This is something I’ve been pondering about myself.
It really depends on your community’s needs and how you anticipate growth.
If you like how buddypress.org has their forums, then you’d want a separate install of bbPress.
If you anticipate that you’d want other forums besides the ones created by groups, then you’d want a separate install of bbPress.
If you want more administrative control over your forums (moderation, plugins), then you’d want a separate install.
If you like the fact that forums are only created within the Groups infrastructure, then go with a “new install”. Positives about this approach is you wouldn’t have to modify your BP template often, whereas going with a separate install requires you to create a new bbPress template to match the rest of your site.
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I have a question for the BP devs: let’s say I go with the new, integrated forum approach and want to switch back to my old, separate install… I’d probably have to restore a database backup as well as a backup of my files right?
@r-a-y:
The data in the database is safe, but you’d go back to the old “deep integration” method of making them look and play nicely together. You could either rename the DB tables to use the bb_ prefix instead of wp_bp_, or you could specify wp_bp_ as the custom prefix during reinstallation of bbPress.
Then you’d go the same old route of using the integration plugins to share cookies, etc.
Your question also depends on whether or not you’re going to keep group forums. If yes, then group forums already know which forum_id they’re linked to, and BuddyPress will continue to use its own internal bbPress to write to and read from the DB, while your separate installation will be the one that works for your “forum root.” If you choose to ditch group forums, then you’ll want to visit your bbPress site-admin and rearrange and change your forum settings and descriptions to make more sense.
Better would be to use, the lite version (since this is already configured with buddypress), but if your looking for the old forums way, then you’ll have to install bbpress seperately and tweak it to get the buddypress looks.
I personally have both groups and normal forums, now I’m looking for a way to get the buddypress functions in bbpress.
