Basically, I want all the power of BBpress in the comments but not the hassle of setting it up.
Not going to happen with comments…I would suggest looking at the following plugin.
http://simplepressforum.com/
Yes, it looks really nice and is kind of what I’m after, but it is not backed by the “big names” of WP, like Matt or the Automatic team.
I can’t remember, is bbpress backed by Automatic?
I note that bbsync went dead, which would have helped tip the balance for me for bbpress… but alas bbsync is no longer supported.
What’s to guarantee that this won’t as well and that I’ll be stuck? I don’t know sql enough to convert databases from one type of forum to another.
When shopping around for a CMS/forum portal, it’s good to be cautious and flexible. If SimplePress had converters OUT into the “mainstream’ forums, I’d be happier, (because then you can generally find converters from one to another like SMF to phpbb3 to bbpress and back again).
But I haven’t been able to find any. It’s only got 2000 members of it’s forum, so that indicates that there might not be that many users of Simplepress. Even the Agora forum plugin for Joomla has 7300 forum members.
http://jvitals.com/index.php?option=com_agora&id=19&Itemid=105
Basically, I’d love Matt to take something like BBpress/Simplepress and make it a core feature of WP, just as Matt is making MUWP the standard soon.
…but it is not backed by the “big names” of WP, like Matt or the Automatic team.
Neither are the vast majority of WP plugins or themes that you can download directly from wp.org…they are 3rd party applications that play a major part in making WP what it is today. Want guarantees…install nothing but the standard WP code…want a nice, functional forum plugin…give it a try. The worst that can happen? If it stops working, then you won’t have a forum in your WP install…like you currently don’t have 😉
This isn’t about the way something displays on my blog, but how hundreds, maybe thousands of other people interact
I would be running a political activist forum which might attract politicians. It would be VERY bad to have say 2000 activists calling me in the middle of the night because SimplePress stopped, WP upgraded, it died… and I didn’t know how to fix it.
That’s why I was WISHING that there was an easy plug-in “official, full powered” forum for WordPress, backed by all the powers that back WordPress. WordPress is SO great and well respected but this quaint (and respectable amount of work!) little operation might be great now, but just as with bbsync, there are no guarantees. I want guarantees before committing a few hundred people to something.
I’m looking into it. SMF might have a script soon… if there’s just ONE solid converter out there, people feel they have a bridge to take then they can dance around between the other forums as they wish. One bridge, and I feel I could “give something a go”. Without it I’m reluctant to commit.
It would be VERY bad to have say 2000 activists calling me in the middle of the night because SimplePress stopped, WP upgraded, it died… and I didn’t know how to fix it.
First, WP doesn’t upgrade itself…you upgrade it. Anyone who is running a production, active, important site, and upgrades the site without first backing everything up and/or testing the upgrade on a test site…well…you fill in the rest 😉
If your forum is that important to you, then there are some really solid, well tested forum apps out there that have been around for a very long time with more features that you will ever get in a WP forum add-on…and that’s simply because WP is a blog…not a forum.
phpBB (open source) and Invision Power Board (proprietary) are just a couple stable, well tested, dedicated forum apps. They’re both php scripts and it doesn’t take a genius to skin them the way you want and make them share user login info.
If your site is so important that 2,000 people will be calling you in the middle of the night if it stops working, then you may need to take @spykie’s advice and hire a programmer to be on stand-by 😉
OK, good points, and WP is a blog.
But if it heads into the CMS market competing with Drupal and Joomla, maybe it will want to back BBpress as an even easier, “WordPressier” kind of plug in that just shares everything really easily.
“They’re both php scripts and it doesn’t take a genius to skin them the way you want and make them share user login info.”
That’s where I disagree. I’m a humanities/arts kind of guy, and this stuff is a fairly mysterious arcane art to me. You guys do magic with code! 😉
I’m sorry if the above came across as criticism, I’m really very grateful for all the open source communities are doing.
