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There are a few changes in 0.9 which plugin developers need to be aware of. So here are some notes to help you get your plugins running under the new release.

Detecting version 0.9

First of all if you want to detect whether someone is running version 0.9 or higher you can use this code:

if (version_compare(bb_get_option('version'), '0.9-z', '>=')) {
	// Tell us what your name is!
	echo('This is bbPress version 0.9 or higher.');
}

Note: The “-z” on the end will make sure you catch all pre-release versions of bbPress 0.9 as well, like “0.9-dev”.

Removing deprecated function calls

There are a number of no-longer-used functions from previous versions that we provide backwards compatibility for in bb-includes/deprecated.php. So you may not have noticed that your plugin is still using some of them. In version 0.9 we have made detecting your use of these a little easier by providing a way to report their use via PHP errors when they get called.

Just open up the file bb-includes/deprecated.php and change the “BB_LOG_DEPRECATED” constant at the top of the file from the boolean false to true.

Now if one of the many deprecated functions gets called it will be written to the same place that your PHP errors are written (either an error log or to the screen). The errors will tell you which deprecated function was called and what to replace it with.

Removing deprecated constants

A whole bunch of PHP constants have been deprecated in this release in an attempt to standardise our naming of constants. For now we are providing backwards compatibility for the older constants, but you should check your own usage of these and change them to use the correct ones.

Unfortunately there is no way to log these to errors, so this is a manual find and replace task. Two arrays of constants and their replacements can be found in bb-settings.php starting at line 304.

New “bb-plugins” directory for core plugins only

There is a new directory called bb-plugins in the root of the bbPress codebase. This directory is reserved for plugins that are distributed with the core bbPress files. Third-party plugins should still be stored in a separate my-plugins directory. Do not instruct users to install files in the bb-plugins directory, they are functionally no different from each other, except that the bb-plugins directory has more potential to be destroyed during user upgrades. You have been warned!!!

Storage of active plugins and active theme in options

Formerly we stored active plugins in a serialized array where each plugin was identified using it’s relative path from the my-plugins directory, e.g. “plugin.php” or “folder/plugin.php”. With the advent of core plugins there exists a need to differentiate between “core” and “user” plugins.

We are doing so by prefixing either “core#” or “user#” to the plugin, so the previous examples in the my-plugins folder would become “user#plugin.php” and “user#folder/plugin.php” in the same serialized array.

Similarly we are changing the way the active theme is stored. Instead of saving the absolute path to the active them, instead we are simply storing it’s name, i.e. the name of the directory it is contained prefixed with either “core#” or “user#” depending on it’s location.

Plugin activation and deactivation hooks

The correct way to register a function to run on plugin activation is like this:

function foo() {
	echo 'bar!';
}

bb_register_plugin_activation_hook(__FILE__, 'foo');

Provided that the file you are registering in is the base plugin file. Do not hardcode the plugin file name as users may move them into directories inside the plugins directory.

Registering a function to run on plugin deactivation is similar except you need to call bb_register_plugin_deactivation_hook()

Built-in avatar support

With the inclusion of built-in avatar support you may think that all the time you spent on that custom avatar plugin is wasted. But actually, it is quite the opposite. By incorporating avatar calls into the default templates and providing a fully pluggable and filterable get_avatars() function, integrating avatars is actually easier than ever.

New plugin browser

One thing that might have slipped by without enough attention is the new plugin browser which was recently implemented. Go have a play and check out all of the newness.

Thanks…

And finally, a big thanks to all our plugin developers for contributing so much to the bbPress community. If you have any ideas about how we can help you build better plugins, then let us know.

With the introduction of the new BB_Query_Class in bbPress 0.8.3, the old method of adding custom “views” to bbPress has been removed. You should no longer directly manipulate the $bb_views array, nor does the bb_views hook work.

To add a view, you should instead use a new function: bb_register_view(). Also available is bb_deregister_view() for removing the default views or views added by other plugins.

function my_plugin_views() {
/*
  bb_register_view(
            $view_slug,
            $view_title,
            $bb_query_argument_array
  );
*/

  bb_register_view(
            'more-than-5',
            'Topics with more than five posts',
            array( 'post_count' => '>5' )
  );

  bb_register_view(
            'old-timers',
            'Topics started before 2005',
            array( 'started' => '<2005' )
  );

  // Remove default 'Topics with no tags' view
  bb_deregister_view( 'untagged' );
}

add_action( 'bb_init', 'my_plugin_views' );

If you really need more complicated queries, you have the following filters at your disposal, just by registering your view in the above fashion (assuming the $view_slug is “my-view”).

• bb_view_my-view_distinct
• bb_view_my-view_fields
• bb_view_my-view_join
• bb_view_my-view_where
• bb_view_my-view_group_by
• bb_view_my-view_having
• bb_view_my-view_order_by
• bb_view_my-view_limit

If that sounds complicated, it probably is Most plugin developers will never have to do much besides filter a join or where here and there.

bbPress has twenty or so functions that select groups of topics or posts from the database. Some of them do very specific things, and some of them do something only slightly different from another such function.

Maintaining this large group of functions and keeping them all consistent was beginning to become a nuisance. Additionally, it was annoying to have either to write a whole new function or to hack filters into and onto an existing function every time a new database query was needed.

To help alleviate both of these problems, the next version of bbPress will come with a BB_Query class, which all of the above referenced functions will use.

For developers and plugin authors, this means it’ll will now be really easy to query the database for posts and topics based on whatever arbitrary criteria is needed. For users, the following couple paragraphs will be boring, but see the news below

Example

As an example, the following code will select all the topics written by mdawaffe in June of 2007 and having the “bbPress” tag and will sort those topics by their start time.

$topic_query = new BB_Query( 'topic',
	array(
		'topic_author' => 'mdawaffe',
		'started' => '2007-06',
		'tag' => 'bbpress',
		'order_by' => 'topic_start_time'
	)
);
$topic_query->results; // Here's the array of topics the query returned.

Both the incoming parameters and the SQL query that the class generates are highly filterable (in a way that’s backward compatible with the current version of bbPress), so further customization should be easy. Also, the BB_Query class can automatically handle pagination, caching and more, so you can relax and get on with more interesting things.

New feature: better search

In the end, though, we write code for users, not for developers; we want the user experience to be as pleasant as possible. With all these new bells and whistles, users get some pretty cool new features.

The default theme will now let you constrain your search to an individual forum (and adding that ability into other themes will be super easy). Adding extra constraints (like searching by tag or author) will be easy too.

In the admin section, you can search both topics and posts by a number of criteria.

Next stop… Pingbacks. (sshhh! It’s a secret!)

bbPress has seen some pretty interesting development over the past weeks. Just to keep people in the know, and since many were expecting bbPress 0.80 to come out a couple weeks ago (we’re still learning here ), here’s a short list of some new features that will be in the next release.

• Better support for right-to-left languages.
• Some better backend support for search queries.
• Removal of the topic_resolved column from the database. No more “this topic is not a support question” strangeness for forums that aren’t support forums. Those people that want to keep such functionality around will be very pleased with Aditya’s Support Forum plugin.
• The ability to delete forums. (No!) Yes!
• Tags that are multibyte aware (you’ll be able to tag in Japanese).
• Multiple theme support. You’ll be able to upload a bunch of themes and select which one you want from the Admin panels.
• A more pluggable database class and user system.
• Anywhere-you-want-them plugins directory, templates directory, and config.php. This is pretty nice; you’ll be able install a completely “clean” copy of bbPress in, for example, a directory named public_html/forums/ and have your templates stored in public_html/templates/, your plugins stored in public_html/plugins/ and your config.php file in public_html/config.php. None of your custom stuff ever has to be in bbPress’ public_html/forums/ directory, so upgrades will be a snap.

Of course, we’re still working out some bugs and have a few more important things to get done before the next release, but that’s a preview of things to come.

bbPress 0.8.2 introduced a new way of counting how many pages worth of information there were to display (how many pages worth of content, for example, there are to display in a user’s profile): MySQL’s FOUND_ROWS() function. It works very well for most bbPress sites.

It cripples large sites.

After upgrading the WordPress.org Support Forums to bbPress 0.8.2, the server very quickly melted into a belligerent heap of protesting electrons. Most of this was bbPress’ fault (though MySQL shares some of the blame).

FOUND_ROWS() seemed to be a “magic bullet” everywhere it was tested (including the bbPress.org forums). While that impression should have made me very wary, instead it led me to use SQL_CALC_FOUND_ROWS (the SELECT query companion to the FOUND_ROWS() function) in places that really didn’t need it.

Mea culpa.

Because of that misuse and because of MySQL’s poor SQL_CALC_FOUND_ROWS optimization, sites with hundreds of thousands of topics (such as the WordPress.org support forums) will actually be slower (much slower) using bbPress 0.8.2 than they were using bbPress 0.8.1. This despite the other database and query optimizations that went into bbPress 0.8.2.

A fix for this bug and fixes for those others we collect in the coming weeks will be packaged into a new release.

Until that time, if you have a large site (where large probably means “tens of thousands of topics or users”) that has noticeably slowed since upgrading to bbPress 0.8.2, there is a solution. Use the current code available from the bbPress svn repository’s 0.8 branch (available via svn or zip file).

Our Trac system lets you see the changes in that branch since the release of bbPress 0.8.2. In particular, this performance issue was fixed in changeset 867.

On most sites though, the slowdown will probably not be noticeable. Unless your site is getting bogged down by bbPress’ use of the database, there’s no need to change anything.

There have been several changes at bbpress.org over the last couple weeks.

First off, the content of this site has been updated substantially. There is now somewhat more thorough documentation, and a more fleshed out about page.

Second, bbPress’ code has been made just that much more pluggable and convenient by syncing several of its core functions with those of WordPress.

Third, Bryan Veloso has whipped up some stylin’ new style for the bbPress default theme. People expect great things from Bryan, and, amazingly, he just keeps raising their expectations. Tips on how to create your own themes can be found in our Customization Documentation.

Fourth, the bbPress Trac has been moved to http://trac.bbpress.org/. The tickets have all been cleaned up to make way for…

Lastly, the imminent release of bbPress 0.72. Expect an announcement and some forums (no!) here on bbpress.org within the next couple of days.

If you’re looking to integrate bbPress and WordPress, life just got a little easier.

Keep reading for the long of it.

There have been a few template changes recently.

1. post-form.php should no longer have <form> opening or closing tags. These tags are included by the post_form() template tag.
2. Same for tag-form.php and tag_form().
3. edit_form() no longer needs any parameters.
4. login-failed.php has been moved to login.php.

I just checked in a new database layer that allows bbPress to connect to a completely separate database for its user information, in addition to just having custom table names. This is very useful if you want a bunch of blogs and forums running off the same user system, but don't want to stuff them in the same database, or if your user information is hosted on a different server or account than your forums are. 

We're making some big changes to the bbPress codebase over the next few days, as opposed to the more incremental changes over the past year. bbPress has been working so well we haven't really needed to touch much, but it still needs a good coat of paint before we consider taking it out of alpha, so that's what to watch for.

There have been several changes in the code over the past few weeks. Rather than explaining them in detail, I’ll just highlight the most interesting ones.

1. Profile pages now have a (pluggable) menu through which an increasing amount of administration can be done.
2. Like it’s cousin, usermeta, a new table, topicmeta, has joined the bbPress database family. Both meta varieties use the same code, which has seen some substantial efficiency improvements.
3. Quick (and arguably dirty) plugination. The API’s a bit different than what’s used over at WordPress, particularly the UI API. It’s not as friendly, but it’s a trooper; it really gets the job done. Expect an simple plugin to be included in the initial release to serve as an example.
4. Some bugs related to sharing users and/or usermeta across separate forums/blogs/etc. have been squished in order to make sure Matt tells the truth

PS: A quick reminder that action and filter hooks are always up for grabs. Suggestions welcome!

In order to help both those who ask questions in a support forum environment and those who answer them, topics can now be given a resolution status. Moderators and the original poster are able to change a topic’s resolution state to “resolved”, “not resolved” or “not a support question”.

After the appropriate interface decisions have been made, resolution status will also be taken into account and reflected in the various default templates.

bbPress is starting to use AJAX for updating various content, which allows us to avoid hard page refreshes.  The benefits of this are two fold.  First, we only have to update part of a given page instead of the whole thing; we save time, database hits and bandwidth.  Second, the user experience is improved (or will be when we figure out the best interface for all the new shiny bits).

Everything should degrade nicely if the client does not support AJAX specifically or Javascript in general.