Kevinjohn Gallagher

Dear Automattic,

My name is Kevinjohn Gallagher, and I’m one of the people to who contribute to bbPress. I’ve mentioned this before, but after the announcement by Jane Well on the Official WordPress blog, and by Andrew Nacin on the WordPress development blog, I thought I’d take one last shot at a bit of sanity:

Please, stop calling the new Wordpress forum plugin the “bbPress plugin”.

• It has nothing to do with bbPress.
• It does not plug-in to bbPress in any way.
• It does not plug bbPress into WordPress.
• It is not, by it’s own very definition, a bbPress plug-in.
• It is a Forum plug-in for WordPress, completely separate from bbPress in every way.

So maybe, just maybe, we should call it… the “WordPress Forum Plug-in”. Or an equivolent name. Anything with separates it from the naming quagmire we currently find ourselves in; because one should really be asking Automattic why they are (intentionally?) confusing their user-base?

We currently have :

• bbPress0.9
• bbPress1.0
• backPress
• buddyPress
• bbPress for buddyPress
• and now you want to add in a bbPress Plug-in that doesn’t have anything to so with any of the above?

We already have bbpress0.9 which is different and unique from bbPress1.0 (which uses BackPress, which itself is shortened to bPress or BP). 2 versions of the same software released/updated at the same time and both in-compatible. We refer to them both as bbPress, but really one of them is “bbPress” and the other “bbpress with bPress”.

We have the bbPress plugin for BuddyPress (which itself is shortened to bPress or BP – cunningly the exact same as BackPress is shortened to) and that is effectively bbPress1.0 (the one build on BackPress) but without BackPress.

So to clarify for those who are confused:

bbPress for BP is bbPress with bPress without bPress.
But that’s not the same as just bbPress, the bbPress plugin, BP, bPress, BuddyPress nor BackPress.

Is it any wonder, honestly, that people get confused?

I’ve been developing for and with bbPress since bbPress 0.8 and I’m confused by the above sentence. On top of this you want to throw in another completely new, unique, different and separate project and call it the exact same name? Have you lost your marbles? Are we honestly, and truly, wanting to have 7 products from the same company all with the same abbreviation, all starting with “b” and ending in “Press” and expect 0 supoprt questions to arise from this?

I have been vocal about how both Matt specifically and Automattic on the whole have dropped the ball with bbPress on numerous occasions. Those mistakes and indeed the catalogue of errors that were made, will simply dwindle in comparison to the amount of confusion caused by this decision.  The initial damage has been done, the amount of support requests and uncertainty has already affected bbPress and it’s community a ridiculous amount, but there is a chance to be brave and sort it out once and for all.

I strongly suggest and hope that sensible heads prevail.

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EDIT: I see that the new Forum plugin for WordPress has it’s new WordPress.com development blog. http://bbpdevel.wordpress.com I’m sure no-one will confuse that with the current bbPress one at http://bbdevel.wordpress.com.

http://bbpdevel.wordpress.com and http://bbdevel.wordpress.com

Nope, can’t see anyone getting cofused about that. Here’s hoping no-one makes a typo and helps the wrong project!