Many people want integration so that your users can log in to either bbPress or WordPress and not have to log in again when they switch from blog to forum, or forum to blog.
Others want ‘deep integration’ so they can use WordPress functions (like get_sidebar, get_footer and get_header) in their bbPress installation. Sometimes they want deep integration to make the two themes look similar or identical. Sometimes they want to be able to pull WordPress information into bbPress or vice-versa.
I integrated a forum with a blog one time but I normally have no use for it. It’s not worth the trouble for me, and I don’t need integration of users or functions.
For normal site-users it can be nice, that they’re logged in at WordPress if the’re registered and logged in at bbPress. The WP comment form is simpler for the logged-in-users, they don’t have to type their name, mail adress and homepage. If you configure your WordPress in a way which requires registration of commenters, there is an additional benefit for administration. There are always some hand-registered SEO-spammers, and it makes you less work if you have only one user database. The mapping of WP user roles to user roles in bbPress may save some work too.
For most installations, the integration isn’t needed. Always remember that the bbPress installation with integration is significantly more complicated than a normal bbPress installation and may lead you to incompatibility issues with future WP releases. Think about it before doing. I love it, but it is a little hard sometimes…
The reason for me asking this question, is the gazillion topics in this forum about integrating WP with bbpress. A lot of users have problems doing it. I tried it as well on my localhost, and couldn’t get it to work. I was also thinking what is the greatest benefit, so that’s why I asked.
I was wondering, if you integrate WP with bbpress, does that mean that plugins that work on bbpress will also work on bbPress?
Like, WP has this very cool, SEO for all plugin, you can edit page title, description etc. will this plugin work for bbPress topics?
If WP plugins don’t work for bbPress, then I really don’t see any great benefit for going through all that trouble of integrating…
There are some WP plugins which should work without any changes, those are the plugins which do not interact with the actual content, like google analitycs or super cache. Plugins which need the interaction will probably not work, or at least not as expected, but if you are willing to do some coding, in the long run it might be easier to adapt an existing WP plugin to be used with BB than to support two different plugins, one for each platform.
Integrating does not help WordPress plugins work on bbPress. If that’s all you’re looking for, you probably don’t need integration. If you’d like to ensure that WordPress plugins work in your forum, maybe you want a forum plugin for WordPress, not bbPress.
I was thinking that integrating bbPress with WP, doesn’t let you benefit from most WP plugins, why to integrate at all?
I’m strongly against deep integration. It slows down bbPress and WordPress, and most of the time (especially with bb1.0) it will create errors. If you integrate using the built-in integration settings, you’ll be able to share logins and user accounts between bbPress and WordPress. For me, it’s no integration (for example, forums that aren’t tied to a specific blog) or normal integration (for forums that are).
“why to integrate at all?”
I think I explained it:
1. so you can make the two look similar by using WordPress functions
2. so your users can log in once and be logged in in both places
Other than that, I don’t see a benefit either, and certainly not enough benefit to jump through all the hoops that are required to get it working.
The only thing difference from an bbPress + WP website is, compared to a standalone bbPress website, is dat the integrated version, CAN have articles posted that look like normal pages, with a comment form.
Now if there was a plugin for bbPress, which could give the option to post articles on normal pages and let users leave comments (ehm, replies) on it, I think a lot of users didn’t had to integrate at all.
It would then all depend on how the template looked like.
@chrishajer thanks for the plugin, gonna test it later
The integration wasn’t hard. I found only one theme that I wasn’t able to make look like wordpress because it was a complex WP theme to begin with, one with many WP header options. BBpress stand alone is great but if you have a site already and you looking for a forum for just help, like this one. Right now if you click on EXTEND, you will have to login again. It can get annoying especially when you don’t understand that this is more than one “software” working at one site. If your site is a forum site great. If your site is not a forum site, like THIS ONE. The forum is just for help. Plus, with WP you can create multiple pages, gallery, forms, etc etc.
I think webmasters that run a forum, and wanna have “normal” pages for information, should look for a different way, for creating single pages with a reply form, integrating with WordPress is not a good thing IMO.
The reason why I’m saying this is, is that WordPress is under a constant development, but bbPress not, atleast that’s what I read. If WordPress gets updated and bbPress doesn’t and if that breaks the integration, you’ll be stuck on that for a while for support.
WordPress + bbPress is not always easy, but sometimes, unavoidable…
The down part of that plugin is, that you can’t add custom titles/description for topics.
