OK, after a long, painful day of multiple attempts, we finally successfully migrated our forums to bbPress. We’ve been on vBulletin for many many years.

We integrated with BuddyPress – the site can be seen here:
http://www.theworshipcommunity.com

First Impressions:
Clean, slick, overall, a better design once we tweak the .css to make the forums (specifically) look better.

Performance: not sure if it’s a plugin or what, but overall performance is sluggish on both the Buddypress and the bbPress side.

Biggest Disappointment:
By far, the biggest disappointment and biggest feature request, in less than 24 hours of use, is the inability to find ANY plugin or way to easily let a forum user in bbPress show UNREAD threads/replies in one location. I’ve installed the pencil plugin, the “go to first unread post” plugin (which doesn’t seem to be showing up) and another plugin that puts a “new” icon next to a forum .. but that still requires one to click on each forum and dig through to try and find the actual new post or reply.

Someone PLEASE tell me that my 24+ hours of searching and scouring these forums and google results that a decent way to do this is out there? (w/o modifying core files)

[@robkk Moderator 9 years, 7 months ago]

the “go to first unread post” plugin (which doesn’t seem to be showing up)

its that little [>] by each topic title that has an unread post. When you click on the topic and see the new post it disappears.

The plugin also has a feature to bolden the topic titles that have posts unread but this requires editing the loop-single-topic.php template which you do with a child theme.

[@fmckinnon Participant 9 years, 7 months ago]

Thanks RoBK – I see it now – wasn’t sure what I was looking for. Any thoughts on if there is anything that easily filters and displays all unread forums/threads in one easy view?

[@ppoojavermaa Participant 9 years, 7 months ago]

I want to migrate from blogger. Is it possible.

[@robkk Moderator 9 years, 7 months ago]

@fmckinnon

well there is the bbpress mark as read plugin which lists all the unread posts a user has in there subscriptions area. of your profile.

the developer does not reccommend the plugin on large sites though

i dont know if he fixed it where its okay , or that the listing all the users unread posts feature might be bad for large sites.

[@fmckinnon Participant 9 years, 7 months ago]

@Robkk thanks for the reply. I have the “mark as read” plugin installed but it still doesn’t quite accomplish what I’m looking for (and what I’ve seen so many other people search for), which is a quick view of ALL unread forums or replies. Any new content — regardless of whether or not you are subscribed to that thread.

We migrated from vBulletin 4.2.2 and this is what we’re missing the most. Logging in and immediately being able to “view all unread”.

There’s just gotta be a way!

[@robkk Moderator 9 years, 7 months ago]

@fmckinnon

you do not have to be subscribed to the topic for it to be unread and show if i remember correctly, and its just the area the plugin developer put it.

that plugin should display a list of topics that are unread in the subscriptions area.

it should kind of similar to these screenshots here, it looks really different because the developer was using a custom theme.

https://wordpress.org/plugins/bbpress-mark-as-read/screenshots/

if there is a way to use custom user meta in wp-query then i could just give you a snippet to add a custom view for bbPress that would list all the unread topics in one place , and you just place a shortcode in a page and all.

viewing unead forums is not part of both of these two plugins i think but you could mark a forum read in both to clear any unread topics in it.

unread replies go to first unread post shows which topics that are unread replies using that little [>] icon.

[@fmckinnon Participant 9 years, 7 months ago]

@robkk –
Thanks for the screenshot – that is EXACTLY what I was trying to do … but I don’t seem to be able to find that on my forums at http://www.theworshipcommunity.com/discuss/

Two questions:
1 – when you say “in the subscriptions area” – what do you mean by that? Where is the “subscription area” and how to you get there?

WAIT: I think I found it here:
http://www.theworshipcommunity.com/members/admin/forums/subscriptions/

Also, if you’re good w/ design/style, etc — can you tell me why my right sidebar gets pushed down to the bottom of the page on certain forum pages? It displays fine on some, but in the subscriptions area it doesn’t, and also, any forum that is a parent forum to a group also displays w/ the right sidebar pushed down.

[@robkk Moderator 9 years, 7 months ago]

WAIT: I think I found it here:
http://www.theworshipcommunity.com/members/admin/forums/subscriptions/

There you go!

Also, if you’re good w/ design/style, etc — can you tell me why my right sidebar gets pushed down to the bottom of the page on certain forum pages?

i tired it last night but i couldn’t find what was causing the problem easily through CSS, i would have to dig in your code more.

[@vitormadeira Participant 8 years, 6 months ago]

@fmckinnon, I just visited your forum and it seems that you went back to vbulletin.

bbPress did not do the trick on running your community forums?

I too am planning on converting a vbulletin 3.8 forum into bbPress, but really need to get other folks opinions before taking such move.

Thanks.

[@fmckinnon Participant 8 years, 6 months ago]

Hi @victor.madeira yes, we didn’t stay with it long – there was just too many vBulletin features that weren’t available.

[@vitormadeira Participant 8 years, 6 months ago]

Thanks! This is the kind of information that I’m looking for: Real user testimonies when dealing conversions from vBulletin to bbPress with success or not!