[bobbyh44]

== Installation ==

1. Place the ‘bbpress’ folder in your ‘/wp-content/plugins/’ directory.

2. Activate bbPress.

3. Visit ‘Settings > Forums’ and adjust your configuration.

4. Create some forums.

5. View your site.

6. Adjust the CSS of your theme as needed, to make everything pretty.

You have to do plenty more than these steps if you want to install and have some forums up and running on your blog.

I think it’s a bit of a cheat to suggest this is so easy to complete. Absolutely hellish in my experience. 2 days in and still nothing.

You make no mention of setting up pages with the shortcode tags, no mention about issues with sign up conflicts and documentation is non existent if you want to add it to wordpress.

Is this another case of tech people making a great system and then just forgetting that people have to use it?

Where are the wordpress installation instructions?

Please someone just tell me if any exist as I’ll go for another system if not.

Bob

[John James Jacoby]

You don’t “need” to do anything else. But you can if you’d like.

bbPress 2.0 is over a year in the making. Documentation will come next.

[Weznezz]

I’m sorry but the OP isn’t lying.

you do step 1-4 and then 5: View your site…

… yup, it looks exactly like it did before I installed bbPress…

no link to forums. The only way anyone can access the forums is if they;re an admin, and go into the forum settings and click “view forum”

You’re obviously telling us theres a magic invisible link outside the Admin area??

are we supposed to make a page with something like [bbpress] inside? And dont bother trying [bbpress] it doesn’t work.

[John James Jacoby]

You create the navigation on your site the same way you always do, whatever that is for you. Either make the page, use the nav menus, etc… bbPress doesn’t turn your existing site into something new, it compliments it by adding forums in place. You do the rest.

[tgiokdi]

perhaps in the bbpress installation, there should be a suggestion to add a page with the shortcode already on it, or create a link in the menu. It took me a while to figure out just where the ‘new’ forum was.

[Erlend]

You’ve got a point there tgiokdi. BuddyPress 1.5 does a good job of helping the user create the necessary pages for the plugin to use.

[bobbyh44]

Hi Again,

Ahh thanks tgiokdi, getting closer to knowing how to get this working.

So you install it.

Then you make a wordpress page.

Then you add a shortcode tag to that page.

I’m guessing you add it into the HTML view of the page or a post and it would look something like:

[bbpress(testforum)]

Where the name of the forum is ‘testforum’.

I haven’t tried this but maybe its a step in the right direction. Can anyone tell me what the tag looks like to get the forum to show up… or is it a secret

[Andre]

You’d probably want to use one of these:

[bbp-forum-index] – Show the forum index/archive

[bbp-single-forum id=$forum_id] – Show a single forums topics

Here is the thread listing the shortcodes – https://bbpress.org/forums/topic/bbpress-20-shortcodes

[bobbyh44]

Ah – awesome. Thanks Andre, really appreciate it.

Hopefully they’ll add that link into the bottom of the instructions so it reads:

== Installation ==

1. Place the ‘bbpress’ folder in your ‘/wp-content/plugins/’ directory.

2. Activate bbPress.

3. Visit ‘Settings > Forums’ and adjust your configuration.

4. Create some forums.

5. View your site.

6. Adjust the CSS of your theme as needed, to make everything pretty.

7. Create a page and add one or more of these short codes into it to display your forum: https://bbpress.org/forums/topic/bbpress-20-shortcodes

All the best.

Bob

[Andre]

There are also other ways to get forums to display, but labeling the above as quick instructions would probably be helpful.

[Rev. Voodoo]

I didn’t think anything was necessary to use it. During installation, step 3, I either set up, or it defaulted the forums base slug as forums.

A slug is part of a URL, so Ithen visited domain.com/forums and it worked.

So I added a link to my menu for that URL, and I was done.

Basically, whatever you set the forums slug to, yu add to the end of your URL, and there’s your forums

[patrickallmond]

I know that seems obvious Rev. but it’s not. If you are installing this for the first time “Forums Base Slug” does not mean anything to. A simple one or two liner in the instructions (as indicated above) that says “Congratulations. Your forums is up and running. Visit xxxxxxxxxxx.com/forums or xxxxxxxxx.xom/[what-is-in-the-forums-base-slug-field] would really help. After I installed it the first time it took me a couple of hours to find my forums page.

[bobbyh44]

“After I installed it the first time it took me a couple of hours to find my forums page.” – good that you persevered and got it working Patrick.

Suspect that for every user that manages finally to find the solution, have half a dozen that just think – Sod it, doesn’t work, waste of time, delete.

Maybe it’s some kind of elitist coder thing? If you can’t fill in the missing technical details you can’t join the club?

I’ve gone over to SMF, Simple Machines Forum purely because they do indeed have clear documentation and installation instructions. I have confidence in the team behind the script because they are thinking of the end user and not just the code. I suggest that if you want this excellent addition to wordpres to be the roaring success it deserves to be, you do the same.

Good luck with the project.

[Rev. Voodoo]

I used SMF years ago, it was poorly documented, and hell to use.

I’m not bashing SMF, the point is bbPress is brand new. The devs are creating a new product from scratch. You get a product, or documentation. It all takes time. Resources are finite.

It takes time to grow everything out. If more people don’t volunteer their time, it is what it is. Do you have any idea how many people have worked on something like SMF? Or how long it’s been around?

I’m not knocking anyone here, it’s just good to have realistic expectations.

[bobbyh44]

Hi Voodoo,

Point taken. I’ve been a bit harsh on the Dev guys which I shouldn’t have been. The system obviously does work fine as plenty of people use it. I’m just not very technically minded.

Good luck with the project, I’m sure it will be a success.

[folgerj]

@andre, the shortcode link is dead. someone deleted the reference page…

• This reply was modified 12 years, 2 months ago by folgerj.

[thirtyfivemill]

I would say you’re spot on Bobby. 2 years down the line from this thread and I’m beggared if I can find clear, concise documentation on how to install and activate a simple bbpress theme. I just don’t get the point of spending all this time and effort to create forum software and then refuse to properly help people to use it. Like you said, more people will just give up than actually install and use at this rate.

I can honestly say it was easier to integrate phpbb3 with wordpress using a complex modification than it is to properly set up a bbpress forum, which is meant to be seamless.

Might be time to look for another solution if this is the future. Not wishing to be snappy and I know this is free software, of which I’m sure we’re all appreciative, but this has to be one of the most frustrating installs I’ve ever encountered.

[thirtyfivemill]

Add to the above the fact that I’ve just gone to 4 threads where people like myself didn’t even receive a single answer to the same question?