Check the sticky from Trent on how to integrate bbPress with BuddyPress – that’s the only option right now for an “integrated” (as it’s not all that integrated) forum.
john it isn’t built-in you should install bbpress in another directory and integrate that with wpmu
All users in bp/mu can post to any forum in bbpress with user integration.
Thanks Burt. That answered my question.
I realize now I didn’t really phrase my question clearly. I have been using bbPress integrated with WordPress.org for a few months now and am very comfortable with how it works, however it obviously integrates much differently with BuddyPress, with group forums and all.
So to confirm, there are group forums and then global forums, and anyone can post anywhere regardless of group membership?
At the moment yes. Things are as you describe. I’ve got a little plugin coming out when bp goes 1.0 that integrates bp group forums and bbpress. bp Public groups will be readonly in bbpress except for group members. Private and Hidden groups will have their forums hidden in bbpress except for group members. Group admins and moderators will have forum moderation capabilities in bbpress.
Nice, that’s exactly what I was hoping for. I’d gladly test with you when the time comes.
Burt, that’s something I’m looking forward to as well.
Let me know if you need any beta-testing done. 
Thanks. It’ll get released as beta. Working hard to get it done for the bp 1.0 release date.
Can’t wait! I was surprised to find that it didn’t work this way and am happy to assist with any effort to help it along. 
Dang you burtadsit! Forums were removed off my list when going live this weekend. It wasn’t integrated enough to be worth it. Now I’m going to have to reconsider…
If this works like it sounds like it should be integrated into the core code.
Mr. Adsit sir, no rush of course but I’m curious if you have an ETA on this plug-in? I’ve got things nicely integrated now, and feel like this would be a great finishing touch.
I have this plugin up and running. Here’s the way it works. You install a plugin on the bp and the bbpress side, import your existing groups and group users into bbpress. That creates forum and user meta data in bbpress that allows group forums to operate there as expected.
Part of the package is a live link using xmlrpc to do two things.
1. Keep the forum and user meta data updated for changes in bp. New groups, group status changes, users joining/leaving groups, user promotion/demotion/ban.
2. New topics and replies created in bbpress need to show up in the bp activity stream and trigger actions over there.
I’ve got the import done and the link from bp to bbpress in xmlrpc running. I’m working on the bbpress to bp link now. Should have the bbpress to bp link done by today or tomorrow.
Then I need to test it on my linux server and let interested others give it a whirl on their development servers. That’s where things stand.
Wow kudos for the in depth reply. I’m super excited to give this a shot, I’m actually waiting to go live until I see how this works.
I think it’s a great idea to keep things all synced up also. I made the mistake of adding a group forum in BuddyPress and deleting it in bbPress. Boy did that make things angry ha!
Right now I’m not sure how to handle the group deletion on the bbpress side. I can delete the forum if the group gets deleted ya. However, when I thought about it I decided to let the site admin/keymaster handle that now manually. The situation I thought of was a group admin gets bent out of shape, deletes the group and there goes a huge group asset if I just blindly kill the forum. So that action in bp is just being ignored now.
The only major problem I have now is that group join/leave in the group directories doesn’t work. Doesn’t even join/leave the group much less do what it’s supposed to in xmlrpc to talk to bbpress. It works in the member theme fine. Some sort of conflict in that context I have to track down.
Update: working on final packaging and documentation for BuddyPress Group Forums for bbPress. Still some features that need to be added but testing in other environments is more important. Should have it done by the end of the day.
Yay! Very happy to hear about this, and I will try to be one of the first to try it out!
You probably will be John. You posted 16 minutes ago:
http://ourcommoninterest.org/downloads/bp_group_forums_0.2.zip
I haven’t even done an announcement message yet.
lol! Yay! I’m gonna give it a whirl right now! Ha ha!
When activating the oci_bb_groups_forums.php plugin, I receive this error…
Fatal error: Cannot redeclare oci_server_methods() (previously declared in [...]/wp-content/mu-plugins/oci_bp_group_forums.php:417) in [...]/discussions/my-plugins/oci_bb_group_forums.php on line 249
This comes from my using “deep integration” on the bbPress side, including wp-load.php to allow access to the WP/BP functions (despite being told not to do this, ha!)
Adding some if function does not exist checks might be a good measure…
Did this for:
oci_service_methods
oci_escape
oci_authenticate
oci_xmlrpc_query
trailingslashit
untrailingslashit
Also, I added this around the ixr inclusion:
if (defined(BACKPRESS_PATH)) {
require_once( BACKPRESS_PATH . '/class.ixr.php' );
}
Might not be correct, but it did get rid of the double inclusion for me.
After those changes I was able to get that file to include without problem. Gonna keep testing.
Okay, got everything installed, no errors, however when I try to import, I get…
Last import Saturday 14th of February 2009 03:41:32 PM, 1 seconds
0 groups with forums enabled
0 forums updated
0 users updated
However I do have 1 group, with 4 users in it, that does have a forum already active. There aren’t any topics in that forum however.
ok. Thanks John. Gimme a few and I’ll change the fn names to be unique on both sides.
Try this one. I just changed the fn names on the bbpress side to be unique and wrapped a couple of fns in if(function_exists()) that I know are mu fns.
http://ourcommoninterest.org/downloads/bp_group_forums_0.21.zip
We have liftoff! All systems go! Let me take a look around and see what this thing can do!
I like your attitude John. You’re so laid back. Hardly anything gets you excited.
