Breadcrumb NavXT and bbPress Compatibility

Notice: This topic is being revisited in August/September 2020, with a new guide that is more applicable to how Breadcrumb NavXT and bbPress work as of that date. Below is the original article which remains for historical purposes.

While developing Breadcrumb NavXT 5.2, I spent some time investigating the compatibility issues between Breadcrumb NavXT and bbPress. Within Breadcrumb NavXT, every attempt is made to use the WordPress API, when possible, to maximize the compatibility with other plugins such as bbPress. However, this is not always enough, and the findings of this investigation are presented in this article.

What You Need

These are the plugins and versions used when performing the testing reported on within this article:

• bbPress – At the time this article was written, 2.5.4 was the latest available version and was the version tested against.
• Breadcrumb NavXT – Tested against a development release of 5.2.0.

What Works

Out of the box, just about everything works in Breadcrumb NavXT 5.2.0. In previous versions of Breadcrumb NavXT the breadcrumb trail is not as expected in regards to linking to the forums archive page. Within a topic, rather than the forums archive breadcrumb appearing in the trail (as expected in this use case, but not by Breadcrumb NavXT), the breadcrumb for the topics archive page appears. Additionally, on topic tag archives did not result in the proper current item breadcrumb representing the topic tag.

In Breadcrumb NavXT 5.2.0, some changes in regards to handling post type archives were made to improve compatibility with bbPress, and other plugins using similar CPT hierarchy schemes. These changes fix the incorrect display of the topics archive page breadcrumb rather than the desired forums archive page breadcrumb. Additionally, another change in Breadcrumb NavXT 5.2 fixes the unhanded current item breadcrumb representing the topic tag in a topic tag archive page.

What Doesn’t Work

Topic tag archives do not present the desired breadcrumb trail. Instead of presenting a breadcrumb for the forums archive page, they have a breadcrumb for the topics archive page. Unfortunately, there isn’t a way to fix this without using code that is specific to bbPress. Thus, a bbPress compatibility extension plugin is necessary for full compatibility.

The Solution

Breadcrumb NavXT bbPress Extensions is a free, add on plugin for Breadcrumb NavXT that fixes the topic tag archive issue in Breadcrumb NavXT 5.2 (and above). It is a simple activate and you’re good to go plugin—no configuration required.

Within Breadcrumb NavXT, you may want to check the value of the following settings (under the Post Types tab):

• Forum Archive Display – Checked
• Topic Archive Display – Checked
• Topic Hierarchy Display – Checked
• Topic Hierarchy – “Post Parent”

-John Havlik

[end of transmission, stay tuned]