Three quick questions to help scope out the situation. 
1) Which versions of bbPress and WordPress did you have working together?
2) What version of WordPress did you upgrade to?
3) Where did your users disappear – just in bbPress, or also in WordPress?
Also – is this your forum?
http://www.mh900e.org/
John,
It’s rather an odd situation, as I just took over administration of this board, so I’m not really familiar with the interactions of bbPress and WordPress. The WordPress installation had only one user (the original admin), and as part of the transition we intended to upgrade both utilities to their latest, greatest versions to leave me with a “clean slate” to work from. Our intended first step was to upgrade WordPress, which the original admin hadn’t updated in some time. I had, and still have, no credentials in WordPress.
Our intent was to simply delete the original install of WordPress and install the latest version. I took care of the file end, but upon install the program told me that there was already an installation in place that had to be deleted first. The previous admin then wiped the WP database. I believe this began our problem. Upon installing the latest verison of bbP, I discovered that bbP stores it’s user info in the WP database, so I think that killed us. I think that if the orignial admin restores that db we should be able to salvage our installs.
I don’t know the release of the original WP install, but if you’ll tell me where to look I have a local backup of the original site on my harddrive. Ditto bbP, though I think it was 0.8.3.
Yes, http://www.mh900e.org
The discussion forums (the only really relevant part of the site, to my way of thinking) is at http://www.mh900e.org/parlare. I’ve installed 1.1.11 at the root (I was thinking about removing WP, anyway) and put up a single message telling users that we’re working on resolving other issues.
Ah if you deleted your users table, then that would definitely cause this problem. You’ll definitely want to restore a backup of that table… how many users were in the system?
Ah ok, then it’s not a situation where you might be able to restore them manually…
John,
I’m having trouble connecting to the databases at all. The previous admin says he’s checked the db and it’s intact.
I’m trying to get “back to stable” by reinstalling the site as I originally inhereted it. I deleted everything via ftp, then put back everything exactly as I inhereted it. No joy. I deleted wp-config.php to initiate the install program so that I could see whether or not the program is even trying to connect to the database. When I run install, I type in the original database metrics (database name, username, password, location) and after it generates a new wp-config.php (that looks exactly like the old wp-config.php) I get:
Error establishing a database connection
This either means that the username and password information in your wp-config.php file is incorrect or we can’t contact the database server at db1573.perfora.net. This could mean your host’s database server is down.
Are you sure you have the correct username and password?
Are you sure that you have typed the correct hostname?
Are you sure that the database server is running?
If you’re unsure what these terms mean you should probably contact your host. If you still need help you can always visit the WordPress Support Forums.
Is there anything that might have changed on either end that would change db user info (name, pw, etc.)? Why won’t this thing “hook up”? I’m REALLY lost. Has upgrading the database to a later WP made it unreadable to this older version?
You mentioned that “[t]he previous admin … wiped the WP database.”
What exactly did that entail… did they drop all tables with the wp_ prefix? Or did they delete that entire database completely…
Btw, do you have phpMyAdmin access to your database?
OK…I”m back to a spot where the original WP is working, and the forum is working but with no user info, again.
What exactly ties these databases together. What could be causing them to not work together so that bbP could read messages, but not user info from the WP db?
I don’t have phpmyadmin access…..I think. I’m pretty new to this whole mysql/php world, so I’m still on the steep part of the learning curve. How to I check to see whether or not I have this access? I doubt it.
The previous admin has this domain attached to several others he has, and I think he has reserved this right for himself.
Meanwhile, as I said earlier, the original WP install is now working again, content and all….so if I can figure out why the two applications have stopped sharing info I’ll at least be back to stable.
OK…..in bb-config.php, there is a line that reads:
// of the “SECRET_KEY” in the WordPress file wp-config.php
define(‘BB_SECRET_KEY’, ‘6koHWRD9d{XOEQ-S5+T[Or|TK[at.G8Qo~s,Z$]n:Yt:Ts%+uVpO.]MI3$’); // Change this to a unique phrase.
Then, in wp-config.php, there’s a line that reads:
define(‘LOGGED_IN_KEY’, ‘6koHWRD9d{XOEQ-S5+T[Or|TK[at.G8Qo~s,Z$]n:Yt:Ts%+uVpO.]MI3$’|P]tL’);
Notice the line in bbpress is missing the characters: ‘|P]tL’
I don’t know if the ‘ between and | is the end of the phrase and the P[tl is code, or if the whole ‘|P]tL should be added, but it seems odd that they don’t match EXACTLY.
Reckon this is an issue? I don’t know why it would have changed, but something’s askew.
Make the keys the same, whatever you have to do to make it work. Remove any “special” characters because bbPress did not handle those correctly for a while, while WordPress did. So, I would remove single and double quotes and slashes and make them both identical. The actual key does not matter too much, and changing keys just invalidates existing login cookies. It’s more important to make sure they’re identical.
Moving along with my understanding of this system, I hope.
If I understand this correctly, somewhere in bbPress there is an area where the information for the WordPress database is stored so that bbPress can get the user table from it. Where is it stored?
I believe the password for the WordPress database changed and I need to change it where ever it is. I thought maybe it was in bb-config or bb-settings, but I don’t see the correct db name and username there anywhere.
Does anyone know where bbPress stores WordPress database info?
I’ve changed both keys to a much simpler phrase and things still don’t work.
Anyone know where bbPress gets it’s keys to query the WordPress database?
The MySQL database name/username/password is at the top of the bb-config file:
http://svn.automattic.com/bbpress/trunk/bb-config-sample.php
What DB name/username/password do you have in the current bb-config.php file? (I’m not asking for the actual info – please don’t post that, as that pose a security issue!)
I have a valid dbname, dbusername, dbpassword, and dblocation in the bb-config.php file in the directory of the bbPress install. That seems to be correct, as bbpress now displays all of the posts from that database. Go to http://www.mh900e.org/parlare to see for yourself what I mean.
However, there is another database, used by WordPress, that I believe has all of the user info in it that is shared by both bbPress and WordPress. Does bbPress store information on the WordPress database somewhere so that it can retrieve user information and credentials? If not, how does it go to that database to get the user info? I think the “link” between bbPress and the user information in the WordPress database is what’s damaged or missing.
Any thoughts?
Forum is version 0.9.0.3 according to the version information in functions.php.
When I integrate a WordPress and a bbPress install, I use a single database to hold both installs… that way, they can share the same users table.
Is your WordPress and bbPress data stored within the same database? One quick way to check that is to compare the config files for both: do they refer to the same database name/username/pw?
They do not have the same dbname or dbusername. They are different databases, but somehow all of the user data is stored in the WordPress database and was (but isn’t now) accessed by the bbPress database.
In all this mess, the dbpassword for the WordPress database changed, and I was wondering if the bbPress install has a refugee outdated password for the WordPress database stored somewhere within its directory. Either this is true, or there is some other method by which bbPress queries the WordPress database for user data.
How do they link to share the user info in WordPress? I have a SQLdump of both databases, and only the WordPress one has user info in it.
What do you mean about the bbPress querying the WordPress database for user data? I thought most posts are showing up as Anonymous?
If they are different database, then that explains the problem. You want to install both WordPress and bbPress inside of a single database, if they are going to share users. This guide to integration might be useful.
https://bbpress.org/forums/topic/wordpress-and-bbpress-integration-101
It’s a bit outdated, but I’m guessing it will give you a nice lay of the land.
When installing bbPress you can choose to use a different database for the user table. Here’s a screenshot from step 2:
http://chrishajer.com/bbpress/step-2.png
This is present when installing 1.0.2. I don’t recall when it was added. But you will need to replicate those settings to use a different database and table for your users.
Chris,
The forum was set up and functoned for years with the split databases. Posts are saved in the bbPress db, whilst users are saved in the WordPress db. Now, for some reason, bbPress cannot read the user info from the WordPress db. I’ve tried to reinstall, but once I’ve completed “Step 1” and click the button to move to “Step 2”, the page is redirected to the forum homepage and I never get an opportunity to get to “Step 2”. I assume the installation script realized that there is already an installation of bbPress present and refuses to go further.
My questions is, how (in the code) are bbPress and WordPress tied together? What could be fouled up that makes it impossible for bbPress to read the existing user data from WordPress?
Where does bbPress physically store the wp-user database name, location, user, and password information? That’s what I want to know. This is the information the installer asks for in step 3. The wp-database password changed, but I don’t know where to change it in bbPress to make it work properly, again.
Looks like that information is stored in the bb_meta table in the bbPress database, with the following values:
meta_id: autoincrement
object type: bb_option
object_id: 0 (always zero in my case)
meta_key: these 4
user_bbdb_name
user_bbdb_user
user_bbdb_password
user_bbdb_host
meta_value: your database name, user, password and host.
Screenshot: http://chrishajer.com/bbpress/cloner-userdatabase.png
HTH
chrishajer,
I don’t know how to thank you enough for your patience and your help. I’ve just learned more than I EVER wanted to know about the interaction between bbPress and WordPress. I’ve changed the status of this thread to “resolved”, as all that was required to make this problem go away was to change the user_bbdb_password to the new WordPress database password. Voila.
Now I just need to figure out how to develop exactly the theme I want and I’ll be in tall cotton.
Cheers,
Cloner
ABQ, NM
