BuddyPress and bbPress – The Future
August 10, 2010 in News
If you haven’t heard the word, there is a fury of activity going on at this very moment in the WordPress community. For the first time in over 8 years, the core development team is not working on the next version of WordPress, but rather on an initiative that’s been dubbed “3.org.”
3.org is a very appropriately named project that is focused on building and polishing the surrounding elements of WordPress rather than on WordPress itself. Part of this initiative is the conversion of bbPress from a standalone platform into a neat little WordPress plugin. I’ve volunteered to lead that initiative, and wanted to take a moment to explain what that means for BuddyPress, bbPress, and what you can expect for the next few months.
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.
The end result will be two plugins working harmoniously together, to easily enable setups where bbPress forums can be created for any other kind of object, component, or plugin. This is particularly awesome for BuddyPress developers because it will allow them to internally extend bbPress to fit the specific needs of their own custom BuddyPress components as they see fit.
With all this going on, the loose expectation is for BuddyPress 1.2.6 to roll out asap with a few bug fixes and maybe even a small new enhancement or two, with 1.3 to follow by the end of the year. bbPress 1.2 (the plugin) should be stable enough to start testing as soon as September 15 (give or take a few days and/or missing features) with a full release due around the same time as BuddyPress 1.3.
markj alper said on September 4, 2010
sounds intersting when will it happen
Dan | Facebook Messages said on September 9, 2010
I appreciate that changes in WordPress may be rather tough for you with keeping track of and ensuring compatibility, this recent announcement by WordPress is probably a good thing from a users experience point of view – after all WordPress is a very good product, but it also sounds like you’re headed in the right direction. Good luck!
Josh said on September 10, 2010
Is there any place where we can read the specific plans for this stuff? I look at the trac, but it seems like I am only getting part of the conversation. I am waiting to launch BuddyPress on my site until this bbPress-as-plugin stuff is sorted out properly, after a disastrous time trying to integrate bbPress standalone last year. Would be nice to know if we will be able to have an independent bbPress forum still (tied to WordPress, but not BuddyPress groups).
Piyush said on September 12, 2010
We have thousands of wordpress+bbpress(standalone) integrated websites.
More are the other combinations.
@kwatog, I just saw Justin Tadlock’s forum http://popcritics.com/forums. He also asks for his ideas to be used in the bbPress(plugin), ie, use of custom post types and taxonomies.
Right now we have no idea, what will be the new bbPress(pluin) will be powered by.
Both the plugins looks great and having bright future. But unfortunately, none of them available(not even beta) currently. Hope to see the bbPress(plugin) soon.
@JJJ, The same name for bbPress standalone and plugin is really confusing(i went through the bbpress forum.. haha…)
Good Luck to all the developers.
Alan said on September 13, 2010
When bbPress the plugin is ready, will we still have to wait for Buddypress 1.3 before they are compatible?
Tim K said on September 14, 2010
Will the bbPress (WP plugin) be release on Sept 15? That’s only 1 day away.
alanchrishughes said on September 14, 2010
When the bbPress plugin comes out with that integrate with Buddypress? Or will we still have to wait for Buddypress 1.3?
Dregond said on September 14, 2010
How will this effect sites currently using group forums? will they lose the older posts when its separated ?
Josh said on September 17, 2010
What’s the latest news? Is the bbPress as plugin almost ready for testing?
Yuval said on September 20, 2010
I can’t wait until BuddyPress will start to kick some Boonex ass! Keep up the good work guys.
Michael Eisenwasser said on September 21, 2010
@Modemlooper Agreed! Most people I work with prefer to have the forum separated from groups. This would make my life so much easier.
Thompson said on September 22, 2010
Cool. Any updates on this forum plugin? I keep checking back in a couple places b/c I don’t know where to look for updates on this–bbpress.org, wordpress.org, or here. lol Where should I look for the beta release when it’s ready?
JamesEduard said on September 22, 2010
It is remarkable move for WordPress community. BuddyPress and bbPress are still gearing towards the future. I love everything about the post. It is informative and ideal. Thanks a lot.
Kaitlyn Retzer said on September 29, 2010
I’m very excited about that! Keep up the good work.
nellore said on October 4, 2010
Great News!
Aiki said on October 13, 2010
So are we likely to see the buddypress 1.3 release before christmas? Im thinking of adding buddpress to my music news site and Ive decided to wait for 1.3
Anyway whatever the release date keep up the good work.
dralamir said on October 15, 2010
Sounds very, very promising and, hopefully, something I have been looking for. I made the following thread to try and find out whether this update is something I should wait for my community site:
http://buddypress.org/community/groups/creating-extending/forum/topic/looking-for-the-best-combo-for-wp-bp-forum/
Should the update address those issues I’d very much like some confirmation on whether to keep on waiting for this or look for other solutions.
Anthony Luth said on November 11, 2010
What about users who have already resorted to using bbpress and have custom themes which utilize deep integration? Will users have to migrate to the plugin and restructure the themes used (such as: CongressForum by Pagelines) or will a standalone option be available? Also, I was wondering if there would be an easier way to use the WordPress Search to also include bbPress within the search?
Abraham said on February 1, 2011
Glad to know bbPress will be getting some attention from you and people from WordPress.
Abdallah said on October 3, 2011
I thing there’s something wrong here
i have installed WordPress + BuddyPress (+) bbpress but when i goto
Dashboard > Buddypress > Forums >
i see the message ” New! Site Wide Forums ” & when i press “Install Site Wide Forums ” it install bbpress but i still recieve the same message !!
Al Lachman said on November 3, 2011
Hello I just activated the Bbpress plugin to my word press Thesis theme, but I can’t even see the Forum on my pages…..Can someone give some some guidance on how to integrate bbpress plugin with Thesis??
On a side note, I was able to set up a bbpress plugin Forum on another theme (Awake)but I cant seem to make it work with Thesis.
What I see is the Thesis Blog but not the forum.
Please help! Thanks
sirmarjalot said on January 15, 2012
The wordpress platform is so powerful now, im about I was looking at forum installations the best solution as I can see is bbpress for me.
Thanks for all your hard work on making all this possible