[Grubbi]

Ok, completely new to WP. Wanted a website with a forum…so thought this was my best bet.

Have installed bbPress. Have created forums. My forums are shown on my link but not http://mywebsite.co.uk/forums, instead it’s http://mywebsite.co.uk/post_type=forum

I did some digging around…apparently I’m to change my permalinks…but when I change them my forum disappears and I get an error –

Not Found

The requested URL /forums/forum/general-discussion/ was not found on this server.

Not sure why it’s got forums/forum??

Anyway…I’ve been trying in vain to add a forum “tab” on my home page, so that people can click the forum tab to take them to the forum home page.

I tried adding a Menu…but it says that the theme only supports one menu. (I have Home) So I did a custom link, dragged it over to the home menu…but nothing changes on my home page.

I’ve seen another saying to create a page and use a bbPress template in the drop down to link the page to the forum…except I don’t have any bbPress templates in the drop down, only “default template”, £ront page template” and “full width page template, no side bar”.

All I’m trying to do is add a forum tab to my home page…so it reads “Home…Forum” etc… Is this not doable?

[Stephen Edgar]

Try all the things you above using the Twenty Eleven theme included with bbPress…

• Change your permalinks and visit http://example.com/forums
• Add a menu item pointing to http://example.com/forums
• Create a new WordPress page and add the [bbp-forum-index] shortcode to it

Once you are happy that you have everything working with the Twenty Eleven theme as you expect it should then switch back to your custom theme and if needed contact the theme author asking why the theme doesn’t support xyz…

[Grubbi]

Which is the best option to choose for permalinks?

When I change the permalinks I get a message telling me to update my .htaccess file. Except I can’t find a .htaccess file on my FTP or server, so I created one, added the text it tells me to and copied it to my root folder. That seemed to have worked ok, I no longer get the .htaccess error.

Also, when I create a page and add the shortcode to it, it creates the tab for me, but it links to /forum-2, not forums. If I change the permalink, it just changes it back.

Also, when I view the forum via the “View” link in Dashboard>Forums it takes me to /forums/forum/general-discussion/, not forums/generaldiscussion.

[Stephen Edgar]

That seemed to have worked ok, I no longer get the .htaccess error.

That will indeed help now that you have a .htaccess file for permalinks and the most common permalink format is ‘Post name’ which it appears you are now using.

Also, when I create a page and add the shortcode to it, it creates the tab for me, but it links to /forum-2, not forums. If I change the permalink, it just changes it back.

Make sure you don’t have a deleted page named ‘forums’ in your trash.

Also, when I view the forum via the “View” link in Dashboard>Forums it takes me to /forums/forum/general-discussion/, not forums/generaldiscussion.

WordPress removes any ‘whitespace’ from the names and replaces them with a hyphen, URL’s may not contain spaces.

[Grubbi]

I did have a “forums” in trash, I deleted it but it’s still linking to /forum-2. Any idea how to “refresh it”?

Ah I get the – being added, I was more concerned with the forums/forum/ part of the link, instead of just /forums/.

Thank you! 🙂

[Stephen Edgar]

I did have a “forums” in trash, I deleted it but it’s still linking to /forum-2. Any idea how to “refresh it”?

Try changing your permalinks, click save, change them back and save again and that should flush them.

Ah I get the – being added, I was more concerned with the forums/forum/ part of the link, instead of just /forums/.

That is the default bbPress structure, you can turn off the ‘forums prefix’ in settings and you would end up with /forum/general-discussion/

[Grubbi]

Hmm, I did that, changed the permalinks, the path changed to default, so I changed it back again and it’s still /forum-2/