It means that your registered blog users can use their accounts to post in the forums. When a users logs on to your blog, he’s automatically logged on to your forums.
Sharing the user database table as well as the cookies between the two sites. A visitor only has to create an account once to gain access to both sites.
An example: I have WP on http://www.loinhead.net/ and bbPress on http://forums.loinhead.net/. It works without problems for me and was very little work to set up.
You should certainly understand the integration process before installing as there are several key things you have to do differently – your config.php configuration will be very different, for example. If you have already installed bbPress then I think you will have to get rid of it and install it again, but integrating this time.
If you need help at any specific part of the process, feel free to ask here. 
Also in mathematics integration is the opposite of differentiation.
Is shared logins the only benefit?
Can bbpress use any of the wordpress plugins?
What are some of the practical benefits of integrating a blog with a forum?
Can you make the comments from wordpress go directly to the forum? Not just appear in the forum but ONLY appear in the forum?
My wordpress blog is http://300.mpm.org.au, a community charity illustration blog but I’d like the community aspect of the commenting system to be part of our forums with all our other forum topics/projects at http://www.mpm.org.au.
Ideally I would like the root of our site (http://www.mpm.org.au) to use something relatively simple like Nulls BBportal to pull and display open forum topics from a couple of specific categories (in our forums case our ‘newsfront’ category and our company specific category) and then have our wordpress blog also linked into the forums from a subdomain.
The biggest benefit is the shared logins (a huge benefit), but there are plugins that allow you to make new topics for every post in WP and such. Hopefully at some point there’ll be a total link between posts with comments and topics with replies, but not yet.
bb cannot use WP plugins.
“If you have already installed bbPress then I think you will have to get rid of it and install it again, but integrating this time.”
Is this true?
I think so. Integration has to be done from the very start. You have to set up your config.php properly before install (with the database pointed at your WP database) else it won’t integrate. Maybe I’m wrong; does anyone else know?
If you change the config.php to have the correct information for WP and then login using a user from WP, it will start to use the users out of the wp_users versus bb_users table. I tested this back with 0.74 and it worked, so I can’t see why it would not do this with the newest version, but it is worth a go to prove it. The biggest thing is copying the information from bb_usermeta to wp_usermeta for the keymaster, admin, mods, ect because that is where the information on the user will ‘now’ need to be from that table. If I try this again in the next day or so, I can try and post up some kind of FAQ.
Trent
I’m bummed! I just stabalized a good install of BBPress. Good news is I have no content in there, so I guess a fresh install isn’t too painful.
I’m going to go back and do a fresh install of WP at the root level of one of my sites, then nest BBPress in a directory called ‘forums’ on that site (this is where I assume I’ll tweak the config file FOR BBPRESS to access the existing WP users before running through the browser installation pages).
Does this sound right?
So steps in this order:
1. Fresh install of WordPress 2
2. Fresh install of BBPress nested in a directory (just moving files)
3. Before fully installing BBPress, tweak config file to target existing WordPress DB table for users
4. Adjust cookies
I’m good on most of this but what about item #4?
Thanks for any comments in advance!
David Martinez
You could probably get away with some clever table dropping and simoultaneous config.php adjustments, but your method is simpler. #4 is not a problem, in this case you just want to add this to the middle of your config.php:
bb->cookiepath = '/';
Hi,
Can someone recommend if I should do a re-install?
WP is currently installed here: http://www.website.com/community/wp
bbpress is currently: http://www.website.com/community
Even though I managed to get the 2 sites integrated – i can see the same users on boths sites but am having problems logging in. And I know I need to do something to config.php but can;t quite figure it out. Or would a bbpress re-install solve my issues?
Also how do I setup something like http://www.community.website.com?
You advise will help a lot. Sorry I’m new to all this and this has been rather fasinating to me becos I’m a chef by training You cannot imagine the good you guys have done!
Thanks heaps
Reinstall won’t help you!
When you log into bb, you also log into WordPress, but not the other way around, right? Trouble logging in is usually a cookie problem.
Add this to your config.php:
$bb->cookiepath = '/';
$bb->cookiedomain = '.example.com';
and this in your wp-config.php for wordpress:
define('COOKIE_DOMAIN', '.example.com');
define('COOKIEPATH', '/');
I think that those are all the things you need to set. Give it a go.
To get www.community.example.com you need to set up a subdomain. This is usually done in your control panel. Bear in mind that some hosts have restrictions on numbers etc.
Hihi,
Unfortunately things did not work out. After adding those lines, I lost all privileges to post or even log out on wp and on bb registered users on wp are still experiencing failed log ins.
And on bb, after the new config.php was reloaded, it went into re-install.
$bb->cookiepath = ‘/’;
$bb->cookiedomain = ‘.website.com’;
and this in wp-config.php for wordpress:
define(‘COOKIE_DOMAIN’, ‘.website.com’);
define(‘COOKIEPATH’, ‘/’);
Both bb and wp share the same database with similar prefix “wp_”
Would that be wrong too?
New error I got from re-installing of BB
bbPress database error: [Incorrect table definition; there can be only one auto column and it must be defined as a key]
ALTER TABLE wp_posts ADD COLUMN post_id bigint(20) NOT NULL auto_increment
bbPress database error: [Key column ‘post_id’ doesn’t exist in table]
ALTER TABLE wp_posts ADD PRIMARY KEY (post_id)
Any tips to resolve this?
Yeah. Don’t make the bb prefix the same as the wp prefix! Might have to reinstall.
I’ve seen so many articles about integrating bbPress with WP I’m getting a headache, and I still haven’t got it to work.
Has anyone got a definitive guide to integrating bbPress with WP when BB is installed in a sub-directory of wordpress, perhaps an example “live” config.php?
Please visit http://www.invisionplanet.com for a complete guide for forum integrations.
I am hoping you put the bbPress installation instructions up there on your site as the WordPress/Invasion instructions don’t help here.
Trent
the bb instructions for integration say that to include WP functions in bb you need to include the put require_once('path/to/wp-blog-header.php' in bb’s config.php file.
i’ve done that and things work ok until I go into bb admin at which point it all dies coz it can’t find the wp file.
anyone had this, got a solution?
Not sure if you have found the solution, but if you put the absolute path to your wp-blog-header.php, it should work fine.
Example: /home/yourusername/public_html/wp-blog-header.php.
Hello,
Another view on integration..
I’d love to use BBPress as a repository for WP coments (at least some of them).
When they are a lot of comments, WP is not very usage. FGor example I have a popular post with 141 comments ans loading the page takes a long time and cause errors to google ads. I’d love to use BBPress as a repository for that but I don’t know how import a thred of WP comments as a BBpress forum.
Luc
I have a phpBB forum. Can bbPress import those forums?
Thanks,
Sam Hughey
Yes, it’s been done:
https://bbpress.org/forums/topic/a-phpbb-to-bbpress-database-converter?replies=33
https://bbpress.org/forums/topic/the-result-of-phpbb2bbpress?replies=1
https://bbpress.org/forums/topic/importing-from-phpbb?replies=26
These are old posts, but yes, it can be done. You might need to make some modifications to the linked scripts to make them work with your version of phpBB and bbPress.
But, it can be done, yes.
