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Title: Critical Bug – Cross Posting suddenly starts creating thousands of duplicate topics/posts

wpForo Blog Cross Posting

Last Post by Heinz Krizsan 15 hours ago

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Posts: 3

Heinz Krizsan

Customer

Topic starter

Aug 16, 2026 12:03 am

(@heinz-krizsan)

Member

Joined: 2 weeks ago

[#14647]

Hello,

I am experiencing a critical and reproducible problem with wpForo Cross Posting 3.1.6.

The important point is that the plugin was working correctly after a complete fresh installation.

Timeline

Yesterday I completely removed wpForo and the Cross Posting plugin, cleaned the related database data and installed everything again from scratch.

I then configured wpForo and Cross Posting again.

After the fresh installation and configuration, Cross Posting worked correctly.

Today I created WordPress articles and manually selected a wpForo forum for Cross Posting.

It worked correctly.

One WordPress article created one corresponding wpForo topic as expected.

However, later today, without changing the Cross Posting configuration, the exact same action suddenly started creating thousands of topics/posts.

I did not enable any additional Cross Posting rules or change the forum configuration immediately before the problem appeared.

Expected behavior

When I create a WordPress article and manually select a wpForo forum for Cross Posting:

1 WordPress article → 1 wpForo topic

Actual behavior

The plugin enters what appears to be a recursive/looping process:

WordPress article → wpForo topic/post → Cross Posting triggered again → another topic/post → Cross Posting triggered again → …

This can result in thousands of topics and posts being created from a single Cross Posting action.

This is extremely serious because one accidental Cross Posting action can generate tens of thousands of database records.

Important detail

The problem is not simply that Cross Posting stopped working after changing the wpForo page ID.

The complete timeline is:

wpForo page ID was changed previously.
Yesterday wpForo and Cross Posting were completely removed and freshly installed.
The database was cleaned.
Cross Posting was configured again.
Cross Posting worked correctly after the fresh installation.
Today it continued to work correctly initially.
Later, without changing the configuration, it suddenly started creating thousands of duplicate topics/posts again.

Therefore, I suspect that something during the Cross Posting process is causing the plugin to lose or fail to recognize the relationship between the original WordPress post and the wpForo topic.

I would especially appreciate it if you could investigate whether Cross Posting 3.1.6 can enter a recursive loop when processing the cross-post relationship or when detecting an already-created topic.

Environment

WordPress
wpForo
wpForo Cross Posting 3.1.6
Elementor
Manual Cross Posting from WordPress articles
Fresh installation of wpForo and Cross Posting
Problem occurs even after a clean installation

The fact that the exact same setup works correctly for several articles and then suddenly starts generating thousands of topics from one action is the most important part of this bug report.

I can provide database information, screenshots, plugin settings and details about the generated duplicate topics if required.

Thank you.

2 Replies

Posts: 3

Heinz Krizsan

Customer

Topic starter

Aug 16, 2026 12:48 am

(@heinz-krizsan)

Member

Joined: 2 weeks ago

Hello,

I have now been able to reproduce the problem again and I have found some very specific information that may help identify the cause.

I am using wpForo Cross Posting 3.1.6. After completely reinstalling wpForo and the Cross Posting plugin, Cross Posting initially worked correctly. I was able to create WordPress articles and manually cross-post them to wpForo, with exactly one corresponding topic being created.

Later, without changing the Cross Posting configuration, the problem suddenly appeared again.

I created a new test article (WordPress post ID 33758) and selected wpForo forum ID 22 (Konsolen News) for Cross Posting. After saving the article, Cross Posting started creating hundreds/thousands of duplicate wpForo topics instead of creating only one topic.

I checked the database afterwards. A previously working article (post ID 9790) contains the correct Cross Posting information, including the wpForo forum ID, the corresponding wpForo topic ID and the disabled status. For the new problematic article 33758, however, only the selected forum ID and the topic title prefix are stored. The corresponding wpForo topic ID is never written to the WordPress post metadata.

At the same time, wpForo keeps creating new topics in forum ID 22. I can see consecutive topic IDs such as 2232, 2233, 2234, 2235 and so on, all with essentially the same title. The process continues and can create thousands of topics/posts from a single WordPress article.

This makes it appear that Cross Posting successfully creates a wpForo topic, but then fails to save or recognize the newly created topic ID. Because the WordPress article still appears to have no associated wpForo topic, the plugin creates another topic, then another one, resulting in an endless loop.

The forum ID itself is correct. Forum ID 22 is currently my “Konsolen News” forum and forum ID 23 is “Allgemeine Game News”. Previously working Cross Posting entries also use these same forum IDs.

The particularly strange part is that this happened after a completely fresh installation. Immediately after reinstalling and configuring wpForo and Cross Posting, the functionality worked correctly. Only later did the endless topic creation suddenly start again, without me changing the Cross Posting configuration.

Could you please investigate why Cross Posting 3.1.6 creates the wpForo topic but does not save the resulting topic ID back to the WordPress post? This missing topic ID appears to be directly related to the endless creation of duplicate topics.

I can provide screenshots and database information showing the working and problematic posts if required.

Thank you.

Posts: 3

Heinz Krizsan

Customer

Topic starter

Aug 16, 2026 11:14 pm

(@heinz-krizsan)

Member

Joined: 2 weeks ago

I found out that this is caused by a combination of the WPforo Crossposting add-on and the WPforo to Peepso add-on from WBCom. I've opened a ticket with WBCom.

If you install the “WPforo to Peepso” add-on and then create a new cross-post, it doesn't work properly. maybe you can check togheter this issue for a good solution.

This post was modified 15 hours ago by Heinz Krizsan