[jangles]

Hi guys. I really love what I’m seeing here and have a great feeling about potentially moving over to this system! My needs – I have a wordpress based site:

I’m trying to decide between bbpress, simplepress and another solution to move a large forum. The problem I’m having is that I’m not sure what each one is capable of exactly. I want a system similar to this one that allows the following:

1) You can immediately post a question with minimal fuss – you can create a username, collect email, password can be generated and sent to the user (or the user can add the one they want.) The registration must be able to be entered into the main wordpress database – essentially shared user table. This might require an add on but it’s “Ask a question” text field, click “submit” and it takes you to the next page with the information I see now and an area to register a username as well as the rest of the post options.

2) Logging into the system logs into an entire multisite. I don’t mind if the user goes through the front door but I need cookies to be set properly so if i go to the wp front end, going to the forum also works and is logged in. Would be nice to login everywhere but I can put the front door login in a sidebar and problem solved methinks.

3) User profile integration. This is the one where I’m not sure happens here or how easy it is to do. For example, if I have a site at wp_4, can I have the forum profile list sync with that so I can have a link that goes to that site for the author’s profile. In theory this should work with a shared user table. I see you have forum profiles here as well as an additional link. If I have a shared user table it’s just a matter of creating a link and substitution username or userid where it belongs.

4) Is there a thread prefix system here, e.g. “question, comment, other” – or will I need to create one? Not a problem, just want to know. I see one here – is it built in or did you guys customize it?

5) Scalability issues. I’ve seen bbpress running quickly, perhaps because it’s also pretty sparse but getting better. simplepress, however, has always crawled on virtually any site I’ve seen of any size. Could it be due to shared hosting? Maybe but it always crawled on every site. You guys would have a bit more experience as to the post numbers where things start to change (I’m thinking of 70,000 threads, 210,000 posts or so I’d like to import.) Looks like others are using it with large numbers.

6) Badge rewards – addons. This is not totally essentially and I can create this with my team. Wondering what kind of a repository already exists and extensibility.

PS – originally I wouldn’t have considered bbpress but this new version is a major step up from what it used to be. Well done!

[Anointed]

Keep in mind, bbPress is at its core simply a WordPress plugin. bbPress does not take away from anything WordPress is capable of doing.

To try and answer your questions.

1. Yes. You pretty much have full control over the registration system just like you do with a standard WordPress install.

Want it open to everyone with no info collected? Sure it can be done.

Want it open but require some info collected? Sure it can be done.

want it open but require double opt in? That’s pretty much standard behavior.

2. If using a subfolder install of multisite then this is pretty much standard behavior. If using subdomain install, then yes there are workarounds. If using subdomain install with domain mapping… well that is a can of worms but possible.

3. Yes but requires some custom code. Not to difficult.

4. Nope, but keep in mind that topics and replies are simply custom post-types. Hence you can add in custom metadata or custom fields to each topic. Then add in the front end metabox inputs and your 90% there.

5. I personally have a bbPress forum with 300k posts, 45k members on dedicated server and have no issues. This would NOT work on a shared server. bbPress is a ‘heavy’ plugin using a lot of resources, but compared to just about any other forum system, including commercial products, it holds its own.

6. plugin territory – I believe Paul Gibbs has a rewards system for buddypress which could probably be reused for bbPress, though I have not tried it.

Remember that bbPress is just a plugin which follows all the WordPress coding standards. It is simple code to understand, clearly labeled and well thought out. Not to mention JJ is a coding ninja.