This morning, the latest version of my favorite forum software, bbPress, was released. While this is a beta and not a final release, it’s still a major event for the project: this release is in the form of a WordPress plugin, instead of a stand-alone application as it’s been in the past. In December 2009 I wrote about this decision – and at the time I was rather disappointed with the change in direction; but now my views have changed. I’m also excited to see that Matt and his company, Automattic have decided to invest the time and money needed to make this happen; there for a while it looked like bbPress really was dying.
Thanks to services like StackExchange and its numerous clones, it seems the days of standalone forums are numbered; when combined with the increasing strength of WordPress as a full-blown CMS, this move actually makes a lot of sense.
I’m excited both as a user and developer – this opens many new doors from both perspectives, and will certainly increase adoption of the software, as integration with the current version is a bit tricky.
Congratulations to the entire team on this release; it really is a major milestone for the project!
While building a new website for a small ISV, I was asked to integrate a forum – should be simple I thought, I’ll just use WordPress as a CMS and bbPress. Simple? Not quite.
To make things easier, I used Platform Pro by Pagelines (a great platform IMHO) and so used their “deep integration” instructions (while they are intended for Platform Pro users, the steps are virtually identical for all other setups). While the setup went quite smoothly, it wasn’t until it came time to test user registrations that the issue came up: when a new user tried to register they would receive an error stating that “email is required,” even if they had entered a valid email address. This effectively made it impossible for users to register, and thus made the forum useless.
After a bit of research, it looks like there is a conflict between newer versions of WordPress (3.0+) and bbPress 1.0.2 (I’m not sure if older versions have the same issue, but I would assume so). The fix for this is actually quite simple: install a plugin. The plugin itself is quite simple – containing only around a half-dozen executable lines of code, and works around the issue with a simple hack.
Unfortunately, the plugin description is rather vague and required a fair bit of research to identify as the fix, and the official documentation makes no reference to the issue or that this plugin can be used as a workaround.
Overall, a simple workaround but a major issue if you don’t notice that it’s broke (as is quite easy to do).
I’ve been a fan of bbPress for quite some time; I’ve even contributed code to the project. For those that aren’t familiar with it, bbPress is an open-source forum system written in PHP. It’s fast, lightweight, easy to install and even easier to use. It also scales, quite well.
bbPress was originally written to power the support forums WordPress.org, which get quite a bit of traffic. Later, it was released as a separate project. While it doesn’t have nearly the feature set found in more popular systems such as vBulletin or phpBB; it makes up for it in simplicity. It’s designed to be conversation-centered, where the clear focus is on what people are saying, not the bells and whistles provided by the software.
I’ve used it for a couple sites and couldn’t be more pleased; though now I fear the end may be near.
Automattic, the company behind WordPress.com (and ListPress.com) has committed to supporting the project; though primarily in context to its role in the WordPress world. bbPress as a separate product has so much potential, though it seems Automattic has little interest in this; instead the interest seems to be in making bbPress just another add-on for WordPress.
At one point there was a lot of excitement and interest surrounding bbPress, though for a project like this to succeed you need input from the community, you need an open and fast paced development process. Unfortunately for bbPress, it had no such process. There were people who had the skill, time, and interest to lead the project and make it a success; but they were pushed away and the project was allowed to stagnate.
Today, there is some activity going on, and I’m glad to see that it won’t fade away completely; though I see little chance that it will live up to what it could have been. I have a lot of respect for Matt and Automattic; they’re very successful and build great products; but they could have done so much more.
bbPress will go on I’m sure; though I believe only as a shadow of what it could have been. Though maybe Matt will prove me wrong, I certainly hope so.
After 2 years, my favorite forum software has been officially released. I’ve been a big fan of bbPress since it’s early days, I even had at least one patch accepted. So I guess one could say I was a developer on the project (although, a very minor one).
It’s great to see this project make it. If you’re looking for high-quality PHP-based forum solution without the weight of something like vB, then bbPress is the answer.
