I am going to install a bbpress forums with my wordpress blog. I am trying to understand something.

I want to have the menu from my blog appear in my bbpress forums. My question is: Does this mean I have to do “deep integration” as described in the documentation on integration where it says:

“bbPress will not have access to WordPress’ functions unless you manually tell bbPress to load WordPress first. This integration step is also known as “deep” integration, “

Does my wanting to have the top menu from my blog appear on my bbpress forums fit into the category of “WordPress’ functions?” as described above?

[@chrishajer Participant 15 years, 1 month ago]

You do not need integration at all to put a link to your forum in your top menu.

How to put a link to forums on my WordPress navigation menu

But it’s even simpler than that. If you put your bbPress installation in a folder (subdirectory of where WordPress is) called “kitty-cat-talk” and you create a WordPress page called “Kitty Cat Talk” with a slug of “kitty-cat-talk” – the link will be in the menu, and clicking the link will send visitors to your forum. The way WordPress .htaccess and mod_rewrite works with pretty permalinks is that it looks for a folder first (or a file) and if a folder with that name exists, serve that. So that is what happens with a page like this. Your WordPress page will have no content, it will just send people to your forums, assuming the Page slug and the folder you installed into are the same.

There also also ways to call the page whatever you want, and do a custom redirect to your forum. That is detailed in the link I sent. There are a couple plugins that can do that for you.

http://txfx.net/wordpress-plugins/page-links-to/

http://www.nathanrice.net/plugins/custom-field-redirect/

And then there is the template way someone linked to in that thread.

It’s pretty easy and you do not need integration at all to just have a link in your WordPress menu to your forum installation.

[@buddha-trance Member 15 years, 1 month ago]

I believe that the issue was the reverse, that is: how to add the blog menu onto the forum.

If this is the case – the way I have done it – you edit header.php of your forum theme and add the menu tabs there, to match the ones of your blog. Make sure it is a custom theme and add it to my-templates folder, or you will lose it when you upgrade bbPress next time (if left as the default Kakumei).

Just after

<div id="header" role="banner">

you add the html for the tabs (for id “navigation” add it to the style sheet). For example:

<div id="header" role="banner">

<ul id="navigation">

<li><a href="blog url" title="Main Blog">Blog</a></li>

<li><a href="forum url" title="Forums">Forums</a></li>

<li><a href="another page url" title="Whatever Page">Whatever Page</a></li>

<li><a href="contact page url" title="Contact Me">Contact Me</a></li>

<li><a href="about page url" title="About">About</a></li>

</ul>

</div>

Hope this helps.

[@fifthhouse Member 15 years, 1 month ago]

Thanks to you both. Yes it was to have links in my forum back to the blog. OK great, I think I can do this (not versed in code but this looks quite straightforward).

If I could take the question one step further, within my blog, would I then be able to create a widget “latest forum posts” with a list of several, which would link to the posts in the forums? Or would this require deeper integration?

This would give me everthing I need in terms of functionality.

[@buddha-trance Member 15 years, 1 month ago]

I am using this plugin, with just normal integration, to call the forum latest posts in the sidebar of my blog, and it works great.

https://bbpress.org/plugins/topic/bbpress-latest-discussion-for-wp/

[@fifthhouse Member 15 years, 1 month ago]

Thanks for this. I don’t mean to be a bother, but when you say ‘normal, does that mean integrating cookies and database?

[@chrishajer Participant 15 years, 1 month ago]

Heh, completely misread that one. It’s even easier to put a link to the WordPress site in your bbPress header. Just modify the template file to put the link where you want it.

[@fifthhouse Member 15 years, 1 month ago]

Can you say more? How would I modify it? And which file?

[@chrishajer Participant 15 years, 1 month ago]

buddha trance explained it pretty clearly, for adding the links to your header.php:

https://bbpress.org/forums/topic/question-about-integration#post-60365

Did that not work for you?

[@fifthhouse Member 15 years, 1 month ago]

Hi there again. Yes that works for me. I just though you were suggesting another method as well. I did get that to work, so I’m good to go.

[@chrishajer Participant 15 years, 1 month ago]

Ok good – we were all talking about modifying the same file, header.php in your theme or template folder.

[@buddha-trance Member 15 years, 1 month ago]

@ fifthhouse – Yes, chrishajer and I were talking about the same file! Great that you got that to work.

Regarding integration, yes, by “normal” I mean just sharing the users tables in the database and cookies. Deep integration loads WP into bbPress. It is better explained here, under “Functions” https://bbpress.org/documentation/integration-with-wordpress/

The plugin seems to work even if there is no integration, though. From the description page:

“Even if your bbpress is not integrated with your wordpress. U still can use this plugin with a little change on the option page.”

[@fifthhouse Member 15 years, 1 month ago]

I have a developer who does some work for me sometimes fixing up my blog, and this week he made a nice theme for me to match my wordpress theme

http://angerwise.com/forums

[@nisray Member 14 years, 9 months ago]

@fifthhouse:

I like the design of your forum, which I assume was in some way put together by your designer. Still working on mine. I can’t see a link to your forum from your home page though. Perhaps I missed it or it is pending.

Will be looking for a designer myself sometime soon. Would you be kind enough to pass on details of yours??

Thanks.

John.