These two are in need of a serious overhaul and I lack the skills to do it. Please read this text and let me know if you agree or if I’m looking for something nobody else needs?

Lets look at the recent replies widget:
If I have the widget show the last 10 replies, and the last 10 replies happened to be on the same topic, you only see that one topic, everything else is drowned out.
The good thing is, if I click on a reply, I jump straight to that reply, not to the beginning of the topic.

Lets look at the recent topics widget:
Sorting by newest topics, this is pretty neat but I wish one could also show the specific forum with each recent topic shown. Clicking a topic sends you to the beginning of that particular topic, which is cool, after all its a new topic.

Now to get what I was looking for with regards to the recent replies, I am now using the recent topics widget but sorted by topics with recent replies. Except that it doesn’t list the latest poster but the thread creator and it links to the topic’s beginning and not to the latest reply.

I kinda feel we had a lot more power, plugins and extensibility with the old bbpress before version 2 came along.

Unfortunately, I’m not a coder so I can either wait until someone helps out or move to another solution.

Any thoughts?

[@janhoos Participant 11 years, 3 months ago]

Agreed! Missing this functionality 2. I have it set to your setting as well, but a perfect widget would be a combination of the 2! Not a coder myself as well unfortunately.

[@ovizii Participant 11 years, 3 months ago]

And here I was thinking tis just me who’s unhappy with the built-in widgets.
I used to love the bbpress versions below 2.x – there where plenty of plugins available to it to make it jump through loops and hoops but since 2.x most of those don’t work anymore.

I’m just wondering that nobody except you is interested in this issue 🙁

[@janhoos Participant 11 years, 3 months ago]

haha yea! So far for me, BBpress is a mixed bag. Its simple alright! You need to add in a lot of stuff to make it come near the other forum softwares. But the big advantage is the integration with WordPress <3

[@martyn_ Participant 11 years, 3 months ago]

Agree it could do with an overhaul. A single widget that can be flexibly configured to show and link exactly what you want would be a real bonus. Similarly for the shortcodes. Even better if it could cover WP posts and replies using an identical structure/layout.

an ideal widget would have

– number of things
– sort by: topic creation, freshness, popularity/views, popularity/replies in last X days
– show/link OP author
+ include date [x]
+ include avatar [x]
– show link most recent
+ include date [x]
+ include avatar [x]
– present as table or list
– extract OP
– extract latest
– [shrtcodeable]

I don’t see the need for a list that has replies (with dups per topic) as thats better handled as an activity stream.

[@ovizii Participant 11 years, 3 months ago]

btw. did anyone else notice that the latest bbpress killed the display of the date of the latest post/reply?

Its simply not showing anymore even though I checked the box in the widget settings.

[@samoya22 Participant 11 years, 3 months ago]

I would like the Recent Topics widget to have html embedded that would make styling it a lot easier. This ” by” nonsense is impossible to work with in CSS. Please, make these things lists or encapsulate everything within a style-able inline element like paragraphs. Divs with no semantic titles (ie. classes) are equally useless.

Just my two cents. I’m really quite pleased with BBPress overall, as a plugin.

[@samoya22 Participant 11 years, 3 months ago]

Oops. I just realized we lost the functionality of authors and dates in the Recent Topics widget now, too. I was on 2.3 when I wrote that comment.

[@theopt Participant 11 years, 3 months ago]

Im using the last version and I got no CSS options, and when I choose show author and date it doesnt.

[@ronthai Participant 11 years ago]

I would like the Recent Replies widget to have a setting to select for which forum(s), just like the Recent Topics has.

[@kentlii Participant 10 years, 10 months ago]

completely agree with your first point. Even though when I click on an answer it just to page 1, which I do not understand.

[@zachmatthews Participant 10 years, 9 months ago]

One of the weirdest things about the recent replies widget is that it is limited to just replies. If someone starts a new topic, it doesn’t appear. This is contrary to common sense and almost every other forum software’s version of this feature.

How hard would it be to add in a recent new topics component to this widget?

[@kvr28 Participant 10 years, 9 months ago]

if the topic index shortcode would work in a widget, that would make me happy, I just tried it with a plugin, didn’t work so good

[@forwardslashdesigns Participant 10 years, 9 months ago]

For me I would like to have the option to add a ‘see more’ or ‘view all’ button to be displayed under a list. Also would be great to break up the list with different sub-headings for each forum.

[@inget Participant 10 years, 8 months ago]

Oh yes, please: recent topics, recent replies in one widget, per forum, with the mossipibility of showing this for different forums in the same widget, and only showing the hidden/private topics/replies if a user with access to hidden/private forums is logged in.

[@ovizii Participant 10 years, 7 months ago]

I found a way to replace these damn widgets but am struggling getting it right.
Maybe if I point you guys towards the tools you can help me do it?
=> https://wordpress.org/plugins/query-wrangler/

That plugin can be used to create a custom query and then use it as a widget. You can select replies as post type and define a lot of stuff I just can’t seem to get it right.

Those queries you create can be exported so please share if you get it working.
Here is my thread in the wp.org forums: https://wordpress.org/support/topic/need-some-help-getting-this-right-1

[@ovizii Participant 10 years, 7 months ago]

The plugin author of the plugin I mentioned coded What I asked for, you can find the thread here: https://wordpress.org/support/topic/need-some-help-getting-this-right-1

Fixes the Recent Replies perfectly!!!