On December 9th, Matt published the chat log to the first bbPress meetup that occurred in the bbPress IRC channel. The attendees were made up of folks who volunteered to keep the project going. Here are some of the tidbits I learned while reading the archive.

There was a great debate amongst those in attendance on whether to continue bbPress as a standalone product, a dedicated plugin, or both. As far as I can tell, a concrete decision has not been made but quite a few leaned towards making an awesome bbPress plugin.

bbPress will become a registered trademark under the WordPress Foundation.

One of the biggest weaknesses of bbPress right now is documentation. Therefor, a documentation team has been put together comprised of Tom39Away, pmall, justintadlock, and Nightgunner5. For the first time, access to the bbPress.org website will be given to outsiders such as the documentation team.

Hajii who has been a long time moderator on the bbPress.org forums will be putting together a state of the forums where he will be stating where the forum needs help the most. If you’ve been looking at being more active on this particular forum, keep an eye out for the announcement for more moderators.

I was wondering when the name _ck_ would be mentioned which it was 37 minutes into the meeting. For those that don’t know, _ck_ was a very active bbPress contributor by being a forum moderator, producing a number of bbPress plugins and was recently brought on by Sam Bauers to help out with the project. But, after Sam left, _ck_ also left. There is some controversy as to why she left the project but Matt himself said he was surprised to find out she left the project.

I was very surprised when _ck_ left, I hadn’t heard anything from her like an email or anything — anyone know the story there?

Everyone took a stab at guessing why she left but the only one who really knows is _ck_. She had a loyal following and many in the bbPress community enjoyed her contributions.

The next big topic was plugins. There are many plugins for bbPress that only work up to 0.9. It looks like there will be a survey published on the bbPress.org blog in the coming days asking users what type of functionality they would like to see in the software which would not only generate core functionality ideas, but plugin ideas as well.

It’s also worth mentioning this information as well.

hajii: yes and to clarify just like wordpress.org, bbPress is not owned or operated by Automattic, it’s separate. Just because I saw a lot of people conflating them in the forums.

I own bbPress.org just like WordPress.org — separate from Automattic — and the plan is to run it in the same fashion. We’ll register the bbPress trademark under the pending foundation

Last but not least, the survey I mentioned previously has since gone online. The poll focuses on ideas and features that you think should be in 1.1.

So in the end, Matt is spearheading the project once again as he did when he created the software over a weekend back in 2004. In fact, this Christmas, bbPress will turn five years old. If you are interested in being a part of this renaissance, now would be a good time to head on over to the bbPress.org forums and make your presence known.

Strategically the most important thing we need to figure out is how to integrate bbPress better with WP more for people who want that — right now it’s easier to use one of the WP plugins for forums than bbPress.

I’ve only installed bbPress locally once to check it out but it’s not my cup of tea. I think the bbPress forum software is aimed at developers since it comes with all the basics to build on or around but doesn’t contain the feature set of modern forum software out of the box. For example, the SimplePress plugin for WordPress Matt mentions is packed with more features than the dedicated forum software. One idea I’ve heard Matt discuss with Sam that I think has a ton of potential is to replace or add onto the WordPress comment system with bbPress. This type of tight integration between the two is what I believe Matt wants to figure out. It would be awesome to have such an easy way to not only have a forum where visitors can start their own conversations, but also leave comments on articles on the blog side of things. I hesitate to mention Vbulletin but it’s the software that comes to mind that takes this to the next level by offering their own CMS with the forum software built into it.

One of the best things bbPress has going for it right now is the work of Andy Peatling. In BuddyPress 1.1 Andy rewrote the forums component from the ground up to provide one click internal bbPress forum integration enabling users to setup forums in a fraction of the time. BuddyPress is gaining traction and as Matt says, has all the ingredients to become as large and successful as WordPress. I think the more people that use BuddyPress, the more that will use bbPress building that community simultaneously with BuddyPress.

Your Thoughts:

You tell me, or Matt. What is the future of bbPress you would like to see turn into a reality? Also, if you use bbPress, tell me why and how.

With this in mind, I’ve decided to whip up a guide on how to maximize the use of the WordPress.org forum. It’s not exactly as cut and dry as you would think. This list of steps was comprised mostly by Michael E. Hancock with additional tips provided by Otto and myself.

1. A new user may want to read the Forum Rules

2. Report inappropriate posts/threads by adding the ‘modlook‘ tag to that thread

3. Link to Codex article by using the wiki code of two beginning and ending brackets. [[Template Hierarchy]] will create a link to that article in Codex.

4. Try to place your question in the correct Forum–if it is related to Plugins use the Plugins and Hacks Forum.

5. If needing to put a large code example in your thread, paste the code in a pastebin and put the link to that code in the thread.

6. Click on View Your Profile to see all your threads. Note: Currently the Threads Started feature is broken.

7. You can initiate a forum topic from a particular plugin at the WordPress Extend Plugins site. At the bottom of each plugin page there is a “Write a new topic” link that displays a form to enter the topic and automatically creates a tag related to that specific plugin and automatically selects the Plugins and Hacks Forum.

8. A new topic is started by first selecting(entering)the particular Forum (e.g. Installation) and at the bottom of the screen, the New Topic form is displayed.

9. Use the Version box when starting a new topic. If the Version isn’t listed, select Other and then type the Version in the box.

10. A tip from LesBessant – You can hide the tag cloud in Firefox by adding the file usercontent.css to the …\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\xxxxxx.default\chrome folder. Put this in the file:

.frontpageheatmap, #hottags {
display: none;
}

11. Use the Report a Site Bug link at the bottom of the screen to report bugs with the forum software.

12. When creating a new topic, make the topic be descriptive and brief. “Help me now” is a poor topic.

13. If asking a question about a plugin or theme provide a link to download the plugin/theme.

14. Use meaningful tags. Using the same tags as the topic isn’t very useful, but using keywords from the topic is good.

15. Make use of the search before starting a new topic. Also a Google search such as “wordpress plugin cforms” will return a good list of info about the Cforms plugin.

Here is a tip provided by Otto42 – DON’T BUMP. Bumping makes your threads have a reply, which makes them not show up on the “threads without replies” list any more. Meaning that bumping actually decreases the chances of you getting any help.

Here is a tip from me to you. If you end up resolving your problem, be sure to edit the post and mark it as resolved. I’ve forgotten to do this step several times but the good news is, you can always go back to those posts via your user profile and edit them.

Conclusion:

As has been discussed on the Testers mailing list, there are many things that can be done to improve the forum experience that are out of the control of end users. For example, an improved search. Based on what I’ve heard, the search for the Codex as well as the Forum and Plugin Repository has a good shot at being implemented before the release of WordPress 2.8. While on the subject of search, I think it would be nice if the forum search provided a set of Advanced options so that I could search the forum in all threads that have been marked as resolved.

While BBPress is decent forum software (for now as Sam continues to work on version 1.0) I wonder if it’s the software of choice that meets the needs of the WordPress.org support forum. There is no private messaging, distinct thread/post filtering, etc. Not that every feature found within PHPBB3 or other forum software needs to be integrated into BBPress but I feel there is quite a bit missing at this point to provide a sound experience on the forum.

With that said, I ask you, the community how we and the powers that be can improve the WordPress.org forum. I ask that you do not take this opportunity to vent your frustrations with particular users but instead, provide feedback and ideas on how to improve the system.