Well, I slightly dreaded the WordPress Multi-User and bbPress user integration I did today -but in the end it was a complete lay-up. I guess my tough luck with sitewide category tags in WPMU (I will accomplish this!!!) had me feeling a bit vulnerable today. OK, but enough about the King, here is the play-by-play for integrating user authentication for bbPress and WPMu:
Environment: I am working with WPMu 1.2.3 (using dynamic subdomains) and bbPress 0.8.2.1 (all installed on a LAMP server with PHP 5 )
Download bbPress here.
Unzip, upload and configure the database settings. I used a separate database for bbPress, the folks on the forums suggest it can just as easily be integrated into the WPMu datasbase, but I was a little uncertain of that so I opted out (if anyone who has details about the nature of the option it would be appreciated).
Most of the work happens right in the config.php file so I am going to include an image (click for the large version) below annotating and highlighting the changes I made (color coded in magenta) and code I added (color coded in green) to the bbPress config file. I think this is all correct, and I hope it helps. So click on the image for a much closer look at my settings.
Two more thing before show time, however:
- You are probably going to have to create an .htaccess file in the directory if you want permalinks or slugs. You can get a good sense of how to do this here (it worked for me with the OptionViews like a champ -I love our new hosting
). - Important!! Before installing bbPress and creating a username and whatnot, be sure that you don;t use the same username you have in the WPMu. For example, if your username is admin for WPMu, try to avoid using admin for bbPress as well because when the user authentication connections to the WPMu information, it will overwrite anything in the bbPress database.
P.S. -If you already did this, don’t worry, just put the following line of code
$bb->new_keymaster = 'admin'; //(with admin being the overwritten username) in the config.php file for bbPress and try go to –> your_forum_domain/wp-admin/install.php
At this point, I think it is safe to say you can install bbPress and have users signed-in on the WPMu site just mosey on over to forums and post a topic!
One caveat in my testing thus far, you may want to take the login/password fields off of the theme for bbpress. reason being is that users can authenticate on to both bbPress and WPMu from the bbpress login, yet they have to return to bbPress to logout. In other words, if they log into bbPress and read the forums, post, etc. then head over to their blog, they will ultimately have to return to bbPress to logout, causing some confusion. Best bet is to just put a general login and password field on the homepage.
Some fun features of bbPress:
*RSS feeds for all topic (huge!)
*You can include images and code
*You can have both private and public forums
*You can integrate latest forums topics into WPMu homepage
*tags, tags, tags
*avatars
*theme-easy (looks like I may have a shot at a MistyLook them for bbpress)
*the plugins are starting to roll in
I have no idea if the forum part of UMW Blogs will getting any use, but it turned out to be quick and easy enough that I’m not too concerned. Additionally, if you have folks who like the forums and want to continue using them for classes, create private one on the blog/wiki/forum environment and give it a span. I think the fact it has RSS for every topic, post, etc. is nice -and it looks much better the phpBB road kill.
Good luck with it!
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Sounds like a lot of work to install a feature-anemic version of Drupal
Cheers,
Bill
Zing!
You’re right, Bill. And if Drupal weren’t so God damn ugly I wouldn’t have to do all this work!
If only…
Wait! I’ve got it! Drupal does all of that! And it might be easier to design a theme you don’t hate, than to rebuild Drupal using duct tape and bubblegum to slap other single-purpose apps together…
I’m just sayin, is all.
But WPMU does the dynamic subdomain thing. I don’t believe Drupal can do that.