Pippin has released a simple bbPress notices plugin that allows you to place forum notices that will be seen across the entire forum. By default, the notices appear at the top of the forum and use the default bbPress styling making integration painless.
John James Jacoby has published the 2012 year in review post for bbPress. It’s been one year since the project went from being stand alone software to a WordPress plugin. So far, it looks like the project is progressing along quite steadily. Among some of the cool stuff added to bbPress during 2012 are retina support, theme compatibility, multiple user roles, private/hidden forums, BuddyPress integration, Akismet integration, and improved multisite support. Although it’s taken awhile, it looks like the community is really starting to rally behind the project again.
For those of you that are using the plugin version of bbPress, what are your thoughts on the new project so far?
The latest version of bbPress was released on the same day as WordPress 3.5. The new version sports a few bug fixes with themes and BuddyPress compatibility. On the topic if bbPress, there is also news that Jennifer M. Dodd has been officially given committ access to the bbPress project. One her tasks for bbPress 2.3 is full forum search. Something of which you can keep tabs on by following ticket 1515.
After a long time in development, bbPress 2.0 stable has been given the green light. While new version releases are exciting, this particular one for bbPress is especially so as it is a total rethink of how bbPress runs, integrates, and functions as a forums plugin instead of stand-alone software. If you’re already using an established bbPress install, moving into the plugin version of bbPress is as simple as importing your content from one to the other. John James Jacoby describes the move as follows:
If you already have a previous version installed, updating to 2.0 is easy with the bbPress Importer. Move your bbPress 1.0 powered content into your new WordPress/bbPress installation and you’re ready to go. (There is already a migration plugin in the works for other forum software that promises to be pretty amazing, too!)
I’m particularly interested in seeing what the migration plugin will be like as I’m currently using vBulletin to handle the forum side of the Tavern. I really like what vBulletin offers out of the box and I’ve been pretty pleased with it since I began using it for the site. However, I’ve reached a point where I’d like to switch over just to see what it’s like while at the same time, offer me an opportunity to write about bbPress more often from an end user perspective. One of the best things about bbPress is the ease in which it takes to make it look similar if not exactly like the WordPress theme in use.
It’s encouraging to see that since the release of bbPress 2.0, there will be more work dedicated to the surrounding ecosystem such as the website, the addition of a bbPress focused Codex, and the official bbPress forum. While giving the 2.0 version a try, I noticed that you can’t browse the bbPress plugin repository and install plugins like you can with WordPress. I hope that at some point in the future, I can expect the same user experience out of bbPress that I currently get out of WordPress.
John James Jacoby has announced the availability of bbPRess RC5 for public consumption which brings the release one step closer to being labeled 2.0. In RC 5 you get improved theme compatibility, BuddyPress activity stream behaviour, subscription email sending, and API tweaks for plugin authors. ∞
John James Jacoby who is one of the core developers of BuddyPress has published a post on the BuddyPress development blog that talks about the future of bbPress and BuddyPress as he sees it. In fact, if you didn’t know it by now, John is leading the initiative in turning bbPress into a plugin versus stand-alone software.
Since BuddyPress 1.1, bbPress has come bundled in the package to help make the installation as smooth and easy as possible. Through a little bit of massaging we successfully integrated bbPress into a dedicated forum component to allow for group discussion, and we included a central discussion directory to help put all of these topics in one easy place. All of these ideas were great on paper but have had mixed feedback and results in practice. Making bbPress a standalone plugin will help allow for more customizable installations which is great news for anyone that’s currently using BuddyPress for the forum component, or has been holding off because of the complexity of it all.
Our goal with me giving some attention to the bbPress plugin project is to keep it tightly integrated with BuddyPress, but have them act totally independently or alone if necessary. This means in a future version of BuddyPress, bbPress will no longer come packaged in the download, and both plugins will be aware of each other being activated. When that happens, additional features will be available to you to help create the kind of community that you’d like to have, instead of forcing forums to be tucked away into BuddyPress discussion groups.
John ends the post by saying BuddyPress 1.2.6 is on its way out the door. It will contain a few bug fixes with perhaps an enhancement or two. As for BuddyPress 1.3, it should be shipped before the end of the year while bbPress 1.2 might be ready for testing around September 15th with a ship date of around the same time BuddyPress 1.3 is released.
About a week ago, Matt Mullenweg published a post over on the newly designed bbPress blog that hints to the platforms future. The topic of discussion was WordPress integration, and what better way to do that than to build an awesome bbPress plugin?
One, it’s an embarrassing pain in the butt to do now. One of the most frequent questions here on our forums. You have to jump through endless loops, and end up with something worse than most of the WP plugins for forums.
Two, we get the benefit of all the WordPress plugins and themes, which vastly outnumber our current options. Want private messaging? Use the BuddyPress plugin for it. Want OpenID? Stats? Sitemaps? There’s a plugin for that. Social network and profile features, in particular, are useful to the future of discussion forums and it’d be silly of us to duplicate that effort.
One of the more interesting points addressed in the post was Matt’s admittance that having BackPress and bbPress together turned out to be a hindrance more than a convenience, not to mention a performance hit.
Full, seamless integration with WordPress is something I’ve discussed for years. (Remember my dream of having each comment section being a mini-bbPress forum, complete with threads?) We’ve just taken a number of unfortunate detours (BackPress) on the way there.
This is an exciting development and I’ll be looking forward to seeing how mini-bbPress forums within the comments actually pans out. I’ve always thought that blog posts are just like forum threads except that the blog author gets to control the initial conversation. Forums on the other hand allow the community to create conversations. So if Matt can find a way to balance the two together, more power to him!
By the way, there are a few vocal people within the bbPress community that are pretty upset by the news that bbPress will be turned into a plugin but I think the benefits outweigh the negatives, as outlined by Matt in the post. However, thanks to the license and the open source nature surrounding the software, anyone will be able to take the core of bbPress, rename it, and continue providing updates as stand alone software. However, Matt did post this within a forum thread that addresses bbPress the plugin and the stand alone product:
Non-plugin bbPress development is going to continue until we have a perfect importer so people will be able to bring their content out of the legacy codebase.
No need to freak out as it will take some time to create that importer. Just make sure if you’re using bbPress to keep an eye on the development blog along with the forums for updates.
Remember this image? It was grabbed from a couple of new design screenshots back in July of 2009 when Sam Bauers announced the site would be getting a face lift. It’s been awhile but the new design looks great. Asides from the missing bee in the header graphic, the design is pretty much the same with just a few minor tweaks. It’s good to see Sams work not put to waste.
The new design has sparked some life into the members of the forum and it’s also brought back a familiar face to the project, _ck_. I’m still not a fan of the huge Gravatars as I’d rather see them around the 75 Pixel mark instead of 132. Initial feedback and bug reporting appears to be centered in this thread. As Chip Bennett published in one of the recent threads:
At the very least, I take the bbpress.org refresh as a sign of new life, and in that sign, I choose to find hope of great things in the near future for bbPress itself.
Well said.
Gautam who is a member of the WPTavern forum recently let us know that he has setup a bbPress Developers area for bbPress developers to chat about developments in the software similar to how WordPress has one. If you are a member of the WPTavern forums and are also one of the few who decided to help regenerate the bbPress project, send him a private message with your email address and he will add you as a member to the blog.
When asked whether the site was endorsed by Matt or considered official, Gautam responded that Matt doesn’t really know about the site just yet. I imagine he will now.
While we are on the topic of bbPress, might as well provide an update as to what’s been going on. As far as I can tell, there has not been a developer chat since January 13th, 2010 and a few other people have noticed this as well. The bbPress forums are still pretty active. In fact, many people are now asking support questions regarding bbPress with BuddyPress.
There is a thread in the tavern forum specifically regarding the off and on activity process surrounding the bbPress project. In this thread, I asked two individuals that initially showed quite a bit of interest in helping to regenerate the project why their activity has faded.
Jeffro – Considering you two were part of the rally to get things back on track for the project, are you both still interested in helping out? Are you guys waiting on direction on what to do and where to go from Matt?
Ryan Hellyer – I wanted to help, but it seemed that after the first IRC meeting or so it was looking like the project was going to just stagnate again, so I haven’t taken much notice since.
Justin Tadlock – Same here. I’ve even went so far as to code my own mini-forum using WP’s custom post types and taxonomies. It’s actually not too difficult. But, I lost the code on a recent computer crash. I might revisit the idea though.
Hopefully at some point, bbPress gets the ball rolling on a consistent basis. Perhaps that will happen once bbPress is turned into a WordPress plugin.
The chat logs from the latest bbPress developers chat are online and there is some exciting news to come out of the meeting. bbPress now has a official plugin on the repository albeit it’s not down-loadable just yet. If anyone was thinking bbPress would make for a good core plugin, you’re not alone. However, the focus is on improving the current stable version by fixing bugs and adding a few features for 1.1. Thoughts about bbPress as a core plugin have been postponed to after the release of 1.1. Filosofo was granted committ access to the bbPress SVN and has applied his patch for anonymous posting.
