[Ricardo]

Hi everyone!

Ive been playing with some forum software/scripts and i would like to ask the bbpress/wordpress coummunity some questions/opinions on this.

I’ve tested bbpress and so far i can see its a very lightweight forum system, it integrates nicely with wordpress, it doesnt have many functions the competition has but in my opinion most of them are really not needed and make the forum heavy on server resources.

Having said this here’s the questions?

1- Spammers – How’s the protection/management on this, is there a way of bulk deleting spammers or keeping them “at bay”?

2- Translation – i’ve been trying to translate bbpress but the info on how to do it is mostly wordpress as the process is very similar…so i looked in to online translation tools but none of them have bbpress as a project…not even Glotpress itself…i know there are desktop tools but for example i tried poedit and i only want to translate what the user sees not the admin panel, but it seems i have to copy every line to the translated section…there isnt a method to copy all strings and then edit the ones i want, i would take me a while doing it one by one and my professional life doesnt allow me, im sure more are interested in this and adding bbpress to glotpress would be a good idea as “everyone” could “chip in”.

3- search engines – some of the traffic to forums are made by search engines but unlike the competition bbpress doesnt have a method to manage them, the last forum script i tried was mybb and it has a whole section dedicated to bots and their permissions. Can this be overcomed in bbpress with a simple sitemap? the way i see it a sitemap only has urls not the content… if i keep the forum readble to everyone will the sitemap be enough, the way i see it the bot finds the url in the sitemap and then crawls the pages for content, i think this is enough.

4- Besides bbpress what other forum scripts would you recommend, personnaly mybb and fluxbb caught my eye and seem very lightweight, also i noticed the wp-foum pluggin as been forked into the WP Forum Server, one of the things i like on a forum is the ability to have a name based permalink like wordpress and bbpress, i find this feature very usefull as people can see by the words on the url (hovering mouse above link) what the link is about.

I know its a lot of questions but any info even if little is apreciated.

Thanks

[Ricardo]

no feedback?

[chrishajer]

1. Spammers – use Human Test to prevent them from registering the first time around. I can’t recommend Akismet because of the false positives and the fact that it doesn’t block all spammers.

2. Translation – not sure what to tell you. Translation takes time.

3. What needs to be managed with search engine traffic? If you have an XML sitemap, the search engines will follow it. If not, they follow links, unless you don’t want them to.

4. I don’t recommend anything other than bbPress, but only because I have never used anything else. The versions available now are standalone and in the future bbPress will be a WordPress plugin.

[Fernando Tellado]

Hola,

1. Plugins: Bozo users + Delete all bozos + Akismet + Skip Akismet (for admins and moderators) + Human test

2. bbPress is going to be in glotpress soon (I hope), meanwhile you can download the translation on your language made by the community

3. You can restrict access to bots with a robots.txt too

4. I recommend bbpress because is great for SEO, simple to use and friendly with your hosting needs (very light). It comes with some lacks yet (you cannot move a post from one forum to another) but it have a great future, much more when it will come as a wp plugin

¡Saludos!

[minervaa]

*(you cannot move a post from one forum to another*

I think I came across to a plugin which allows you to do that. Sorry can’t remember the name.

[johnnydoe]

@ chrishajer

can i keep my bbpress theme with your mentioned plugin as it is, or does that mean i have to start over with my theme again?

thx

[chrishajer]

You mean when bbPress becomes a WordPress plugin? I don’t think there will be themes for bbPress at that point. More likely you would use a WordPress theme and could use a custom page template for forum pages, if you wanted.

But honestly, no one knows at this point. My feeling is that a lot of the overlapping functionality will be removed from bbPress once it becomes a WordPress plugin. No need for integration because you will already have access to WordPress functions. No need for themes because you will have access to all the WordPress theme functionality.

[johnnydoe]

ah i see, thank’s chris

[Ricardo]

@ Chrishajer

Thanks for your advices

@ Fernando

About the localization, bbpress (1.02) its not available in Portuguese (Portugal), i wanted to translate just the “bits” that the user sees, ive tried poedit but its take time as i cant copy all strings from the “original area” to the “translated area” with one click, need to copy paste one by one, i installed glotpress and it copied all strings as i wanted with one click… all i have to do is edit the ones i want (what the user sees)

Off topic:

one question about glotpress….how can i change the admin password? I couldnt find any reference on how to do it, i wanted to make “my glotpress” available to anyone to contribute but without changing the password anyone can login as a admin and erase all the work done. Anyone know how to change the admin password on glotpress from the default one?

Thanks to everyone for your advices

[Ricardo]

Another question… take for example CK’s image upload plugin, wiil the images show up on future bbpress versions even if the plugin is discountinued?

Also will the permalink structure remain in future versions? i know search engines adapt to it but links from other sites will end up in a 404 error page…outside links still go to the forum but not the right page.

[_ck_]

None of my plugins (or any others) will be compatible with the next version of bbPress (1.2 or 2.0 or whatever they are going to call it to confuse people).

Also, none of the existing themes.

Basically think of the next version of bbPress as another program entirely that they just insist on calling bbPress anyway.

[Ricardo]

Thats what “worries” me, the plugins wont be compatible but will the images show up? If the plugin is not present will the images work? They’re uploaded to bbpress folder so im thinking that as long as they are there they will show up even if the plugin is not there.

Some dark times (or not) are coming for bbpress, i’m not sure if i’m the only one asking these questions when looking for a forum script/plugin.

I think from a user prespective we all ask ourselves these questions but there’s no info on bbpress future.

I like bbpress but i can´t see it on a medium/long term prespective, am i worrying to much about these questions?

[chrishajer]

If the software you install today works for you, why upgrade it to the plugin version? It’s not even an “upgrade” so much as it will be installing completely different software. It would be like switching from bbPress to WP Forum or some other forum plugin for WordPress. Would you expect your bbPress plugins to work with any other WordPress forum plugin? I don’t think so, and I don’t think you should expect any existing plugins for bbPress to work (or even be necessary, for that matter, when running the WordPress plugin.)

[lcray]

Hey all..

I’m about to start a hacky project to integrate bbPress into WP.. but am thinking of putting it off if it’s just going to be a plugin soon.

Have there been any realistic time-frames mentioned for when the next (plugin) version is set for release?

Thx

[Raize]

I would go with http://vanillaforums.org

I wouldn’t even consider any other software at this point

[KittysForum]

lol @ vanilla forums. I’ve been testing them for two weeks and would not recommend them to anyone.