Forum

This forum is running bbPress, correct?

If so, why not install:

BBcode Lite: http://bbpress.org/plugins/topic/bbcode-lite/ + BBcode Buttons Toolbar http://bbpress.org/plugins/topic/bbcode-buttons/

Will add buttons like this (depending on how you style it with css of course): http://img577.imageshack.us/img577/1482/28910210.png

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Another thing, want to allow images in the forums, or afraid of it getting nasty?
http://bbpress.org/plugins/topic/allow-images/

User signatures?
http://bbpress.org/plugins/topic/bbpress-signatures/

bbPM – users can send PM’s to each other
http://bbpress.org/plugins/topic/bbpm/

Forum thread rating 1-5 stars
http://bbpress.org/plugins/topic/bb-ratings/

Smilies?
http://bbpress.org/plugins/topic/bb-smilies/

Shows which members are online/has been online today
http://bbpress.org/plugins/topic/members-online/

bbPolls – let users create polls right in the forum
http://bbpress.org/plugins/topic/bbpress-polls/

Ignore members – you can ignore certain trolls
http://bbpress.org/plugins/topic/ignore-member/

Forum mini stats
http://bbpress.org/plugins/topic/mini-stats/

etc.

(not saying that all these are good, but could be taken into consideration)

unlocks are for babies

Quoted from Alx

This forum is running bbPress, correct?

No, etf2l uses a heavily customised rs-discuss.

Quoted from Alx

Why not install:

BBcode Lite: http://bbpress.org/plugins/topic/bbcode-lite/ + BBcode Buttons Toolbar http://bbpress.org/plugins/topic/bbcode-buttons/

Adds no value at all; the current system works just fine. The pain of whatever is missing does not weigh up against the time/effort to go for a completely different system.

Quoted from Alx

Another thing, want to allow images in the forums, or afraid of it getting nasty?
http://bbpress.org/plugins/topic/allow-images/

User signatures?
http://bbpress.org/plugins/topic/bbpress-signatures/

bbPM – users can send PM’s to each other
http://bbpress.org/plugins/topic/bbpm/

Forum thread rating 1-5 stars
http://bbpress.org/plugins/topic/bb-ratings/

Smilies?
http://bbpress.org/plugins/topic/bb-smilies/

Shows which members are online/has been online today
http://bbpress.org/plugins/topic/members-online/

All these are deliberately not available. Some are, but to admins only.

Quoted from Alx

bbPolls – let users create polls right in the forum
http://bbpress.org/plugins/topic/bbpress-polls/

We have a poll system already – again, admins only.

Quoted from Alx

Forum mini stats
http://bbpress.org/plugins/topic/mini-stats/

We have fairly detailed forum stats; admins only.

tl;dr The current forum works and, more importantly, is readable.

You do know when you add polls and everything to normal user to do, the super trolls will start to post most idiotic things here. Or lets say even more than they do now.

Quoted from Spike Himself

[…]

Not just stability, more readability. Same goes for polls. It would just get messy.

bbPress either didn’t exist or didn’t work very well, back in the day (it still doesn’t work very well I can tell you from personal experience; rs-discuss is ancient and no longer developped/supported but it’s the best forum plugin for wordpress yet).

Alright. Yea, I guess it might be bad to give features to users who consists of 50% trolls when I give it a second thought.

Regarding bbpress – I’ve had a flawless experience with bbPress myself, and seeing that wordpress.org uses it as its own support forum (at least I think so?) should be proof that it’s stable and can handle much users. But then again, the current forum of etf2l works really well, just a bit feature-thin.

History
At the time the ETF2L forums were created (November 2007), bbPress was at version 0.8. How it looked like back then: no idea. But I’ve helped integrating bbPress with WP on a project a year ago. Getting the so-called “deep integration” going was doable, but it required a bit of work. At the moment, bbPress 2.0 is close to being final, and it says it’s made as a WP plugin, so integration should be a whole lot easier than bbPress 1 and earlier. I’ll be keeping an eye on that, it looks promising.

Anyway, over the course of time, I’ve looked at other forum software to be used a few times. There’s roughly 2 options: 1: Use separate forum software (bbPress, phpBB, MyBB, VBulletin, etc.), and integrate thse in our design, and connect these to the WP database with a “bridge”.

Option 1: standalone forum software
Bridges are annoying, they hardly ever work 100%, and is a hell with software updates. For example: I’ve helped a bit with integrating WP + phpBB once at http://teamfortress.be The WordPress – phpBB bridge is actually pretty decent. But, it doesn’t work for WP 3 and is no longer updated.

So, all In all, this isn’t really an option to me. Loading huge pieces of software on top of WordPress, with shoddy features. No thanks.

Option 2: a forum plugin
Of course, there are multiple forum plugins for WordPress. These are generally really easy to use. Download the plugin, activate it, and you’re done. I’ve looked at, and tried out, the more popular ones. There are basically only 2 proper ones. I didn’t like either of them enough to warrant a switch.

RS – Discuss
So, we chose RS-Discuss back in 2007. I wasn’t around yet back then, but it was, at that time, probably the only useable forum plugin. We took that, and evolved it further. Mind: rs-discuss in it’s original state is not quite what we’re running here. We’ve added a load of features, fixed some bugs, etc. Let’s take a look at what we’ve done:

– Added # of Views counter
– Added forum categories
– Added the use of avatars
– Added the link to your teams besides each post
– Added some BBCode support
– Added a quote function
– Added the Recent Posts section
– Fixed a number of security issue
– Some performance fixes here and there
– Added Forum ban functionality
– Hugely expanded user profiles http://etf2l.org/forum/user/681/
– Added the forum activity widget
– Added topic / forum name to the page title
– Cleaned up the forum admin interface
– Some other stuff I’ve forgotten.
– Slightly improved forum search (Though it’s still crap, don’t use it.)

So we’ve added a load of functionality to these forums, we know every nook and cranny of it (code-wise) Because it doesn’t have a load of extra features, it has a small codebase, and is more lightweight, and easier to maintain.

The forums are visited a lot. (There’s over 300.000 posts atm), so some performance is nice. There’s no shiny buttons to load, no smilies to parse, none of that. But more important for me is the cleanliness. I like the forums not being a circus act with all these bells and whistles. There’s some simple markup stuff to do the basics, and that works for me. Septique’s concerns are also very valid.

We’re so integrated with RS – Discuss that it will take a lot of time and effort to switch. Adding a new feature if we want it is very doable for us. Unless it has great benefits, switching forum software isn’t going to happen. (Not to mention the fact we’d have to convert the data in the database to a different format)

If there’s anything in particular you’d like added / changed, just make it known. If it’s a nice thing we also like, it has good chances of being implemented.

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Now for some fancy stuff: (I doubt any of the admins knew they could do this :) )

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There are 43370 registered users who have posted 303889 times and created 15762 topics, spread across 35 forums. Your forums have been open to visitors for 1273 days, and the busiest day of the week is normally a Tuesday

Free autographs @ i43 for anyone who made it this far! You sure like to read.

I’d say either stay with this since it does what it should as a forum, or wait for a stable release of the bb-press plugin and check that out (to save work when upgrading wordpress without breaking the forums, plus lots of plugins to chose from etc).

Always nice to get rid of “bridges” in the long run, but if the bbpress plugin isn’t good – stay with this one.