Hello,

My name is Matt Conway, just joined the site. I would like to know how easy it is to run a bbPress forum. The only thing I’ve ever used before is iWeb; I enjoyed it’s simplicity but I’m not stupid and I know there will be a learning curve.

Our local council here are planning to redevelop the town centre with high rise apartments. There is a lot of local anger about this and I think a forum is the best way to get people talking. I’d like to know: Is it within the bounds of someone with no programming knowledge, but a desire to learn, to set up and moderate a bbPress forum?

I would start as simply as possible, but over the course of time would like to do the following things:

1 – Run the forum from a name I have just registered: http://www.walthamforestforum.org

2 – Make users register before being able to post – add someway to deter spammers

3 – Make it possible for users to add photos

4 – Make it possible for users to vote on issues

5 – Make it possible for users to sign a petition (could be just a link to another petition site)

6 – Make it possible for users to “thumbs up” or “thumbs down” other people’s comments

6 – Start a diary of upcoming local events (maybe best in another part of the site?)

7 – Start a sub-forum that lists local tradesmen, shops etc; where users can add to an accumulated star rating and add comments on the tradesmen’s individual thread

How much of this is possible on bbPress? Should I instead be looking at phpBB?

Thanks, Matt.

[@robin-w Moderator 9 years, 9 months ago]

bbpress uses wordpress as it’s host and using a combination of the two you should be able to achieve all this

1 yes
2 yes
3 yes
4 probably
5 lots of wordpress petition plugins
6. https://wordpress.org/plugins/bbpress-like-button/
6 (again) lots of diary systems within wordpress
7 would tend to do this within wordpress

[@ebunny3k Participant 9 years, 8 months ago]

You should instead use phpbb, musch more options available, including categories/subforums option what bbpress does not have. <- years later and they still do not have so simple thing like that. crazy.

[@robin-w Moderator 9 years, 8 months ago]

@ebunny3k maybe fair comment, but not sure why you’re lurking on here if you feel that bbpress is such a bad product 🙂

[@robkk Moderator 9 years, 8 months ago]

@ebunny3k

are you talking about categories/subforums like this.

[@mattconway Participant 9 years, 8 months ago]

I did go with bbPress, http://www.WalthamForestForum.org is now up and running, and very happy with it by and large. However, I still haven’t successfully answered question number 6 above. The bbPress like button plugin linked to in the first answer would be perfect if it worked, but it doesn’t (administrators can like, normal users can’t). I just need a simple thumbs up option so users can show their agreement with other peoples posts (thumbs down as well would be even better).

The $150 being asked for bbPress functionality on RatingWidget is just far more than I can afford. Not saying it’s not fairly priced but it does far more than I need.

Are there any other options? Could the programmers possibly consider making it a standard part of bbPress? It does seem like such a standard function nowadays.

[@robkk Moderator 9 years, 8 months ago]

i think any rating plugin should work with bbPress but you would have to manually configure most of them in the bbPress templates in your child theme.

you can follow the very bottom of this topic and use the thumbs rating plugin.

you could probably use CSS to make the blocks actually look like thumbs or something.

Request: Voting

there is also this from a really popular developer , usually some of his plugins are good for bbPress.

https://wordpress.org/plugins/wp-postratings/

random list of post rating plugins

wordpress.org/plugins/voter-plugin/
wordpress.org/plugins/voting/
wordpress.org/plugins/kento-vote/

Are there any other options? Could the programmers possibly consider making it a standard part of bbPress? It does seem like such a standard function nowadays.

This really looks like it should be plugin territory, there are already so many options to choose from WordPress plugins and some quite different , its kind of good for people to have options on this.

[@novakedward Participant 9 years, 2 months ago]

@robkk I am trying to set up exactly what you have a picture of, could you help me out?

[@tecca Participant 9 years, 2 months ago]

@novakedward

Give this a shot: https://bbpress.org/forums/topic/forums-index-in-the-same-layout-as-other-bb-software/#post-141442

[@novakedward Participant 9 years, 2 months ago]

@tecca Thanks it was exactly what I needed.