***Updated June 3rd, 2009 and works with BB RC 1.0, BP 1.0, MU 2.7.1 *******

I notice that this forum thing is really not that easy for everyone to put in place and I had to do it several times myself to get it working properly. What worked on one server didn’t work as planned on another one. Strange, but I thought I would write this to see if it helps anyone out.

Integration Assumptions:

First off, this assumes that you are using SVN of bbPress of at LEAST 1.0 alpha 4 and nothing less. Do not try this on bbPress alpha 7 when it is released! No more than alpha 6. Buddypress beta or SVN as well. I also haven’t tested this without at least having bbPress using the WPMU user tables for integration. You also NEED to be running WPMU 2.7+ SVN or WPMU 2.7 Branch until the release of WPMU 2.7.1 as it doesn’t work on earlier versions of WPMU.

*** these are requirements for running the bp-forums integration, not buddypress in general! ***

bbPress Side (First):

1) you have bbpress installed and a new user created on the “bbPress” side which you granted “administrator” rights by the keymaster

2) you copy the “buddypress-enable.php” plugin out of the bp-forums folders and copy it into your /my-plugins/ folder (create if it doesn’t exist) so it is /my-plugins/buddypress-enable.php ****People ask about /bb-plugins/ versus /my-plugins/ and put it in /my-plugins/

3) Enable the plugin through your bbPress administration side for plugins

4) Edit “settings” to enable xmlrpc and pingbacks (both)

5) edit your bb-config.php and just before the closing php call at the bottom of the page put:

$bb->bb_xmlrpc_allow_user_switching = true;

buddypress Side (Second):

6) Go into your main blog dashboard as the “site-admin” and go to the “bbPress Forums” page. Put in the URL of your forum like http://yoursite.com/forums/ and make sure you have the ending slash on that one.

7) Put in the user that you created in step 1 with the bbPress “administration” rights and their password. I never changed the password, just used the random one it sent me, but it is up to you. I usually save it a couple of times to ensure it was entered due to a refreshing bug at time of writing this.

Go to one of your groups (new or existing) and go to the group admin page. Make sure “discussion” is turned off. If it was already off that is fine, but if it was enabled already, turn it off

9) Turn the group “discussion” back on and then physically go to your forums URL and see if it created the forum on the bbPress side without trying to create a new topic on the buddypress side.

If you have the new forum now, then you should skip to step 10. If not, go through steps 1-9 again and make sure you got all the steps perfectly.

10) If you have made it this far, it will work, but I like to create the first post in the new forum on the bbPress side and then see if it shows up in the buddypress group forum. Old habit, but for odd circumstance, it seems to work best for me. If it works, try creating a new topic on the group you have working.

***Don’t forget that you have to do step 8 for every group that was created before you enabled the forum integration! Very important***

Other notes:

1) The refreshing bug in step 7 killed it for me a couple of times and I made sure I saved it at least 2 times.

2) Forgetting the line in bb-config.php killed it for me a couple of times as well.

3) In one install I had to change the bbPress “user” with administration rights password and on the bbPress side and then completing step 7 again.

4) I also found that through “previous testing” I had some bp_groupmeta entries that were screwing things up with duplicates for the same forum in the database. Shouldn’t happen to anyone else, but that screwed some things up for me as well.

In terms of having buddypress and bbPress working together, I am sure it works with buddypress on one server and bbPress on another since it works through the xmlrpc module which makes it very powerful.

Let me know if I am out to lunch as well or you have anything else to add!

Trent

[@wardeh Participant 16 years ago]

That’s really helpful, Trent. I ran into that bug (your #7) many times and think that is what caused most of my trouble getting the group forums to work.

[@gogoplata Participant 16 years ago]

Thank you Trent! I’ve been working on getting the forums working since they were first released and have FINALLY got them working thanks to your post and this thread. Looking back I think I had two problems:

1. I had been installing the plugin in bb-plugins, not my-plugins. I had seen my-plugins mentioned a few places but thought maybe it was replaced by bb-plugins in 1.0 and never really looked into it. I still installed and activated the plugin successfully through bb-plugins so I’m not sure if this was or wasn’t the problem but in any case thanks for pointing this out.

2. I previously modified the etc/hosts file mentioned in the other thread but it must not have saved correctly on the first try. I re-edited it to what burtadsit recommended and now we’re working.

Anyways, thanks again!

[@jimgroom Participant 16 years ago]

Trent,

I just want to say thanks, this solved all my issues, and it is working beautifully now. You rock!

[@burtadsit Participant 16 years ago]

Hi jimgroom. You planning on causing some social networking havoc over at umw.edu soon? Haven’t you caused enough trouble already there?

[@jimgroom Participant 16 years ago]

burtadsit,

You know, I may have, but you awesome folks make in so easy to introduce a new brand of trouble just about every semester. Here’s to you, BuddyPress looks awesome, and your support here is no small part of that. Thanks

[@adamhdv Member 16 years ago]

Going to test this out in a few hours!

Thanks Trent!

[@slaffik Moderator 16 years ago]

Trent, its doesn’t work for me. I’m sure that I did everything right. Thу result is:

I can’t create any topics via Group forum.

I can’t post in already existing topics (I created them manually in bbPress).

I’ve read all topics in this forum – nothing helped me. Any ideas?

[@trent Participant 16 years ago]

Are you talking about http://demo.cosydale.com/ ? I can’t even access the group to find out what the problem might be. Somewhere you are getting fatal errors and pages with “white page of death”.

[@slaffik Moderator 16 years ago]

Not only http://demo.cosydale.com/ but, yes. I don’t know what’s the problem, why I get this white page. But after reloading (some times) everything is ok (sometimes). It’s all after I’ve updated to 2.7 MU trunk 1585.

But on cosydale.com was the same problem (I temporary deleted BP from there). Could be any suggestions?

[@slaffik Moderator 16 years ago]

After reinstalling 2.7 MU it just doesn;t work at all

I’m trying to launch bp-forums on a local machine. Without any success.

[@biegun Participant 16 years ago]

in my case forums stopped to work because of… password set up in .htaccess file. after deleting it everything is as it should be.

[@chylly Member 16 years ago]

I cant get this to work either, followed it to the letter.

Altho it is not clear on where you put this “my-plugins” folder. Or is that a spelling mistake?

Cant get it to work in the mu-plugins folder either

[@trent Participant 16 years ago]

The “my-plugins” folder is actually based off the root of your forum install. If it is /forums/ then you would have /forums/my-plugins/ for the folder.

The real trouble with getting the forums side working is that it makes the assumption that you have WPMU and bbPress installed 100% and integrated properly even before you start trying to get the buddypress side going. Always make sure the logins are integrated and working right before you continue on.

Biegun also has a point as well. Buddypress accesses bbPress through publically accessible xmlrpc.php and if you put .htaccess in there for password protection, it will break as well since it won’t be able to access the installation.

slaFFik I would just suggest that if you reinstall WPMU 2.7, you also restart on bbPress 1.0 alpha 4 from scratch as well and then integrate the installs off the installation of bbPress and just go through all the steps again without having a bit more information.

[@slaffik Moderator 16 years ago]

Trent, thank you.

I’ll try to do everything from scratch.

[@grizzlygroundswell Member 16 years ago]

Trent, where can I find this: –> WPMU 2.7 SVN

Hey stop by and check out our conservative version of BuddyPress! http://theodoremedia.com

Thanks, we are loving Buddy Press!

[@zenseeker Participant 15 years, 12 months ago]

Hi Trent,

I finally gave up on cookie integration and went with just the wordpress integration. I got farther along in that I can post topics now with no errors, but adding a reply gives the dreaded red “There was an error posting that reply.” Looking over your last post gave me pause though. Are you saying to install only wpmu and bbpress, get them working, then install buddypress? Maybe I’m just tired, but the instructions from bp-forums/installation-readme.txt dont’ seen to follow that route. Makes sense though. I keep saying I’ve attempted this for the last time and moving on, but I find myself pulled back in once more with a faint glimmer of hope. I hope this isn’t the definition of insanity (always expecting different results).

Thanks for all your time in helping us.

[@trent Participant 15 years, 12 months ago]

The forums part is pretty neat, but it is really SIMPLE right now anyways. Andy just about didn’t add it to the beta 1.0 download. After 1.0 is released, there will likely be changes to the forums side anyways, so if you are having trouble configuring it now, it should get easier in the future!

[@skimaine Member 15 years, 12 months ago]

thanks so much, finally got the integration to work. pesky #7 and the “my-plugins” stuff was screwing me up badly. kudos.

[@mfgmk Participant 15 years, 11 months ago]

AND FOR THOSE OF YOU ***STILL*** HAVING PROBLEMS after everything that’s detailed above, you can always use this plugin http://simplepressforum.com/ which is a breeze to install on WP (haven’t tested in WPMU).

It’s been in development for quite some time and it’s skinnable. All you’d have to do is add the “Forum” link to BP nav and you’d be set. Hope this helps for those of you who’re getting a receding hairline because of all the hair you’ve pulled out in trying to install the BP forum. SPF and BP don’t talk to each other but, then again, neither do BP forum and BP itself

[@famous Participant 15 years, 11 months ago]

I get this error:

“There was an error posting that topic.”

However, it works on the forum side, but it says there are no posts

Does anyone else have this problem??? Thanks

[@trent Participant 15 years, 11 months ago]

It isn’t connecting to the forum. Check 4,5,6 and 7.

[@famous Participant 15 years, 11 months ago]

went back and forth trying everything. Deleted the group forums I was able to create that only worked with the wp admin account, now can’t get them back…

Setup a new group, and only then can I create topics that give me an error message saying:

“There was an error posting that topic.”

They do create in forums, but I get an error, and I am not able to create topics or posts with other accounts other than the admin???

[@famous Participant 15 years, 11 months ago]

These are the errors I got when trying to integrate the two:

SQL ERROR!

>>> Database: username (localhost)

>>>>>> ALTER TABLE wp_posts ADD COLUMN post_id bigint(20) NOT NULL auto_increment;

>>>>>> Incorrect table definition; there can be only one auto column and it must be defined as a key

SQL ERROR!

>>> Database: database (localhost)

>>>>>> ALTER TABLE wp_posts ADD PRIMARY KEY (post_id);

>>>>>> Key column ‘post_id’ doesn’t exist in table

and the nonce key is missing in bbconfig

[@mikepratt Participant 15 years, 11 months ago]

Am dealing with an entirely different mysterious monster here: After running for weeks, I somehow corrupted my db and felt a fresh db was the only way to go (only test data to worry about) Currently running 2.7, BP latest trunk and a bbPress 1.0a4.

After getting all the way to bbPress/Wordpress integration menu (and seeing all the properly entered cookies/salts) when I enter the “wp_” prefix and click “Save settings” I am kicked out to the bbPress forum login screen and upon login of the keymaster or any other account, I am returned the error message “user does not exist” and thus completely locked out of the install. This happens whether I clear cookies or not at various stages in the process. Please help!

[@mikepratt Participant 15 years, 11 months ago]

Just to make things weirder:

Might have solved the problem mentioned above by:

1. creating user in BP 1st, admin rights, change pw

2. bb install process – keymaster is chosen as exactly the user created in BP previously

3. login admin bb install, change pw of keymaster, activate plugin, check off xmlrpc boxes

NOTE: I did NOT add the line $bb->bb_xmlrpc_allow_user_switching = true; to bb-config

When I did, it broke again. Took it back out and full functionality.

Frankly, I’m afraid to ever launch for fear of getting tons of topics and posts generated anly to break it down the line and cause much down time while we fix……