I was excited to find a wordpress forum that had good reviews and seemed the best solution after comparing a few.

I’m happy I was able to import my old PhpBB forum without much problems due to what I believe is an improved importer.

but I’m disappointed with 2 things:

1./ Lack of Support – check out this topic, not one reply as I waited for several days. In the end I had to do it myself on hope and lucky for me I puled it off. I hope this improves.

2./ Lack of dedicated Styles and themes. It was impossible to find anything like a normal forum from Invision, Vbulletin or PhpBB. There is nothing available that can make your forum look like those types of forums. There is one very basic template thing that does not do much but that is it from my many hours of research. Even the Themes section has nothing at all basically. I was expecting to find many dedicated BBPress themes. The good thing is most new themes will work with BBPress but they all look the same, simple with no organization etc.

Despite all this I am excited to have moved my PhpBB forum to wordpress and I can now make use of plugins etc.

I hope in the future BBPress improves these 2 issues.

[@robkk Moderator 10 years, 5 months ago]

1./ Lack of Support – check out this topic, not one reply as I waited for several days. In the end I had to do it myself on hope and lucky for me I puled it off. I hope this improves.

i saw this and had no idea what you were talking about, and i didnt have a correct answer, and since you solved it you could share so that people in the future that came across the same problem can find your topic and help themeselves in the future.

2./ Lack of dedicated Styles and themes.

phpbb inpsired forum theme by lynq

https://github.com/EpicWebs/bbPress-starter-theme-epicwebs

envatos support forum theme-is actually a wordpress theme in whole on github, idk if copying templates will work because this relies on 5 other plugins also

https://github.com/syamilmj/Supportte

I might make a better mobile responsive forum theme in the future and post it on github

here is how my theme kind of looks like , the bbpress theme i will post on github will be loosely based on this

My Forum Layout (in progress)

It was impossible to find anything like a normal forum from Invision, Vbulletin or PhpBB.

what would you like specifically like other forums??

[@robin-w Moderator 10 years, 5 months ago]

1./ Lack of Support – check out this topic, not one reply as I waited for several days. In the end I had to do it myself on hope and lucky for me I puled it off. I hope this improves.

I’m sorry that you feel you should receive quicker free support on a weekend in the middle of the summer holidays for a product which was written for free for you, is supported by a small group of volunteers who have jobs, family and other hobbies to pursue, who do this for free, and spend a large amount of their free time doing so. That we failed to respond to you sooner is naturally a disgrace.

[@robin-w Moderator 10 years, 5 months ago]

2./ Lack of dedicated Styles and themes

I presume you also write to Ford to complain that the Ford car you bought doesn’t look like a Nissan 🙂

[@pfswss Participant 10 years, 5 months ago]

Hi Robin, so you don’t like feedback here? I seemed to have hit a sensitive nerve with you! I did try to make some positives as well as what I thought were honest concerns. I looked on the support forum and there were also other older threads with no replies, not just mine, If you can’t take feedback about what you do then I’m sorry to say you will never learn or grow. As for it been free, well I’m not going to go into a debate about that. But I believe there would be ways to make money out of this like here: http://www.packtpub.com/bbpress-complete-comprehensive-guide/book

Rob, thanks for the reply. I have now put instructions into my post as suggested.

I had found the theme by lying but from what I seen all it basically did was separate the man forum page to have borders in between the categories and that was it or is there more?

Both that and the Suportte theme just seem to be a very simple white theme that I can’t see how they look like Vbulletin, Invision or PhpBB. This is the demo I found which is just a screenshot: https://camo.githubusercontent.com/0370bd78798f25ca777774b376651cc71ef4fff9/687474703a2f2f692e696d6775722e636f6d2f386c45694144442e6a7067

Am I missing something?

Your own layout looks promising, I hope it goes well.

As for examples

Just any thing that looks like a forum:

here is one theme I do like, just a screenshotL http://invisionmodding.com/index.php?app=downloads&module=display&section=screenshot&record=1678&id=1408&full=1

even IP board support forum is very basic: http://community.invisionpower.com/

here are just some random links to IP board forums I found, nothing special but just demonstrating a forum look with a structure of a forum with a skin.

osatuk.com/community/forums/
mlbboards.com/
community.simtropolis.com/

[@pfswss Participant 10 years, 5 months ago]

Here is a forum that looks good: https://www.namepros.com/

[@robkk Moderator 10 years, 5 months ago]

Hi Robin, so you don’t like feedback here? I seemed to have hit a sensitive nerve with you! I did try to make some positives as well as what I thought were honest concerns. I looked on the support forum and there were also other older threads with no replies, not just mine, If you can’t take feedback about what you do then I’m sorry to say you will never learn or grow. As for it been free, well I’m not going to go into a debate about that. But I believe there would be ways to make money out of this like here: http://www.packtpub.com/bbpress-complete-comprehensive-guide/book

bbpress is open source , i dont think the community is going to try to make money off of something thats open source, thats probably why there is no ads on this site too.

that book was just written by some guy thats not really affiliated with bbpress. Its like if i myself made a book of all that i know from reading all the documentation. (i dont work for bbpress, i am a volunteer )

topics with no replies, people are busy , there is like only 2 official people that check out this forum occasionly , robin and stephen

jjj might check out the forums though but he also works on wordpress core i think i am not sure.

Other than that the others are volunteers like myself , which i am helping out people because robin helped out me , idk i feel i got to repay them somehow haha

Your own layout looks promising, I hope it goes well.

im on the fence if i should put it on github or not, i feel like i dont want people jacking my forums style sometimes

As for examples

Just any thing that looks like a forum:

bbpress looks like a forum ,its just a really simple one.

which is great because not all people need extravagant features, but if they want they can add wordpress plugins, and also custom functions that you may find on this forum.

if we compare features in bbpress compared to other forum software there is not much of a difference.

All i can see that is different is shortcodes on bottom, which i showed a user how to do in a topic before. using bbpress forum statistics shortcode, and the do shortcode function.

forum icons, which is possible there is a function somewhere if you search this forum.

category and hierarchy layout , if you search the bbpress trac people have shared how to do this if users want that specific layout.

ip boards topic sorting you can create something similar using bbpress views in simple html links.

and the rest is just styling with css, in the documentation it explains… go to this https://codex.bbpress.org/step-by-step-guide-to-setting-up-a-bbpress-forum-part-2/

[@robkk Moderator 10 years, 5 months ago]

also another thing about topics with no replies

if you want you can feel free and try to find a solution to some of these topics.

official bbpress support dont always have to find a solution to a topic, even volunteers.

[@pfswss Participant 10 years, 5 months ago]

well I appreciate it been open source, My intention was to point out something’s that I was disappointed with and not to put it down. If I had that intention I would have not spent 3 days upgrading to BBpress. Sometimes the best way to see things improved is to give feedback.

Thanks Rob, I will take all these things into consideration.

[@robin-w Moderator 10 years, 5 months ago]

Hi Robin, so you don’t like feedback here?

I love feedback, but you need to realise that this forum is supported by a small bunch of volunteers. I have absolutely nothing to do with bbPress, I am just a user who is trying to give something back and help others, as I was helped when I started using this software.

But I do feel that to complain about the support and lack of functionality for something that is free, and that the authors could quite easily decide to stop developing, is not the best way to achieve a positive response.

Anyway I do hope that as you learn how bbPress works you will come back and help others, so that someone else’s answers are not left for as long as yours.