I’m running latest WPMU branch 2.7.1r1715, bbPress 1.0-Alpha-6, latest BuddyPress, r1324

I an on a shared hosting service with HeartInternet.co.uk

WPMU works fine on its own, bbPress works fine on its own, BuddyPress works fine, however:

When I update groups to “Enable discussion forum” the forum isn’t created.

Users are shared fine, cookies shared, even admin login to bbPress works properly.

On installing BuddyPress, there was only one plugin to activate. – no ‘core’ plugin and then a series of others, just a single plugin (yes they are in plugins/buddypress) – BuddyPress 1.0-RC2 (The bbPress plugin buddypress-enable.php still says 1.0-RC1.)

Also on selecting the Buddypress Default Home Theme to activate as my main site default, I get a blank white rectangle, instead of the usual preview, it activates OK tho.

My main concern is how to get the forums working. Any ideas?

http://mypartyonparty.biz

[@lancewillett Participant 15 years, 8 months ago]

Mypop, when you are in the MU admin area — go to the last menu item (it should be labeled “BuddyPress”). Click “Component Setup” and make sure that bbPress Forums is enabled.

Then click the link in that same admin menu that says “Forum setup”, and make sure the settings there are correct.

I noticed when I recently upgraded my BuddyPress to the latest trunk (rev 1324) that those forum settings were empty, so I had to enter them again (URL, username, and password).

[@mypop Participant 15 years, 8 months ago]

@Lance,

Thanks, already did that! ( I saw the new menu at the bottom of the screen) – It actually carried over my previous settings, so I deleted and re-entered them, and saved twice, just in case the refresh bug was still about…

I went through each of those new options and hit save / update on each page to make sure that the settings had been set.

[@mypop Participant 15 years, 8 months ago]

p.s. yes I have also enabled XML-RPC and pingbacks in bbPREss ..

[@mesgains Participant 15 years, 8 months ago]

hi Mypop,

Do you add this line into your bbPress bb-config.php to enable user switching ? $bb->bb_xmlrpc_allow_user_switching = true;

i followed those advices below to install my forum. I hope it can help you

here is a video :

http://wordpress.tv/2009/01/23/integrating-a-bbpress-forum-with-your-self-installed-wordpress/

and there some good tips :

http://trentadams.com/2009/04/01/buddypress-forums-tutorial/

I notice that the twitter plugin makes some conflits with the bb_press install. I deleted it.

[@lancewillett Participant 15 years, 8 months ago]

I looked at your site, and in the one group (Test group7), I am seeing the forum (http://mypartyonparty.biz/groups/test-group7/forum). Looks like it’s working… did you try adding a new forum topic yet?

[@mypop Participant 15 years, 8 months ago]

@Mesgains, thanks for that, I’d already added the $bb->bb_xmlrpc_allow_user_switching = true; so it’s not that,

I’ve been through Trent’s tutorials double checking everything as a I go, and as he says “If you have made it this far, it will work” …!!**!!

The bbPress forums are located here: http://mypartyonparty.biz/forums

@Lance, tried, I get the red message of death! “There was an error posting that topic.”

I’ve switched “Enable discussion forum” off and on again, and even created new forums, and there’s nothing of significance in wp_bp_groups_groupmeta

I’ve even tried a different user set up with wp and bb admin priviledges.

[@lancewillett Participant 15 years, 8 months ago]

and even created new forums

Have you tried creating a brand new group and enabling the forum for it? I only see one group on your site. You could try creating a new group, enabling the forum, then test again.

Since the issue is with an existing forum/group connection, it could be that BuddyPress thinks the forum exists (with a certain “id”) which doesn’t exist in bbPress any more.

If you look in the “wp_bp_groups_groupmeta” table in your database, find the “group_id” for the group you are testing, and then look in the “bp_forums” table and see if the same id is being used there for a forum (look at the “forum_id”).

[@mypop Participant 15 years, 8 months ago]

@Lance,

Done it may times, just done it again, here’s the infor for the new forum from

id creator_id name slug

17 1 Lance Group8 lance-group8

“groupmeta” data:

id group_id meta_key meta_value

65 17 total_member_count 1

66 17 last_activity 1239056228

67 17 theme buddypress

68 17 stylesheet buddypress

There is only one entry in the bb_forums table:

forum_id forum_name forum_slug forum_desc

1 Test test qwswsq

This is driving me nuts!

[@lancewillett Participant 15 years, 8 months ago]

Are there any errors in your server logs?

Based on those database values I’d say that it’s clear that when you create a new group it’s not creating a new forum in bbPress, otherwise your new group would also have a meta_key with a value of “forum_id” and your bp_forums table would have a new entry as well.

This might be a hard one to track down as it could be a problem with your host/server and not with BuddyPress/bbPress.

Just as a matter of being thorough… did you follow Trent’s steps or the steps in the forum component readme file?

When I did my setup I used the readme file steps and everything worked smoothly. Nothing against Trent’s tips and tricks, but I found that if I followed the readme steps it worked fine.

Do you have a way to try the same setup on a different server or maybe on your local machine?

[@mypop Participant 15 years, 8 months ago]

@Lance

I used the readme file, and cross checked with Trent’s notes.

I’ve just lost my admin log in to the system, not done anything, it’s just started to not let men in, other users OK, but not admin, weird,

I’ve even deleted wp_config.php and re-installed and it won;t let me in.

So I’m going to clear everything out and start completely from scratch, ifi it doesn’t work this time, it must be something to do with the xml-rpc calls or hosting configuration.

[@lancewillett Participant 15 years, 8 months ago]

OK, a clean install sounds like a great idea. Keep us posted!

[@mypop Participant 15 years, 8 months ago]

Well, complete clean install from scratch followed instructions to the letter and it still doesn’t work……..

Haven’t integrated the cookies yet, shared user log-on works though….

I’m at a complete loss, if burtadsit or Andy Peatling want full access to the system and ftp access, I am more than happy to let them at it, because something isn’t working.

They only thing I can think is that is something to do with the configuration of my shared host, and I don’t know where to start solving that.

I have Firebug and Firefox Webdeveloper toolbar installed if that can help anyone…

@burtadsit – do you have your xml-rpc testing kit available will that help?

It’s 2:15 am in the UK, I’m turning in…….! Will pick up on tips.suggestions etc in about 8 hours time. All suggestions welcome.

[@mypop Participant 15 years, 8 months ago]

@Lance, thanks for the links to the XML-RPC testing files, I’d tried to download them a week ago and couldn’t access them, got them now.

I’m posting on the forum, so that if anyone else is as frustrated as me they can follow!

Any way here’s the result:

-32300 >> transport error – could not open socket: 111 Connection refused

Any ideas what next?

[@lancewillett Participant 15 years, 8 months ago]

Mypop, can you confirm with your host that they support remote procedure calls (and XML-RPC specifically)?

That error message basically means they are blocking RPC calls; probably for security purposes.

[@mypop Participant 15 years, 8 months ago]

@ Lance, thx, I will do. I have raised a support ticket with them and will get back to you.

– they are generally ‘friendly’ to WordPress hosting.

[@mypop Participant 15 years, 8 months ago]

Here’s my hosting co’s reply:

Hi Gordon,

Thanks for the ticket, I’m afraid I haven’t got an easy solution for you. WE don’t allow RPCs to be made back to the same server, I can understand your usage is entirely legitimate, but a poorly designed rpc back on a server can easily result in a nasty infinite loop, eating up server resources.

However, rather than just send you away empty handed, I can think of a way round it. However, you would need packages on separate webservers – this will allow them to call each other.

Best Wishes

Craig Cotter

Heart Internet Support

I know it can be done in theory….. (just a few more lines in the bbPress bb-config.php file to cope with being on a different server)

So I guess it’s time to write the distributed integration tutorial if anyone has any pointers..

[@mypop Participant 15 years, 8 months ago]

Update #1

I’ve just done a complete install, exactly as I’ve done before, this time up on a hostgator account (not even reseller, just a cheap hosting deal.)

All works just as it should, so the good news, I was doing nothing wrong – took just over 40 minutes from start to all up and running. http://gordonbunker.ws

Forum posting works both ways. – Only challenge – it’s slooooowww! so I guess it won’t scale. Good place to test out tho.

Will keep you posted on the split installation.

[@mypop Participant 15 years, 8 months ago]

Well… It’s working kinda!

Forums are created, topics can be made on either side, and replies to topics created

However when I created a topic or reply to a topic in BuddyPress I get

“There was an error posting that topic.” or “There was an error posting that reply.”

they are created though.

And on the bbPress side, when I create a topic, or rpely to a topic, I get:

“Warning: cannot yet handle MBCS in html_entity_decode()! in /home/sites/my-partyonparty.biz/public_html/forums/my-plugins/buddypress-enable.php on line 53”

once again, they are created tho.

[@mypop Participant 15 years, 8 months ago]

SOLVED!!!!!

Searched for \”cannot yet handle MBCS\” in the forum and came up with Trent\’s post about the same error, once again I\’m running PHP 5.2.9 it wasn\’t that, a quick tweek to line 53 (based on Trent\’s advice)

so I edited /my-plugins/buddypress-enable.php and changed line 53 from:

$post_text = html_entity_decode( $post_text, ENT_COMPAT, \”UTF-8\” );

to:

$post_text = utf8_decode($post_text);

Worked brilliantly – actually fixed the errors on both sides (BuddyPress and bbPress)

[@icuddy Member 15 years, 8 months ago]

Hi Gordon

Good to see you’ve now got it to work.

I’m having the same problems you had – to the letter – with getting forums to work. Am using shared hosting in the UK. Forums are not being created on the bbpress side and I’m getting the “There was an error posting that topic.” message on Buddypress.

Has anyone got the link to the xml-rpc testing files?

Thanks!

[@lancewillett Participant 15 years, 8 months ago]

Here are the instructions from Burt to test your host/server setup for XML-RPC support.

Follow this link to download the XML-RPC test that Burt created: http://ourcommoninterest.org/downloads/xmlrpc-sayhello.zip

The test consists of two files. The first file is a bbPress plugin that you activate in the bbPress plugins area that acts as a XML-RPC server and responds to a simple “say hello” type call. The second file goes in the root of your MU setup.

This test bypasses all the “bbpress_live/discover_pingback_server_uri()” stuff that might be giving you problems. If this works then the issue is most likely in that area and could be a host/server problem.

To load the test, first install the “oci-bb-sayhello.php” file to your bbPress install root in a folder called “my-plugins” (create the folder if it doesn’t exist). Then log into bbPress and activate the plugin. Next, drop the “oci-bp-sayhello.php” file into the root of our MU install so that you can navigate to it easily. Then load “your-site/oci-bp-sayhello.php” in a browser and see what the output is.

There are several possible points of failure if the test fails to authenticate the BuddyPress user that is created for the connection between BuddyPress and bbPress.

1) The BuddyPress connection username/password isn’t the same as the username/password that exists in bbPress. That username/password is stored in “wp_site_meta”.

2) The bbPress user is not an administrator.

[@wythagy Participant 15 years, 8 months ago]

Okay, so I get

-32300 >> transport error – HTTP status code was not 200

I’m assuming this is the same error he got above…I guess I’ll try installing BBPress on a different server…hrmmm

[@magi182 Participant 15 years, 8 months ago]

Heh. After weeping tears of blood trying to integrate bbPress, buddypress and wpmu, after several installs, multiple reads of Trent’s tutorial page, I began to suspect XML-RPC problems and jumped back on the forums, found this thread and installed Burt Adsit’s lovely little plugin and am rewarded with:

-32300 >> transport error – could not open socket: -1080553356

Thanks Burt. You rock. Now to figure out how to permit XML-RPC calls locally.

[@magi182 Participant 15 years, 8 months ago]

OK. XMLRPC is enabled for local calls. I had to put a loopback in the server’s hosts file as this isn’t a live domain yet. It’s always something blindingly easy – once you figure it out.

Yet… posting to the forums didn’t actually work until I reset the linking account’s password a couple of times.

[@schafir Participant 15 years, 7 months ago]

I am hosting on 1and1 in a shared hosting environment and I have the same problems that Gordon Bunker had. After making the same change to the buddypress-enable.php file, the forums finally work, but I cannot make a post to them. It comes up with the following error: “There was an error posting that topic” Not very informative is it?

I also get the ” -32300 >> transport error – HTTP status code was not 200 ” error when trying Burt’s “say hello” test.

Anyone figure out how to get around this in a shared hosting environment?

Is it time to give up and just go to another hoster? Any recommendations?

thanks!