bbPress Forum Installation

A Professional Forum, Integrated


WordPress, PlatformPro and bbPress

As many have noticed, bbPress has recently changed from an application to a plugin (version 2.0) and is now installed differently than previous versions. We’re providing general guidance with the installation and setup for the plugin, however, bbPress does require some customization (their words, not ours) in order to look as you would like.

Download bbPress

According to bbPress’ instructions:

  • “Place the ‘bbpress’ folder in your ‘/wp-content/plugins/’ directory.
  • Activate bbPress.
  • Visit ‘Settings > Forums’ and adjust your configuration.
  • Create some forums.
  • View your site.
  • Adjust the CSS of your theme as needed, to make everything pretty.”

Installation

You have two options to install the bbPress 2.0 plugin:

  1. You can download the plugin from http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/bbpress and manually upload it to wp-content/plugins once unzipped, or;
  2. You may use WordPress’ automated “Add New” option in the Plugins section in the Dashboard.
  • Once the plugin is installed, please Activate it by clicking “Activate Plugin“.
  • The list of available plugins on your WP installation will show up.
  • You’ll see ‘bbPress’ and an option for “Settings” under the plugin title. Please click that.
  • Under “Archive Slugs”, you’ll see “Forums Base”. Change the name from “forums” to something else (but not ‘topics’). Something like ‘discuss’ or ‘community’ are suggested, but the choice is yours. This helps avoid a conflict with Buddypress, should you also install that.
  • Click “Save Changes“.

Create a Forum

  • On your Admin Dashboard, some new Menu items have appeared. Click on Forums and select New Forum.
  • Add a title for your new forum. On the right, select whether you want this to be a forum or category under Forum Attributes > Type. Also, select the Status and Visibility or any Parent. Add a description in the main text editing area.

Note: You will not have a parent until after the first forum is added.)

Once you click “Update” all the Pagelines Meta Settings will appear as options.
Scrolling down a bit on the setup for that new forum, under Pagelines Meta Settings > General Settings > Content Section – Select Layout Mode (optional) select the layout you prefer. Simply update your settings, then “View Forum“. This is where you’ll hide components you don’t want visitors to see.
You will see messages saying ‘no topics have been created’.

Create a Topic

  • Go to Dashboard > Topics and click New Topic and an editing page will appear.
  • Add a topic title.
  • On the right side, select the Forum from the list. The Forum you just created will be on that drop down list automatically.
  • Write a description of your forum in the body of the main text area.
  • On the right side, enter keywords to help your topic be found by search engines. As with all WordPress pages or posts, keywords are comma separated. The more descriptive they are of your subject, the better it will be for your search engine placement.
  • Click “Publish”, just above the keywords area.
  • Again, the Pagelines Meta Settings will appear and just as above, select the layout you wish or, hide components you don’t want visible. View the Topic.
  • At this point, you’ll notice that there are some things aligned center that you may wish to be aligned left. As bbPress recommends, this is where custom CSS code is needed.
  • We suggest you use Firebug for Firefox (http://getfirebug.com/) to identify and write the CSS code you’ll need.

Of course, we’re available via the Forums to help.

Permalinks Update

It is incredibly important that before you complete your bbPress installation and make the forums public, you visit Dashboard > Settings > Permalinks and update your permalinks, without necessarily changing them.

Deep Integration

bbPress suggests that deep integration with WordPress is no longer necessary and will add quite a lot of weight to your bbPress installation as it will cause WordPress to load in it’s entirety. Your best option is to try to emulate the functionality you require inside a bbPress plugin. There are many up-to-date bbPress plugins available at wordpress.org/extend/plugins.

Registration

When a user registers on your bbPress forum, your WordPress blog doesn’t know about it (and vice versa). The user will be created, but WordPress won’t know what user role to apply.

In the “Wordpress Integration” section of the “Settings” area in your bbPress admin you will find a “User Role Map” where you can set which roles will be applied to users who register on your forums. Users who register on your WordPress blog will have the appropriate role applied to their account when they first login to bbPress.

If you don’t setup a role map, then this will not work. When you do setup a role map (or change it) any users who are missing either role will be updated, but existing roles will not be affected.

Recount

Under Tools in the menu, you’ll find a link for Recount. This allows you to recount the number of posts, topics, replies and other components of your forum and select which components you specifically wish to recount.