[Plugin: Mingle Forum] No Way to Post New Comments or Topics on Any Forum

[4795209]

I’ve been working with this plugin for hours now and am about ready to delete it. It installs easy and looks great but there is no way to post a new topic or comment as the WordPress Administrator and after I logged out, I created a bogus user account to see if I could participate in the forum as a a casual web user. Nope. I could register and log in but there was no Forum to post anything to and no way to post a new topic or post. I checked other websites of people who posted questions about the same topic asking for help, and their forums were same way. No way to post new topics or comments in any of the “forums.” I could register but then once I was in their “backend” as a subscriber I could not post any comments to anything.

I watched every video tutorial there is and the layout and icons used in the videos don’t match what I downloaded and when the video narrator shows you how to set everything up and then post a sample topic, it simply can’t be done because the button is not there.

I’ll sleep on it, but something tells me I’m going to have to delete this plugin and try something else: There is simply no way to post new topics whether you’re a website Administrator or outsider who registers.

https://www.ads-software.com/extend/plugins/mingle-forum/

[denislav12]

same problem here, i would refresh and the topics would pop up and then they would not show again…

[4795209]

I’m over it, dude. The plugin looks great and is an easy install, but that’s where it begins and ends. I worked on this for hours last night and have better things to do with my time. Time to look at other plugins.

[TE5LA]

What I’ve noticed is you have to create groups in Mingle and add people to them in order for the forums to show up. Then people can post, but that’s bad because you have to manually add everyone who registers to a group, there is no default group.

The other weird thing is everyone is listed as “Administrator”.

[[email protected]]

This is both hilarious and pathetic. I quote: “Have you been looking for a Forum Plugin for WordPress that just works? Then look no further!”

Well, count me as one that’s “looking further!” It’s absolutely absurd that something as “simple” (what the developer takes PRIDE in) doesn’t work at this most basic level.

And note: no response on this forum about this issue. So, it seems that if you’ve got this problem, well, tough luck.

I think I would have nothing to do with any for-pay products offered by Cartpauj & iComNow. Again I quote: “All plugins are FREE (as-is) therefore we cannot promise all requests will be answered or considered. If you need more immediate help then send “cartpauj” a message on this site and we can discuss Paid support.” Translation: “We will charge you to get our ‘free’ product working as advertised.”

Big developer-credibility problem here! I HATE wasting my time. So, I hope my post helps steer people away from this junk to something that will work. I’ll update when that search is ended.

Deleting and trying something else.

[4795209]

I have to agree and am “over” this plugin. BuddyPress is alot more work but at least you know what you’re getting and it works.

As I’ve said before, I’ve tried this plugin and installed it and couldn’t get anywhere with the counter-intuitive programming. I’ve also checked the websites of people who said they’d installed it and nothing was there, just blank.

It’s much easier and time-consuming to go to Bravenet.com or some other web-based forum system that will simply give you what you need, post their ads, and then be done with it, if you want an easier forum other than BuddyPress.

I don’t know if this plugin works somehow or not, only that I tried it, tested it, and after several hours of trying to figure out why nothing appeared as it was supposed to and no one could register or login, I just deleted it and gave up and went on to other web-based forum providers who also provide free forums that work simply and actually respond to e-mails quickly.

Been there, done that, got the t-shirt, done with the drama.

[[email protected]]

I’m just finishing configuration of Simple Press, and so far I’m very impressed. The basic forum seems far superior to those on the WordPress plugins pages. And the settings are extremely fine-grained, yet intuitive! Both signs of back-end power and thoughtful coding.

The company charges for support, premium features, and plugins to the software. But the base forum is extremely configurable and robust even as a free version! You can even match component colors to your theme on one single configuration page, so that in a few minutes you can have every bar, button, etc. matching your existing theme. Count me impressed so far.

I’ll update later after a thorough test. But, so far, this seems to be a better option than what’s on the WP site, and less trouble than trying to integrate an external forum into WP.

[[email protected]]

Okay, the update on Simple Press.

In short, THIS is the forum application that installs neatly into WP, is wonderfully configurable, is incredibly robust, AND is in fact IS “Forum Plugin for WordPress that just works.”

I’ve done about everything imaginable with it so far, and it’s utterly without hiccup. I love the configuration options, including how “skinnable” it is.

Best of all… it HAS an “Add Topic” button that “just works.” LOL

Perfect integration with existing WP users and user groups. Even a “badge” system for ranking users by number of posts, WITH the ability to auto-assign ranks to user groups (so, for example, you could establish a ‘major contributor’ rank and auto-add somebody reaching that rank to the ‘moderators’ group. Very fine-grained in every way.

This is, honestly, the best forum software I’ve seen in or out of WP.

Two thumbs up.

[TE5LA]

I am giving Simple Press a try. They aren’t much on support unless you pay for it and they don’t have plugins (unless you pay) and the themes are pretty lame, but everything else looks pretty good.

There was a coding error in the theme (or overlay) I am using, something about an array, but I actually fixed it myself ?? I got it when I posted something and went back to view the post. A long error message about “expecting blahblah to be an array on line 364 of a certain file. Fortunately it pointed out the line so I looked at it and did some searching and was able to fix it. So happy! If any of you have this error, let me know and maybe I can help you too. All I had to do was add one line above the line that the error came from.

I also changed some of the colors and the icons in the default theme. You can see the forum here:

https://xtc.site.nfoservers.com/forum/

The only thing bugging me now is the search entry box being up against “Recently Updated Topics Bar”. I also want the new unread posts thing that is below the forums above them instead. If anyone can help, please contact me on my website.

[AlisonMooreSmith]

Same problem. As the admin I can login and post. No one else can post or comment, even when registered, logged in, and permissions set to allow that.

Boo.

[AlisonMooreSmith]

BTW, when I’m logged in as the admin, it looks great. But logging in under another account and it all changes.

[aloeroot]

Same here. Installed it, set up the forum, and whenever I try to click the New Topic link I get an error message. Moving on to something else.

[alby54]

SimplePress is a real Rip-Off. The basic “free” plugin is worth nothing, it takes a lot of extra plugins to make it work and those are payware in the worse sense i.e. you have to sign an expensive subscription to download them and to have a basic support. The alternative plugins could be BuddyPress with bbPress but they are real theme destroyers and it takes a life time to have them integrate with your custom theme. Mingle Forum is surely very basic and it is missing a few pretty important features like ‘preview’ and a good WYSISWYG editor (still on old BBCode), but it is quick and falls perfectly into whatever WP Theme with no problem. Maybe you guys didn’t follow the right sequence in setting it up because it really takes no longer than couple of minutes to have it up and running. Did you create a Category and at least a Forum? You do not need to create a group if you do not plan to have different user groups access different forums. It picks up users from WP database so you can have guests viewing the forum and keep posting on it reserved to logged users.

[FritzU]

I′ve got the same problems as all the other users above. Wasted an hour testing it and deleted Mingle now.
No points from Germany!

[TE5LA]

@alby54

I did set everything up properly with Mingle. I’m sure a lot of people here did too. It really isn’t that hard to do. Yes, I made categories and forums. You must create groups just for these to appear, but there is no default group for new users. After you assign a user to a group and they are able to post, they are labeled as “Administrator”. These are not setup issues.

After fixing the bad code in Simple Press, it is actually working well. This alone should indicate that I’m not an inexperienced user. I’m wondering if Simple Press did this by design to try and get people to pay for the tech support. Pretty awful if they did.

I’m not saying that you do not have Mingle working, but it may be that there are certain plugins or skins that conflict with it. There are just too many variables for users to figure out what these are. They just want “forums that work”.

[[email protected]]

SimplePress is a real Rip-Off. The basic “free” plugin is worth nothing, it takes a lot of extra plugins to make it work….

“Worth NOTHING?” Literally NOTHING?

That seems like a pretty harsh indictment. Could you be more specific about what you are trying to do with SimplePress that takes “a lot of extra plugins to make work?”

I’m using the utterly free, “out of the box” version. I won’t pay them anything, so I’m not “advocating” SimplePress to push “customers” their way, and I’m in NO way affiliated with them. I was just groping around for SOME forums plugin that would “just work.” And SimplePress indeed “just works” for everything I care to do with a forums package. It is the ONE WP forums plugin that has “just worked” for me without causing theme problems or outright errors.

For people looking for a FREE WP forums plugin, I doubt they are looking for scads more “functionality” than the free version of SimplePress does provide. If they are looking for more functionality, it’s not really fair to compare the other free (and largely problematical) WP plugins with the FREE version of SimplePress. For FREE, I haven’t found a better one than SimplePress. Again, what are you trying to have it do?

Of course, the key point of this thread is that if you are one of the “unlucky” ones with Mingle Forums, at least now you know to not waste one minute on trying to “resolve” the issues! If for you it does NOT “just work,” just instantly uninstall and move on. And, comparing FREE functionality heads-up, SimplePress appears to be a very good alternative. ??