[Darfuria]

It has been 4 months since the latest update on the blog, and I’ve not heard any news about it elsewhere. I know that it’s a side-project of sorts, but I was just curious to know if there was any development news or upcoming features.

[citizenkeith]

It’s such a pity it had to come to an end.

Who said that it has come to an end??? See the sticky post on this forum’s front page.

[buddha-trance]

@Michael888 – bbPress won’t come to an end. We are just going through a temporary halt.

Once we see v. 1.0.3, we’ll know that bbPress has made it though the bump. I bet things will pick up again after WP 2.9 is released.

Then, we’ll see WP 3.0 (with wpmu merger) + BuddyPress 1.5 + bbPress 1.2

the perfect blog/social network/forum combo

I can already visualize it on my dashboard!

A cheerful moment of optimism

[Alex Luft]

Then, we’ll see WP 3.0 (with wpmu merger) + BuddyPress 1.5 + bbPress 1.2

the perfect blog/social network/forum combo

I can already visualize it on my dashboard!

A cheerful moment of optimism

I hope you’re right! I really do! I really like bbPress for its simplicity and flexibility. There still remains work to be done (better commenting integration with WP), but I hope it pulls through!

[Michael]

I’m happy to hear it that way. After looking at bbShowcase, I just thought that it was done. I’d be so happy to see 1.2 come out. In fact, I can’t wait to see 2.0 – I’m sure it’ll have a stack of new features.

But you’re right, and like I said as well, there’d be no good reason to end it.

I know this is off-topic, but I’d just like to ask something. BuddyPress seems to be such a brilliant piece of software. Can it only be integrated with WordPress MU? Can it not run standalone? The whole idea for my site is to have a simple community-driven system for all areas of development. The forum seems to be doing the trick, and as good as it is, BuddyPress would cater for the concept so much better than bbPress does.

Thanks for the optimism – I wasn’t worrying, however.

[buddha-trance]

@Alex Luft – Focused intent within a community can move mountains!

@Michael888 – As of now, BuddyPress works only with WPMU. It does not run as a standalone, because it is built as a set of plugins. Rumors said that the code for WP single user and WPMU would merge soon. I still have a test community area with everything installed and it’s the ideal combo. Didn’t transfer the blog there because of the announced merge… have been waiting for a year now. If the social network capability is urgent for you, you may want to use WPMU for the time being, and merge later.

BuddyPress is another good reason why I don’t see bbPress coming to an end. A forum is an integral part of the social networking (group forums, etc.). BP itself relies on bbPress currently. From their site:

Groups also include a group forum (bbPress), and wire where group members can engage in discussions.

[Michael]

I see – thanks for telling me that. The change is not urgent – so I’ll stick to my current bbPress installation. It seems to be doing the trick just fine. I’ll probably even land up extending it myself.

[sadness]

Automattic is funded and have enough money to hire a lead developer to take charge (same way as wp), what Matt posted really gives me the chill when it comes to bbpress roadmap…

_ck_ already said three months ago that if things didn’t change by December, she wouldn’t be doing plugins upgrades for 1.0: http://bbshowcase.org/forums/topic/suggestion-to-ck-regarding-donations#post-1641 I can’t understand why Automattic doesn’t send her a $5-10k donation… bbPress would lose so much momentum if she stopped contributing.

I agree with both of you. I was the one that made that post on bbshowcase suggesting to _ck_ that she accept paypal for donations and/or monetize her site in other ways. But the main sentiment she shared with us is that she feels under-appreciated, which we all can understand because it is TRUE.

At the end of the day, there is absolutely nobody to blame for all this madness except Matt. He had 2 amazing programmers running the bbpress project for him, for FREE, and instead of showing them some appreciation, let alone paying them for all their hard work (out of his millions of dollars), he decided to be selfish and focus on WP and screw the people who were making bbpress such a huge success.

He barely gave bbpress any recognition, and still doesn’t. He has just never cared much about it. Christ, look at how shitty the WP.org forums are. They haven’t been updated in years. He just grabs the basic forum code for WP and BuddyPress and hacks it to work smoothly, and that’s it.

There are only 2 reasons why Sam and _ck_ “left”, “are leaving”, or “were removed” and that is because there have been sour relations for a very long time between WP and bbpress. There are only 2 causes:

1) they were being taken advantage of

2) they were being under-appreciated

Both of these are the fault of Matt, who in his juvenile ways has never given 2 shits about the worker bees that he has been so blessed with and who have made his open source projects take off. It’s the same exact attitude that you see with the a-holes at Facebook and other “startup successes” that were simply at the right place at the right time yet who think of themselves as gods.

Matt, get your shit together, and show some respect and appreciation for the people around the world who made, and continue to make, you successful. You didn’t create yourself buddy. Grow up and show a little generosity and maturity and manage bbpress with some true class.

This project will not go away people so stop with the farewells.

…That’s unless Matt deletes it, of course.

[r-a-y]

@sadness

No need for speculation, hearsay and playing the blame game.

Posts like this do not help matters.

@michael888

If you can’t wait for the WP/WPMU merge for BuddyPress, use Mingle, a social networking plugin by Blair Williams that works on regular WordPress. It’s already quite stable for such a young plugin.

Good news is you can still use your existing bbPress as well

[johnhiler]

Sadness – Since you quoted me, I wanted to make sure to correct the record in a few places:

Matt must care about bbPress – he wrote the initial version himself!

http://ma.tt/2004/12/bbpress/

Sam was not working for free when he programmed v 1 – he was a paid employee of Automattic from Nov 07 to August 09:

http://unlettered.org/2007/11/13/wax-on/

http://www.linkedin.com/in/sambauers

Just wanted to make sure that any inaccuracies weren’t left uncorrected…

[Sam Bauers]

I just want to set the record straight a little here as some things have been said that aren’t accurate.

The flaming that Matt has received from @sadness above is unwarranted, unsubstantiated and quite cowardly.

I left Automattic to pursue my own interests both within and outside of the web development world. This was my own decision, there was no pressure from Matt or anyone at Automattic to leave. Before I left Automattic I talked with Matt about a bunch of possible directions for bbPress and my own options within the company. Whilst a lot of the ideas we discussed would make for interesting and important work, I didn’t feel passionate about it, and I was feeling a little burnt out after about 10 years of web development work.

_ck_ was always a constructive critic of bbPress. I always gave her plenty of my time so that she could fulfil that role. In the absence of a full-time lead on the project to hear that input I imagine that she felt her contribution in that regard was limited. It’s not that Matt isn’t good at listening, it’s just that he’s about 100 times busier than a full-time lead would be.

I’d also like to chime in on the future development path of bbPress a little. The idea of moving to becoming a canonical plugin I think is the only sensible way forward for bbPress. bbPress needs a bigger user base to be viable as a product. A big problem in the past has been justifying changes in WordPress for the benefit of bbPress, so the more users there are of bbPress the more accommodating WordPress will be in that regard.

WordPress development moves really fast, it was (and will be) totally inefficient to spend time and energy maintaining compatibility with WordPress as a stand alone product, when bbPress can get all that stuff for free as a plugin. There is a ton of common code between WordPress and bbPress now (mostly in the form of BackPress). That should all go away. The PHP framework is WordPress. The only issue is bloat for those using bbPress as a standalone product. WordPress + bbPress plugin will be a lot of code, and will probably be slower than bbPress 1.0 (and almost certainly slower than 0.9). But by hooking into WordPress, a lot of the work that has been done and that will be done in the future to speed it up will be gained. It’s a case of “two steps forward, one step back” but I think it’s the right decision for the project.

Although there was a lot of effort put into BackPress/bbPress 1.0, a whole lot of that work has ended up in WordPress, so it won’t be wasted development. The best vehicle going forward is the canonical plugin route. I suggest that the community gets behind that plan.

[chrishajer]

Thanks for the info Sam. Happy Holidays to you.

[Sam Bauers]

No problem chris I have to say that I’m sorry for not being around more. I didn’t intend to do the “hot potato” thing.

I’m also sorry for re-opening this topic, but for previously stated reasons I felt it was necessary to respond.

[grassrootspa]

Best of luck with your future projects Sam. I am still enjoying your bbPress 1.0.2 release.

[chrishajer]

No apologies necessary.

I too am using various versions of bbPress (I think 1.0-alpha 2, 1.0.2 and 0.9.0.4) without problem. It works just great for me. So, thanks once again and sincerely, Happy Holidays to you.

[tfbpa]

I was happy with bbpress, but actually the only reason I was happy was because of the plugins of _ck_. Now that she is discontinuing the plugins, I feel that I have no choice but to move away from bbpress.

It’s a shame, but bbpress without plugins is pretty useless for me.

[Macmenddotcom]

Nothing is dead until it stops breathing and its heart stops beating, bbpress is opensource, if you like it as a forum and want it to continue then get coding, the wordpress codex says of opensource:

“open source – is simply programming code that can be read, viewed, modified, and distributed, by anyone who desires. …”

The next thing is promote it, if you have a blog do what I have done here: http://www.macmend.com/archives/114

If you just have a forum with no blog then use what I have done above as a sticky topic.

[circulartrend]

I have to agree. I want all of CKS plugins included into the new bbpress. I know some people like simple, but I for one don’t. I want all the features of a normal message board like phpbb etc. Otherwise, what is the point of a forum if you can’t post photos, easily bold/underline etc all within a little bar for each posting, have new post notifications. Why not just include the majority of them and have them turn on/turn off able for people who want a more simple forum and people who want dozens of features? If there isn’t the same plugins available for 1.1 and beyond like there is with 9.6 ….I won’t upgrade the forum, I will simply leave it as it or start another one using phpbb etc.

[kevinjohngallagher]

what is the point of a forum if you can’t post photos…

I can honestly say, since using my first Bulletin Board back in the very early 90s, that i’ve never uploaded a photo to a forum.

Why not just include the majority of them and have them turn on/turn off able for people who want a more simple forum and people who want dozens of features

And which magical elves would build, debug, and maintain all these wonderful features that at least some people don’t want?

[Dailytalker]

Before bbpress I used SMF (Simpe Machines Forum) http://www.simplemachines.org/. SMF is also open source and it offers much more features than bbpress and it has much more developer. I changed to bbpress for two reasons:

I searched for something which I could better integrate into wordpress and I thought that wordpress and bbpress are more SEO friendly than SMF and Tinyportal.

When I changed from SMF to bbpress I lost about 50% of my previous forum members. It’s because bbpress doesn’t offer as much features than SMF. Some members complaint because of this, thats why I know it.

[kevinjohngallagher]

Dailytalker,

I’m always open to listening to people who have real world examples. What features is BBpress missing that your old SMF forum had?

[Macmenddotcom]

I also used to use SMF but moved away and whilst i am aware of its many add-ons and extra basics that BBpress does not have I have not missed it, and moved away because it became over complex and the move from version 1 to 2 made my site more difficult to run

[hpguru]

I move from SMF to phpBB, because my SMF was spammed dayly. phpBB3 is slow and very difficult to use. Then i open bbPress and I like the ease of use, speed and excellent spam protection and basic operations. Now I am more than a year bbPress user, and I’m happy about that.

[Dailytalker]

Kevin, you can check yourself:

Old forum:

http://www.dailytalk.ch/forums/index.php

(I had pretty urls before but I removed them when I moved this forum into another folder.)

New forum:

http://www.dailytalk.ch/forum/

The old forum had a tinymce-editor with a lot of cool features…drop-down menu for font-size, drop-down menu for different font-style, drop-down menu for different font-color, you could put some letters up (for example “CO2” you could write with the 2 higher than the other letters and also deeper etc.) movies, pictures, links, quotes with name of the original author, message function to reporte abusive messages to the moderators, you could temporary ban members, you could move posts from one topic to another in a very easy and very nice way, sophisticated privat messaging, high security level no spam, you could in an easy way change the login requirements, sophisticated admin-section, admins could see the IP-Number of the visitors, very easy mod (=plugins) upload through integrated ftp-upload, ssi-functions and so on….

The change to bbpress was not an easy decision for me. In my opinion bbpress is still an adventure. Many bbpress-projects are on release candidate level. I used SMF for 3 years and was happy. The problem is that I also have blogs on wordpress and wordpress mu. I had some problems with integration of SMF into wordpress. There are certainly some very old bridges but the different codings didn’t make it easy to me. I integrated SMF with SSI-Functions to wordpress…but I think that because of the similiar coding bbpress is much easier to integrate into wordpress. Thats why I finally decided to give bbpress a chance. I’m somebody who likes to try out new or other things.

@hpguru, what you say is not true at all!!! I never ever had problems with spam when I used SMF!!! SMF offers different register opportunities. They have in the admin-section a so called registration management which offers four different options for registration:

1) Registration Disabled:

Disables the registration process, which means that no new members can register to join your forum.

2) Immediate Registration

New members can login and post immediately after registering on your forum.

3) Member Activation

When this option is enabled any members registering to the forum will have a activation link emailed to them which they must click before they can become full members

4) Member Approval

This option will make it so all new members registering to your forum will need to be approved by the admin before they become members.

Further they have captcha-codes which need to be entered in a registration field. (You can even change the level of those codes. They have different difficulty-levels).

New updates are shown in the admin section…is very simliar to wordpress and you can easy update with integrated ftp-upload.

[kevinjohngallagher]

Thanks for the info Dailytalker, always great to hear real world examples.

The issues i have is that almost all of features which your users could use are availible for BBpress as a plugin. TinyMCE, Quotes, report users/posts, are all availible as plugins. Changing login requirements and temporary bans are also availible as a plugin.

Private messaging (and there is a plugin) is a funny one because some people love it, most think its useless when there’s such a thing as e-mail. Not to mention it just leads to added spam.

“high security level no spam” is something i doubt, because so far, no-one has been able to elimate spam. Google/microsoft/apple – you name it – they get spam. Its more than likely that your particular board got no to little spam, and it was picked up.

For me, these 2 stand out:

you could move posts from one topic to another in a very easy and very nice way

sophisticated admin-section

These are the issues i face with BBpress everyday. I know that different people will be faced with different problems, but when we simply can’t fully administer BBpress, surely its the feature that has to come first.

If you dont mind me saying also DailyTalker, your old forum looks far more like a forum than your new BBpress one (which looks very plain and boring). I’d definately suggest creating a theme to make your two forums look the same. This will make life easier for the users

Thanks for the discussion, and have a merry christmas.

[Dailytalker]

Kevin, before I changed from SMF to bbpress I checked the extensions. I use the following plugins:

Activated:

allow images

image rezizer

bbvideo

Bavatars

BBcode Buttons Toolbar

BBcode Lite

bbPM

bbpress signatures

bbpress smilies

bbpress user directory

bozo users

members online

Not activated:

Askimet (do not like it)

Remove topic forum (unfortunately there is no updated version, it would be a cool thing for users who like SEO-friendly pretty urls)

open-ID (no facebook login and does cause problems with the current bbpress version; wait until its updated)

bbpress polls (causes some problems with my template)

bb topic views (did not find out how to change the language; does not work with poedit and in the files I did not fiend the word “views” so I cannot translate it in german)

ignore user (needs to be updated for the current bbpress version)

All this plugins are nice but with all this bbpress is ways apart from SMF. Thats why former members complaint about the change from SMF to bbpress. SMF allowed to write drafts before posting and other things not mentioned yet…

Regarding the spam problem: SMF and wordpress did solve that problem (wordpress has a lot of good spam protection plugins as well..no need for askimet). I have a pr 5 page and no problems with spam. Register option 3 usually is secure enough. Email-address needs to be proved and there is a captcha-code. If this is not enough you can use register option 4 (member approval) With member approval the admin has to activate new members. With this spam can be avoided. Further SMF had a sophisticated bozo-user ban protection. You could ban by member-name, ban by IP-Number, ban by email address etc.

Regarding the design of the new forum:

The new forum design is better than the design of the old forum. I am not a designer, therefore I don’t think like a designer. I am somebody who likes to have the overview. The new theme is better to keep the overview. On the top you have the latest posts. Beneath you have the different categories and subcategories. This structure is easy to understand. Further the new design allows me to place more ads. Also I work with a drop down menu. Did you use it? It helps too to keep the overview.