There is no option to make a post sticky when you add it. However, once you have added a topic, click to view it. Then browse right down. You will see a link ‘Stick Topic (to front)’

If your click STICK TOPIC, this topic will become a sticky in its respective forum. However, if you click TO FRONT, it will stick to the front page Latest Discussions list. One downside of this being, the topic is no longer shown in its respective forum. It is still counted there but no longer viewable from within the forum.

What purpose can this serve? Well for one you can use this to add General Forum Rules that you might not want appearing in any of the forums but visible on the front page. Any announcements can also be added here.

Favorites

How this works is you can add a post to your favorites. There is the option of subscribing to your favorites RSS feed so you can receive the latest posting in your favorite topics.

You can also add the option to subscribe via email by adding a plugin called Post Notification.

More on this and other plugins.

Forgot Password

There is no forgot password link – at least none that I could find.

This is how it works:

If you try to login with a username that does not exist, you get a message saying that this username is not registered, would you like to register it?

If you try to login with a username that exists but with the wrong password, then you will see a button on the login page. Clicking this button will send you an email via which you can reset your password.

Works nicely but you cannot directly go around finding your lost password. Your member might get lost trying to find the option unless they try logging in first.

Definitely makes for a good sticky note on the front page – How to Retrieve Your Lost Password.

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Post from: ErumMunir.com.
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How Some Things Work At bbPress Forums

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1. bbPress Latest Discussion
   This is actually a Wordpress plugin which displays up to the last 10 discussions going on at the forum. Let your blog visitors know what is going on at your forum.
2. bbPress Signatures
   Let registered users add a signature to their posts. You can also add the option to individially toggle this option on or off per post.
3. bbRatings
   Add the option of post ratings. Let registered users voice vote on the posdt on a star rating of 1 to 5.

4. Censor
   Want to filter posts for bad words? This is the plugin. There is just one issue at the moment … its settings page doesn’t show up in the bbPress admin. A slight tweak will do the trick.

   Open censor.php and find the function: function censor_add_admin_page

   Replace the entire function with this:

   function censor_add_admin_page() { bb_admin_add_submenu(__('Censor Posts'), 'use_keys', 'censor_admin_page'); }

   You will also want the titles to be filtered so this code needs to be added, too:

   add_filter( 'topic_title', 'censor_post_text' );

   You can add the above after the 3rd line of code:

   add_filter('post_text', 'censor_post_text');

   You can see a listing of all these fixes at the plugin page as well.

5. Post Notification
   Currently you can add a post to your favorites list and subscribe to its RSS feed. However, some members may want their ntifications via email. This plugin adds an option to their Edit Profile page which if turned on, emails them everytime there is a new post in the favorite threads.
6. Private Forums OR Hidden Forums
   These are the two main plugins available if you want to have private forums. The first option offers four access levels: Open to all * Registered Users * Moderator * Administrator . The problem with this being that you cannot divide your registered users into groups and allow them to view different forums.

   Hidden Forums is a better alternative in that regard. However, since its read me file claims that it is still not ready for a live website, I’m staying away from it until it is.

7. Quote
   This should actually be a basic functionality. Let your posters quote previous messages. It places blockquote tags around the quotd paras. You can add a style in your css file for this to ensure that the quoted text appears nicely.
8. Report Post
   Let your members report bad posts to you for removal. Don’t be alarmed if you don’t see the Report Post link even after you have added it to your theme. If you are logged in as the poster, you will not see the link. It is assumed that you wouldn’t want to report your own post.
9. Show Top Posters
   Shows a list of your top posters. Again it does not have an admin and if you want to tweak any settings, they need to be done in top-posters.php file.
10. Terms of Service
    Lets you add a terms of service option to the registration form. Get your subscribers to agree to your terms when signing up. The only thing I don’t like about the plugin is it adds the terms right on that page. This can make a page way too long. A link to the terms would have been a much better option. Another hack called for.

    Edit: The Terms of Service does not make the page longer. It takes up around 8 lines worth of space with a scrolling option. All in all it looks good. So no need to have a link to another page.

11. Private Messages
    Add a private messaging system for your members. Just one little warning – The Send New PM option takes you to a page where you get the entire drop down list of members. If you don’t want to expose all your member IDs and allow spamming, then it is a good idea to remove this option.

    Replacing the dropdown with an input box is not without its problems. The script does not check if the member exists as it was relying on a drop down before. So it will show a dummy sent message to any xyz id you add.

    Another option is to just remove the Send New PM option altogether. Add a PM This User option next to each post. This way only members that are active and posting can be PM’d which is how it should be anyway.

The one thing I just couldn’t get to work were the Unread Posts, Unread Topics, Since Last Visited and other similar plugins which display updates since your last login. The reason being they all rely on a plugin called Simple Onlinelist. And this does not work with the latest bbPress version for now.

All in all these plugins require more configuration than most of the Wordpress plugins. Reason being, there is no widgets option so code has to be added to your theme to enable most of these. Plus some of them still do not have a settings option in the admin and whatever setting needs to be done has to be within the php file. Also some like the private messaging are adding entire sections to the forum and hence are going to require some work.

But the great thing is you can choose the functionality you want to add. This makes the script much faster as oppposed to all the functionality being built in by default whether you need it or not.

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Post from: ErumMunir.com.
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bbPress Plugins That Work!

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1. What is the link to the theme directory?
   In Wordpress if you need to link to the theme directory you just use the tag:
   bloginfo(template_directory)

   For the moment there is no such option in bbPress. The basic documentation does not provide this very essential piece of information. After much research this is what I found:

   <?php bb_option('uri'); ?>my-templates/your-template-directory-name

2. If you want to add a menu for registered users which includes a link to their profile, edit profile, favorites, etc, you will find it a bit tricky. This is the code which displays the menu on the profile page.

   <?php if ( is_bb_profile() ) profile_menu(); ?></p>

   If you try placing profile_menu(); outside of this page, it gives an error.

   I assumed there had to be direct links that can be placed anywhere for Profile, Edit Profile and Favorites. I was right. Here is the code you can add to your logged-in.php file so these links appear only when a user is logged in:

   For Profile Link:

   <?php printf(bb_get_profile_link(Profile, bb_get_current_user_info( 'name' )));?>

   For Edit Profile

   <?php echo '<a href="'.get_profile_tab_link( bb_get_current_user_info( 'id' ), "edit" ).'">Edit Profile</a>' ?>

   For Favorites

   <?php echo '<a href="'.get_profile_tab_link(bb_get_current_user_info( 'id' ), "favorites" ).'">Favorites</a>' ?>

   This function can then be called using:

   <?php login_form(); ?>

   This displays the file login-form.php if your user is not logged in. And logged-in.php with the links you just added if they are.

3. Wordpres integration is very simple. You just follow the steps in the installation and fill in the right information. There are two important fields you need to enter in order for integration to go smoothly.

   One is a secret key found in your wp-config.php file. This is defined as:

   define('SECRET_KEY', 'YOUR-KEY-HERE'); // Change this to a unique phrase.

   YOUR-KEY-HERE needs to added as is.

   The second part is a Secret field which can be found in your Wordpress admin. You will get the direct link on the instalation page.

   Now guess what I did? I mixed up the two.

   It was easy to change the first one via bb-config.php as it was defined the same way it was in wp-config.

   Now how to change the Secret field to the correct one? There is a section under Settings in the bbPress admin called Wordpress Integration. You can make changes here. However, lady luck was not favoring me. It just wouldn’t update the field and kept logging me out. And the integration could not work until I updated the field. I was caught in a vicious cycle.

   Anyway turns out you can also update your Secret field by adding a line to bb-config.php. The value is then picked up from here. Of course you need to remove it once the value has updated as it is not very secure having both parts of the key in your config file.

   So just in case you have a problem updating your Secret field, here is the code to add to bb-config.php

   $bb->secret="VALUE-HERE";

The script itself is pretty good! It is the lack of documentation which can be problematic. I hope they come up with something as good as the Wordpress codex pretty soon.

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Post from: ErumMunir.com.
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The downside to this script is that there is no official documentation available. And that can have you going around in circles for quite a while especially if you are new to bbPress.

Here are a few resources:

1. Basic Documentation: This is all the official documentation you will find. There is no listing of functions and tags you can use. For all you know they may or may not exist.
2. Forum: There is a wealth of information in the forum but searching for what you need can take time. However, if you don’t find what you are looking for, the response time on the forum is really great. I got my answer within 2 hours which is especially briliant as this is an open source software. Hats off to these guys!
3. Unofficial Documentation: Last but not the least, there is an unnofficial documentation. A lot of it is still incomplete and hence inaccessible at the moment. But it is a start.

Reasons to choose bbPress over other forum scripts

1. Lightweight and Fast
   The script is coded to be very simple and lightweight as opposed to many other forum scripts which are way too heavy. Most forums have all the functionality built in – everything you can think of as part of the package. bbPress on the other hand offers additional functionality as plugins you can add. This lets you choose what functions you want and which ones you don’t.
2. Wordpress Integration:
   It is easily integrated with Wordpress. Just follow the simple steps via installation and you are done. This means that you can register and login at one of the scripts and be automatically registered or logged in at the other. That is a relief! Plus if you really want you can share Wordpress functions with bbPress although I wouldn’t recommend it. There are just too many variable involved … there are two scripts in action with probably a few dozen plugins … it is bound to give you an error at some point. Believe me, I know! Already tried going down that route.
3. Customizable Design
   Just like Wordpress, bbPress forum also has its own theme capability allowing you to completely customize the look of your forum. This is a capability I find seriously lacking in most scripts. So it is a relief to have a forum one can design and customize according to need.
4. It can only get better
   With new versions being released and new plugins being added, this script can only get better. There are no limits to the functionality that can be added. Just look at how far Wordpress has come.If that is an example, then I am going bbPress all the way.

Some Quirks

There are a few differences between Wordpress and bPress. For example while Wordpress has only one plugins and one theme directory, bbPress has separate ones for its core plugins and themes. You put your additional plugins and themes in my-themes and my-plugins. Personally that doesn’t make much sense to me.

Also there are way too many files in the theme directory. But they are planning on merging some of these so that scenario should get better.

Of course these are not deal breakers, just minor annoyances.

Plugins

Most of the plugins are also at an early stage of development and are either not ready for a live website or may require a lot of manual configuration. Some only work with older versions. But not to worry, I am going to compile a list of some of the basic plugins that do work with the latest version 0.9.2 so you don’t have to go thru the trial and error stage of it.

What’s the Verdict?

The script is still at an early stage but it looks promising and if it is going to follow Wordpress’ lead, then it should end up being a great forum script.

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Post from: ErumMunir.com.
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bbPress Forum Script: Thumbs Up or Thumbs Down

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