[L Croonquist]

Let’s say I have a fresh WP 3.2.1 and NO plugins installed.

In fact, everything is default from a fresh installation.

I am lead to understand that bbPress is an enhanced version of the built in forums in BuddyPress. In order to have a web2.0 type forum with sharing and favoriting and comment-post-topic interaction you need to add bbPress.

First I install BuddyPress 1.5.1.

Then I install BuddyPress Template Pack 1.2 to assist in moving over the BuddyPress pages to my site.

Then I go to WP settings and allow users to register. There are some new additions to the drop down menu here so I select the default user role and set it to “member” this should be sufficient to allow users to post new topics.

Next I run though the BuddyPress Template Pack wizard (with all defaults) and end up with a working BuddyPress site that is integrated into my theme.

Works good.

There are no groups or forums yet, and one member ‘admin’.

I now have a basic forum where a user can register and create a topic, reply to topics etc.

My aim here is to have ONE forum (one) that has user-created posts that are also integrated into the forum for discussion as topics, the user created topics are actually posts with full text and featured image and all that jazz.

So on the front end I now have a menu with the default BuddyPress pages (they have been created by BuddyPress) activity — members — groups — forums — register

Now what I want to do is add the ability for a registered and logged in user to create a post that becomes a topic in the forum. Sounds simple right?

So to add this functionality, I download and install bbPress 2.0.

All it seems to have done is add three new areas to my WP Admin left margin:

forums — topics — replies

Moving on I want to install bbPress Topics for Posts 0.6

According to this plugin creator, this plugin is supposed to Add an option to the Discussion meta box to use a bbPress topic instead of WordPress comments, and displays that topic beneath the post on your site.

So as of right now I have 4 (four) plugins installed, and I need another plugin for users to be able to add posts, then they can see the bbpress post to topic option and integrate it into the forum themselves.

Once I find this plugin, I will continue this thread.

RTBOP