WordPress MU

Just thought i'd let members know that there is an alternative to the hacked RS discuss forums that works, with one very minor modification, on MU.

I happened upon Simple Forum V1.0 today -

http://www.yellowswordfish.com/

And was pleasantly surprised to see it work almost immediately out of the box on Wordpress MU.

The only issue i had was it looking for the users table in the blog i was running it on (this one in question was blog id 3).

A simple fix to this was to go into the

sf-includes.php file and around line 18 you should see

'define('SFUSERS', $table_prefix.'users')'

This is setting the plugin to look for your blog id's user table but MU stores all these in one user table.

So just change

'define('SFUSERS', $table_prefix.'users')'

to

'define('SFUSERS', 'xxx_users');'

where xxx is your table prefix. In my case my prefix is wp_ so

'define('SFUSERS', 'wp_users');'

And that was it. Up it went and ran like a dream.

It even has a BBCODE type input box, post moderation and informs you in your admin panel when new posts need moderating.

Its a bit green around the edges visually, but nothing some CSS won't cure.

I see he hard coded user pictures, but i'm seriously considering whether this would be prime for something like Gravatar to be included.

Anyway hope someone gets some use out of it. I'm off to continue testing it.

Now i can offer my members two different types of forum, woohoo :)

so you're happy with RS discuss? I found it a little bit lacking because I cannot make subforums :-(

I am playing around with wp-forum from fahlstadt, but am still in the testing phase... there are also some posts around here regarding wp-forum

###edit###

I did not really understand clearly if simple forum is for a per blog basis or a sidewide forum solution?

did you try the version for wp 2.0 or for wp 2.1 ?
I hope you tried 2.1 as thats what wpmu is based upon if I am not mistaken.

I like RS-Discuss but as you say, no sub forums is a bit of a drag. However i'm looking more on what my members will be able to use and RS-DISCUSS works pretty well i feel.

Simple forum is also a per blog capable forum that can have categories although unfortunately no sub categories again.

This one looks more akin to phpbb and simple machines and functions very well indeed.

And yes i downloaded v2.0 (ooops) and everything worked accept the automatic page creation at the start (it creates a holding page for the forum). I manually created that the first time and then looked for a permanent solution.

Low and behold in the same php file i edited the fix above i found -

' // CREATE THE WP PAGE RECORD
// ***************** WP 2.1 VERSION *****************************
// $wpdb->query(
// "INSERT INTO {$table_prefix}posts ( post_status, post_title, post_name, post_type, comment_status, ping_status )
// VALUES ( 'publish', 'Simple Forum', 'sf-forum', 'page', 'closed', 'closed' )"
// );
// **************************************************************

// ***************** WP 2.0 VERSION *****************************
$wpdb->query(
"INSERT INTO {$table_prefix}posts ( post_status, post_title, post_name, comment_status, ping_status )
VALUES ( 'static', 'Simple Forum', 'sf-forum', 'closed', 'closed' )"
);
// **************************************************************'

So i commented the routine i was using, uncommented the one i wasn't and then, thankfully through the insight of the plugin author, completely removed the tables with one click (it has a rather nifty uninstall that deletes all its posts and tables) and re-activated the plugin. Low and behold now the plugin works with the autopage creation for the holder for the new forum. That will cut down on support questions :)

It was a minor issue anyway but glad i solved that one :) The only caveat is that it didn't set the admin as owner and the page date was wrong but no biggy at all.

Still in testing but so far i'm pretty pleased with it.

I ended up with bbpress as a sitewide forum. I really like it. Much less bloat and useless stuff, like with SMF or phpBB.

For an "individual" user forum, this might be decent though.

I'm pretty tight on scripts that make new tables, and it killed me to have to do it with the menu plugin, so this option/feature of using the existing posts table is nice.

Ah you misunderstand. It does create 3 tables i think for each blog. It was the page creation retainer i had issue with and solved.

Still its still a very nice forum and this one, unlike RSS-DISCUSS allows posting of images using the '<img>' tag.

I've performed some rudimentary security tests on it and it passed with flying colours too.

One thing i intend to do is include the forum css into every them and code it into the same style as that themes default. Granted its a bit of work but it would be worth it i feel. I'll also create a fullpage (no sidebars) page template per theme giving the blog authors a choice on full or fixed width.

The way i see it is that, with things like Users Online, Lightbox 2 (for images and for them to create their own galleries), Your very cool Menu Management plugin lunabyte, RS Discuss and Simple Forums, The Template Customiser by Jason Ling, coupled with some rather spiffy themes and various other addons i've taken the system from basic blog to full content management akin to drupal, phpnuke and joomla. With a bit of forward thinking with page templates, i feel my members, who are looking for websites not blogs per say, will have a very robust and rather easy to maintain and use content management system. I'm very happy :)

Now on to getting that pesky WP Polls working :) I'm sure its just the widget causing me hassles :)

One other thing to note is that i intend to use the very things offered to my members and only them. I feel this is fairer than having a rather snazzy looking forum, page etc that they can't possibly have. So i'll use the same plugins as them and only them (apart from listing latest blogs and themes of course). This way when one of my members asks what type of websites you can create i can simply say "well the one you're using now was created using the same items offered to you" :)

Granted my theme will be exclusive, i.e. not offered to them, but apart from that the same plugins they have access to will be used to build my frontend website.

I just made the connection between your other post named "Detecting a plugin is running in a widget" and your list of plugins you listed above:

with things like Users Online, Lightbox 2 (for images and for them to create their own galleries), Your very cool Menu Management plugin lunabyte, RS Discuss and Simple Forums, The Template Customiser

so I wanted to ask if you would make the modified plugins/widgets available :-)

There already available :) But anything you can't find simply shout and i'll send them over :)

I first heard of these plugins when you mentioned them :-)

- users online: you said you are going to release the unified plugin/widget thingy so its easier for users (just activating one and have both available :-)
- lightbox2: users have to manually insert the lightbox tags, right? can we make a button for this in the rt editor? or maybe modify the imagemanager plugin to use lightbox instead of lightbox plus? or do both work?
- simple forums => I will use it when you are ready with your test, have not tested it yet
- template customizer: I already have this running, perfectly :-)

I've also got the users online plugin running, FYI.

Although it's only available to my main site at the moment.

Thanks for calling my plugin "very cool". ;)

It is very cool and opens up a whole new way for my soon to be users to create a unique system for themselves.

I really think we do ourselves a great dis-service calling it a blog hosting website as its, in reality, with a few key plugins, a CMS hosting website :)

I know i know, wordpress is a blog :)

I just started my tests with simple forum and found a small bug? the auto creation of the static page, that will contain the forum is working, BUt when I go to manage => pages in my backend, instead of seeing the date of the "Updated" I see "unpublished" - any fix for this?

Yes just edit it and save it.

The forum is really coming on and he's open to suggestions and improvements.

He even included uploadable avatars but unfortunately they don't function as yet. However the approach of them looks promising as the avatars get uploaded to a central location, perfect for MU.

However the approach of them looks promising as the avatars get uploaded to a central location, perfect for MU.

As long as it doesn't kill the 32k files problem. But someone in that position probably would rework that part anyway.

after looking through this simple forum I have two ideas, please read and give me your opinion:

a) change define('SFUSERS', $wpdb->prefix.'users'); to define('SFUSERS', 'wp_users'); so that any registered user of the blog system would be able to post in any forum on any blog. makes sense to me, anyway when registering for the forum, there is only a login link, which pooint to the general login, I guess we could / should a link "register" pointing to the wp-signup.php ?
question: does this simple forum create roles like: post in forum? what capabilities does a user need to be able to post? how can this be solved?

b) what about changing the central location where avatars get uploaded to something like this: $IMConfig['base_dir'] = str_replace( "\\", "/",ABSPATH) . UPLOADS; // UPLOADS is defiend in wp-settings.php snippet taken from Imagemanager and UPLOADS being defined like this: define( "UPLOADS", "wp-content/blogs.dir/{$wpdb->blogid}/files/" );
this way every user would upload his own avatar to his own blog, but what about users without blog? those with only a username? would it make more sense to keep a central avatar upload space?

just some iideas and thoughts, please feel free to comment and complement with your own ideas.

For me a central location of avatars seems appropriate. After all then one member can comment on various blogs with the same avatar across the entire website.

V1.4 is looking pretty darn sweet and he's really putting in features being requested.

I'm convinced this is the forum i'll use in production now as it works in a multiple blog environment and has good support.

hey dizzy,

I just realized that when a client activated the foru mplugin, the forum page appears as unpublished when you go to manage => pages and look at the updated column, i nstead of displaying the time/daten when the forum was activated, it just says unpublished? blog owner, has to open and save to make it work.

does this happen to you too?

the author of simple forum is constantly updating his plugin and he is really open for suggestions, so if you're interested in a forum plugin you should help him out right now while he is developing it.

I do post on his forum frequently with problems/bugs I find.

He needs some help to fix the latest one I found:

whether I check or uncheck "Sort Topics by Most recent Postings:" and click on "update forum Options" it always says: "Options Updated!" but the ckeckbox stays unchecked..

short version: option changes are saved but not displayed until I leave the forum options page and come back

his response:

All I've found so far is that the normal 'option' table functions work at blog level but that there are also global functions so that options can be set for ALL blogs on the system.

I rather suspect the behaviour you are seeing is a different form of cacheing on MU than I am used to on single-user WP so that it the option is getting set correctly but not showing up until the cache is refreshed.

Can someone help us out here?