[Dan Milward]

Hey Guys.

We’ve made a new Support Forums Plugin for bbPress 2. It is something we made for our own website, and want to share with the greater WordPress community, as we improve it on our site we’ll release the changes accordingly. We’re probably going to put it on a git repository at some point too so that should somebody want to contribute they can.

The Support Plugin will allow you to turn all (or some) of your forums into Support Forums. With this Plugin you can implement and display user ranks, you have full control over the user ranking system including how many topics and replies need to be created for the user to go up a rank as well as custom titles relevant to your forums for each rank.

With this Plugin you can also set statuses for your topics and control who can update these, very key to a support forum, your posters will be able to tell what topics are resolved or not resolved right away.

Please let us know what you think on our blog as we spend more time on our own website.

Source: http://getshopped.org/getshopped-news/freebie-new-bbpress-support-forum-plugin-by-getshopped/

[Gautam Gupta]

Thanks for this!

I’d recommend if you upload this on the WordPress Plugin Repo with the bbPress tag.

[Anointed]

@getshopped

Wow, very nice addon there!

thnx for the release

[Dan Milward]

No worries guys – we want to get some feedback before we add it to the WordPress Plugin Repo.

Also do you guys know of any developers that might want a part time job working on this with us?

[Anointed]

@getshopped

I’ll do my best to try and find some time this weekend to install the plugin and report back what I find. I did read through the code, but have not yet done anything with it.

Sorry, no idea about devs, everyone I know is absolutely slammed right now. Will keep an ear out though.

*I’ve got my hands absolutely full with the new importer and building the supporting site for it. After that, projects are still lined up…

[master5o1]

I’m interested… I tend to underestimate my abilities and sell my self short. But my post toolbar has been a big confidence boost.

https://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/bbpress-post-toolbar/

[Dan Milward]

@anointed no worries mate, if you want to take on a contract once you’re done, let me know

Also has anybody done an “inline editing” Plugin yet? I want to be able to edit threads like you can edit posts in P2

[master5o1]

^ That would be really cool. I don’t think I’ve seen it yet.

[Dan Milward]

Its how we used to do it on the old GetShopped.org site… but now that work is gone

[Dan Milward]

Hey Guys. We’re adding some VIP functionality to this. Probably as a new add-on Plugin.

As a site owner you’ll be able to setup a support forum AND distribute a plugin that allows your users to see their posts and make bbPress posts from their WP dashboard.

Do you think there is a demand for this?

[miruru]

Does this work if you have bbpress plugin and Buddypress working? I have to say it’s a fantastic plugin especially the Forum Ranks which is what I’m after.

Edit: Everything is working as it should be. For some reason it was not updating correctly. The only thing that is not working is that I already have a number of posts, i.e. 10 plus. However it does not display that information within the post count. Only displays any new posts that i have created since installing this plugin. It is only when I go into existing posts and re-save them then it counts.

Edit 2: All is well, however only normal users do not have the rank displayed. I have set them to subscriber, member and even forum participant to no avail. I will keep this updated should I find a solution

[Dan Milward]

@miruru I don’t see why it wouldn’t work if BuddyPress was installed.

If you could provide us any patches that would be awesome.

Are you a bbPress developer?

[Anointed]

@Dan

For inline editing have you taken a look at:

https://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/front-end-editor/

Scribu’s a master at this stuff and code is rock solid.

[Dan Milward]

Have you tried it in bbPress?

[Dan Milward]

The bbPress 2x Support Plugin has been updated. Its quite a powerful little Plugin now.

For more information:

– https://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/bbpress-vip-support-plugin/

– http://getshopped.org/getshopped-news/update-bbpress-2-0-gets-a-new-support-forum/

We’re also building another VIP Support Plugin that will allow users to post to your bbPress Support Forums from within their WordPress dashboard.

Please remember these Plugin’s do not take us away from developing the WP e-Commerce Plugin – we’re making these bbPress Plugins for our own website and we are using it ourselves to help the WP e-Commerce Plugin community. Because…

WE FIGHT FOR THE USER, and

We Heart Open Source!

[Erlend]

Yeeah, exactly what we needed! Yet another definitive nail in BuddyPress’ legacy forum’s coffin. Can’t wait to make the conversion now. Will start testing this and give you some feedback first chance I get.

[Dan Milward]

Thanks dude. I’ve always appreciated your feedback. I think this Plugin kicks ass…

[Erlend]

I took it for a spin, and here’s my feedback thus far:

A lot of functionality should be in its own plugins.

– Move forum:

I’m surprised this isn’t in core already; I thought it was. In any case, this would make much more sense as a stand-alone plugin, as its useful for all topics, not just support topics.

– Forum Ranks:

As far as I can tell, it doesn’t tie directly in with support topics; it’s a completely separate feature. Maybe you have plans for it, but if that’s the case I still think you should just have two plugins communicate, as this is something many support forums won’t need. I personally dislike forum ranks. I consider it unwarranted labeling. On the jMonkeyEngine forum we frequently see first time posters with 10+ years of Java experience, which is the type of experience that holds weight in our community, not # of forum posts.

– Please separate your settings from bbPress’ options page. Your plugin offers so many options (which by itself is great) that it ends up bloating the options page.

– I think the default setting should reflect the one in this screenshot:

https://s.w.org/extend/plugins/bbpress-vip-support-plugin/screenshot-3.png?r=448946

That part slipped by me in the settings screen, and when I tested the plugin I was puzzled by how I couldn’t change my test support topic to “resolved”.

– What about a widget for the resolved/not resolved drop-down? (Same goes for Assign topic, and possibly some others I haven’t noticed yet). This would make it easier to fit it in with custom themes. This also means admin should have the option to turn off the in-built drop-down.

Oh and as recommended, add the bbpress tag to your plugin. It’s the default bbPress plugin tag, and currently the most convenient way of keeping up with the latest bbPress 2 plugins.

[Erlend]

Bugs/inconsistencies:

– “Assign topic to” appears on all forums. That’s okay I guess, but should be an option, not mandatory.

– If a “Resolved” or “Urgent” topic is moved to a non-support forum, the prefix will stay, but there’s no way of removing it as the extra controls don’t exist in this forum. When moving support topics to non-support forums, I would suggest stripping away all extra features entirely.

I seem to remember the first time I did it the process was clean, but in all my last attempts I’ve received this error when moving a topic out of the troubleshooting board:

( ! ) Fatal error: Call to a member function get() on a non-object in C:wampwwwwordpress-singlewp-includesquery.php on line 27

Call Stack

# Time Memory Function Location

1 0.0019 676480 {main}( ) ..index.php:0

2 0.0030 681376 require( ‘C:wampwwwwordpress-singlewp-blog-header.php’ ) ..index.php:17

3 0.0043 702424 require_once( ‘C:wampwwwwordpress-singlewp-load.php’ ) ..wp-blog-header.php:12

4 0.0059 720680 require_once( ‘C:wampwwwwordpress-singlewp-config.php’ ) ..wp-load.php:29

5 0.0083 848040 require_once( ‘C:wampwwwwordpress-singlewp-settings.php’ ) ..wp-config.php:90

6 0.2526 29401072 do_action( ) ..wp-settings.php:206

7 0.2567 30235488 call_user_func_array ( ) ..plugin.php:405

8 0.2567 30235520 bbps_setup( ) ..plugin.php:0

9 0.2571 30236240 bbps_includes( ) ..bbps-premium-support.php:43

10 0.2593 30455272 include_once( ‘C:wampwwwwordpress-singlewp-contentpluginsbbpress-vip-support-pluginincludesbbps-support-functions.php’ ) ..bbps-premium-support.php:94

11 0.2594 30460320 bbps_move_topic( ) ..bbps-support-functions.php:405

12 0.3092 30240600 bbp_update_forum( ) ..bbps-support-functions.php:155

13 0.3092 30243984 bbp_update_forum_last_topic_id( ) ..bbp-forum-functions.php:778

14 0.3171 30283584 bbp_is_topic_published( ) ..bbp-forum-functions.php:426

15 0.3171 30283584 bbp_get_topic_id( ) ..bbp-topic-template.php:963

16 0.3171 30283584 bbp_is_single_topic( ) ..bbp-topic-template.php:361

17 0.3171 30283872 bbp_is_query_name( ) ..bbp-common-template.php:169

18 0.3172 30283872 bbp_get_query_name( ) ..bbp-common-template.php:1322

19 0.3172 30283952 get_query_var( ) ..bbp-common-template.php:1338

[David Decker]

As I really liked the general approach of this plugin I have some errors/requests to report:

With the plugin installed I couldn’t save the the bbPress settings anymore – gave php errors…

Also, the plugin for me would only make sense if it’s localized properly – as of now all texts/strings are hardcoded. So for my sites in Germany the plugin is unuseable as of now but I would like to use it once it’s translateable.

So thanx for taking your time to develop this and hopefully it will be translateable one day

Thanx, Dave from Germany

[Erlend]

That’s a good point daveshine. This might help:

http://yoast.com/translate-yoast-plugins/

[Erlend]

On more idea:

You could merge “Unresolved/Resolved” with “Unassigned/Assigned to: {}”.

I realize it might make the coding easier, but on the front end there would be one less element to care about, which can mean a lot. Thing is, an issue being assigned to someone is pretty much equal to being “accepted” or “in progress”, i.e. the intermediary between ‘Unsolved’ and ‘Solved’.

[David Decker]

@Erlend:

I know this already, but that doesn’t help here yet because the plugin developers have to implement the gettext strings first, so it actually becomes translateable.

That’s a pity with a lot of great plugins: all hard-coded text strings so nearly unuseable for international users. Since we’re two thirds of all WordPress users worldwide – and growing – localization/internationalization is a really hot and important topic. EVERY WordPress developer should consider this.

In NO way I want to disregard the awesome work of the devs of this support plugin just encourage them to make this final step

-Thanx, Dave

[Dan Milward]

Thanks for the feedback guys. I’ll forward this page onto Michelle who is doing the dev inhouse and we’ll have a conversation about it and get back to you all as soon as possible.

We’ll get the translation stuff done in the next build. Its stuff we definitely know how to do – we setup languages.getshopped.org for WP e-Commerce Plugin so we’ll just add this as an additional project there when we get a chance. I like the idea of doing that sooner rather then later so that people can collaborate with us.

Maybe we’ll move it to git as well. Would that be handy?

-Dan “fights for the users” Milward

[beazleboy]

I set this up no a multisite wordpress site, and it all looks good. The main problem I am having at the moment is that when viewing a forum, i only get to see the [Resolved] tag, I cannot see the [Not-resolved] or [not a supprt question tags]. I have checked the settings in both my main site and my subsite, and all Display status boxes are ticked

[Dan Milward]

I don’t suppose you’re a programmer willing to join the team

To be honest folks, I’d say that based on all the feedback there is another days worth of work. But I can’t guarantee we’re going to be able to put that day aside until later next week or the week after. Our #1 priority right now is the next getshopped.org update.

So if there are any hard core devs out there that love open source… let me know!!