Three Great Forum Plugins for Wordpress
Discussion forums were one of the earliest forms of online social networking and are hard-wired into the DNA of the internet. Though few large forum sites seem to launch anymore, some of the web’s largest online communities still gather around the discussion boards.
When it comes to niche blogging, forums may be a great addition to a blog, especially when there is little in the way of competing forums. The trouble is that it usually takes a community to attract a community, but if you’re willing to try, there are some good and simple options for adding a forum to an existing Wordpress site.
BBPress
BBPress is quick and easy to install and integrates rather seamlessly with most BBPress-ready Wordpress themes. It ought to be compatible – it’s made by the same community that continues to improve on Wordpress.
Simple:Press
Simple:Press is another plugin developed with Wordpress in mind and installs like any other plugin.
Vanilla Forums
Vanilla Forums have been around a while and have powered some well-known forums in the creative community. Now they offer a simple way to embed a Vanilla Forum in any blog or website. (HT: ChurchCrunch)
There are dozens of others, but these are three that are open source, seemingly reliable, and fully-featured. What did I miss?
In addition to serving as Editor of Fuel Your Blogging, Brandon is also a Pastor at Saddleback Church and Online Community Coordinator for Pastors.com. He’s also a web designer, blogger, and church communications consultant. Catch him on his own blog or on Twitter.
Hey Brandon,
Thanks for the kind words. I’m a big fan of the fuel network, this post made my day :)
If you have any other questions about Vanilla let me know.
- digibomb a.k.a. Brendan Sera-Shriar
Social Manager
Vanilla Forums
Thanks – it was a definite and obvious choice. You guys rock!
Genius! Thank You! Thank You! Thank You!
… you’re welcome. :)
thanks for the HT!
No problem, John!
Thanks for this Brandon. I’m glad that you didn’t lay out dozens of options. We’ve got enough information overload today that having 3 good options to choose from is hard enough 8=)
Anyway, I looked at bbPress about a year ago and it wasn’t quite ready for prime time. Seems like it’s matured and I’ll have to check it out again. SimplePress and VanillaPress seem like worthy candidates as well.
Embedded Vanilla looks pretty cool but the idea of having it hosted on their server is a bit scary. I’ll have to check and see if the javascript needs to be hosted on their site or if I can host my own copy of it.
Do you know of any feature comparisons out there for these 3?
I haven’t seen any comparisons of these three, I’m afraid. I know that FreelanceSwitch’s forum used to run on Vanilla. Not sure if it still does or not, but that’s where I first discovered it. You can do a self-hosted version of Vanilla and then use an add-on to embed it in your blog. There is also a way to add it to Wordpress in a way that they share a database, but it’s been a while since I’ve installed it.