I installed bbPress today and going through the installation I added a new database for it to use, then later as I went further into the installation it mentioned sharing one database. I’m unclear as to what differences it will make using one or two. It also seemed a bit scary to have specified the wp database to set up bbPress into.

If there’s some documentation that explains all this, could someone point me in the right direction?

[@chrishajer Participant 16 years, 5 months ago]

You only need to share databases to have integrated user logins. If you just installed WordPress, it’s probably 2.6, which is not compatible with bbPress at the moment, so you do not want to attempt this right now anyway.

The difference is, when you share a database, is that bbPress will use the wp_user and wp_user_meta tables for it’s users, rather than creating bb_user and bb_user_meta tables.

If you don’t care about logging in in bbPress and being logged in in WordPress, and vice versa, then you don’t need to shared the tables.

If you don’t do an integrated installation (sharing of the wp_users and wp_user_meta tables), then you can just use a different table prefix (by default WordPress uses wp_ and bbPress uses bb_) in the same database and not worry about a thing.

This is the best documentation I know of:

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

[@keress Member 16 years, 4 months ago]

blockquote

You only need to share databases to have integrated user logins.

/blockquote

Thanks for responding, Chris. I’m still confused about this. It sounds like, from the documentation like above, integrating the cookies will accomplish the same thing:

blockquoteIntegrating cookies allows your users to log in to either your WordPress blog or your bbPress forums and be effectively logged in to both.

/blockquote

I do want it to be pretty seamless for our users. I want them to only have to register once, and not to have to log in again when they cruise to the forum. On the face of it, it would seem like we need to share one database. BUT, that seems a bit scary, like the kind of scenario where I could wipe out our existing WP installation.

If that’s the route I should go, how do I go about it? Uninstall the bbpress I just created, then go through the installation again, except this time enter our wp database info?

I tried doing the integration last week for the two databases I have currently set up, and had to add a line into my wp-config about a secret key. With that, an error message came up instead of the blog, choking on that line. It was a day before I got wind of it, so it didn’t look very good.

I want to have a clearer understanding this time before I start messing around with these settings.

BTW, what am I missing with the markup here? It says to put the code between backticks `, but it’s not working.

[@chrishajer Participant 16 years, 4 months ago]

Backticks for code go around anything at all, and make it a monospaced font, like where you have blockquote above. If you want to use the html <blockquote> just type [blockquote] without any backticks (use angled brackets rather than the brackets I used to make sure it did not render.) I think you did something like backticks around the HTML for [blockquote] which is not necessary. Just use HTML where you need it and then use backticks anywhere where you want to show the actual HTML, not have it be rendered.

[@keress Member 16 years, 4 months ago]

Thanks. So am I right that to put everything on the same database I should uninstall the bbpress I have currently installed, then re-install, specifying the same database I used for wordpress?

Or is it unecessary, since I can get cookies to recognize users whether they’ve logged into wordpress or bbpress?