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 being reminded of Alex King‘s excellent Tasks task management system by a Download Squad article, I decided it was high time to give it a try. I had seen the software before, but never really evaluated it to see if it would be of any real use to me. This time, I gave it a more thorough look.
I’ve been doing a fair bit of reading in recent weeks about time and task management; and thus I’m trying to build a better process than what I use now. Seeing as my current method revolves around hoping to remember things, it doesn’t work so well.
After playing with the demo for a few minutes, I was quite impressed. I’ve used (or tested) many task management and related systems; Tasks seems to have gotten the model right. It’s easy to use, well designed, and uses a model that is flexible enough that you can apply just about any style you like.
One of the things I find so interesting is that this is web-based software, though is intended only for a single user. While this is certainly not the only application marketed this way, it still intrigues me. Traditionally, one would think that there would be little or no market for single user web-based applications that users install on their own servers. In reality though, this makes a lot of sense.
There are so many people who now have their own web site(s), running on real hosting accounts, that there would be a sizable market for personal software, made accessible anywhere thanks to being web-based. This is a great idea, and one of the factors that really made me like this software.
Once I was done with the demo, I started going over the requirements (basically PHP/MySQL), looking at the pricing and all the other details. With a price of US$29.95, it didn’t take long for me to decide. I was sold.
Installation was quick and painless (though not as quick as the famous WordPress install), within a few minutes I had Tasks up and running. Give or take a minor bug on preferences*, it all works very well. It works quite well out of the box, once the install process in completed, you don’t need to change anything else to be up and running.
The UI is responsive and well laid out; thanks to AJAX and plenty of tool-tips it’s a breeze to use. If you are looking for a better way to keep track of things, or working towards a better way to manage your time, it’s worth giving this a look. I think you might like it.
Update: After speaking with Alex about that ‘bug’ – it turned out to be Firefox being overly helpful with its Auto-Fill feature. There are a couple ideas floating around to work-around this, so even though it’s not a bug in Tasks, Alex is working towards eliminating the problem.
