I’m looking for advice on how to keep bbPress separate from my primary WP installation while still using the newest version of bbPress…..I think I know what to do but want to be sure I do it right before I start.

My plan is to create a fresh, empty installation of WP, add the bbPress Plugin, and then import my old bb_ tables, which I know will then go into the wp_posts table in the new install – I just don’t want them co-mingled with the content on my primary site.

I can then point a subdomain of my primary site (forums.mysite.com) to this install and just link to it from my site.

To head off questions and just get advice, the reason I want them separate is that I tried integrating the forum with the site (unintentionally) last year when I updated the bbPress plugin and found that it was no longer stand-alone. It created a major catastrophe that took me months to recover from and get back to the way it was previously, and both my site and forum were offline for an unacceptable length of time…..I just never want to go through that level of frustration and work again, as much as I love bbPress I’d rather use some other forum software to keep things separated if I have to.

BUT that said I want to keep my forum software up-to-date and I know that means using the current version.

Any advice, thoughts, suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

[@margaretjpoland Participant 10 years, 7 months ago]

Im also interested with this topic

[@robin-w Moderator 10 years, 7 months ago]

There should be no reason they won’t integrate.

However the first thing you should do is create a test site see

https://codex.bbpress.org/creating-a-test-site/

The you can do everything without any pain !

From what you describe, if you really want to go to a separate route, then the simplest route is for you to have two domains the primary and a subdomain. On the subdomain you would install wordpress, and the same theme as your main site and then add bbpress, put the files in there. As you then say, you’d just call this subdomain from your main site.

[@trisham Participant 10 years, 7 months ago]

Hi Robin,

Thanks for the reply! Integration is not an option for us, as explained in my original post.

The reason I posted the question is that the current version of bbPress – unlike the version we started with – is now a “plugin” that uses the wp_ tables, whereas before it had it’s own folder structure, themes, plugins, etc. But NOW when installing bbPress as a Stand Alone forum, it sounds like we have to install WP somewhere first and then add the plugin? I just wanted to be sure there wasn’t some other method to follow when you’re *not* integrating it into an existing WP-based site.

[@robin-w Moderator 10 years, 7 months ago]

Integration is not an option for us, as explained in my original post.

was just trying to help by giving you a test site that you could fix the issue in – only an option 🙂

therefore yes you are doing wp and bbpress on a sub-domain, should work quite easily !