Wordpress Mu, BuddyPress, and bbPress

WordPress Mu, BuddyPress, and bbPress

On May 30, 2009, in The Web, by Kerry

Like many, I am a huge fan of the WordPress platform. There are certainly other options out there in the world, but I believe this is by far the best. The combination of clean interface, robust functionality, and ease of administration, combine to create a stable and much needed platform for blogging and CMS on the web.

More recently it has provided a platform for the BuddyPress social networking plugin that, quite impressively, offers average users the opportunity to host their own Facebook-like social network. (OK, it doesn’t have that many features, but it’s still pretty darn impressive.) In literally just a few minutes, you can have an install of WordPress Mu (a version of WordPress that allows multiple blogs to be hosted and administered by the same system) and BuddyPress working beautifully together.

Oh, if it were only that simple. What I have said so far is, of course, true…assuming you don’t want forums within this new site. BuddyPress accommodates forums as part of its feature set, but to actually get the forums running you have to install bbPress. That alone is as easy as the rest. bbPress is a forum package written by the WordPress guys, and it possesses the same ease of installation and clean, well thought out, administration. But here’s the rub. You have to get everything talking to each other. And that my friend is no small feat.

You need to hook get bbPress using the WordPress user table, link the cookies through a variety of authorization keys and salts, enable xml-rpc, insert some code in both your WordPress config file and your bbPress config file (although many argue what exactly this should say), download and install a variety of plugins into both WordPress and bbPress and activate them, go in an create some new directories that were not created in any of the installs and move some files to them which erroneously get placed in other locations with no apparent explanation, and the list goes on and on. You carefully do all of this. Check-marking each step in detailed sequence. All to find that you’re now throwing a dozen header errors and can no longer log into your admin. The closest I have come so far is being able to post in bbPress and read the posts in BuddyPress, but not being able to post the other direction or reply to any of the posts.

Enter Trent Adams. While others have shunned us fools, like me, that still cannot seem to get our forums working, Trent has spent countless hours trying to figure out why we can’t get it right. He’s like the Mother Theresa of the Holy Trinity (WordPress, BuddyPress, bbPress) install. And if his actions ever contribute to my eventual success in this endeavor, then my Nobel vote goes surely to him.

PS- I hear that getting these systems working together is painlessly simple to those that understand it. I’m thinking some one with a free Saturday and a PayPal account to make a quick $1,000 at $50 a piece. I’d gladly spend the money.

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