Disappointed With The Slow Progress Of The bbPress Plugin

Hi kevin,
I am actually new to blogging world and i was looking forums alternative and currently share the same state of mind as yours..though bbpress has all the potential to stand out among all will little more support :)
and yes do write a post if you find someway how to embedd Facebook discussions in website that would be so Great!

Mmmm, so Smashing Magazine are releasing quality themes to their readers because of their love of WordPress. Are you sure about that? Or do you not think it works out cheaper for them to pay a designer to design a theme than it is to purchase the same traffic directly?

Not checking the facts? So there hasn't been lots of deadlines missed with bbPress?

Ok, we don't agree to disagree. Can we agree on that :)

Sorry for keeping you from your work. Seriously, you need to relax about this. We have different views on certain things within the community. Debate is healthy and criticism is too. You need to check some of the older articles here and see how supportive I have been about bbPress 2.0.

The documentation for using, integrating and theming bbPress 2.0 is still below par and support is non existent. This is the most frustrating aspect for me and for most other users.

if I spend a full day writing a long detailed about WordPress, bbPress or any other subject, then I am going to place the article on my own site so that it gets more traffic. And through more traffic I can sell more advertising etc.

The only words I put anywhere are mine, you put yours there yourself.

I don't understand what posting a PDF *here* would do any differently than posting to the blog. The analogy doesn't make sense.

I never said anything about "exclusively" releasing anything anywhere. This is me, asking for you, to use your talents as a writer to occasionally help solve problems you observe. You refuse to do it because you don't see a financial gain.

I'm going to get some things straight, and them I'm going to stop responding.

* It's great that you're able to sustain a living writing about WordPress.

* Premium themes are awesome.

* I think people do what they do in the WordPress community not to "increase their traffic" but because they love to do it, love to share it, and want to be pay their bills with their talents - not unlike you and I.

* Ironically, all this time and effort to enlist your help was a distraction from me writing the documentation you are upset is missing.

* None of the blogs you mentioned would post a negative opinion piece without checking the facts, and once they were proven incorrect they would follom up with corrections.

* We don't have to agree to disagree. Your interpretation of everything I've said here is skewed. Even when we agree, you're convinced we don't.

I didn't say you “had to” do anything.

To clarify, the bbPress related articles you write here don't help as much as they would there, because the new bbPress user doesn't come here.

You're upset about a lack of documentation on bbpress.org, but also endorse fragmenting the conversation more by posting documentation not on bbpress.org.

It doesn't add up.

Whoa. Don't put words in my mouth. I'm not telling you not to exercise your right to free speech, I'm asking you to check your facts before posting.

http://bbpress.trac.wordpress.org/log

That is a log of bbPress’s progress. Over 800 code changes straight in a row over the course of year - two code changes a day on average building something from nothing.

My comments here are only to provide the inverse perspective to yours. I'd hate for someone to read your post and think that bbPress 2.0 was ever in danger of not shipping.

You asked for opinions on what would make bbPress better. The answer is simple: more developers, more designers, and more technical writers to help with documentation.

More to the point… if by slow progress you mean 7 releases, 38,000 lines of code, and more traffic to bbPress.org than its ever had, all in the past year, the problem doesn't seem like it’s a lack of progress.

The things you do on your site don't help anyone on bbPress.org because they aren't looking here for bbPress support.

I answer almost every forum topic that come through. You specifically called out Automattic as the problem here, disregarding that they are currently the only company committing any time directly towards the solution.

I guess I'm just really confused by your tone, and your approach towards communicating it. If bbPress isn't doing what you want it to, and you're not able to do anything to help the project along, why criticize? I can't moderate forums, write code, write tutorials, respond to angry blog posts, have a job, and have time to walk my dog when the day is done.

If you offered to write docs for bbPress.org, that's one less thing I have to do, which lets me do more of the others. You're so worried about your unanswered topic that you missed my unanswered topics asking for help, from anyone that has a few extra minutes to donate.

The worst part is, I get it. This clones from a passionate place. A good place. A place where you want to be part of the success of something great, something you believe in. I understand it completely.

That passion ends when you start to be vocally upset about progress and momentum and deadlines without lending a hand to help to accomplish those goals.

You adding new forums here doesn't help the bbPress forums there. It only helps you and your site. Instead of *hoping* tutorials here help, *know* they will help by writing tutorials in the place with the most exposure and traffic, the bbPress.org forums themselves.

This kind of feedback is a punch in the gut to the people that are already giving 150%.

Automattic allows me the privilege of working on bbPress and BuddyPress as part of my free time, not unlike what you hear about Google allowing 20% of their employees’ time to work on their own projects. That said, there is only so much time I can donate..

It's because *I* want the WordPress community to have a great support forum plugin, and because Automattic totally rocks, that I'm even able to donate any time at all.

So i ask, before you blame “them” for slow progress, think of how you can positively help by contributing and donating your time back.

they are still not devoting enough resources

Who is they? It's open-source, community developed, "they" includes you.

There is nothing stopping you filling in the gaps which you've correctly identified. That's the beauty of it. :)

Forums have been a PITA ever since I started using WP. I ran a phpBB one for a while, then SMF, but I really wanted to get away from standalones. I moved on to a variety of plugins like simple:press and some others. The plugins always looked odd, like some sort of bastard forum forced into WP. I admit the wait has been long for bbPress, but I think it's worth it. I dig bbPress so far. I like how simple it is.... I'd love for it to stay lightweight, and get a variety of additional functionality through plugins. And I would love to see some themes for it. I don't even need good ones, I just learn best by tearing through some existing code to see what others are doing.

Thanks for the comments guys.

@Ryan - I appreciate that documentation for an open source project will never match that of a commercial project. Though if there is no documentation and no one providing support, it's very difficult for some users to use the plugin. As I mentioned in my post, I was trying to get the theme customised the way I want just like I had done with the standalone version of bbPress that I use to use on WP Mods but there were a few small things that didn't seem to work like they should. Unfortunately, as no one replied to my support queries I was unable to move forward.

@Roger - haha well I had always wanted it to be released as a plugin as it was a pain in the ass having to update my standalone bbpress design every time I changed links on my navigation menu or footer.

I think the plugin was initially scheduled for September last year! If you've only been waiting since May, you're one of the lucky ones ;)

We'd hoped to use it in a BuddyPress project for a client - so for us, that area wasn't 'trivial' - unfortunately, the deadline is long since passed

Nah, I think momentum has really been picking up. I haven't run into any problems yet since I started using it pretty publicly on WPCandy.

It would be great to see more plugins made for bbPress (though Jared's the other day is a neat one) but I think that will pick up once the plugin is finalized. I think that's where bbPress as a plugin will really shine.

I'd suggest treating it as though it's out and final now. Documentation for an open source project will probably never be where we want it to. I think that's just the nature of the beast, to an extent. The only way to fix it is to have more folks like us actively using it and being dangerous :)