Running –
– WP 4.6.1 with Divi
– BBPress version 2.5.11

My use case –
– Using BBPress to create Topic discussions around content pages. The nature of these pages is that users may want to find a content page from different directions.
– Example: consider two content pages, Apples and Oranges. Some people may be researching vegetarian diets (both may come up), Citrus fruits (only oranges will come up), or fruits from Washington State (only apples will come up).

My hope –
– create the ability to have a topic relate to multiple Forums.
– Using the above example, I would have a forum for vegetarians (both apples and oranges relate to this Forum), another for Citrus Fruits (only oranges relate to this Forum), and a third for Washington State produce (only Apples relate to this Forum).

What is the best way to accomplish this change in BBPress categorization of Topics to ForumS?

Thank you in advance!

Mark

[@barryhughes-1 Participant 7 years, 11 months ago]

Though I think I understand the gist of what you’re trying to accomplish, I’m not completely clear about how you see the user experience shaking out. That said, a natural way to group like-things together is to use a taxonomy (think tags and categories).

In this case, that might mean creating a new taxonomy especially for this task or it might mean extending an existing taxonomy (such as ‘topic tags’, such that they also work with pages and any other relevant post types).

[@robin-w Moderator 7 years, 11 months ago]

bbpress uses wordpress structure which works on a hierarchy, so a topic/post has a forum/post parent.

Would take a lot of customisation to make bbpress work differently to that – loads of functions would need total re-write.

Off-hand I can’t see how this would be achieved.

[@markognezeniq Participant 7 years, 11 months ago]

@Barry, thank you! Taxonomy was where my initial Google searches were taking me. In this case, I believe I’m trying to change the relationship of Topics to Forums. Do you have any additional direction or can you point me to content that might provide direction?

Thanks in advance!

[@barryhughes-1 Participant 7 years, 11 months ago]

The WP Codex is a great starting point for learning how to do things like register a custom taxonomy … it comes to mind you might also want to explore plugins like Posts 2 Posts (which would offer an alternative way to go about this task).

[@markognezeniq Participant 7 years, 11 months ago]

You’re the best, thank you @Barry!

[@johnjamesjacoby Keymaster 7 years, 11 months ago]

> create the ability to have a topic relate to multiple Forums

bbPress currently requires that all topics have some parent forum, but you are not forced to expose this hierarchy in your theme/design if you’d rather not.

Custom taxonomies are the way to go, and there is a goal to eventually migrate the “Forum” post type to be a taxonomy instead, now that individual forums can have their own meta-data.