I am really confused about how bbPress works…

I have taken over a website from a previous administrator. I replaced the WordPress site completely with a new one I developed. There was already a bbPress forum (a whole separate SQL database), so I just added a menu item to my site that linked to the existing forum directly. http://www.oakridgeoutlaws.org

Now I need to work on customizing the forum. Since I originally developed my new WP site on my own computer using WAMP I thought I would add bbPress there first to play around with it. So, from WordPress, I added the bbPress plug-in and followed the the instructions. I can make a forum show up on a page, but it is not like what is on the public server. On the real website there is a whole other SQL database for the forum. On my local site, there is just a bbpress folder in my plugins folder.

I saw a comment on another thread here that said “bbPress is not a WordPress plug-in. It is a stand-alone software.” What am I missing? What did I download when I added a plugin called bbPress?

Thank you for putting up with a confused newbie.

[@robkk Moderator 9 years, 4 months ago]

bbPress was a standalone software for forums in the 0.1 to 1.0 era, now with version 2.0 and on it is a WordPress plugin.

The plugin version also includes an importer for the v1 standalone version that might be helpful.

[@egb123 Participant 9 years, 4 months ago]

OK thanks. So on the public site I should add the bbPress plugin to WP and then use the importer to move all of the existing forum posts and user info, etc to WP? Should I import the old forum first and then change the formatting in WP or do I create a new forum in WP the way I want it to look and then import the data? Or does it make any difference?

Thanks.

[@robkk Moderator 9 years, 4 months ago]

You might want to test the importer on WAMP first to get the feel of how it works and is set up.

You should be able to style your forums before or after. You are just moving data over while importing.

[@egb123 Participant 9 years, 4 months ago]

Thanks. I will try that.