Best forum plugin for s2?

[diannemclean]

I'm concerned about seamless integration for forums. My ideal situation would be that a member logs in to the site, and they can get on the forums without having to log in again to the forums. Also, that I can set privileges on the forums for each membership level.

Which forum plugin works seamlessly with s2 in this manner? Or does one exist?

Dianne

[Cristián Lávaque]

bbPress can be integrated with WordPress and s2Member. Others (vBulletin, SMF, phpBB) would need custom coding to get integrated.

http://bbpress.org

[diannemclean]

I tried to install bbpress, I get an error code that says "this plugin does not have a valid header" and down below it says the installation failed. I tried it both ways, through the wordpress admin panel (uploading the unzipped folder that I downloaded from bbpress) and then through filezilla.

I'm not a coder, so I don't know how to resolve this.

Dianne

[Cristián Lávaque]

The plugin in WordPress.org's directory hasn't been updated since almost a year ago and says

If you want a stable version of bbPress, please download it from http://bbpress.org This is the place holder page for bbPress, the WordPress plugin. This plugin is in the very beginning stages of development.

Get the one here http://bbpress.org/download/

During installation you'll get an optional step to integrate with your WordPress blog.
http://bbpress.org/documentation/integr ... wordpress/

Tip: the description for some integration fields point you to a WP admin page, but I didn't find them there (they probably were in earlier versions), they were all in wp-config.php.

[rainleader]

Thanks guys -- I've been looking to do this too! Works seamlessly...

[Cristián Lávaque]

Great!

[rainleader]

Man I wish it were easier to integrate your WP theme with bbPress though. I don't feel like futzing with my site's header/footer out of fear that future updates might corrupt the whole thing. You'd think there'd be a shortcode (e.g. [bbpress]) to drop in the forum on any WP page.

[Cristián Lávaque]

You'd think... :/

I'm not very experienced with bbPress, so I don't have some tip I could tell you about, but I can tell you to Google that. There must be something out there that helps you with it, you can't be the first one to wonder about it.

[rainleader]

Yea I looked into this. Basically, you have to configure bbPress to use your WP installations header, footer, and then combine CSS styles.

Better yet, though, bbbPress is also working on a plugin for WordPress that is entirely a plugin and not a standalone application. It's still early in development. The plugin is what is getting the development attention now from the bbPress team so the standalone may eventually go away. You can follow it's development here:

http://bbpdevel.wordpress.com/

[Cristián Lávaque]

Oh, that'll be nice.