yes… its the online help in your wp admin under forum…

you can have blog posts auto appear as a topic in the forum (or vice versa). same for comments.

Maybe I am having one of those days. . . But I can't find this option in the 'online help' area. 

Please could you be more specific?

I am in the middle of configuring your forum and to integrate WP to SPF would be great. Not live to our visitors yet, but here it is so far http://craggy-island.com/news/?page_id=710/

This sounds like WP MU. Is it? If so I am no expert and we will need Radio (ourt moderator and MU guy) to drop by.

But – the setup is builty in. Users who can write blog posts and have the forum permission to create the blog/topic links will see a small from on the write new post page to select to link to the forum and create a new topic. On the forum side, when you create a new topic you get the option to create a new blog post at the same time.

Yellow Swordfish said:

This sounds like WP MU. Is it? If so I am no expert and we will need Radio (ourt moderator and MU guy) to drop by.

But – the setup is builty in. Users who can write blog posts and have the forum permission to create the blog/topic links will see a small from on the write new post page to select to link to the forum and create a new topic. On the forum side, when you create a new topic you get the option to create a new blog post at the same time.

Yellow Swardfish, Thank you ! 

This may be more of a WP blog issue than a forum issue…  Can members (with forum permission) be automatically granted the ability to create their own blog?  This would enable them to have they their own area to display their work and develop a sub-community through blog comments, but also have the exposure that a common forum would give there work.  So I guess the relevant question here is, will Simple Press forum know which blog (assuming multiple blogs are supported) to link a forum topic back to?

BTW, I've been promoting this concept for years, but don't have the skills to develop it. (I was formally Borland Delphi developer, and don't know PHP).  As I was googling “Forum Blog Integration”, before finding SP Forum”, I see that there are several other people calling for this, one that called it the “Holley Grail” and said he'd gladly pay for it.

Thank you Yellow Swordfish and Mr Papa (and whoever else is responsible) for developing this!

elfman said:

Can members (with forum permission) be automatically granted the ability to create their own blog? 

I see here that MU or Lyceum is required for Multiple Blogs without multiple WP installs.

And I am afraid I can not reliably answer on behalf of MU. We will need Radio to jump in.

huh? who? what?

oh…

hi…

WordPress Multi-User blog system and SPF are compatable in the respect that each user may have their own blog, If that is what the site owner (site admin) wants…

However, SPF is blog dependant, meaning it uses one single blog at a time…

If you have SPF installed on a WPMU system, each blog will get it's own forums…Siteadmin may choose to hide SPF from users and only run the blog on the main site…

What you specificly mentioned, post linking accross blogs to the main forum, is not possible (and isn't likely to be an included feature) because of the way the database is segregated between blogs.

Thanks Radio for the clarification.

-Radio- said:

…What you specificly mentioned, post linking accross blogs to the main forum, is not possible (and isn't likely to be an included feature) because of the way the database is segregated between blogs.

Thanks Radio, I'm sorry to hear that, but I respect you  being strait up like this! 

Does anyone know of any forum/blogging software capable of doing this?  Written in any language for any platform? If someone reads this and knows of one, please respond or email me: “simplepress at nobsys dot net”

Thank you,

Bill

bbPress by the makers of WPMU may have this feature. WPMU + BuddyPress has specific plugins for compatability. Multiple threads on multiple issues of bbPress+wordpress compatability and how-to's can also be found on mu.wordpress.org

-Radio- said:

bbPress by the makers of WPMU may have this feature. WPMU + BuddyPress has specific plugins for compatability. Multiple threads on multiple issues of bbPress+wordpress compatability and how-to's can also be found on mu.wordpress.org

Thank you Radio.  I'll dig into it tomorrow and post back what I find.

Bill

Radio, I've been looking around, and it appears that there is interest in this, but no support of it anywhere. 

BBpress does not have it. I started a thread on their support forum here.

People at WPMU could not help me.

It looks as if there is a very round-about way of implementing a crude version of forum/blog integration in buddypress.  Buddypress seems to come in modules of social networking components.  One called “Activity Streams” can be configured to show activity (such as blog posts) of a member and his “friends” and display a list of it like a forum.  Perhaps this could be tweaked to show only blog posts of all members, creating at least a common “read only” forum.  Readers would just have to click through the list and comment directly on the blogs using another component called “The Wire” which seems to be a site wide component commenting system… kind of cool. But even if it works as suggested, all this by itself would still be very limiting. 

Thinking on this further, to do this correctly, it requires database integration between the blogs and forums with no duplication of data. Here is what is needed:

– Posters to a forum should have the option to have their topics or comments viewed as an entry to at least one of the blogs that they have permission to edit.

– Bloggers should have the option to have their posts viewed as a subject in at least one of the forums that they have permission to edit.

– Comments to either should be visible in both forum and blog views.

– Edits to one should be reflected in the other views.

– Adding a blog-forum link (or perhaps even a blog-blog or forum-forum link) should be supported at any time by any person with the permission to post to a view that they are linking an existing post into (assuming the author of the original post authorizes that.)

– Deletions should be managed with an option to unlink the post from any of the views in which the author or moderator has permission to delete it from, and only delete the post entirely if it is unlinked from all forums and all blogs.

This is not rocket science, and it's just the beginning. There is way more than just forums and blogs that this concept supports, and I think that the results would be just as explosive. But that's the basics.

One thing promising about BuddyPress's “Activity Stream” is documented as ”Custom components can also hook into the activity streams, meaning any sort of data can be tracked and recorded.“  Would that mean that a third party forum like Simple Press, could be configured to use those streams to access blog posts and comments for exactly the kind of forum blog integration outlined above?

Bill Carson

(btw, the unordered list feature was not working well formatting this post.  It just “undented” the list to the left in IE.)

I noticed in this topic the mention of being able to link blog comments to the forum. I went to the online help as directed and there was further mention of the possibility. I would very much like to convert comments to forum posts. I would prefer that the conversation take place in the forum. I would also like to have it only take place in the forum as I don't want to be penalized by search for duplicate content. I was hopping to get a bit more information regarding specifics.

As for the original question … I would look into vbulletin. I think they are perhaps the most feature rich of the forums. They are also one of the more expensive. If you were able to link many blogs to a single forum it would strike me that that's your best hope. vbulletin does not however work as a plugin for WP it's more or less the otherway around. Not my cup of tea but there is a direction to go in.

Scott

I am going to let Andy answer this one as he has done the comments integration and I have never used it. It is one way, but cant remember which way.

Clearly, you can disable comments on your blog posts and instead put a link there instead to the topic in the forum to stimulate the discussion. If you create a blog linked topic when creating the blog post, the topic is auto created.