And I thought this was actually about _building_ one. Ah well.
I suspect that you don’t actually need help using Google.
Well I don’t like to re-invent the wheel if it’s been done.
Many times there are lots of little things you don’t think about when you try to build something from scratch vs convert a program that’s had years of development and on it’s 3rd generation.
It’s far enough work at times to make things work with bbpress. I’ve already spent half a dozen hours this month tracking down subtle bugs in other people’s plugins.
But if you want to try to make one from scratch I’ll do what I can though I am not a professional programmer by any means.
If I want to try to make one from scratch, there’s no need for you to do it. Because, you see, I’d want to make it. But thanks.
Er, okay. I don’t follow. Are you making one then?
Or are you just rubbishing my idea of porting one of hundreds of existing php polling programs (a dozen for wordpress alone) to save weeks of development and bug squashing?
bbPress needs some serious options fast if it’s going to hit critical mass and attract additional quality programmers. I just want to see a decent polling feature added as soon as reasonable possible.
I’m not making one yet and I’m not rubbishing your idea. Originally I thought _you_ were making one which would have been interesting. But you porting one isn’t interesting to me. That’s not to say it’s a bad idea … it’s just not interesting to me. That is all there was to it.
I think WP Poll is a good one to port..
You mean the one by GamerZ S010?
I’ve watched him improve that over the past year or two, actually sent some bug fixes and improvements. Still doesn’t do quite everything I’ve seen in other advanced polls but he’s got the multi-vote option so that’s good.
It uses the metadata so it would be fairly easy to convert, the only problem is his creation and management menus are all meant for the admin interface so a new creation routing would have to be written for the regular user interface. Then there is the problem of the trigger and attachment. I guess it gets attached to the topic-info box.
Now if we could only get him to switch from simple machines forum to bbpress we’d have a shedload of new bbpress plugins within a month 
> bbPress needs some serious options fast if it’s going to hit critical mass and attract additional quality programmers.
What’s the rush?
The rush is that the project is “out there” and people are looking at it and coming to conclusions. Bad conclusions.
I’ve tried to attract/recruit some of the major wordpress plugin writers to bbpress and the response has not been good unfortunately.
What I find interesting is the belief around here that wordpress integration is not a major desire by most people evaluating it. How would we ever know the sheer number of people that have looked and been turned off? At least one person on wikipedia sees it this way:
The project was created by Matt Mullenweg to support users of WordPress. Existing bulletin-board software was overly sophisticated for those requirements, so bbPress was created with the same focus as WordPress: a functional and extensible core, with all other capabilities delivered through plugins.
The “overly sophisticated” really bothers me.
Because that would mean bbpress’s goal is to be under sophisticated. Obviously that’s not the official statement but my point is that’s how it’s being perceived.
Keeping advanced features out of the core is fine. I get that. But some of those features should somehow exist in plugin form by now – at least that’s what I was hoping for. So now I am trying to make that happen, which I can barely do on my own as I am not a professional programmer by any means.
In some good news, GamerZ is happy to have me try porting his WP Polls. The bad news is he is unlikely to stop using his SMF forum software anytime soon and try bbpress. Not that I blame him right now.
The rush is that the project is “out there” and people are looking at it and coming to conclusions. Bad conclusions.
One of these days you’re going to have to show us the crystal ball that tells you everything about the users and potential users of bb.
What I find interesting is the belief around here that wordpress integration is not a major desire by most people evaluating it. How would we ever know the sheer number of people that have looked and been turned off?
I think that tidbit (or at least, in my case) is based on a hand-me-down from Trent who’s pretty close to the folk at automattic and they’d be the ones to know.
How would we ever know the sheer number of people that spontaneously combust when they use bb?! You make it sound like the entire internet trooped over and looked at bbPress yesterday, saw that there was no plugin for this or for that and decided that they would stick to phpBB.
I think that the implied opposite of ‘overly sophisticated’ (is that a polite ‘bloated’?) can equally be ‘lean and mean’ rather than ‘underly sophisticated’.
I think that bb just isn’t ready in a lot of ways for what you’re trying here. At 0.8.2.1 it doesn’t _need_ to have a full gallery of plugins yet just like it doesn’t yet have a full feature set. Sure more plugins are a good thing but it’s not urgent in the sort of firetruck way.
Well there’s isn’t any forum development issue that is urgent in a firetruck sort of way (but that’s a cute expression).
Maybe I’m just being impatient, maybe it’s far too soon for bbpress to attract a decent base of plugin developers/users. I’d just like to see it sooner than later. 0.8.2.1 added some critical features, with just a few more it’s almost ready to hatch.
Let’s look at the finish line, one possible goal for bbpress. Take a look at a typical Simple Machines forum aka SMF (PHP+mysql, open source)
http://forums.lesterchan.net/ (that’s GamerZ)
look at the useful features on the page.
Now look at the lovely low query counts down below.
I’m a big vbulletin fan but that works better than vbulletin IMHO.
I wouldn’t call that forum “heavyweight” and I wouldn’t call SMF “bloated”. So what’s going to be bbpress’s niche then if it’s not going to do what SMF does?
(ps. poke through the menus on SMF 2.0 too http://www.simplemachines.org/community/ oh and then look at the insanely low query count at the bottom of a full page of posts)
I don’t think there’s any need to be so ernest about adoption rates of bbPress. I get the impression it would be supported by Automattic even if there was only one user.
Sure there is room for improvement, but I don’t think there is a need to emulate every feature on the forum software check list. I’ve never heard anyone on the various bbPress related channels talk about a need for poll features (for example), although I may be wrong. I think if you want to improve bbPress, then you would be better directing your energy at some of the existing bugs and well-known shortcomings (like search).
I’m not trying to stop you building a poll plugin by the way, and perhaps your suggestions regarding the quality of bbPress are well-founded. I just don’t think you are going to get much support from people around here by attempting to whip them into a competitive frenzy against other forum platforms.
I’ve never heard anyone on the various bbPress related channels talk about a need for poll features
Do you realise the irony in that if this thread had a poll, we could more easily evaluate how many people are interested in a poll feature. LOL. Also evaluate in other threads how much interest there is in wp+bb integration.
I simply want more people and therefore more talent in the fray that is bbpress. I’ve tried various clever google search patterns to try to determine the unique number of bbpress installs (that are publicly indexed) and I come up with around 200 installs. How many of these are active and have more than a few members is unknown of course. I’d like to see that number be 2000 by January and the only way for that to happen is to have certain common forum perks available. “Competitive frenzy” is one way to see it but inaccurate to my thoughts. I’d just call it feature motivation
Do you realise the irony in that if this thread had a poll, we could more easily evaluate how many people are interested in a poll feature. LOL. Also evaluate in other threads how much interest there is in wp+bb integration.
Gotta remember it’s pretty much just people with problems and plugin devs here. No poll is going to fix the completely skewed demographic. It’s easy to get the wrong world view here.
Isn’t this discussion more valuable than a poll? With polls people tend to vote first then read the thread. Maybe you can make the poll itself appear last, after the discussion. My 2 cents on your actual proposal I suppose. I’m not too interested, but good luck with it. If you get stuck, throw a question up in this topic and I’m sure people will help.
People that are attracted to bbPress will be attracted because of its out-of-the-box simplicity and its extensibility.
It’s great… if you want a plugin and you’ve messed around with WordPress for any length of time, you’ll feel right at home. I personally dislike polls… _ck_ obviously doesn’t, and he’s not alone. That’s the beauty of bbPress. These features aren’t crammed down your throat; rather they are completely optional.
Also, I don’t think that bbPress was built to win a popularity contest. It was built with certain things in mind and is continuing in that trend. I think that’s great.
One more thing… those people who were attracted to other forum software solutions (ie, SMF, IPB, vB), wanted something feature-bloated. All kinds of things pouring out of every corner. They wouldn’t be attracted to bbPress unless it became a miniature of what they were already using. And what’s the point in that, eh?
I appreciate keeping this discussion civilized everyone! Good discussion on any topic without personal insults and over-reaction is great.
Trent
Sorry, I got distracted with the signatures plugin.
If this migraine ever subsides I will take a look at integrating polls this weekend…
Okay anyone wanna see a prototype?
You can’t vote yet, but you can create a fake poll and see what it looks like so you can give me feedback and ideas.
I gave up on migrating an existing poll program after realising all the issues with custom bbpress integration, even from a wp port.
I’ve locked the demo to moderators (and higher) for now so even when you create a poll, no one else should be able to see it, or the options.
http://ckon.wordpress.com/files/2007/08/bb-polls.txt?v001
rename .txt to .php, install, activate
create a new topic of any sort and then look below the meta at the top for the option to create the poll
try creating one with a few options, it should be saved and then you’ll see some randomised results for a little colourful demo.
If I may say so, port this one:
http://blog.jalenack.com/archives/democracy/
Think this is one of the best and izi to convert…
I’ll be working more on my “from scratch” version tonight and this weekend. I dare say I should have it fully functional by Sunday night.
