One of the great things about bbPress is that when it works, it blows away other forums. It doesn’t get many things right, but I feel with this plugin you’ll see a huge difference in your site’s SEO. It has almost all of the features of it’s WordPress counterparts and many more. Definately it’s something I’m very proud of, and it’s seeing great results in the beta tests. In the past 6 months, I’ve come to regard this bbPress Plugin as a must have – something that rarely happens as an overly critical developer.

bbPress KJG SEO supports both bbPress0.9 and bbPress1.0 as standard; though there are now 2 versions. One version is free (Ad or link supported) and the other is Premium. Neither are fully GPL compatible at this time, though the free version will probably have it’s licenced changed to GPL at some stage.

This will be my first Premium plugin for bbPress. It’s not something I’m totally comfortable with, but given the sheer amount of support I’ve had to give out recently (even when things have Yes/No options) I really want to focus on the people who need a better service as well as offering them their own support forum. There will always be a free version of my plugins, and I will attempt to keep the two as similar as posible, but the time has come to realise I cannot give give give to those who don’t apprecaite it.

Hopefully you’ll see some great results from the plugin, as the bbPress KJG SEO plugin is excellent and benefitial in both formats.

You can download the plugin from www.bbPress-support.com in the next few days.

EDIT: Apparently that website isn’t going to be released for another week, and I’ve jumped the gun a little. So you can download it from this location until then.

My name is Kevinjohn Gallagher, and I’m one of the people to who contribute to bbPress.

I’ve mentioned this before, but after the announcement by Jane Well on the Official WordPress blog, and by Andrew Nacin on the WordPress development blog, I thought I’d take one last shot at a bit of sanity:

Please, stop calling the new forum plugin for WordPress the “bbPress plugin”.

• It has nothing to do with bbPress.
• It does not plug-in to bbPress in any way.
• It does not plug bbPress into WordPress.
• It is not, by it’s own very definition, a bbPress plug-in.
• It is a Forum plug-in for WordPress, completely separate from bbPress in every way.

So maybe, just maybe, we should call it… the “WordPress Forum Plug-in”. Or an equivolent name. Anything with separates it from the naming quagmire we currently find ourselves in; because one should really be asking Automattic why they are (intentionally?) confusing their user-base?

We currently have :

• bbPress0.9
• bbPress1.0
• backPress
• buddyPress
• bbPress for buddyPress
• and now you want to add in a bbPress Plug-in that doesn’t have anything to so with any of the above?

We already have bbpress0.9 which is different and unique from bbPress1.0 (which uses BackPress, which itself is shortened to bPress or BP). 2 versions of the same software released/updated at the same time and both in-compatible. We refer to them both as bbPress, but really one of them is “bbPress” and the other “bbpress with bPress”.

We have the bbPress plugin for BuddyPress (which itself is shortened to bPress or BP – cunningly the exact same as BackPress is shortened to) and that is effectively bbPress1.0 (the one build on BackPress) but without BackPress.

So to clarify for those who are confused:

bbPress for BP is bbPress with bPress without bPress.
But that’s not the same as just bbPress, the bbPress plugin, BP, bPress, BuddyPress nor BackPress.

Is it any wonder, honestly, that people get confused?

I’ve been developing for and with bbPress since bbPress 0.8 and I’m confused by the above sentence. On top of this you want to throw in another completely new, unique, different and separate project and call it the exact same name? Have you lost your marbles? Are we honestly, and truly, wanting to have 7 products from the same company all with the same abbreviation, all starting with “b” and ending in “Press” and expect 0 supoprt questions to arise from this?

I have been vocal about how both Matt specifically and Automattic on the whole have dropped the ball with bbPress on numerous occasions. Those mistakes and indeed the catalogue of errors that were made, will simply dwindle in comparison to the amount of confusion caused by this decision.  The initial damage has been done, the amount of support requests and uncertainty has already affected bbPress and it’s community a ridiculous amount, but there is a chance to be brave and sort it out once and for all.

I strongly suggest and hope that sensible heads prevail.

http://bbpdevel.wordpress.com and http://bbdevel.wordpress.com

Nope, can’t see anyone getting cofused about that. Here’s hoping no-one makes a typo and helps the wrong project!

My name is Kevinjohn Gallagher, and I’m one of the people to who contribute to bbPress.

That is the standalone forum software available at bbpress.org, and not the BuddyPress plug-in called bbPress, nor the bbPress plug-in in the WordPress plug-in directory.

It is sometimes confusing as they all use the same name, so I find it’s best to be upfront about which one of the 3 pieces of software I am trying to help (even if I do sometimes feel like I’m saying that I’m the “People’s front of Judea” rather than the “Judean’s People’s Front” ).

With bbPress utterly reliant on BackPress for it’s next release, I am wondering if I could have 5 minutes of your time to discuss/asnwer the following questions:

• Who is the BackPress project lead?
• Who is the best person to contact when the lines of communication break down between BackPress and it’s dependants?
• What is the best communication method when this happens?
  • given that BacKPress has no forum
  • it’s Mailling List has had 3 emails in 4 months, none of them from any core developers or team members
  • Trac updates have met with no respsonse
  • the Link to the Trac Update List from the BackPress website results in a 404
• I was wondering what the current/proposed release schedule is for BackPress?
• Are more tickets going to be added to the current Milestone?
• Could we suggest/promote/prod/beg/bribe for 2 tickets to be added to the current Milestone?
• Realistically, is there a ballpark time/date when we think the current Milestone will be released?

I realise that some or all of these questions might not be any one person’s to answer, or that I might not be the person to whom these answers should be directed, but I would greatly appreciate any insight you can give me.

.

Basically, we’re somewhat screwed waiting on BackPress.

We have 2 blocker bugs which are causing all sorts of havoc right now.

http://backpress.automattic.com/ticket/18

Opened 6 months ago, this is blocking us from releasing bbPress1.0.3.

More realistically, it’s stopping us from releasing it out for testing. bbP1.0.3 has over a year of bug fixes and code patches, and there will be an awful lot of bugs, and we can’t roll it out for testing until this has been cleared. It appears to me that it’s a very simple fix (apologies if I’ve gotten that wrong). I suppose I’m concerned as it’s had no response from the BackPress team, even after Sam Bauers updated it in May.

http://backpress.automattic.com/ticket/25

This one is a biggie.
BackPress currently refuses to parse any ampersand fronted code.

Every single HTML tag, or PHP class notation on the bbPress website is currently un-usable and un-readable.
Not only does it make the site look like it’s broken (and it is after a half-baked patchy theme release), but it also makes giving support and code near impossible.

This is also blocking bbPress1.0.3; but this one has had a patch in the BackPress track for over 2 weeks.

Help Us, Help Ourselves

I understand completely that with WordPress3.0 just out the door that working on BackPress in order to fix bbPress isn’t seen as the highest priority. That is a very reasonable viewpoint. From our point of view though, the difficulty is the lack of communication. We have NO idea what is going on, and have reached out to BackPress and WordPress contributors on this subject in an attempt to garnish some form of information, only to have recieved no response or no descernable information from the communicae.

I ask, from one person trying to help an open source project to another, to shed whatever light you can on BackPress for us. We can plan and advise against whatever information we’re given, but it’s the unknown that is daunting. We can’t answer support questions, we cant answer planning questions, code contributors can’t test their code, plugin authors can’t test their plugins – we’re in a holding pattern, just looping over and over – but shedding key contributors in the process.

Knowing what’s going on with BackPress will allow us to better communicate and plan bbPress; and we’d apprecaite any help you could give us in this matter.

“Once men are caught up in an event, they cease to be afraid.
Only the unknown frightens them.”
~ Antoine de Saint-Exupery (1900-1944)

Thank you for your time,

Kevinjohn Gallagher

EDIT: 2nd July 2010 @ 3pm

I’d like to offer my public thanks to Westi for not only fixing our outstanding tickets but also sending me a lonely reply by email. There is no doubt that the BackPress project is far from a priority at Automattic right now, but having cleared up the lines of communication and thrown himself into the bbPress mix so quickly, I’m sure we’ll see good things happen soon.

First pint in Manchester is on me!

Heriot-Watt are migrating their online information repository as part of the larger SAS Project, and today signed off on our pitch to create the web app on the WordPress platform. This will be the first time that Heriot-Watt have used WordPress for an externally facing website, and we’re very pleased that they have continued the trend of Scotland’s Top Universities (Edinburgh and Napier universities are previous clients) in choosing Kevinjohn Gallagher and PureWebBrilliant.com.

Our initial project together will be released in August 2010, and will utilise our custom K.I.T.T framework for faster prototyping and deployment as well as enoying the use of our Media Library plugin for WordPress.

From a purely personal viewpoint, this is a great little project which will keep us very busy until and during the  Edinburgh Fringe festival (something else I’ve build a website for this year). After that I’ll take in a few shows, and maybe enjoy a small week break.

If I’m honest with myself, I’ve been lucky with some of the sites that this hasn’t happened before. Ofcourse, I’ve taken every precaution availible and even being critical of myself I can hand on heart say that security on my WordPress installs has improved dramatically in the last 18 months; but a mixture of older WordPress versions, bbpress legacy code, custom code and the great unknown, the website user, have finally conspired against me.

The realism is, I include basic WordPress upgrades in my support package after I build or host a website, save for a few caveats. Errors in my custom code/themes/plugins that I take ownership of are fixed free of charge, while non-forseeable errors are offered at a cost rate to clients. Even with the 3 “vulnerable” WordPress versions installed (due to supporting older versions of bbPress), I’d be surprised if they were to blame (given that only 1 of them has appeared vulnerable).

No, the real culprit here appears to be the website owner/administrator/user. Using the admin account, a weak password, not signing out, not moderating spam, disabling some of my plugins to allow easier access etc. And that’s why I am quietly confident of the exact weekend when these attacks finally breached the website security – I was away for 5 days and my cron job to compare code against my  beta site was alerted to accepting errors as I upgraded to WordPress3.0 nightly build.

Until I can guarentee that these websites are completely free of issues, I shall be extending their maintenance mode until the end of the month (don’t worry, there is a clause in the contract for this). Every site will be upgraded to WP3.0, and bbPress will be upgraded to 1.0.2, all on my brand new server (it’s well lush).

Lessons have been learned, hopefully on all sides, and I’ll take this as an oppertunity to level the playing field for both my clients and I again. Plus it’ll keep me busy this weekend, avoiding hearing the English talking about how they’re going to win the World Cup if they beat Algeria!!

I build, from end to end, websites in WordPress.

I take requirements, I plan the sitemap, I define the flow of information, I design to standards, I create the additional server-side functionality, I tweak the CSS and finally add some fun interactive JavaScript (if needed).

With the new menu functionality and custom post types, WordPress has moved a step closer to being a fully featured CMS. Regardless to what the “blogosphere” says, it’s not there yet. It’s functions are still too narrow, aimed at easily getting you the output it thinks you want as easily as possible. It still feels like some of the more “CMS” features, and the new menu especially, aren’t quite rounded yet – but that is to be expected.

As someone who takes great pride in hand-coding my routines entirely, I am finally enjoying a framework that works with me, from end to end. Now if we could just get bbPress to fix it’s bugs before focussing on new features we’d be laughing!!!

Given how fluid and ever changing web based IT solutions have become, it still amazes me that people and companies attempt to label us and put us in these predefined boxes.

There was a time when it was understandable. Designers didn’t do code, and there were no tools to help them. Front end guys just built websites. Back end development was done on a larger scale. Almost all websites were static. But lets be honest, that time has been and gone for over 10 years.

• How many people that design websites have absolutely no understanding of HTML or CSS or Layering or Slicing?
• How many front-end developers have never used a CMS or PHP or ASP or a Database or any form of dynamic content?
• How man back-end developers have never coded HTML, or written any JavaScript or CSS?
• How many people who have been in the industry for over 10 years haven’t fulfilled more than one of these roles at any given time?

That has become the crux of the matter. I find I’m having the same conversation over and over, where people seem to question my ability to do one job because at some stage in the last 15 years in IT I’ve done a different job. I have no problem with people questioning me about my CV and previous roles but when I hear statements like this one (below) I do shudder a little:

I see you build a website in C# in 2001, just to clarify, we’re looking for a front-end developer and we’re not a Microsoft house.

Yes folks, 9 years ago, I built a website using C#.  I know, the absolute fucking horror of it all.

In the past 15 years, I’ve also developed websites in Flash, Director, Perl, Java Servlets, PHP, VB, ASP, ColdFusion and WAP. Not one of these stop me from doing the job I do today. In fact, they give me an amazing perspective into the best way to build and manage websites with the latest technology.

• You should be glad that I built a website in 2001 with the cutting edge technology of the time.
• You should be very happy that I can code in C#, Perl and PHP, as well as JavaScript.
• You should be ecstatic that I’ve been a front-end and back-end developer with Project Management experience.

The IT industry, if not just the web based sector, have somehow managed to warp it’s perspective that instead of being inclusive, it should be exclusive. Rather than being able to do a role because you have the required skills, instead we’re judged on an ability to do the role besed on additional skills we might have which would somehow take away existing skills. Its truly mental, and I can’t think of one other sector or industry in which this happens; or more importantly, other than lying I can’t think of a way around it!

The goal in software design ( be it desktop, mobile or web based ) must be improved Usability. I state this not to jump on the latest bandwagon, but because I am often asked how I can be so evangelistic about new web based technologies and yet rarely do you see any code normally associated with other front or back end developers.

Where is all the:

• javascript
• ajax
• flash
• json
• xml
• silverlight
• vampires
• care bears
• Facebook buttons
• Digg links
• Tweets

Honestly, there’s very little on this website, or on most of my websites; and that’s not something that’s going to change any time soon.

Front-end web development is once again in the midst of a great technological leap. Jquery (and equivalent tools) has extended the average developer’s ability to control what the user sees and does, but really doesn’t give us any newer options than the old Thomas Bratta library from pre-2000. Lets not forget, we had prototyping in ECMAscript back in 1999 and other than some DOM standardisation we’ve made no real leaps in that department.

For all of it’s acceptance though, JavaScript by it’s very nature is dependant on the user and their choice of system. It is this unalienable fact that strongly shouts that we should strive to use conventional, controllable and deployable technologies instead. Better layouts, HTML and CSS will provide a far more robust experience 9 times out of 10; and I say this as someone who truly loves JavaScript.

In fact, as more and more of the web is seen by non-traditional browsing methods, the way in which we use JavaScript and Flash (and equivalents) needs to be examined on a case by case basis.

• Mouseovers, once the smoking gun in the interactive front-end arsenal, is both covered by CSS and more importantly obsolete on all new touch screen delivery devices.
• The ability to specifically place data as per a design was always a bad idea, but can be done without JavaScript by the most modest of code monkeys.
• Popups are annoying, which is not a shock to anyone with half a brain given that every browser under the sun has had popup blockers for the last 5-10 years; and it won’t be long until these facebook-esque shadowboxes become annoying too.

So what does that leave us with? The elephant in the room, dynamic loading of data. I think of this in the same way I think of communism:

It’s a wonderful idea until someone decides to fuck it up.

And sadly, that’s already happened. Ajax, like flash before it, has become one of the most over-rated and deceptive tools in a developer’s toolbox. Yes we must strive to have data more available to the end user, but dynamically loading data in this way is not inherently usable accessible.

This method became popular with Flash5 but at that point in time one of our primary concerns was dealing with people on slow connections, specifically dial up. Not having to reload the page and all the tables and images was a huge benefit; but I question the consistent over use of this on multiple websites trying to be “Web2.0”. It causes way more hassle than anything else for the end user, but at it’s core the issue is this: you are taking the decision on how and when to show your data out of your hands and placing it in the browser/medium/operating system/device’s hands. When, in the short history of the internet as we know it, was that ever a good idea?

I like Flash, but outside of Video is there any real need for it on modern websites? And how long will flash-based video last in the long term – less than 4 years if you ask me.

I like JavaScript, but it should be used to enhance the user’s experience, not the website’s content.

With great power, come great responsibility. I am a front end web developer who promises to only use these tools when needed, and not when requested. And believe me, I’ll be the happiest man in the world when I get to whip them out and show off my coding skills a little!

So the question I want to ask is, where now for bbPress? Here are my thoughts…

bbPress is dead.

The next release of bbPress (1.0.3 / 1.1) will include some long request features for wordpress.org/.com’s support forums; and then it’s off to the elephant graveyard.

Matt has left the project, and decreed bbPress at this year’s WordCamp even going so far as to suggest to people to use different software. Matt also informed us (though no blog post or official announcement, he just threw it into an IRC chat at 11pm one night) that bbPress will not continue to be a standalone and will be a wordpress plugin. Open-Source software cannot die, but the bbPress project we’ve supported for years is ending.

I believe that after the next release, that bbPress should be forked with a dedicated team in place, in a structured tiered format.

• The new project should clearly define the Roles and Responsibilities of it’s members and contributors.
• The new project’s members should also be listed on the project website.
• The new project’s members should not participate in the original bbPress project.
• The new project should be defined before any coding.
• The new project should have a visible feature list.
• The new project should have a fully working website.
• The new project should do what it says on the tin.
• The new project should prioritise communication.
• The new project should separate moderators and developers.
• The new project should accept criticism.
• The new project should strive to understand it’s user base.
• The new project should be strict on support queries.
• The new project should maintain a clear grasp on reality.
• The new project should focus on the website owner/administrator; rather than end user.

EDIT: Re-reading this list has made me chuckle a little, because I think that most of the items I’ve included are what makes WordPress stand out from the crowd. If only they were both written by the same people…

In a world of every increasing technological wonder, it’s funny how much these ships mean to me. They have always represented ‘a step’ on our path to somewhere new. An idea, if you will, that we can do more and be more. I know that’s a bit of an grand over reaching statement, but really what these ships embodied for me.

I felt the same after the plans to ground Concorde were announced. The idea that we (sic) were happy to have a technological leap just abandoned because the cost of ensuring it’s safety was more than the amount of money it would make in return.

No single [project] will be more impressive to mankind, or more important… and none will be so difficult or expensive to accomplish
– President John F. Kennedy; May 25th, 1961

More than anything, I believe, that these ships (and the American space program) have brought the world together on a scale that very few others have achieved. Sometimes though the idea that the barriers between us had been lifted (Walter Cronkite presiding over the moon landing) to a reminder that we’re all human and fragile (Challenger blowing up with school teachers on board).

Maybe it’s just me (a sentimental old computer geek) but in a day when Adobe and Apple fire another salvo across each other’s bow in an attempt to convince the other’s fanboys which level of hell they’re going to be on; I can’t help but feel that we’re losing something fundamental to us all. I’m quietly confident that were John F. Kennedy alive today to see the legacy of his space program he’d want to slap Steve Jobs just a little.

We choose to go to the Moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard.
– President John F. Kennedy; September 12th, 1962

Today, after 25 years of service, we lose one of the three remaining non-corporation owned space shuttles in existence. Today, our dreams move just a little further away.