BBPress 1.0 Final Released

The final 1.0 release of bbPress, the popular forum script and kid brother of  the world famous blogging solution, WordPress, is now available. bbPress 1.0 alpha started around August of last year, and after several release candidates they have finally released bbPress 1.0 Final. The latest release is now available for download on the bbPress site. The current version is geared towards WordPress users offering various usability improvements which should be familiar to adopters who are used to WordPress.  A major overhaul of the admin interface has been done which should make WP users feel right at home.  All of the previous javascript code has been moved to jQuery and themes now include a “functions.php” template, a feature previously unique to WordPress which should be exciting news to many WordPress theme developers looking to make the jump the bbPress themes.

Here are a couple more of the exciting new features over the previous .09 series:

• “Voices” count on topics reports the number of individuals participating in a conversation
• Native support for cookie integration (single sign-on) with Wordpress 2.7 and 2.8
• Optionally allow login via email address as well as username
• Optional Akismet statistics page
• Improved use of posts admin to manage spam
• Read the full list of features at bbPress

Like many WordPress releases and other trademark Automattic developments bbPress is named for a jazz musician. This one is called named “Bechet” after the pioneering jazz saxophonist Sidney Bechet. Its’ default theme  has some major accessibility improvements on the forms and also sports those cute beehive themed icons by Ben Dunkle which you see pictured above. Obviously a huge part of the success of this script is going to be determined by its compatibility with WordPress. Integration is going to be a key factor. Users will want a single-login and admins would most likely prefer the single user database as well. In earlier versions of bbPress integration was thorough but it was also tedious and painstaking to set up.

Integrating a forum with WordPress has been covered extensively on Blogging Tips and bbPress has kept coming up. In my opinion these changes that bbPress has made are going to make it more popular than phpBB as an open-source script. bbPress 1.0 final was released just this afternoon, so I haven’t had a chance to try it on any test servers or live web sites yet. I am hoping the integration with WP is as smooth as they say it will be. One of the first questions to come up on today’s announcement was about a possible migration from the popular vBulletin script. How many other forum options could bbPress potentially trump here? Could the open source bbPress forum replace the paid forum scripts like Invision and vBulletin?

Written by Ryan Edmunds from CrunchPlay.com
Posted on July 3rd, 2009 and filed under WordPress
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