Create Forum on WordPress Blog for FREE Using BBPress
You might have observed that some of Popular Blogs on WordPress has question and answer section where users are asking questions and get answers from other users from the same forums. Bulletin boards and forums are good old reliable tools to build online communities. There are plenty of Free and premium forum software available on the internet that you can use on your website as a forum and build community. If you use third party forum with your WordPress blog, your blog themes and everything can me modified according to your homepage theme. But we have great FREE WordPress plugin that will allow you to insert and create Forum based on your parent theme.
bbPress Review
BBpress WordPress plugin use your existing WordPress core that would easily implement your forum on your blog using BBpress WordPress Plugin. bbPress is light-weight and faster than other popular open source forum software.
How to Install & Use BBPress WordPress Plugin
BBPress is available for FREE download and use on WordPress Plugins Gallery. You can install this plugin from plugin section of your WP admin dashboard. Upon activation you will see the welcome screen for bbPress.
Related : How to Install WordPress Plugin
Creating a Forum with bbPress in WordPress
Once you successfully installed BBPress WordPress plugin on your blog, you will need to setup and create Forum on your WordPress blog using BBPress. To Create your first forum, you will need to go to to WordPress Dashboard > Forums > New Forum.
You will see forums, topics and replies on your WordPress dashboard after installation of bbpress plugin. When you create new forum, you will see post page like editing panel from where you can create new forum for your blog. Once you publish it, it will be start appearing on your forum pages.
BBPress is the Best WordPress Forum Plugin that allow you to create multiple forums and category using BBpress on your WordPress blog. Below is the screenshot, you will see topics published and answered thread along with user names on your wordpress blog’s forum page.
How to Display Forum on WordPress Page
Here is little bbPress Tutorial for you that might help you to setup it on right way.When you install BBPress on your WordPress blog, you create form and topics but it would not visible until you add shortcode to forum page. To display forum page on your WordPress blog, you will need to create new page with your desired name.e.g. discuss, forum, answers etc. and write bbPress Shortcodes on that created page and publish it.
[bbp-forum-index]
Now turn off comments and trackback on that page so that only forum would be displayed. Now recommended action is to add that forum link on the navigation bar so it would be accessible by all users and readers of your blog. You can add it on navigation menu from WP dashboard » Appearance » Menus and add this page to your navigation menu. So whenever user clicks on that link, they will see forum index and can use your blog’s forum easily.
User Roles in BBpress :
1. Keymaster : Keymaster is stands for Webmaster or admin role.When you install BBpress Plugin on your blog, Default WordPress Admin automatically assigned as keymaster. Keymaster has all capabilities including modify, create, delete any posts, topics or forums.
2. Moderators : Moderators has capability to moderate forums, topics, and posts. In general they are sub admin who can manage forums effectively.
3. Participants : This role is users role and they can create new topics and posts. Also they can subscribe and favorite topics they like.
4. Spectators – Spectators have a read only access to public forums, topics and posts.
5. Blocked – When a user is blocked all their capabilities are blocked.Admin and moderators has blocked they when they caught spamming on forums. They can still read publicly view-able topics and posts, but can not participate in the forums.
Just like WordPress, you can install Best bbPress Plugins to make it more user friendly as well as effective community forum.We hope this article has helped you to setup & Create Forum on WordPress Blog. BBPress is Best Forum for WordPress and we are recommending it.