[nathanegraham]

Hi,

Amazing plugin. Just ran into an unusual problem. I have a large multisite and I’ve been using bbpress and buddypress for a couple years with no problems until now. I just updated bbpress to 2.5.4 and here’s the problem:

1. site administrator activates bbpress
2. the site administrator does not see Forums, Topics, and Replies in the dashboard menu
3. If I navigate to their site as a network admin, I can see Forums, Topics, and Replies

So only network admin can see these menu items if activated on a site-by-site basis.

If I network activate bbpress, then everyone sees Forums, Topics, and Replies. I want to allow users to choose to activate bbpress on a site by site basis.

I’m on 3.9.2 and have tried disabling all plugins except multisite plugin management. Thoughts?

Thanks!

[Stephen Edgar]

Are you saying this worked as expected with bbPress 2.5.3 and now 2.5.4 has broken this functionality?

[nathanegraham]

Hi Stephen,

Thanks for responding! I actually updated from 2.5.2 to 2.5.4. Before I updated, I could just activate bbpress on a site-by-site basis on the multisite network and folks could use it just on their particular site. When I updated from 2.5.2 to 2.5.4, they could activate it on their site and I could see Forums, Topics, Replies but they couldn’t. I tested with the various roles and only Network Admin could see the menu items Forums, Topics, Replies. However, the actual forums were there and if I sent the site admin or site editor, etc., a direct link to the site forum, then could access it. It’s just the menu item visibility that’s the problem.

Thanks!

[jugoretz]

I can document this exact problem on our Multisite install. Seems like some problem with the roles/permissions in multisite? And in fact, even with the direct link, site admins can’t create forums (although super admins/network admins can).

Meanwhile the workaround of network-activating is effective, but that’s not a good long-term solution. We have thousands of sites in the network and only a fraction of them need to use bbPress. (thanks, @nathanegraham for the tip on that workaround, though!)

[jugoretz]

@netweb Any ideas about this? It’s a fairly major issue in multisite, and I’d love to have a solution.

[nathanegraham]

Thanks for chiming in @jugoretz

I’m still seeing this issue. I’m going to update to WP 4.0 this weekend. Hopefully that resolves this permission issue. At this point my only choice is to network activate if I want individual site admins to have access to forums, and activating network wide causes quite a lot of confusion and is unnecessary for our purposes.

Thanks!

[jugoretz]

Yeah, not trying to be discouraging, @nathanegraham, but this is a bug–and I am already running WordPress 4.0 and still experiencing the problem.

Activating network-wide also has the consequence that sites that do not need bbPress, but do need other plugins, sometimes have trouble with those other plugins because of conflicts with bbPress (I’m suspecting that as a problem now with Join My Multisite plugin).

Would be great to see a fix soon, if possible! @netweb? Anyone?

[nathanegraham]

Thanks @jugoretz

I can also confirm that updating to WP 4.0 didn’t resolve the issue described above. Any thoughts on how to fix this issue while we wait for the next bbPress update?

[jugoretz]

@netweb @nathanegraham

I have been poking around trying to find a fix but no luck.

This is quite a serious problem for multisite. I hope that the team can take a look?

[tharsheblows]

I can’t reproduce this on a clean install of WP 4.0 with bbPress 2.5.4 and Twenty Fourteen theme. What other plugins are you using? I’ve tried it both with Join My Multisite and this pluginhttps://wordpress.org/plugins/multisite-plugin-manager/ (tried them separately, I mean) and both work.

Can you give any more details? Which theme are you using?

[jugoretz]

thanks @tharsheblows

This is in a large multisite install, and occurs on every site in the install, regardless of which theme is in use, and even when no other plugins are activated.

The problem is quite specific–as @nathanegraham says above–

Network Admins (what used to be called super admins) can access the bbPress Forums, Topics, and Replies in the dashboard menu on any site where bbPress is activated. But site admins for that particular site can not. (unless it is network activated. Then it works for both site admins and network admins).

The forum items in the Settings menu are there and visible. But not much use when the site admin can not create forums.

This is the case even when Join my multisite is deactivated (even when it’s uninstalled).

It’s a really specific problem, I realize, but it’s a clear issue that network admins do have access to that menu and site admins do not.

AT first I thought that the forums menu was functioning, just not visible, but it turns out the problem is deeper.

If, as a site admin, I have the direct link to the forums menu ( /wp-admin/edit.php?post_type=forum ), I can see the menu, but if I try to create a new forum, I get an “Invalid post type” error. It does seem that I can edit existing forums.

Again, network activating bbPress solves this problem (although it creates others).

Happy to provide any more info that might help!

[tharsheblows]

Could you check to see if your admins have the bbPress role of “keymaster”? If not, change that and see if it works.

I’ve just reproduced the problem and had to do that. Having an “administrator” WP role was not enough.

Just want to know if that’s the issue! Thanks.

[jugoretz]

That looked like a very good solution, but it didn’t work. Thanks!

I can see a blank spot in the sidebar where the forum menu should be, but a site admin, even with a forum role of keymaster, can’t actually see it.

Really appreciate the help–I’m kind of stumped.

[tharsheblows]

Shoot.

The problem is, I think, that current_user_can( ‘bbp_forums_admin’ ) and the topics / replies equivalents are returning false for your admins / keymasters in bbpress/bbpress.php register_post_type() starting on 473 (you want ‘show_ui’ => true when registering the post types). Oddly (?) I can’t find the bbp_forums_admin etc capabilities anywhere.

I am just checking here but you don’t have a cache or anything like that enabled, do you?

I’m just about to go to bed but will test a couple of work-arounds tomorrow sometime.

[jugoretz]

No cache, no.

We do have buddypress running, although from what I can tell, that shouldn’t cause any problems, should it?

[tharsheblows]

I would think that BuddyPress should be fine. But do you have any other plugins? If you have any more, try deactivating them all (bar bbPress and BuddyPress), seeing if the problem is still there and then reactivating them one by one to find the offender.

[jugoretz]

I’ve tried deactivating just about everything except BuddyPress, with no progress. I’ll keep trying on this over the weekend. Thanks again for helping!

[jugoretz]

Well, I think I’ve found a better workaround than the Network Activate Solution.

Based on a lead from this topic from a year ago https://bbpress.org/forums/topic/missing-admin-menu-items/ , I tried activating Capability Manager Enhanced (https://wordpress.org/plugins/capability-manager-enhanced/) and surprise! There were the missing capabilities, not checked, not active, in the Capability Manager settings.

So I just enabled all the forum-related capabilities for administrators (could do this for any role, I’m sure) in CME, and that made everything work again for the site administrators, even when bbPress is not activated network-wide.

So that’s a much better solution (from my perspective, at least). If you want to use bbPress in multisite, just be sure to also use Capability Manager Enhanced on any site where you want the site admin to have the capability to add/edit/delete/manage forums.

[tharsheblows]

Oh I’m glad you got it sorted! I read this and meant to reply but forgot.

Do you remember which capabilities were missing? I’m curious as to why they weren’t active.

[jugoretz]

Pretty much all the forum-related capabilities were not active (and I’m not sure why not, either).

For the administrator role, there was no capability to delete, edit, publish or even read topics, forums or replies.

The keymaster role does have all these capabilities, but for some reason that is not translating over to administrator.

Looks like something quite odd is happening with roles and capabilities in multisite.

[tharsheblows]

Thanks. I wonder why that is.

Did you, by any chance, run the “Remap existing users to default forum roles” tool? I wouldn’t have because I have waaaay too many people that have the “blocked” bbPress role but I didn’t change from “subscriber” in their WP role.

Just curious if there’s a case to be made for a tool to do the same but just for Keymaster capabilities. Or something. I’m not quite familiar with all of it to know the right way to handle it.

Anyway, thank you for letting me know! 🙂 I was super curious.

[jugoretz]

Yeah, I did run that remap tool…but it didn’t have any effect. A very difficult error, this one, but at least the workaround works.

[sundog02]

This solved the missing Forum Admin link for me. Thanks!