Topic: External and Group use of bbPress

External and Group use of bbPress

designodyssey
Participant

@designodyssey

14 years, 2 months ago

There are no shortage of posts on this topic, but after much searching, not finding my answer.

Is it possible to have group forums with categories like the Forums page here on BP.org?

Is it possible to have users post to forums without being members of the group (or must I hide their group membership on their profile page?

Is it possible to run an external bbPress install and a group-based install together?

When I say is it possible, I mean without major hackage.

I’d love a categorized forum within groups because without categories the list of topics gets unwieldy and hard to navigate real quick.

To solve the groups vs. external challenge, I thought of having some autojoin groups for all members (but omit the icons from their member page). Then, I’d create a separate “Forums” page that only listed those generic forums as if they were categories.

To use the group forums you’d have to enter the group first.

Anyone got a solution or even struggling with the same issue?

Viewing 16 replies - 1 through 16 (of 16 total)

Ashish Kumar (Ashfame)
Participant

@ashfame

14 years, 2 months ago

You can certainly have a standalone install of bbPress along with BuddyPress and then integrate it with the site to give user table sharing and login sync.

But I would suggest to check how BuddyPress is going to handle this issue at a later date so that if you want to import it back to single system then you can because BuddyPress might support it then.

Xevo
Participant

@xevo

14 years, 2 months ago

Just install buddypress with group forums and install bbpress seperate, with intergration offcourse.

There’s nothing wrong with that.

Ashish Kumar (Ashfame)
Participant

@ashfame

14 years, 2 months ago

@Xevo

My point was what if BuddyPress supports this at a later date which in my opinion it will. He should have scope for importing that in the BuddyPress then. no?

Xevo
Participant

@xevo

14 years, 2 months ago

I don’t really believe Buddypress will support this (at least not untill Buddypress 1.4, and even then only if lots of users demand it), their might be a plugin of some sort that allows it though. Shouldn’t be that hard to copy the data to the buddypress version if that happens.

Ashish Kumar (Ashfame)
Participant

@ashfame

14 years, 2 months ago

just a warning for later on headaches

still giving
Participant

@nonegiven

14 years, 2 months ago

If you use the standalone BBpress option, how can you make it use the same template as the integrated Buddypress/BBpress installation?

Thanks

BTW, yes, I understand the principles of customing skinning and css but what I am asking is that it surely must be a fairly simple implant or template linking.

I am trying to make a general forum any member can access without having to join a group or being limited to only that group or groups.

rich! @ etiviti
Participant

@nuprn1

14 years, 2 months ago

BTW, yes, I understand the principles of customing skinning and css but what I am asking is that it surely must be a fairly simple implant or template linking.

you’ll need to create a new theme for bbpress, as i don’t believe a bbpress look-like buddypress is available

Ashish Kumar (Ashfame)
Participant

@ashfame

14 years, 2 months ago

either create a matching theme or use deep integration
still giving
Participant

@nonegiven

14 years, 1 month ago
It does not work to use a standalone forum because then you lose all the group making aspects of Buddypress.
In short, the skin approach is just faking it. It is not real. It is just a facade. I know because I have done it for years and it goes against my sense of integrity. It looks like a real website but it isn’t. And it is just all held by rubber bands behind the scenes.
r-a-y
Keymaster

@r-a-y

14 years, 1 month ago

It does not work to use a standalone forum because then you lose all the group making aspects of Buddypress.

You do not lose all group making aspects by using this approach.

You can use both BP group forums and your external version of bbPress at the same time.

There will be some duplication in your external version of bbPress. You’ll need to find a way to address this issue. One way is to hide the group forums in your external bbPress. I did a writeup on this a few weeks ago; I’ll provide the link to those who want to read it.

designodyssey
Participant

@designodyssey

14 years, 1 month ago

OK, now I know what’s possible. Given the NUMEROUS topics on this issue, it seems there is sufficient demand for the capability/convenience of an easy way to set this up. Probably plugin territory, someone who knows bbpress well could really help the BP community.

still giving
Participant

@nonegiven

14 years, 1 month ago

If one uses both a separate standalone, and the built-in Buddypress forum, then does not one adds is yet another complication/confusion as regards searchability … or rather the lack of searchability … typical of WPMU/BP installs!?!

And is left faces the uphill struggle of skinning it all to match?

Let’s face it … the universal consensus or feedback is that it would be better to allow the creation of forums independent of groups.

I have not read one voice in support of enforcing groups for forums and cannot see the purpose in doing so.

designodyssey
Participant

@designodyssey

14 years, 1 month ago

It would seem possible to have forums separate from groups, but have the group be able to create a “category” of forum posts that could be displayed within the group and separately. Not sure if bbPress supports this, but when I messed around with PHPBB it would. Simply about filtering and display.

Frankly, that’s what I thought was in BP until I did some digging.

Anointed
Participant

@anointed

14 years, 1 month ago

+1 to having forum categories on a per group basis.

I already run a number of vb sites with hundreds of thousands of users and would love to someday bring that platform to wordpress/bp.

The problem is that my forums are huge (millions of posts) and without separation, it would be impossible using group forums.

I’d rather not have to create a separate group just to have a separate forum, as then I would end up with hundreds of groups (one forum I run has about a hundred or so subforums all are very active). That would only diminish the value of using groups imho.

I just don’t see the feasibility of doing it this way.

For instance, how in the world would you convert a site like vbulletin.org forums over to bp groups?

Even with very fancy templating it would still not work properly

(Yes, I know, groups are really just uber powerful forum categories… for a lack of a better way of putting it)

Michael Eisenwasser
Participant

@eisenwasser

12 years, 12 months ago

Try the BuddyBoss theme at http://www.buddyboss.com. It combines groups and forums in a way that is MUCH more intuitive than the default BuddyPress setup, no hacking required. I think a big issue with BuddyPress is that the layout of groups and forums is usually confusing to people. We’ve fixed that

Hugo Ashmore
Keymaster

@hnla

12 years, 12 months ago

Closing this year old thread.

Theme announcements may be made in:
https://buddypress.org/community/groups/buddypress-themes/