What's happening with bbPress?
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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.
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> Why not just include the majority of them
Finite resources. WordPress didn’t become great by cramming a bunch of features in. WordPress is great because of the ability to add plugins and themes. Any feature you want, and any look you want, is available in WordPress using a plugin or a theme. If there needs to be a new hook added to WordPress to allow a plugin to accomplish something, they generally do it.
It’s taken WordPress a long time to incorporate into the core a lot of things that used to be plugins, and maybe should still be plugins. bbPress is nowhere near that stage yet.
Merry Christmas mate,
The reason i was asking about what features SMF had that BBpress didn’t is that most of them you’ve listed so far have plugins to complete that task. Not all, i agree, but 90%.
Its not ideal, but they are there and they do work.
… SMF had a sophisticated bozo-user ban protection. You could ban by member-name, ban by IP-Number, ban by email address
BBprogress had 1 or 2 plugins that handled that.
EDIT: Infact form the last 4 plugins listed on their website:
– Admin block posts based on keywords
– Sin Bin functionality.
– Black mark functionality.
– Check registar against spammer database.
Why not just include the majority of them?
Because we dont have anyone to build them.
Why isn’t bbpress just WordPress with a slightly different ‘loop’ ?
The only differences between a ‘blog’ and a ‘forum’ I can see are:
- Posts are ordered by last comment, not by original posting date
- Database remembers the last comment you have seen for each post
Otherwise, are there any basic code differences? (“Forums” just become “Categories” so that should just be window-dressing, not code.) Why can’t we build bbpress right into WordPress as-is?
They are looking into making that happen:
>WordPress didn’t become great by cramming a bunch of features in.
WordPress became popular, and maintains its popularity, because it provides features users want. If you want Vanilla, go download Vanilla. When people get BBpress they expect comparable functionality to WordPress. Not some stripped down prototype of a forum framework.
This community is hijacked by people who want BBpress forever to be 0.9. It is extremely frustrating to see people continually rail against increasing the base featureset of BBpress. Especially when _ck_ abandoning plugins that were crucial to the very existence of the BBpress community show the need for these features to be officially maintained and not exist on the emotional whims of a single person.
>Wordpress became popular, and maintains its popularity, because it provides features users want.
I agree. As plugins, in most cases.
And for the record, I don’t want bbPress to stick with 0.9. I think some people want that because 0.9:
- has more plugins that work with it
- uses less resources
I just want bbPress to live up to the promises it makes:
https://bbpress.org/about/features/
https://bbpress.org/documentation/integration-with-wordpress/
That’s all.
I’m a long time bbPress user, and invested quite a big time to update from 0.9 to 1.0 some months ago.
I really, really don’t want that bbPress dies.
I need a standalone version of bbPress, even if I somehow integrated it into my wordpress but just for user.
I really don’t ask for another new complete bbPress version. For me, that means a very long time for re-adapting (some customs plugins and hacks and integration with a custom website-script)
Like Chrishajer, the basic features of bbPress are my ground requirements. Specially since the old plugins usually works with small adaptation.
I participated some times in the forum for such adaptations.
The best part of bbPress features, is “Fast and light”. Which is not anymore the main characteristic of Worpress.
enougth said about what’s my point of view, I would like to ask one more time
“What’s happening with bbPress?” (topic title)
The bbPress blog is not that clear, and the “meetup”s are not really easy to read.
thierryyyyyyy:
A lot of ideas are being thrown around at the moment, and things are going slowly. It’s like that for a reason. The next version of bbPress will be one that is clean, robust, and easy to use.
At the moment, it looks like bbPress will become a canonical plugin for WordPress. As with most Automattic products, I think this was the idea in the first place.
Closer to the time, Matt will share updates as to a more narrowed path for bbPress.
This is what I want from future bbPress releases:
1. Open Source, always and forever
2. Less (code) is more
3. Simplicity is a feature
4. Speed and security are the foundation of any good user experience
5. Put the user first
This list can be found here:
Thanks to chrishajer for pointing it out earlier in the thread… I think it sums things up nicely.
Thanks Michael.
Just a precision : ‘a canonical WordPress plugin’ means that it will be something like “akismet” ?
Could it be a standalone, then ?
Wordpress is a very heavy “small forum”, no ?
for citizenkeith :
this is more a philosophy than a features list, but I agree …
I think it also miss a point from which we are suffering now : a “viable future”. Every software need to be sure that the support will be continued for a long time. Specially when it is meant to build a community, which is much than needed for bbPress (just thinking about plugins)
@yutt (or is it Skull Man?) & Dailytalker:
I agree 100% with your points. ‘Simplicity is a feature’ and ‘less is more’ are great slogans, but it’s impractical to require someone to find/research/download/upload/configure zillions of plugins to do extremely basic forum tasks that are taken for granted with other programs. I want a stable forum program that contains basic features that aren’t going to stop working if a plugin developer walks away or won’t update them to work with future bbPress builds. I love bbPress but find it just too stripped-down and feature-less out of the box. Would be great to see more optional features you can use or turn off like Gravatars. The default text input interface in-particular leaves much to be desired.
Plugins like Topic Views should be incorporated into the base feature-set of BBpress as well as things like Widgets and the ability to edit themes or plugins from within the admin.
I am not a professional programmer and really admire and appreciate those who develop plugins, such as NightGunner5, Paul Hawke, Michael Adams etc. Going out on a limb here, I would guess it would not be too difficult to incorporate SOME of the more popular plugin features into the Core (especially focusing on _ck_’s best stuff as she will likely not be back). Again, I’m not talking about building in Nintendo emulators or Weatherbug displays but why the heck should someone need a plugin to display how many times a topic has been viewed?!?
@all:
Something I think base minimalists and more-base-feature advocates like yutt & Dailytalker would all agree on is that that bbPress’s admin should display plugin update notifications like WordPress’s admin does. This would be extremely helpful for everyone, especially when security risks are discovered in plugins one has running.
Haha, I bet even kevinjohngallagher would agree with me on this one!
Everyone defines basic in a different way. That’s the problem with adding more things into the core by default. I agree that finding plugins that work has been a problem, but that’s less of a problem with the fact that bbPress is minimal and more with a problem of the way the project has been run, and the amount of resources it’s gotten.
I’m just really looking forward to the development and progression of bbPress, regardless of the direction it takes. I think one of the things I’m most keen to see is for the masses to take it under their wing in much the same way millions have with WordPress, so that we have a plethora of innovative developers providing additional functionality and solutions through these forums and their own personal websites.
thierryyyyyyy:
About the Canonical plugin story, you may want to read this: https://wordpress.org/development/2009/12/canonical-plugins/
Like I said, I don’t think it will be a standalone package as, just like other Automattic products, it will need to be a part of WordPress. Look at BuddyPress, for example.
@dailytalk – thanks for posting your real world experiences. I would like to ask that you also include the version of bbpress that you are using?
@all –
I am under the impression that most of the plugins do not work properly with the current version, so a fresh install today is even MUCH further away from the basic functionality of smforums, phpbb, vbulletin, etc.
A serious problem that plagues wordpress, bbpress, and I should mention similar projects including phpfox, is companies that develop new releases often leave lots of broken plugins and themes – most users get so frustrated not knowing to upgrade and lose functionality – or stay downgraded and have possible security issues. This is a major problem that has me admiring the way vbulletin posts whether or not plugins / extensions will be supported by the core company.
The main thing that keeps me using bbpress in a few sites is the price, along with the glimmer of hope that since it is integrated into buddypress. Certainly at some point there will be functioning photo, attachment, moderation and other functions, that the WP / BP /BB community will have to have – even if new versions of one break the other. – Unfortunately it’s tough to hold one’s breath with these projects, and seeing the nightmares of bugs, lost functionality, and the time it takes to get back to square 2 after one of the other projects has been upgraded to square three – it’s devastating.
I for one would love to see image and file attachments, along with something like tinymce incorporated into the core of BBpress – but even if they are not, I would like to see important plugins like these and moderation, etc, all be maintained and tested and upgraded along with any new releases by the bbpress developers.
I think first and foremost, bbPress needs to do what ever it’s going to do with WordPress, and move on from that. Whether it remains as a standalone solution and has a solid integration facility, or becomes integrated with WordPress. I don’t really care which, as either way bbPress will be working side-by-side with WordPress, which is all that I require right now.
When’s the next meet-up, anyway?
We’ve been doing them every week at the same time, PeteMall was going to post the logs from the latest one.
Looking forward to the next log post. Thanks Matt.
I just wanted to chime in and say that I choose bbpress as a stand alone forum system because I don’t like the bloat of phpbb or vbulletin or any of the other bb softwares out there. Its light, simple setup, and anybody can jump into the discussion without having to learn a lot of new things.
I support where ever this all goes, but I hope it stays standalone.
When is the next meet up??
We have them Every Wednesday at 2100 GMT. The last few have not been posted on the blog yet. That will probably happen soon.
It has almost been a week, this doesn’t really add to the “we-are-reviving-bbPress” feeling. How hard can it be to copy-past and post some log?
I’m with you re: keeping bbPress standalone.
I do not want to have to install WordPress every single time I install bbPress.
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