When I installed BBPress on a new site, I noticed that the default forum page (/?post_type=forum) gave me a strange title at the top of the browser (“Archive | ##:## [time]”) as if it were being dynamically generated every time I refreshed the page–and the sidebar widgets were my generic ‘page’ widgets and not the ones I’d explicitly set for the Forum/Reply/Topic pages from the Admin panel (the Reply/Topic pages display just fine; it’s only the base Forum page that’s giving an issue).

I thought I’d solved this problem by making the ‘Forum’ link in my header menu link to a generic page I made that I slapped the bbpress forum shortcode onto–and all looked well–but now in the breadcrumbs, if I click ‘Forum’ from a reply or topic page, I’m sent back to “/?post_type=forum” and left with the same issues.

Any idea what’s going on or how to resolve it? Why isn’t the Forum page accepting the sidebar widget I’ve assigned it, and why is it giving me a dynamically generated, non-helpful title?

[@clickmac Participant 11 years, 9 months ago]

bbPress is made to integrate with wordpress smoothly, the default template for bbpress forums is your themes own, for every page,category etc. If you change the default layout for your theme, then the template for bbpress would change
and what is the link to your site?

[@fencer_x Participant 11 years, 9 months ago]

The forum is located here. If you go into any of the subforums and try to navigate back to the top forum, you’ll be taken to “/?post_type=forum”, which simply isn’t cooperating when I try to give it a proper sidebar via the widget menu in the admin panel (no matter what I apply to ‘Forum’, nothing takes), and I have no clue why the title for it is displaying “Archive | ##:## [time]”.

[@clickmac Participant 11 years, 9 months ago]

that sidebar can’t change, unless you have a plugin or bbpress build the option in.
unfortunately…

but i used custom css to get rid of the sidebar like this:
http://www.trottyzone.com/forums/

[@fencer_x Participant 11 years, 9 months ago]

Why does it come up as an option to give a sidebar in the widget area of the admin panel, then?

The /forum sidebar changes just fine — it’s the /?post_type=forum one that won’t. And if it won’t change, that’s fine. I just want the breadcrumb to lead back to /forum and not /?post_type=forum — no one needs to see that page even.

[@fencer_x Participant 11 years, 9 months ago]

What I mean to say is I can access my forum via two routes: website.com/forum (a page I made the forum top using the shortcode) and website.com/?post_type=forum

website.com/forum has a sidebar I set with the recent topics and comments widget–I can manipulate this just fine and am glad to have it as the forum top.

website.com/?post_type=forum has a sidebar I CANNOT manipulate for some reason (even though I can alter it in the admin settings–it never takes) and displays a strange “Archive | time” title in the title bar.

The only way you can get to website.com/?post_type=forum is via the breadcrumbs–but I don’t want people accessing it via the breadcrumbs or at ALL. I need to either be able to remove it altogether or fix it to allow the sidebar to be manipulated and the title to display properly.

[@fencer_x Participant 11 years, 9 months ago]

Huh.

It seems I solved the problem without meaning to.

I changed my permalink structure from the default (to one which uses the page title), and the problem solved itself! The breadcrumbs now link to the proper title page, yay!

[@fencer_x Participant 11 years, 9 months ago]

Ah wait — nope, just a trick of the eye.

It seems changing the permalink structure gave me two similar looking addresses:

website.com/forum (a page I made using the shortcode into the top page of the forums)
website.com/forums (the default top page, linked in the breadcrumbs and unable to be altered)

So the problem persists, just with a different name :/

[@fencer_x Participant 11 years, 9 months ago]

Hmm, I was finally able to successfully change the sidebar when I realized that the top-page forum is being treated as an archive page–and not a forum page (even though there is a “Forum” entry in my admin sidebar panel, along with Topic and Reply entries so that I can customize the sidebars for those pages as well). I suppose this is the best stopgap measure I can muster for now.

[@clickmac Participant 11 years, 9 months ago]

yes this is what i said at the beginniing
“Hmm, I was finally able to successfully change the sidebar when I realized that the top-page forum is being treated as an archive page–and not a forum page (even though there is a “Forum” entry in my admin sidebar panel, along with Topic and Reply entries so that I can customize the sidebars for those pages as well). I suppose this is the best stopgap measure I can muster for now.”

glad it works 🙂

[@fencer_x Participant 11 years, 9 months ago]

Well, it doesn’t work. That’s the entire issue. The title of the page still displays as ‘Archive | ##:##’ where ##:## is the time of access, instead of just ‘Forums’ or similar. You also said that sidebar couldn’t be change, which patently wasn’t true 😛