6 Best Forum Plugins
I’m a big advocate of building community on your website. It falls in line with that whole social networking, thought leadership stuff that’s so important and so effective right now. Of course, when you’re first setting up a WordPress site for yourself or a client, it can be daunting to know which route is the best to pursue in terms of choosing a platform for engagement.You can have your social media profile links and your share buttons. You can encourage blog comments. But if you want to foster real discussion that stays on your site your best bet is to add a forum.
Before you wonder off cowering in fear, allow me to ease your mind. You don’t need to know a lick of code to add a forum to your WordPress site. No, all you need to be able to do is install a plugin (or theme) configure the settings to your specifications, and get someone in charge of moderating the thing. Otherwise, it’s easy peasy.
Building online forums requires a lot of patience and sometimes more than average technical knowledge. For beginners this usually means learning a new software system from the ground up. What if we told you that you can build a robust online forum within your familiar WordPress CMS? In this article, we will show you the best forum plugins for WordPress.
1. bbPress
Beloved by nearly everyone who gives it a shot, bbPress is one of the top WordPress forum plugins out there right now. Once installed, it adds several options to your dashboard for creating and managing a forum. It fully integrates itself into your site so it doesn’t feel out of place and you can easily manage forum topics and replies just as you would Core settings.
When it comes to integrating a forum into WordPress, bbPress is handsdown the best plugin for the job. It is built the WordPress way and uses the existing WordPress core to power your forum.We have a tutorial on how to set up bbPress in WordPress.
You can also import forum posts from many other forum tools, which means you’re not tied down to one forum solution for the rest of your life.
Pros
- Built for WordPress, bbPress utilizes the same WordPress core and follows the same coding standards as WordPress.
- Integrates with any WordPress theme without any painful modifications.
- Nearly a 100+ plugins available to do just about anything you want.
- Since it does not have a lot of bloat, bbPress is fast and lightweight.
Cons
- Not as feature rich as full fledged forum CMS like phpBB, Vanilla Forums, vbulletin.
2. BuddyPress
Its allows you to build your own social network with in WordPress. Just like bbPress, It is also an official WordPress plugin. It follows the same coding practices and standards as WordPress.
Pros
- Easily integrates into any WordPress Theme.
- Plenty of plugins to extend the functionality.
- Creates activity streams, user profiles, social connections, groups, etc.
- Add a points system to ignite user engagement.
Cons
- It could be quite challenging to move a BuddyPress site to some other platform.
- It is not as well documented as WordPress and finding help can be difficult.
3. WP Symposium
Though typically billed as a social media plugin, WP Symposium is yet another way to add a forum to your WordPress site. And man is it loaded with features! The free version is quite robust and lets you add a forum to your site using a shortcode. You can setup multiple forums if you want by using categories. This way, you can restrict user access if you want based on user role.
Pros
- Easily integrates into any WordPress Theme.
- Plenty of plugins to extend the functionality.
- Creates activity streams, user profiles, social connections, groups, etc.
- Add a points system to ignite user engagement.
Cons
- It could be quite challenging to move a BuddyPress site to some other platform.
- It is not as well documented as WordPress and finding help can be difficult.
4. CM Answers
CM Answers allows you to build a Q & A community on your WordPress site. The basic free plugin comes with enough features to quickly set up a Stack Exchange like forum on your website.
If you want a more robust question and answer forum on your site, CM Answers is the obvious choice for accomplishing this. It’s built on a Stack Overflow discussion board so users can ask questions and other users can respond with their answers. Members of the community can then rate the answers to help improve the overall accuracy and effectiveness of your forum. There’s a free and premium version available.
Pros
- Integrates seamlessly with most WordPress themes.
- Users can vote on questions and answers.
- Premium version has a lot more features including the ability to choose best answer, profiles, comments, social media login, etc.
Cons
- Your forum is limited to Question & Answer format.
- Most useful features are available for the premium version.
- Some reviews on the plugin’s page indicate that users found it difficult to use.
DW Question Answers allows you to create a question answer site with WordPress.
DW Question & Answer is a simple plugin that lets you create a question and answer site in WordPress. This can serve as a useful support forum for your customers, a robust FAQ section, or a way for members of your site’s community to pose questions to one another and respond with answers directly.
Pros
- Allows question categories and tags. This gives your site an SEO boost with user driven content.
- Users can vote and comment on answers.
- CAPTCHA support helps you combat spam.
- Can be used as support forum.
Cons
- Your forum is limited to Question/Answer format.
6. AnsPress
If the Q&A format is your thing, then AnsPress might be a good free option for you to try out. It’s really simple and not as complex as some of the other question and answer style plugins I’ve covered here (like CM Answers, for instance) but it still gets the job done and has a lower barrier of entry for those unfamiliar with customizing WordPress.
Once installed, this plugin adds a Question and an Answer option to your main admin menu and a dedicated Settings page. If you want to customize the look to match your theme you can but it looks pretty nice right out of the box, if you ask me. It has a lot of the same features we’ve already discussed here like the ability to edit questions and answers, flag for spam, and vote for your favorite answers.
Pros
- Include built-in moderation
- Question labels, question tags, categories and tag suggestions
- Private message, email notifications, and a variety of user levels
Cons
- Not as feature rich as full fledged forum CMS like phpBB, Vanilla Forums, vbulletin.
We hope this article helped you find the best forum plugin for WordPress.
As we said earlier, building an online community requires patience and consistency among other technical requirements. We wish you best of luck with your new forum.
As we said earlier, building an online community requires patience and consistency among other technical requirements. We wish you best of luck with your new forum.
6 Best Forum Plugins for WordPress
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