BuddyPress is a popular and powerful profile system. It has almost all features for building user profile and social network. First will do our best to integrate wpForo with BuddPress as much as possible. But we'll also take your suggestion under consideration for sure. wpForo also can be provided with advanced profile system too. We'll try to find the best solution for this issue.

after using wpforo an understanding it more, i like the wpforo profile page a lot more than i thought i would. if all i'm using buddypress for is the profile and community aspects, then can't wpforo almost completely replace it?

the only differences i'm seeing is that buddypress registration configuration is more in depth, there is a friends and group system.

it seems to me like all wpforo needs to meet the complete replacement standard in terms of community is a friends and group addon plugins. i suppose the best compromise would be if wpforo had better integration with buddypress community features. like displaying friends and groups on the forum profile. i personally think it would do wpforo a world of good to have full friends and group integration with buddypress. a reason for this is because most other advanced forum software has friends and group features. it would be like killing two birds with one stone to have this level of integration.

perhaps i just answered my question on my own. any thoughts from you?

Thank you for this interesting story! This is a good case and maybe very helpful for future support.

so just a while ago i was going over both of your advice to me. i was considering the debug stuff you talked about. i was going to install a debug plugin to show me since i'm pretty sure i don't have access to the config files on the host plan i have.

Story

however, i started to think back on what happened (as i explained before, after installing wpforo on my website some days ago, it completely broke the layout of my website that i had to restore a backup to fix the issue. or so i thought). so my reflections lead me to my child theme configuration plugin. i was going over information there and as i was scrolling through "baseline style" code i saw CSS code for the bbpress forums plugin. then it hit me. you see, i only realized my website was broken after installing wpforo, but that doesn't necessarily mean wpforo was the cause, because there is something else i did before installing wpforo. the only two things i did on my website that day was uninstall bbpress and then install wpforo. while i was in my child theme configurator it hit me that for bbpress i was ONLY seeing CSS code. on the day i installed wpforo i checked out the configuration page instantly. from there i went straight to the forums page to see how the forums looked. that's when i noticed my website was messed up. after seeing the CSS code a while ago for bbpress, i thought back to that moment and i remembered 2 very critical things. first of all, ONLY the layout of my website was messed up (it looked like a literal tornado visited my website layout). second, wpforo WAS actually working. i just didn't process it at the time because i was freaking out (my website is kinda like my online baby and seeing it like that really spooked me at the time). then i thought about it even more. if it was such a serious problem, then surely i would have noticed something was wrong before actually visiting my website. there would have been obvious warning sings when the plugin was installed.

it became obvious. what broke the layout of my website was not wpforo, but instead it was bbpress. to test my theory, i deactivated the bbpress plugin and sure enough, the layout of my website broke instantly. my mission was clear. i needed to find out why bbpress was breaking my layout and what i could do about it. after some googling i figured that the problem was with a different plugin, because it seemed like i was the only person on the planet having this problem. there's no way bbpress could be doing this and no one else noticed. i thought about it for a while, then i went back into my child theme configurator where it all began.

the first thing i did was create a copy of my child theme and activate it. my plan was to remove all of the bbpress styling code after uninstalling bbpress. i figured that would fix the problem since without any bbpress styling, it shouldn't have any effect. then i noticed something strange while i was setting up the basic configuration settings in the plugin. i saw mention of bbpress. i looked above it and i saw the option named "remove stylesheet dependencies". i knew instantly this was the problem. the child theme was treating bbpress as a dependency. so of course deleting the bbpress plugin would break the layout.

so in my child theme copy i tried removing bbpress as a stylesheet dependency, then i uninstalled bbpress. it worked. fluid as water. i had successfully uninstalled bbpress without breaking my website layout. so then i did the same thing on my main child theme. some other less important stuff happen and then after all that, i tried my hand again at installing wpforo. EUREKA. wpforo installed and i checked out the properly functioning forums page before coming here to tell my story.

and that's pretty much it. thank you two for sticking with me on this journey. that being said, just because wpforo was not the cause of the previous issue doesn't mean it will work perfectly. i'll have to actually use the plugin before i know for sure.

i just installed it and checked the forums page before coming here. wish me luck!!!

You worry too much for requirements. To see what caused your crash and errors, check this:

https://codex.wordpress.org/Debugging_in_WordPress

Just add to your WP wp-config.php

define( 'WP_DEBUG', true );
define( 'WP_DEBUG_LOG', true );
define( 'WP_DEBUG_DISPLAY', false );

and check in wp-content folder for WP_DEBUG.LOG file for errors.

Also about HostGator, it was good before bought from EIG group.

I don't think the issue was in these requirements. It would be very helpful if you could install a test Wordpress in some subDisrectory, say /wp/ and try wpForo again. Try to find the error message, or check the error logs.

so do you mean that not meeting the requirements isn't a deal breaker? also i'm not too sure what you mean with that subdirectory stuff. i guess i can try installing wpforo on my server again and see if there are any errors. after i find out how to check for errors, of course. would this suffice?

it will most likely break my website again, but i can restore another backup if so.

I don't have those above and wpForo works just fine. I have 30 seconds timeout and 50 mb upload and post size and i'm good.

The only case i can think that 3 minutes timeout is needed, could be for a convertion / importing from an other forum db. Otherwise 30 seconds is enough and standard. If a query takes more than 30 seconds, then you are doomed anyway.

Keep in mind that Host Gator is an extremely poor choice. Belong to EIG. Stay away from EIG owned companies.

hmmm well that's confusing then. i did a google search on eig and it seems they rub some other people the wrong way too. why are they bad and why should people stay away from them?

The only case i can think that 3 minutes timeout is needed, could be for a convertion / importing from an other forum db. Otherwise 30 seconds is enough and standard. If a query takes more than 30 seconds, then you are doomed anyway.

Keep in mind that Host Gator is an extremely poor choice. Belong to EIG. Stay away from EIG owned companies.