[cacarlyle]

Hi there, first of all, sorry if this is something everybody knows, i did try to google it but came up with only things that aren’t the same as what i’m looking for.

What i would like is for an image preview of some sort to come up within the post or reply, in bbpress, whenever somebody pastes a URL. Ideally it should only happen for the first URL in each post or reply, and ignore any subsequent URLs, but if that’s fiddly then just something that will generate previews for any URLs posted would be very helpful.

Here is an example of it not happening: https://yesbook.scot/forums/topic/the-greatest-argument-of-all/

That’s me posting an OP in my bbpress forum, and as you can see i pasted some text from a web page, and then a URL link to the page. Now what would be ideal is if the post also automatically showed a picture, drawn from the URL, inline within the bbprss post, in the same way that facebook pulls a picture in when you post a URL on their site.

Is there a plugin that does this, or some simple tweak i can make to the config files of the site to make this happen? I’m not totally ignorant of how to use php and CSS but for the sake of argument, please assume that i am, because it isn’t far from the truth!

Thanks in advance for any assistance you can provide.

It is currently WordPress version 5.1 and bbPress version 2.5.14-6684
I am using DI Business Responsive theme, though i don’t think that makes much difference for this particular question.

[cacarlyle]

Hello again, right well here’s a plugin that purports to do EXACTLY what I want… Except its for posts in WordPress, NOT for bbpress.

URL-Preview-Box

I feel like somebody here might know how to make this work in bbpress as well. I also feel like somebody must have already implemented this on their own forums and knows how to do it. Can anyone assist at all please? Thanks!

[cacarlyle]

You know what’s even more irritating is that when I pasted the link into my reply above, guess what happened… Yes, that’s right, the URL generated a PREVIEW with exactly the sort of information I want my own forum to generate whenever someone pastes in a URL.

So THIS FORUM actually has the behaviour I want. Can someone please tell me how this is implemented and how a relative coding dunce such as myself can make this happen on my own forum? Thank you!

[Robin W]

this site only does this for the wordpress and bbpress sites.

I’ll take a look at the plugin above soon, but tied up with other stuff at the moment

[cacarlyle]

Thanks, @robin-w, much appreciated.
I’ll continue to try to figure it out in the meantime (but really, my web-dunceness is a hindrance!)

[Robin W]

if you do figure it, please post back and let me know before I duplicate effort 🙂

[Dale Reardon]

Did anyone figure this out?
Also when an url is posted into a topic or reply I would love BBPress to automatically turn it into a link using the title of the referenced page as the anchor text – I have seen this done with plugins for BuddyPress but not BBPress.

Dale.

[Dale Reardon]

Just found a plugin that does it for BuddyPress but presume it won’t work for BBPress out of the box:

rtMedia Activity URL Preview

[Robin W]

I see no reason why it shouldn’t – have you tried it?

[angrywarrior]

It only works in the BuddyPress wall feed. 99.9% certain that it is not compatible with BBpress. I’ve used it in a past project so I’m pretty certain.

[Robin W]

thanks for the info

[Dale Reardon]

Hi all,

I have now spoken with the devs of RTMedia plugin that I referenced above.
They confirm it doesn’t work with BBPress at the moment but they have a focus on both BuddyPress and BBPress and said it was a good idea and will incorporate it into the next update of that plugin addon.

So we will have a solution fairly soon.

Dale.

[randrcomputers]

Funny reading this as i had to install Disable Embeds plugin to STOP the previews in bbpress/wordpress/buddypress as it made a mess to my format and overlapped everything.i can only assume my Kleo theme caused it to “work” in bbpress. So maybe try a different theme?

[angrywarrior]

No @randrcomputers???

How about edit the css styling and get it right instead?

Changing the theme will not make much difference. You need to custom code the css to fit things to your liking.

If you do not know how to do that and code it yourself, then I suggest that you hire developer to help you code it.

[randrcomputers]

@angrywarrior
For my site I didn’t want it and I was just commenting that I had to remove it with a plugin. That is all I was saying. I prefer just a link don’t need preview. That’s why I thought it was funny. Sorry didn’t mean to hijack your thread

[muranomidwest]

Hmmm – for anyone thinking that rtMedia was actually doing anything for bbPress – they are not. They’re still “considering it” and the plugin offers no functionality for bbPress users that isn’t mediated by BuddyPress – free, paid or bundled with a theme. Zip, zero, nada, nothing. Do not be deceived by bbPress references in their plugin descriptions. After some conversation with them about it, I would be surprised if they ever add bbPress support.

Given the bad decision from BP upfront to use their own database, coupled with the fact that there are virtually no BuddyPress plugins left that really work in the modern WP world, it was silly for rtMedia to hitch their wagon to this the black star that is BuddyPress.

bbPress has plenty of limitations and should have kept up better, but it generally plays nice with the rest of the WP world. Its universe is infinitely larger at this point.

[muranomidwest]

@cacarlyle – did you find a solution without building it yourself? Given that the entire world experiences link previews every day, it is rather stunning that there this isn’t universally supported throughout every WP app, kinda like bold and italics – except that image previews like this are actually used more frequently than those text stylings these days 😉

[Robin W]

bbpress doesn’t have visual editor as default

but this link to a visual link plugin might catcah attention if more request it to the plugin authirs by adding to the post

https://wordpress.org/support/topic/need-to-help-use-it-available-in-bbpress/

[Chuckie]

I do one of two things ….

1. I upload images to IMGUR and simply paste the URL into the topic. It magically turns into a preview when you hit Submit.

2. I use the TinyMCE toolbar. I use a couple of well known and established plugins to include the Insert Image button. What you do is upload the image to your webspace (it must be on your forum domain). Then when you insert image you paste the URL. You know if it will be OK because it tells you the dimensions. When you click OK you will see in in the TinyMCE visual editor.

I am more than happy with both experiences. My only concern is that the TinyMCE authors are only supporting version 5 of their toolbar from January 2021 and WordPress uses version 4.x. There is no agreed migration plan to get WordPress working with version 5 of the toolbar. I don’t know long term ramifications of that.