It’s about that time again. The bridge plugin (WP-United) I have been using here for years to integrate WordPress and phpBB 3.0.x had been abandoned years ago. WordPress kept updating, and luckily it did not break the plugin. The messageboard however, could not be upgraded any further. And as more WordPress updates kept coming out, the more sloppy patches I’d have to cobble together to keep the site running normally. I’m tired of fixing errors only to have more crop up to take their place, and I want to bring the theme up to something that’s inline with current standards (mobile friendly being a big one).

So right now, WP-United is gone. In it’s place is BridgeDD Pro, and it’s doing its job nicely so far. Cross-posts and user integration appears to have transitions seamlessly. This post will be the first test after the fact, verifying a lot of different functionality. The debug log so far is empty, which is good… haven’t seen an empty one in years ;) The WordPress portion of the site looks fine, although the sidebar widgets could use some work. The messageboard, while functional, needs some serious attention theme-wise. And eventually I’ll upgrade it to 3.1.x some point soon.

Lots to do…

EDIT – forums look much better now. This new bridge basically disables how the forum parses its theme and template files. You’re forced to hand-jam a few files to tell it where to look. Still some work to do, but we’re in a much better place.

EDIT #2 – forum has been updated to phpBB 3.1.10, which fixed a lot of other back-end issues not outwardly visible. I’ve also identified a small issue with why replying to a comment via WP to a cross-posted post wasn’t working. I’ve been hanging on to this theme *forever* which is causing the issues, it’s time to find a modern theme and edit it the way I want it to be. Still lots to do ;)