BBCode is no longer BBCode

Well, that is not easy as you might think. The system that parses content to get shortcodes or BBCodes is very complex, and having two such systems working for the same syntax (both BBCodes and shortcodes have pretty much the same syntax) is very problematic and it can create big problems.

I don’t think it is easy. I just think what it is obvious for me. If the syntax of BBCode, which is quite standard acrross the web, doesn’t work, it is not BBCode.

In my forums (more tahn 6k users) I see everyday messages with true BBCode syntax that I have to edit to convert to WordPress syntax. It is really annoying, not only for me, but also and more importanttly for users. I’m pretty sure that you understand what I mean.

Maybe handling BBCodes by the plugin itself is not the best solution, but you and we need to think carefully about this issue. I think it is a serious one.

In my opinion, if this issue is not fixed, it is better to drop BBCode support from the forum. The users will understand that BBCode is not supported. But they don’t understand well that BBCode is supported but they get a mess in they use it in my forum because they need to learn a different BBCode syntax for my forum and not for any other forum on the web. It is very frustrating for them and I, like any other webmaster, want to care about my users experience.

What do you think? Any other opinion apart of keeping it as it is?

Imaging that someone hire you to program in PHP. When you start the job nothing work. Then the boss says to you: sorry I didn’t tell you, in my company PHP is written using C++ syntax. I hope I’m clear enough explaining the problem.

This change affects only 8 BBCodes, so investing a great deal of time on this is not really something I am willing to do, and I am not even sure it is possible to do without breaking things WordPress do with shortcodes (and this is very real possibility, considering how WordPress processes content).

I talked to many users that purchased Pro version of this plugin, and no one had any issues with changes in the BBCodes format. Pro version has BBCodes toolbar that now uses new BBCode format, and most users that need BBCodes use toolbar and have no issues with the change.

If the significant number of users want this feature exactly as it was before, I will be willing to rethink this, but until then, I am not going to spend a lot of time on something that most users don’t care one way or the other in the first place.

I’m really sorry that you don’t understand what I mean. The problem is not the users (webmasters) of your plugin, the problem is the users of the forum who can not use BBCode.

If you say that the toolbar of the pro version has not this issue is because you have not understood what I’m talking about.

I’ve dropped your plugin from my website. As I said, I prefer to say to my users that BBCode is not supported than saying to them that they need to learn “another” BBCode syntax only for my forum.

I fully understand what you are talking about, but it is very unlikely that this is possible to do with new WordPress without breaking all sorts of things related to shortcodes.

Having two different ways to parse BBCode/Shortcode working in the same time will not work without some very complex coding, and that is only when you take WordPress into account, there is no way to know how other plugins will work with such changes.

There are limitation to what can be achieved in respect to how WordPress works.

Shortcodes like [shortcode=XXX] seems to be back. Can you confirm it?

See -> https://core.trac.www.ads-software.com/ticket/34939

I can confirm it. It works perfectly again.

Sorry for late reply. I am yet to test this fully, but it seems that in 4.4.1 fix was applied to allow for old BBCode style format again.