Installing Group and Sitewide Forums (v1.5)
Sections: Set up new Forums for Groups only | Use Existing Installation of Forums for Groups only | Set up Sitewide Forums only | Set up Forums for Groups and Sitewide Forums | Forums Frequently Asked Questions
D. Installing Forums for Groups AND Sitewide Forums
You may activate both Group and Site Wide forums, but this may create a poor experience for your members. Having said that, if you still want to proceed with setting up both forums to meet your social network’s requirements, read on.
“Forums” Page Slug issue:
If you’re going to install Sitewide Forums only, it gets the Forums slug automatically.
However, if you’re going to install both Forum for Groups and Sitewide Forums, know that Forums for Groups (internal bbPress installation) has priority over the “forums” page/slug under the Discussion Forums page as seen in BuddyPress > Pages over the Sitewide Forums (bbPress 2.0 the plugin). The conflict arises because the Archived Slugs -> Forums base for Sitewide Forums is also “forums”. Uh-oh.
There are three ways to set up both forums and prevent conflict on the page slugs:
1. Change the Forums for Groups page slug OR
2. Change the Sitewide Forums archived page slug OR
3. Change slugs of both Forums for Groups and Sitewide Forums
1. Change the Forums for Groups page slug
In this example, we’ll set “group-forums” slug for our install’s Forums for Groups and use the “forums” slug for our Sitewide Forums.
a) Go to Dashboard > Pages > Add New and name that page, Group Forums, and click on the "Publish" button
b) Go to admin Dashboard > BuddyPress > Pages and change the Page assigned to the Discussion Forums component to the new Group Forums Page created above. Click on the "Save" button on the same line as Discussion Forums.
c) Settings saved. Go to your home page.
d) Click on the Group Forums link in bp-default theme’s main navigation and you’ll see the group Forums Directory page. Before you can add a new Topic, you would need to create a group first because each Topic should be associated to a certain group.
e) Now go back to admin Dashboard > BuddyPress > Forums and click on "Install Sitewide Forums"
f) Continue with the installation as seen on Set up Sitewide Forums only.
g) Everything looks good … except what’s this? Clicking on the “Forums” link in main navigation leads to an empty page titled Forums(!). There’s a solution for that.
– Go Dashboard > Pages > All Pages
– Edit the Forums page
– Add the bbPress shortcode “bbp-forum-index” and click on the "Update" button. Check out the other bbPress shortcodes you can add to your Forums page from this bbPress 2.0 shortcodes list by John James Jacoby, Lead Developer of BuddyPress and bbPress plugins.
h) Re-run permalinks via Dashboard > Settings > Permalnks > and Save Settings.
2. Change the Sitewide Forums page slug
In this example, Forums for Groups will retain the “forums” slug while we’re going to change the Sitewide Forums Base Slug to “sitewide-forums”.
a) Follow the installation instructions of a new Forums for Groups only or that of Existing Installation of Forums for Groups.
b) Follow the installation instructions of the new Sitewide Forums until at Step 5 when you reach the Settings > Forums panel. Go down the panel to the “Archive Slugs” section and in the text area provide for “Forums Base”, change “forums” to “sitewide-forums” (without the apostrophes). Click on the "Save Changes" button
c) Then continue on with Step 6 of the Sitewide Forums installation till end of the page.
d) Create a link for the Sitewide Forums in Dashboard > Appearance > Menus
e) Re-run permalinks via Dashboard > Settings > Permalnks > and Save Settings.
3. Change the slugs of Forums for Groups and the Sitewide Forums
In this example, I would like my Group Forums to named as “Support” and my Sitewide Forums to be “Discussions.”
a) Forums for Groups:
- Rename the “Forum” Page created during the installation wizard procedure by going to Dashboard > Pages > All Pages,
click on Edit linkfor the “Forums” page. - Change “Forums” to “Support” (without the apostrophes) in title area and “support” in slug area below the title.
Click on the "Publish" button.- Go to Dashboard > BuddyPress > Pages.
- In Directories – Discussion Forums – select “Support” from dropdown and click on the “Save” button in same line.
- Go to Dashboard > Appearance > Menus and add the “Support” page to your custom menu.
b) Sitewide Forums:
- Go to Dashboard > Pages > Add New
- In Add New Page panel, put “Discuss” as page title and add “bbp-forum-index” shortcode to start off as seen on this page https://bbpress.org/forums/topic/bbpress-20-shortcodes
Click on the "Publish" button.- Go to Dashboard > Settings > Forums
- In the bbPress Settings panel, go down to “Archive Slugs” – “Forums Base” and change “forums” to “discussions”
Click on the "Save Settings" button.- Re-run permalinks via Dashboard > Settings > Permalnks > and Save.
- Add new Forums via Dashboard > Forums > Add New panel.
- Go to Dashboard > Appearance > Menus and add the “Discussions” page to your custom menu.
bbPress Forums Tables in Database
The installation of BuddyPress internal bbPress forums, Group Forums, adds seven (7) new tables to your database:
- yourPrefix_bb_forums
- yourPrefix_bb_meta
- yourPrefix_bb_posts
- yourPrefix_bb_terms
- yourPrefix_bb_term_relationships
- yourPrefix_bb_term_taxonomy
- yourPrefix_bb_topics
.
Database tables of a single WordPress installation generated when internal bbPress – Group Forums – is activated.
Database tables of a WordPress Multisite installation (other subsite tables deleted) generated when internal bbPress – Group Forums – is activated.
