a 1.0 final product yet and should not be used on projects if that can’t deal with bugs and problems. You should never install a pre-1.0, alpha or beta product unless you can handle bugs.

bbPress like WordPress was not developed for the heck of it to give out for free, it was written for WordPress.com and just happens to have free source available.

(and you need to call animal control if there’s a dog barking for that long, most towns have anti-noise ordinances to protect you from that kind of annoyance)

[@johnjamesjacoby Keymaster 16 years ago]

Well, I’m not missing the point of final products, but WordPress is at version 2.7 and isn’t quite a final product either. The result of the community driven open source product is that pre 1.0 alpha/beta software isn’t really any more or less stable than the next “stable” version, because even if development stops for a moment to celebrate the next milestone, there is still more to do.

I also get how bbPress was introduced and how the developers have chosen to support it. I just disagree with promoting a product before it’s even usable. I guess I take more pride in my product than that. I run the trunk version of both WP and BBP on a relatively small website. I update them nightly. It’s really the best way for me to stay involved and report back problems. I just feel this integration issue is way more important than the attention it gets. It just seems to me like it’s never really worked right ever.

And I also choose personally to not believe that just because a product is graciously delivered to someone for free, that there aren’t certain expectations placed on the quality of that product. I could give someone a cookie, but if it’s stale or poisoned doesn’t really make me a good friend.

Also, the last thing I want to do is bite the hand that feeds me. I really love bbPress and WordPress, promise. I just find the development cycle frustrating some days.

(Off topic: We’ve called animal control, the police, and the condo association. The police say they can’t give her a ticket if she isn’t home, and when she’s home the dog doesn’t bark so they can’t ticket her then either. They’re useless. Animal control told me that if I do not have proof of cruelty in terms of the dog not having adequate food and water, they will not pursue the owner. The condo association is writing her their third letter asking her to correct the issue. Writing a letter is less effective than posting on a forum. )

[@_ck_ Participant 16 years ago]

I just disagree with promoting a product before it’s even usable.

bbPress is very usable, just not finished. But it’s certainly *not* being promoted. All we have is this support forum. If it was being promoted, it would be listed on WordPress.org/WordPress.com and there would be hundreds of thousands of users. bbPress currently has less than 10,000 active installs. That should change by this time next year.

bbPress was originally written by Matt to simply give a support forum for WordPress (WordPress.org). Everything from there was just Matt releasing the source. There never was a general plan after that until Matt started talking about TalkPress which is still very far away by my best guess.

bbPress’s greatest strength is it can be integrated in many websites easily and made to look like them easily. But it’s still a growing child and very young. If you are looking for a polished product, you need something with over half a decade of development like phpBB, vBulletin or SMF. The downside to them is they are very rigid and hard to develop for. bbPress is incredibly easy to develop for, I only learned PHP a few years ago and look what I’ve managed to do. Just imagine what a person who knew what they were doing could do

[@chrishajer Participant 16 years ago]

I will chime in with my thoughts.

1. Most people who find bbPress do so because of its integration capabilities with WordPress. I would say that is the most common non-problem question on these forums. How do you integrate the logins so you can log in at either bbPress or WordPress and the login carries across to the other side. Integrated; seemless.

2. The other common thing people want to be able to do is make their bbPress install look like their WordPress install. Loading WordPress inside bbPress is not recommended, but it’s the easiest way to accomplish including the header, sidebar, footer, etc. But, that seems to break other things. Regardless, I would say that’s the second most requested feature, how do I get my bbPress installation to look like a WordPress page. I know it’s not a WordPress plugin, but, this is what people want.

So, 1) integrated logins and 2) making bbPress look like WordPress. If it can’t do those things easily, then it’s just forum software. Maybe it’s better in the things it does and doesn’t do, compared to other forum software, but we should stop saying you can integrate bbPress and WordPress because it just doesn’t happen easily. So, it’s forum software from the people who make WordPress.

Also, WordPress 2.5 is recommended by bbPress for integrated logins. 2.5 came out around April 2008 IIRC.

You know, I thought the same thing as johnjamesjacoby when I saw this post: how about fixing what’s broken and leave Facebook alone. Then I thought Facebook doesn’t take much time to set up and it might be a good diversion. So, it’s harmless in and of itself, but, really, I would prefer to fix these two issues and then see the volume of support requests here drop off a cliff.

Just my $.02.

[@johnjamesjacoby Keymaster 16 years ago]

I think you summed it up awesomely. I know that I’ve only recently discovered bbPress, and that right now my contributions are minimal and certainly don’t justify the attitude that came out of my fingers. I do sincerely apologize for venting my frustrations, but Chris is totally right as far as login and theme integration go.

I graduated to WordPress from phpBB and the CHBB categories hierarchy spin-off of phpBB2.x. What I love about WP, I hate about phpBB, and what I love about phpBB, I hate about WordPress. What the phpBB team always did well, was catalog and document their code and coding guidelines, almost always and from the start. Even though different authors wrote different pages, the code always looked the same and worked the same, but WP and BBP aren’t like that. Finding and repairing WP/BBP issues is becoming increasingly difficult as there are functions hidden within functions that add one extra capability just to echo other functions.

If I could have a dream job right now, it would be to get paid to be the code janitor to the automatic teams code for the wp3.0 and bbpress 2.0 milestones. To refresh the codebase for the major revisions. Also coming from phpBB, I’m surprised to see WP uses so many echo statements all over the place. I feel the template engine that the phpBB Categories Hierarchy uses was just so amazing and worked so well that moving to WordPress felt like a step sidways.

Anyhow, I’ve taken this topic way off topic, and I don’t mean to vent my ill feelings in what should be a celebration topic. If you mods want to clean this up or split this apart I would totally understand.

Cheers!

[@sambauers Participant 16 years ago]

Setting up the Facebook page took about 15 minutes. It was just a whim. Part irony…

@johnjamesjacoby

The “deep” integration you talk about and have had trouble with is a known problem. But it is not the focus of my development time at the moment. There is also a chance support for it will be dropped completely if there are too many blockers leading up to 1.0, I’m not a fan of the method which is basically only accidentally a possibility at the moment. I’ll look into it but I have to warn you, it will be last on my list leading up to 1.0

Integration of user tables and cookies is a priority on the other hand, as is creating a full XML-RPC interface for those who want to pull data into a WordPress install. I know of only one problem with cookie sharing which has no solution at the moment (admins who login via WordPress have no access to bb-admin), and I will be working on a solution for that soon (it requires a WordPress plugin to be authored, which opens up the possibility to make a few other steps during integration on the WordPress side easier).

Integration only became a real “feature” of bbPress with 0.9 when it was brought front and centre during install and got it’s own admin options page. Unfortunately WordPress is a moving target and it is difficult to keep up with all it’s changes (especially when internally at Automattic we still use 0.9). It’s a little unfair to say that bbPress isn’t usable. We use it for some very big forums ourselves, all of which have some level of integration going on.

Anyway, don’t get me wrong, your comments are welcome here and I’m glad you are a real fan and not just a Facebook fan.

[@johnjamesjacoby Keymaster 16 years ago]

I am curious if wordpress.org uses a “deep” integration? I’ve compared the sources and it really appears that they have similar <head>’s.

Even if theme integration isn’t possible, I like where you’re going with getting the cookies and admin panels working cohesively. I would actually really like to make a plug-in for WordPress to integrate the bbPress admin panel into it. I feel like it wouldn’t be too difficult since most of the code already exists.

I suppose “unusable” is a harsh description, but considering the audience and what they’re chanting for, if it won’t handle sessions and can’t integrate the theme and functions, then what looks like your girlfriend actually ends up being your sister. If it wasn’t for the integration, we could use fluxbb or any other minimalistic semantically focused forum software.

Me wonders if it wouldn’t hurt to have two versions of bbPress. One stand-alone, and one WordPress plug-in. Hmms…

[@kevinjohngallagher Member 16 years ago]

I actually had the same reaction the JJJ had, and i feel that Chris Hajer did a really nice job in summing it up. My initial thoughts were, so Sam is posted missing for 2 months and when he reappears he’s made a facebook page??? (it’s hard to think that automattic got $29million in January to pay for sucj development but i digress).

Sam, i think that maybe you cant see the wood for the trees here mate.

I know, you know, JJJ and CK knows that Matt wanted XML-RPC controls in BBpress. Which is ofc all and well as he pays the bills. But as i’ve said before, there is NOT ONE post about it (request, bug, questions, comment) on this forum or on _CK_’s showcase forum, because it’s frankly of little or not use to any of us. That is not to say developers cant see it’s value in the long run, it’s just that when you say that WordPress is a “moving target” we kind of think… Yeah, but you’ve had 8 months to hit that target and instead you’ve developed a feature that no-one wants or uses. Heck you folks at WP dont use it (it’s THAT bloody useful).

I, and everyone else, understand the way in which this software came about. We also understand that it’s officially ‘beta’ though lets be honest you guys call 0.9 stable. But that’s not to say that maybe, just maybe, if you want this software community to thrive then listening in some part to the concerns of the community who are doing our best to help is a step in the right direction.

“Integration of user tables and cookies is a priority on the other hand, as is creating a full XML-RPC interface for those who want to pull data into a WordPress install”

So what you’re saying is that you have two priorities. One which has a forum full of people pulling their heads out and screaming over. And one that no-one is needing straight away. Why, oh WHY, is the later being worked upon first?

Surely, and i’m worried this might cause personal offence where none is intended, ANY IDIOT can see that logging in and registration is, i dunno, VITAL to a forum?!?!?

So why is it not the TOP priority?

And if it is the top priority, and its so unbelievably complex that making BBpress integrate with WP 2.6 or 2.7 in the 248 days since the cookie processing change was announced, is it likely that we’re going to have it fixed any time soon?

[@kevinjohngallagher Member 16 years ago]

” Integration only became a real “feature” of bbPress with 0.9 when it was brought front and centre during install and got it’s own admin options page.”

Yeah, but that was 8 months ago. It’s not like it’s a massive shock we’ve all just got over. 0.9 was stable 8 months ago.

“Unfortunately WordPress is a moving target and it is difficult to keep up with all it’s changes”

But in terms of a moving target mate, 1) its well documented 2) you work for the company 3) we dont need to keep up with ALL the changes, and 4) it’s been 8 months!

I know that may look like i’m labouring a point, but its more to clarify. If 0.9 nor 1.0alpha cannot integrate with wordpress 2.6 (which has had 3 betas and 4 point releases) in the last 7 months, is it even likely that we’ll get it in the next 7 months?

I, and everyone here, realises that wordpress is changeable, we accept that totally, but if what we’re saying is that BBpress will release 1 stable version ever 3 versions of wordpress (and it will only integrate with the first version) , then really, i think it’s time for me and the others to say goodbye.

“It’s a little unfair to say that bbPress isn’t usable. “

Yes, that’s true.

I think it’s best we say its… Not fit for purpose.

Let me show you how mate, with the blow coming from your own BBpress website:

“bbPress is focused on web standards, ease of use, ease of integration, and speed”

-https://bbpress.org/

See any of my posts last month bout how web standards are not being met.

And, ease of integration, really? I’m hoping that as funny as the irony/joke of the facebook page.

“our extensive plugin system”.

-https://bbpress.org/

Half of them dont work. Most of the Authors have long since left the sinking ship. 0.9 was a milestone, and you folks all did such a stellar job; but man has the side been let down, and infact gotten alot smaller. Where would we be without _CK_?

“is highly customizable.”

– https://bbpress.org/about/

This made me laugh too. Have you ever wondered why all BBpress forums look the same? No different icons, layout, DT/DDs, OL/LIs, etc. Every single one looks like the bog standard one, with the exception of the logo and border/background colours. This either means that everyone loves their website to be identical (hmmmm, no) or maybe hardcoding alot of things into a non template-able file is actually a stupid idea.

“Easy integration with your blog.

WordPress and bbPress are siblings, and they get along together “

– https://bbpress.org/about/features/

*cough*

“bbPress integration should work with most recent version of WordPress”

– https://bbpress.org/documentation/integration-with-wordpress/

Honestly, cant make this up.

And so the list goes on…

We like bbpress Sam, otherwise we wouldn’t be here. But currently, it’s not Fit for Purpose, and it doesn’t do what it claims to do. When you add into that the widening gap between WordPress and BBpress we as a community start to get a bit perturbed.

If you take away all those claims above, the claims that brought us to this site and to this software, then we’re left with a rather generic bit of forum software, that (plug-ins or no plug-ins) doesn’t have the same features or options as other software out there. If you’re a big multinational with millions of forum posts, then maybe that’s ideal, but maybe, just maybe, its not what everyone is after.

This is the crux of the issue. If you’re building something that is purely aimed at being the forum software for WordPress.com, then lets take down the bullshit on the website, and we’ll all skuttle off.

If we’re all helping Automattic in making BBpress an amazing alternative in to bloated forums, then you have to realise that living up to your bbpress’s own website’s statements of fact is simply the least we expect.

[@johnjamesjacoby Keymaster 16 years ago]

Could not have said it any better… If Matt was paying my bills, I would be the first to step up and commit myself to making bbPress exactly what the audience of WordPress wants it to be and still make Matt happy…

Matt, are you listening?

[@ipstenu Moderator 16 years ago]

I think it’s best we say its… Not fit for purpose.

Well that entirely depends on your purpose.

I agree with many of your points but you can make them of many other (if not all) bb sites. The majority of sites look similar because of usability. People are used to things working a certain way, and they expect familiarity (which is how many many people out there define ‘usability’). That’s why car design doesn’t change much. It’s not perfect, but people like it. That’s why people cried bloody murder over OS changes from Windows 3.1 to XP, but they got over it. Change is hard for users to accept. They don’t want to learn how to drive, again, they want to get on the road and talk about STEAM, damn it!

Yes ‘easy’ integration with your WordPress site is a misrepresentation at this time. But the rest? That’s all perception and usage. You CAN redesign the hell out of a bbPress site. If you want to. The base code IS customizable, there ARE a lot of plugins. These are facts. What you do with the options is up to you, though.

I don’t think bbPress is perfect, but after spending years trying to mesh my site with other forums out there, I’d rather have this than them.

(Steam is a joke from http://www.albinoblacksheep.com/flash/posting which is my favorite thing ever)

[@kevinjohngallagher Member 16 years ago]

Hi Ipstenu,

I’m going to disagree with you a little mate, and try not to take it off topic too much.

Yes, each adjective is subjective to ones perspective. “easy” and “alot” etc. can mean different things to different people. That said, lets look at them a sec.

“extensive plugins?”

There are just under 120 plugins for BBPress.

Over 1/3rd haven’t been updated in a year. I’d wager a good few of them don’t work anymore.

And the ones with latest comments 6-12 months ago, usually don’t work either.

Also from what i’ve seen about 1/4 of them are redundant or useless in 0.9 / 1.0alpha.

So we’re looking at maybe 40-50 plugins.

Does anyone think that’s “extensive”?

I know it’s subjective, but, um, well you can make up your own mind.

“You CAN redesign the hell out of a bbPress site”

To a certain extent i’ll agree and disagree with it. To redesign a bbpress forum so that it doesn’t look like this theme actually takes a bucket load of work. I’ve done it for 3 websites, and every time it’s involved me writing full on plugins just to output the right code, or W3C acceptable code, or overwrite the damned code thats stored outwith the templates (why is that btw?).

Can i stop and ask that? WHY does a theme designer NEED to write alot of non basic php code as a separate to their theme plugin, just to over write HARDCODED design output? Since when was hardcoding design output into the core of a theme-able piece of software a good idea?

What you can’t do with bbpress, is hand a Designer/ HTML coder your template files and expect to get anything back that’s not a flat output of a table. It’s a point I raised a while ago (and i’ll not bang on about it) but BBpress works at doing one thing. Outputting a flat list from a database.

In terms of your all forums kinda look the same , i have to agree in this instance. Most forums, ipb/vBulletin/phpBB etc do all look the same. but guess what. bbpress doesn’t look much like them. I’ve stated before BBpress’s horrific handling of parent/children with categories etc. is bloody woeful; but if you’re talking about usability, then bbpress starts to fall down a little.

What it outputs is simple, yes, to the user, but it’s not very perceptive. Finding a specific post or vital information (say that 0.9 = WP2.5 – you know , something you’d expect to be on the documentation or download page but is actually on page 3 of a topic started 1 year ago) , is a disaster. It’s reliant on the user

who posted the content using TAGS appropriotely and ofc it requires a better search function.

Lets not forget that ‘tags’ are fairly new, and really only web savvy people use/know about them. A huge chunk of this software’s cross-pollination and iteration is taken out of the developers hands and placed smack bang in teh hand of the end user (whom we know nothing about nor can reply on).

Just because something is simple/plain, does not make it inherently usable.

Think Boo.com.

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

Anyway, there are a number of things we’d all like to see fixed in bbpress. Some more vital than others. we’ll all agree and disagree on many, but my over riding feeling is this:

Our Clients, customers, friends, colleagues, schools, own sites, will at some stage like to, nah need to, be updated to the latest version of WordPress. it will vary from person to person, but at some stage you know that a wordpress upgrade is probably in the pipes.

But if you’re using BBpress, then you’ve been forced to hold off upgrading for over half a year. We will be/are a whole version behind, and surely someone can see that it’s got to be an issue.

I suppose what i dont understand is, and maybe i’m the only one, so please 100% feel free to explain it to me like an idiot.

if The most requested topic on this website is “wordpress integration”, and the singular fail point of the software is “wordpress integration”, and teh company that owns this software also own wordpress, and it happens to be your singular initial selling point of the software, um, well, WHY THE HELL HAS IT NOT BEEN THE ONLY PRIORITY AND FIXED IN THE 3 MONTHS SINCE 1.0ALPHA CAME OUT?

We’ve had other fixes, new code, new features, a facebook page (see i hadn’t forgotten), but yet without even a hint of when this base level feature might appear, we’re told it’s a moving target.

Please, explain it to me like a 5 year old, that hasn’t read the blog posts linking to the $29 million dollars investment, that also lead to Sam being taken on as a full time developer on bbpress (i.e. dont say no time/resources).

[@chrishajer Participant 16 years ago]

It’s been a few years since Matt’s been around here…

https://bbpress.org/forums/profile/matt

Member Since

April 4, 2003 (5 years)

Maybe at wordpress.org, eh?

Last post around October 2006:

https://bbpress.org/forums/topic/emoticons-for-bbpress#post-93

[@bradsucks Participant 16 years ago]

I don’t think the Facebook page setup stole any time away from bbPress development.

I’m a big fan (and now a Facebook fan) of bbPress and don’t want to come off as ungrateful. But I’m definitely concerned about how long it’s taking to get WordPress integration going. Am I wrong in assuming it would be one of the highest priorities?

I recognize WordPress has been in a state of flux regarding logins and I likely don’t know all the deep developer details, but it’s getting difficult to maintain confidence in the project. Will the 2.7 release make things any easier?

[@ipstenu Moderator 16 years ago]

I’m a big fan (and now a Facebook fan) of bbPress and don’t want to come off as ungrateful. But I’m definitely concerned about how long it’s taking to get WordPress integration going. Am I wrong in assuming it would be one of the highest priorities?

Sambauers agrees with you. How do I know? #1007

[@_ck_ Participant 16 years ago]

I’m not sure how many more times I can repeat that bbPress is pre-release software.

Automattic isn’t making a dime off it, it’s not being promoted, there’s no guaranteed support, all assistance, plugin development is completely voluntary. Every part of bbPress is subject to completely change and break overnight. There is no timetable, there are no feature or bug priorities. Assume you will be on your own.

If that bothers anyone, or they feel the need to rant about it, please stop using it asap and go get SMF – I am completely serious about that. I’ve sent several people about here to vbulletin where money was no object and they could afford it and all the extra hardware it requires when they grow. It has every feature you could possibly want after 10 years of development and all the bloat and price tag to prove it.

If you want forums directly integrated with WordPress and don’t like bbPress, you can go use one of the several discontinued single-developer plugins available for WordPress. They are all slow and buggy and break with every wordpress upgrade, but there you go.

Integration is tricky because it was not a priority for bbPress in the first year or two and there is no such thing as a “standard” wordpress install, everyone has their own weird configuration. The radical changes to WordPress security in the past year have not helped at all with integration ease. Sam is going to try to make integration easier in a future version by creating a plugin for WordPress that assists with the process (in fact a WP integration plugin has now become a requirement because of some recent changes with WordPress).

I suspect bbPress will become much more of a priority for Automattic in 2009 but there’s no guarantee about that of course. So weigh your options and either stick with it or move on but please don’t rant against the very people trying to help the project.

[@kevinjohngallagher Member 16 years ago]

I’m really disappointed in this response actually. _CK_ is without a doubt the person who carries the most weight around here these days given her exceptional and continued support and development.

Whenever we, as a community or an individual, say something that is negative about BBpress it is because we want to make it better. You said yourself in October that Sam wasn’t on the forums much, and as time goes on, mostly because of wordpress moving forward, BBpress has looked more and more stale/abandoned. I appreciate it’s a perception rather than reality, but surely you can see by the response that Sam’s first post in months was met with this reaction, is down to that feeling that’s been growing in the community for months now.

Its not an attack on Sam, as a person, in anyway. It not an attack on BBpress or its code, its people who read one thing (or multiple things) and then find them out to be not true. its people who read new posts daily about “wordpress integration”

“I’m not sure how many more times I can repeat that bbPress is pre-release software.”

We know this, we don’t expect everything to work, we expect bugs, and we’re trying to report them back and be helpful. But we’ve been reporting 1 particular ind crucial bug back for over half a year now, with no info being forthcoming.

“Every part of bbPress is subject to completely change and break overnight”

We get this too. But, um, it broke over half a year ago!

If it broke last night, last week, or last month then yeah i’d get it.

But it broke a long long time ago.

“there are no feature or bug priorities”

Sam said there is (read up).

You said there was last month (about XMLRPC – will find link to post).

“If that bothers anyone, or they feel the need to rant about it, please stop using it asap”

TO Be Honest, that sounds childish in my opinion.

And not what i’d expect _CK_.

“Integration is tricky because it was not a priority for bbPress”

It wasn’t? wow.

Ok, it wasn’t. Can we ask why?

Again, it seems like the most asked about thing on the forum. Not just in terms of how often people ask, or that fact that there is a sticky on it, or that it’s the biggest word on the tag cloud by miles or… (i could go on, but i think we all know the point i’m getting at).

“there is no such thing as a “standard” wordpress install”

Yes there is. Download wordpress. input your database and password. hit install.

Famous 5 min install remember.

There is a standard wordpress install!

“The radical changes to WordPress security in the past year have not helped at all with integration ease”

We get that _CK_, we do, and we totally understand.

But the change happened in WP2.6, then we had 2.6.1, 2.6.2 , 2.6.3 . 2.6.5, and now 2.7.

BBpress / Automattic have had 7 month (minimum) to realise and fix this issue.

I mean, and correct me if i’m massively wrong, but did security change in 2.6, or did it change drastically in every release? If it changed drastically in 2.6, 2.6.1, 2.6.2 , 2.6.3 . 2.6.5, and now 2.7; then yes i can see how that would be a huge issue and a moving target. but if it has stayed the same for 6 months (in all the WP2.6 releases) then frankly, it seems crazy to me that NO-ONE at automatic can be asked how security has changed.

“So weigh your options and either stick with it or move on but please don’t rant against the very people trying to help the project”

We’re not ranting against the people _CK_, there is nothing personal here.

We want to help.

We want to use BBpress, spread the word, fix bugs, make it better.

But with this HUGE issue over our heads, we can’t, and thats what we’re trying to put across.

[@ipstenu Moderator 16 years ago]

How is repeating that you’re not happy with integration, that it doesn’t work, that it fails, over and over again helping?

Ticket #1007 has been opened, by SAM and that means developers agree. It is highest priority and flagged as critical. So look, they know, they agree, and they’re working on it. Can they tell you how long it will take? No. And instead of doing what my office tries to make me do (make up an answer) they gave you the truth. It will take as long as it takes. If that doesn’t work for you, then you should move on to something else. Because those are your options, unless you want to write the code yourself and offer it up.

There are a lot of tickets (see https://trac.bbpress.org/report/1 ) and a small amount of coders. If you want to (and can) fix bugs, fix bugs. If you can only report on them, report. But once the report is there, badgering the techies to be smarter faster doesn’t help anyone. It pisses off the techs who are trying, but honestly, you can’t inspire creativity any faster than it naturally comes

So thank you for reporting that integration sucks, and that the website implies something that isn’t exactly true – bbPress .9 works with WP 2.6, but it’s not full integration. That should probably be modified to say ‘shared login’ or such. There’s a ticket up for fixing real integration, so that is something that the dev team is aware of.

[@sambauers Participant 16 years ago]

Kevin, the cookie and login integration that works with BB0.9 – WP2.5 also works with BB1.0 – WP2.6 or 2.7. The only issues remaining arise when you login via WordPress instead of bbPress, the simple fix for this is to redirect WordPress logins to bbPress, but I will be building a plugin to make this (and some other things) easier.

The “deep” integration issues where people load WordPress inside bbPress are still outstanding, and as I said may never be resolved and might eventually be unsupported. The XML-RPC functionality being developed is intended as a launching pad for people who need bbPress data inside their WordPress installs, I also expect that there will be some functionality written to get data going in the other direction as well. We are using this already “internally” with the BuddyPress forums component which communicates with bbPress 1.0 to provide group forums and eventually other functionality to that software. There is also already a plugin to pull some basic data from bbPress to WordPress widgets.

I don’t think you should blame Matt for XML-RPC being added either, I think it was mdawaffe who wanted pingbacks and I think I was the person who liked the idea of a complete XML-RPC server enough to actually write it.

Features tend to forge ahead when they have a champion for them and as the only major contributor to the code at the moment that kind of leaves it up to me as to what gets done. There has only been a small amount of thorough and reported testing of deep integration done by users so far who are actually trying to make it happen (see #972). That doesn’t exactly excite me to work on a feature that neither I nor the company I work for particularly need, especially when I already have a low opinion of the technique in the first place. In the same breath though, I understand that others may want it and I’m not actively trying to stop it from happening either. If someone fixed, patched it and put it in Trac, I would commit it with a smiley emoticon and a “props” in capital letters.

So in short, it needs someone to take the lead on it, if you want it done sooner rather than later.

Talking about community discontent by referring to the contents of these forums seems a bit disingenuous. These are support forums which by their nature invite people to announce their problems, all we can tell by it is that some people have problems with the software, sometimes. I’m pretty sure we aren’t getting every user coming through here. It’s not a gauge, and perhaps the dreaded Facebook page will help us find the people who don’t post here a bit more easily, perhaps it is something that can be used to gauge what the community mood is like. If anything it might give me a little comfort to know that a few people out there like what we’re doing here. My development time isn’t a zero sum game, I didn’t steal 30 minutes from my “writing code” time to setup that page. I need to enjoy myself while I work, maybe doing that helped me get through that particular day. At the other end of the tubes is me, a person. Hi. Nice to meet you.

On that personal note it isn’t nice to be blasted for something as cursory as not initiating topics in the forums for two months. I’ve been contributing to bbPress for almost two years now. There have been times when I’ve taken close to the full burden of support here, even before I worked for Automattic. Recently we got two community moderators who are very competent. _ck_ and chrishajer have been outdoing themselves around here. I have taken it a little easier for the past month while I focused on some other tasks.

I’m really only catching up on some of the more recent goings on around here, including your very interesting threads about the overall direction of bbPress. I completely want those conversations to happen, you make good points there too and I like the general direction of what you are saying, even though you make incorrect assumptions about some details. I wish I had been there in real-time to discuss it, but I will try to respond where I can.

Finally, bbPress is important to Automattic at the moment primarily as a tool for it’s own uses. Thus there is little or no promotion of it at this stage. If we gain some traction in the real world one day it might be treated like WordPress, but for now it will basically be whatever the people who contribute to it want it to be, and as usual when resources are limited, those who can write good bug reports or contribute real code will get their needs met first.

[@chrishajer Participant 16 years ago]

@Ipstenu: that ticket was opened two days ago. This topic was started three days ago. I’d say people bringing integration up here brought attention to the issue. This thread has been good for that reason alone.

[@johnhiler Member 16 years ago]

I was going to sit this thread out, until I saw some of the recent comments.

I understand that there is frustration over the WordPress integration issues (I share them as well). But I don’t think it’s fair or productive to lash out at the very people that make this community move forward (Sam and _ck_, among others).

The motivation and energy of key contributors is the most precious asset of an open source community, as they are what keeps the community forward.

The feedback and ideas of key users is also hugely important, as they tell the community where to go.

But when feedback attacks the motivation and energy of key contributors, I’ve learned not to just sit back. Because even if the feedback is 100% dead on, if the key contributors are hurt by the way it’s delivered… then as a community, we have been stopped dead in our tracks.

I think we all agree that full integration with a shared signin is a priority. If we unite behind that goal, maybe we can achieve it. I just think that the motivation and energy of key contributors is key to our getting there.

One last thought: Sam appears to work mostly on bbPress, whereas the integration work needs to be done on the WordPress side. So if we want to advocate for full integration, maybe we should organize as a community? If you look at the most popular “ideas” for WordPress, full integration isn’t on the list:

https://wordpress.org/extend/ideas/?show=popular

I am probably missing it, but I don’t even see full integration as a submitted idea here:

https://wordpress.org/extend/ideas/search.php?q=bbpress&forums=1

If we could agree as a community on the wording, I’m sure we could all vote it up. We only need 159 votes to get onto the list of Most Popular Ideas. Maybe that would help Sam’s ticket get some developers assigned to it.

I would rather focus our energies there, especially since I don’t believe that our discussions here are going to change the priorities of the WordPress development team (which is what we need to move forward).

Best,

John

[@ipstenu Moderator 16 years ago]

@chrishajer, I know it was a recent ticket. I posted about it above. And yet the folks who are complaining about it never say thanks for agreeing it’s an issue. Which yeah, pisses me off, I admit it and I probably was a bit more bitchy than I should be. For that I apologize. I was grousing, in general, of the fact that people expect miracles. This isn’t an excuse for my attitude, and I’m not gonna delve into how I’m on Sam’s end of this at work right now. It’s a case of feeling the pain and wanting to defend my fellow techie sorts.

To anyone who felt I was attacking you personally, I didn’t mean to, and please accept my apology. Like you, I feel strongly about things, and disagreements come when people feel strongly.

To the developers: Thank you for raising a ticket on integration.

[@_ck_ Participant 16 years ago]

For those that haven’t been around awhile, code development on bbPress tends to happen in bursts. There will be little or nothing or just trivial bug fixes for a few months and then BAM, Michael and Sam will post a whole bunch more code.

Just because you don’t get feedback on a problem from a developer doesn’t mean they don’t think it’s important, it just means they can’t make it a priority right now for some reason or another. Everyone would love bbPress to have every feature and every feature work amazingly but there simply aren’t enough people or hours available to make it happen. Every feature one person insists is absolutely critical is quite trivial to another person.

Last but not least, be careful what you wish for. If bbPress had all the features like the more mature WordPress does, it would also share the same number of problems, backward incompatibilities and constant changes. If they did to bbPress what just happened in WordPress between versions 2.3 and 2.7, I would not be making plugins for it anymore (because they all would be broken). Since bbPress takes a slower path, it tends to get things more “right” the first time around.

I think 2009 holds big things for bbPress.

Someone new to bbPress a year from now might wonder what some early adopters were complaining about.

[@johnnydoe Member 16 years ago]

may I ask what the beta part of bbpress actuall is? is the “beta” thingy core related or more 3rd party related?