I was using a standalone bbpress for many years, but the latest WordPress update did something to mess up cookie integration. The writing was on the wall for my old standalone forum, I decided to move forward and upgrade and migrate.

A sleepless week later, it is done.

First, it imported all posts, even years-old spam, so I deleted that migration and figured out how to really delete spam in the standalone, and then imported again.

Then I found out that tags were not integrated, rather if tags were in the forum, they simply deleted any tags or custom taxonomies with the same name in the wordpress install. The site relies heavily on these tags, so we we spent a few days re-tagging everything and re-checking.

Now this morning I see that one entire category of the wp install was deleted. Luckily it was not a heavily trafficked section of the site. At this point we’ve put days of work into this data, so rather than roll back, we’ll recreate that category.

bbpress has given our site community many things over the years, I can’t complain at all. But the new version is much slower than the standalone version, and much harder for us to edit and modify. My viewers actually have a diminished experience now.

The tide has turned over the years. While WordPress fumbled with bbpress and buddypress, Facebook came to the fore and basically sucked all the community out of the wp platform. It’s a shame, and not likely to turn around for any of us here. I applaud the hard work of the devs who worked on this platform over the years, but it has been an exhausting experience this last week, and I am not done yet. It will be another sleepless night.

[@netweb Keymaster 10 years, 2 months ago]

A sleepless week later, it is done.

Been there, done that 😉

First, it imported all posts, even years-old spam, so I deleted that migration and figured out how to really delete spam in the standalone, and then imported again.

Tough gig, but once it is done it is done…

Then I found out that tags were not integrated, rather if tags were in the forum, they simply deleted any tags or custom taxonomies with the same name in the wordpress install. The site relies heavily on these tags, so we we spent a few days re-tagging everything and re-checking.

Tags should indeed work and import as expected, for example, here on bbpress.org this was imported using the same importer you used.

The “profile” tag ~7 year old topics -> https://bbpress.org/forums/topic-tag/profile/page/7/

Now this morning I see that one entire category of the wp install was deleted. Luckily it was not a heavily trafficked section of the site. At this point we’ve put days of work into this data, so rather than roll back, we’ll recreate that category.

WordPress deleted a category or forum? or was the category/forum not imported?

bbpress has given our site community many things over the years, I can’t complain at all. But the new version is much slower than the standalone version, and much harder for us to edit and modify. My viewers actually have a diminished experience now.

We are improving performance for the next release and yes, things are different now that it is a WordPress plugin, I can’t even begin to count the improvements I’d like added to bbPress, there are many, but not so much time to make it all happen quickly. 🙂

The tide has turned over the years. While WordPress fumbled with bbpress and buddypress, Facebook came to the fore and basically sucked all the community out of the wp platform. It’s a shame, and not likely to turn around for any of us here. I applaud the hard work of the devs who worked on this platform over the years, but it has been an exhausting experience this last week, and I am not done yet. It will be another sleepless night.

Thanks for applause and migrating data from one platform to another is not the easiest thing in the world, I’ve tried to help make it easier and more reliable but again more can be done and not enough time to do it.

[@hseatsleeper Participant 10 years, 2 months ago]

Stephen my rant was no way a slight against you and your work, assuming you’re the lead programmer? I know it’s been a hard road, I’ve been using bbpress since version .9, and seen a few leads over the years.

Much to my delight, the posts in the wp category were not deleted, just the category itself. So I just recreated the category and put those posts in it again.

But the tags in the wordpress site were definitely overwritten in the migration, including any custom taxonomies using the same slugs.

The community I’m involved with is large and active. Since the forum went live again they are back to posting. We’re kind of tied to bbpress as long as it’s supported and is feasible. Here’s hoping the future is bright.

[@netweb Keymaster 10 years, 2 months ago]

Stephen my rant was no way a slight against you and your work, assuming you’re the lead programmer? I know it’s been a hard road, I’ve been using bbpress since version .9, and seen a few leads over the years.

I didn’t take it that way at all 🙂

@JohnJamesJacoby is the lead developer, I’ve just hitched along for the ride since trying to migrate from phpBB to bbPress didn’t work, I do far more than just the import side of things now, I’m still learning PHP and constantly finding more and more ways to improve bbPress.

Much to my delight, the posts in the wp category were not deleted, just the category itself. So I just recreated the category and put those posts in it again.

Excellent

But the tags in the wordpress site were definitely overwritten in the migration, including any custom taxonomies using the same slugs.

Ok, that’s a problem, it is also a scenario I haven’t tried and or thought of even though bbPress does register its own custom taxonomy. I’ll take a look at doing some imports with existing taxonomies in WordPress (tags/categories) and see what happens.

I also hope for a bright bbPress future and I have a pretty big wish list for it also, some documented around the place, some not 🙂

[@netweb Keymaster 10 years, 2 months ago]

I just tested the topic tag import and everything appears fine for me.

* I created a WordPress post tag topic
* I created a WordPress post category topic
* I created a WordPress post and added the tag topic and category topic to the post
* Imported from bbPress 1.2 with topics including the topic tag topic

All results appear fine for me, I have posts/topics correctly associated with each taxonomy:
* http://example.com/tag/topic/
* http://example.com/category/topic/
* http://example.com/forums/topic-tag/topic/