[Amelia Manders]

I’m having a horrible time getting the group forums working.  I had bbpress install prior to the cbox install.  My site had a site-wide forum and forums at the group level.  I can locate the site-wide forum at site/forum, however, the url for my group forum /groups/iitg-2012-project-outcomes/forum/ produces  a blank forum page with the new topic button, which doesn’t work.  There is also no new topic form on the page.  If I look at the activity for the group a can see the forum posts, but the links bring me to “Oh bother! No topics were found here!” with a new topic form.    If I try to create a new topic here it brings me back to the group list.

I tried following the bbpress instructions but they did not work.  Please help.

 

[Ray]

Hi Amelia,

Which bbPress instructions did you follow?

This guide?
http://codex.buddypress.org/user/buddypress-site-administration/migrating-from-old-forums-to-bbpress-2/

[Amelia Manders]

That’s the one. It looks like we were using bbpress 2.1 before installing cbox. Any other suggestions?

[Ray]

When you navigate to “/groups/iitg-2012-project-outcomes”, do you see a “Forum” tab in the sidebar?

If not, let me know and I’ll write up some instructions.

[Amelia Manders]

I have the Forum tab, that’s not the problem.  None of my existing forum posts are showing up in the groups, and the button is grayed out for making new ones.  The site is slnpilot.com. This just a dev site.  I need to fix this before I can apply to production.  I can give you a login if you would like.

 

[BJWang]

@Amelia_Manders and @Ray, I have the same exact problem. My site also uses has group forums (BP 1.6.3) and site forums(bbPress 2.2.3). Before installing CBOX, I migrated my group forums to bbPress2 forums using the guide from

http://codex.buddypress.org/user/buddypress-site-administration/migrating-from-old-forums-to-bbpress-2/

It was during testing that I found out when navigating to a group, the forum tab is there and all the group activities are displayed correctly; however,

clicking the form tab , a message ‘This forum is empty’
get error message ‘There was an error creating topic’, when trying to create a new topic

I believe this problem is caused by some conflicting conditions between bbPress and BP and not so much due to the migration instruction and CBOX ended up inheriting the problem. I have made two posting to BuddyPress.org’s support forum but have yet received any solutions.

http://buddypress.org/support/topic/group-discussion-forums-and-content-missing-after-bp-bb-forums-migration/
http://buddypress.org/support/topic/buddypress-group-forum-now-shows-up-as-bbpress-forum/

Until this is resolved, I am reluctant to migrate to CBOX which is very frustrating and unfortunate.

 

[Ray]

Hi Amelia and BJWang,

If it is possible, if you kept a backup of your database prior to migration, can you restore the database backup?

Next, if either of you could pass me an admin login so I can see what is going on and go through the migration process myself that would be much appreciated.

Drop me an email here:
http://www.google.com/recaptcha/mailhide/d?k=01lFa683miXx3Gb9ugS4pJbw==&c=mi-u-SqFGr0IKAclDFPlSA==

[BJWang]

@ray, check your email. THANK YOU for looking into this.

[BJWang]

I have been doing some testing on my laptop’s local server.  From my experiments, I noticed a group forum functional difference between Settings and Forum, accessed via the group’s Admin tab. Admin>Settings should be use to controls group forums being managed by BP’s Discussion component; while Admin>Forum should be use to control group fourms being managed by bbPress.

Creating a group with discussion forum that uses BP’s Discussion component, then later disable/enabling the group’s forum using Admin>Forum CREATES HAVOC! Doing this would cause existing topic/replies in that group’s forum to become orphaned. Looking on the bright side, at lease these content still exist and are not lost.

I believed somewhere within the ‘migrating from old forums to bbPress2’ procedure, Admin>Forum may have been used to disable the group forum in order to migrate. This is my hunch and at this point, I have no idea how to fix it other than digging into the mySQL database and delete/modify some records. Of course, that may  cause even more HAVOCs! :<

 

[Nick Nielsen]

I have a similar problem with an experimental, development site I’m trying to build. I want both a site-wide forum and group forums.

My problem is that if I try to administer forums (or is it fora) in the backend I find the general, sitewide forum listed, but no group forum.

In th front-end however, I get a list of group forums, but none of the general forum – and if I type in the adress for the general forum I get a completely blank page…

I probably need to reconfigure everything, the question is how?

[BJWang]

@Nick_Nielsen, from your post, it sounds like you have not migrated your BuddyPress group discussion forums to bbPress forums.

Groups and group forums are managed from the front end only.  All bbPress supported forums(just site forums in your case) can be managed from the backend via Dashboard>Forums.  This is one of the reasons why it would be a good idea to migrate group discussion forums to bbPress forums.

To list your site forums on the front, create a page and write [bbp-forum-index] shortcode in the body of the page. (http://codex.bbpress.org/shortcodes/). Add this page to your menu. Now from the front end, click on the newly added menu tab to see all your site forums. 

[Nick Nielsen]

@BJWang

Thanks for the advice – I didn’t know about the shortcodes.

The bbPress thing mystifies me – I installed Buddypress and bbPress before trying Commons in a box, and I carefully installed BuddyPress and then bbPress before setting up any forums. Then, when I installed Commons I got a message saying I needed to migrate my forums…

I have no idea whether I made a mistake in installing bbPress or if Commons is throwing an error…

[BJWang]

@Nick_Nielsen

A simpler way of looking at this is that bbPress is for  site forums and BP for group discussion forums. The way BP supports group  forums is to bundle bbPress into its plugin. Over time  the standalone bbPress continue to evolve and improve  (currently at version 2.2.3) while the one within BP changed little.  This is why it is better to use the standalone bbPress plugin to power your group forums.  CBOX recommends this as well.

You will need to migrate your forums in order to switch from using the old bbPress that was bundled inside BP to use the standalone bbPress to manage your group forums.  All bbPress forums can be managed from the backend.

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