[nmschaller]

Hello,

I’d appreciate your help on this.

I’d love to integrate forums into my wordpress site, but how do I get rid of all the clutter in bbpress?

There is really cool community software out there like Flarum or the P2 theme that put the focus on the people discussing and on the topics, not on status infos.

That makes me wonder: How do I get bbpress to be more like them while maintaining the basic functionality of the forum software and the look and feel of my theme?

How do I eliminate:

– Notices from “This forum is empty.” and “Oh bother! No topics were found here!” That’s obvious when I open a new forum. I would post welcomes if that would solve the problem. But I have seen that this replaces the notices with even longer info that probably nobody wants to read.

– Further notices like “Your account has the ability to post unrestricted HTML content.” makes people probably think: When do I get to the posting form?

– “Maximum Length: 80” for the title – People will notice.

– Topic status: … closed. In an open discussion, who decides when a topic is closed?

These are just some examples.

I do not know how to edit functions.php. I have fields for Filters and Hooks in my theme options, but I would need clear instructions where to put what, or some CSS.

Is there any plugin with which I can deactivate this?

Thanks a lot for some hints.

Nicole

[nmschaller]

There is something else:

I already had bbpress installed and one of the reasons I was looking for a solution elsewhere is that I found out it had created user pages that display the forum activity of registered users.

How can I block these pages from being publicly viewed? The forums and the participants profiles shall all be private.

Thanks a lot.

Nicole

[Robkk]

How do I eliminate:

Notices from “This forum is empty.” and “Oh bother! No topics were found here!” That’s obvious when I open a new forum. I would post welcomes if that would solve the problem. But I have seen that this replaces the notices with even longer info that probably nobody wants to read.

You can create a topic. A super sticky topic should show above all forums if you want to have a welcome topic or a general rules topic, if that is what you want. Creating a topic in a forum should remove that notice.

What wouldn’t they want to read? Please explain more on this. Is it the Topic/Forum descriptions??

“Maximum Length: 80″ for the title – People will notice.

Well yeah that is the point so that they know the max characters to use in a topic, you can remove it but it would require a template edit.

Do you know how to use FTP , use a file editor like notpad++ , and possibly create a child theme?? I can what file to edit as long as you put the file in your child theme in a folder called bbpress.

Further notices like “Your account has the ability to post unrestricted HTML content.” makes people probably think: When do I get to the posting form?

Only Keymasters/Admins can see this notice. Regular participants cannot post unrestricted html content for security reasons. This is another notice that would require a template edit to remove the specific notice?? I can show you some CSS to remove all notices but you might find them handy. Do you want to remove all the notices?

Topic status: … closed. In an open discussion, who decides when a topic is closed?

Keymasters and Moderators should only close topics.

Is there any plugin with which I can deactivate this?

No.

How can I block these pages from being publicly viewed? The forums and the participants profiles shall all be private.

You can use this plugin , but it is best without BuddyPress.

https://wordpress.org/plugins/bbpress-members-only/

[nmschaller]

Hello robkk,

Thank you very much for your answers. They helps me get started.

I have found a way to hide most notices by CSS. Question is, can I keep it that way, or will there be any important notices not showing up later when the user is interacting with the form:

/* bbpress */
div.bbp-template-notice.info {
display: none;
}

div.bbp-template-notice {
display: none;
}

The bbpress pages cause me headaches. The original bbpress pages for forum index and user page all come out unformatted in my theme, practically useless. I have created a forums page by using shortcodes for forum index and topics index. That is well formatted and informative. But only with one level of hierarchy.

The users plugin you suggest is from 2 years ago; I would not install that. I am told again and again by my hoster and main plugin providers that old plugins are one of the greatest vulnerabilities. Isn’t there a way to block all access to pages containing mysite/forums/users/* in .htaccess or something like that?

And then I had to turn off the buttons for html because they are badly formatted, barely legible in white text on light-grey background.

I also would like to offer my clients a possibility to create a profile page with some background on themselves and the business project they are working on. I have tried BuddyPress but it is not for me. I cannot code and this seems to be necessary to effectively use BuddyPress. So, I have not found a good solution for that yet. For the moment I have chosen to go with the wordpress.com/gravatar profiles and encourage people to introduce themselves and their project in the forum.

Nicole

[Robkk]

I have found a way to hide most notices by CSS. Question is, can I keep it that way, or will there be any important notices not showing up later when the user is interacting with the form:

Well that is the thing , I would have to know what is important to you. The notice that shows when a users post is in moderation might be useful so that they know the moderator has to approve their post , but that will not be in til 2.6 of bbPress. Some plugins might hook into that , and some notices might be for post flooding and maybe some users might think their is a bug on your site if they do not know why they couldn’t post.

The Topic/Forum descriptions could also be removed with some PHP using this function and you can place it in a plugin like this.

https://wordpress.org/plugins/functionality/

It should be Plugins > Edit Functions. You can place any code snippet you might see useful into this.

You can place the snippet after the plugin information.

add_filter( 'bbp_get_single_forum_description', 'ja_return_blank' );

add_filter( 'bbp_get_single_topic_description', 'ja_return_blank' );

function ja_return_blank() {

    return '';

}

The users plugin you suggest is from 2 years ago; I would not install that. I am told again and again by my hoster and main plugin providers that old plugins are one of the greatest vulnerabilities.

It should be fine , it is a fairly small plugin and very well coded.

You can see the plugins main code functionality in the link below. There is also an empty languages folder and a readme.txt file also in the plugin.

https://gist.github.com/jaredatch/3868274

And then I had to turn off the buttons for html because they are badly formatted, barely legible in white text on light-grey background.

You can fix that with some CSS too. Here is a simple black background to fix it.

#bbpress-forums #qt_bbp_reply_content_toolbar input,
#bbpress-forums #qt_bbp_topic_content_toolbar input {
  background-color: #000;
}

I also would like to offer my clients a possibility to create a profile page with some background on themselves and the business project they are working on.

There is a bunch of plugins that add custom fields like BuddyPress some premium plugins add social features too , just like BuddyPress. The thing I am guessing you want is to highlight it on the Home of the users profile page with the forum role and user stats. This would require some PHP coding to achieve. By default the user can add a description and it would show up on the front-end , nothing too crazy.

[nmschaller]

Hello robkk,

Thank you for pointing me to the functionality plugin. I did not know that such thing exists. I also have a theme with filters + hooks in the theme options:

• https://support.woothemes.com/hc/en-us/articles/203106877-Canvas-Hook-Filter-Reference

If I knew where to place the code, I might not need the plugin.

Nicole

[nmschaller]

Hi there,

I am close to desperate.

I have given the bbp members only plugin a try. And after clearing all caches I can confirm that it works:
– forum index page: You have no permission to view this.
– single topics: redirect to homepage
– rss feeds (good to know that bbpress generates public feeds!): you have no permission to view this.
– with some occasional blips like 404 pages after logout.

But.

I also offer WooThemes Sensei online courses. They are protected, too. When someone logs in with the log in page created by Sensei, the “My courses” area appears. When the person then clicks on “Client forum” in the same menu, she is kicked out as a logged in user and gets “You have no permission to view this”.

When I refresh the “Client forum” page, the content is displayed.

What shall I do???

Nicole

[nmschaller]

Not sure, if this was transmitted:

I am close to desperate.

I have given the bbp members only plugin a try. And after clearing all caches I can confirm that it works:
– forum index page: You have no permission to view this.
– single topics: redirect to homepage
– rss feeds (good to know that bbpress generates public feeds!): you have no permission to view this.
– with some occasional blips like 404 pages after logout.

But.

I also offer WooThemes Sensei online courses. They are protected, too. When someone logs in with the log in page created by Sensei, the “My courses” area appears. When the person then clicks on “Client forum” in the same menu, she is kicked out as a logged in user and gets “You have no permission to view this”.

When I refresh the “Client forum” page, the content is displayed.

What shall I do???

Nicole

[nmschaller]

O.k. I deinstalled the members only plugin and installed the Functionality plugin.

With this and your code snippet, robkk, I was able to hide the forum/topic descriptions. I also found a code snippet to redirect all bbpress feed requests.

Now, I found this to hide the user page:

bbPress – Making Profile Pages Private

But I am wondering:
– Is that update safe?
– Is there a way to solve the same in functions.php or .htaccess instead of starting with a third approach to get familiar with? I have seen something like returning the user profile blank. Unformatted as they are they are useless anyway.

Nicole

[Robkk]

Hmm I probably need to contact the author about the incompatibility with the WooThemes Sensei online courses, or I will just check out what is causing the issue later.

Robins zip file does not contain a plugin, it is just custom bbPress templates with some conditional code.

You can email me about all these issues, and also since this topic is messing up too. I am going to be busy today though because of celebrating July 4th with the family though, but I will be there to help you out definitely tomorrow.

Contact

[nmschaller]

Hello robkk,

No need to hurry. This is not a matter of days.

I am reconsidering: maybe I am too worried about privacy. I just checked with a management innovation community I am a forum member in. My profile there is also public. And so are the management hacks that people post there.

In this context of creating a virtual room and a social learning experience for my clients, I am checking out various options. There is, for example a new plugin “Buddypress for Sensei” that requires both installed. BuddyPress again creates further pages like “Members” that cannot easily be set private.

So maybe, I should create the learning platform as I envision it and take a more relaxed stance on the fact that parts of the profile and member information are visible for guests.

Thanks a lot for your input.

Nicole

[Robkk]

So maybe, I should create the learning platform as I envision it and take a more relaxed stance on the fact that parts of the profile and member information are visible for guests.

Hey I mean it is your website you can do whatever you want to it. If you feel the information people are passing on your forum should be private you can make it private. The other solution that I thought of is similar to Robins code and that is to just put a conditional if the user is logged in to a bbpress.php file so it would only work on bbPress pages (and hopefully not mess with woothemes sensei). But this would require code editing/WordPress template knowledge.

https://codex.bbpress.org/theme-compatibility/getting-started-in-modifying-the-main-bbpress-template/

[Pascal Casier]

@nmschaller,

In the end, did you manage to get most of the things done ? Just for your info, I see that some things you request are in my bbP Toolkit plugin (https://wordpress.org/plugins/bbp-toolkit/) already and some others (like securing profile page) will be in there soon.

Pascal.