Any suggestions for forum plugins other than bbPress?

(Leland Fiegel) #7

Flarum looks quite nice.

Another thing to consider: do you really need to integrate them? Do regular users need to login on the WordPress side of things, or is it just you and other admins to update site content? Do you need to share data between WordPress and the forum software for some reason?

For example, it’s common for WordPress-powered membership sites to restrict content to users with certain capabilities, and restrict bbPress forum access based on the same capabilities. In this case, you’d be better off using bbPress and not worrying about potentially complicated integrations with other forum software.

If you’re just concerned with making things look “seamless” between the main site and the forum, there are ways of theming it to look the same without any sort of integration at all.

Basically, unless you have a purposeful reason for doing so, I wouldn’t rule out standalone forum software just because it doesn’t have a publicly released WordPress integration.

But if you just want a plug-and-play WordPress-powered solution, there’s no better option than bbPress. It just works.

By the way, there are a few Discourse <-> WordPress integrations out there already, like this one. It doesn’t seem to cover templating, but covers SSO.

(Chris Rault) #8

For an example of how flexible BBPress is, check out the new Beans community forum - https://community.getbeans.io. Thierry built an entirely new front-end for BBPress from scratch and it’s pretty darn slick if you ask me.

Regarding Flarum, I have it installed over at http://community.themebutler.com/ and it’s definitely one the nicest forum systems I’ve used over the years. That said, it’s still in active development, so be prepared to get your hands dirty from time to time. I had a few issues when they switched to Composer for updates and packaging, but nothing a few hours of tinkering couldn’t sort out. Also, like Leland mentioned there is no integration with WordPress yet - which was fine for me, as ThemeButler doesn’t have any front end access yet, but that will of course depend on your own projects requirements whether that’s a deal breaker.

Thierry did mention he’d be will to share the work he’s done on the Beans forum (using BBPress), but the only catch is it needs to be setup as a theme, which would work fine in a multi-site setup, but probably not for most normal sites.

Hope that helps!

(Leland Fiegel) #9

This looks awesome. I’m wondering if it’s even necessary to build an entirely separate theme though. You can probably compartmentalize forum-specific views with creative use of the template hierarchy.

(Chris Rault) #10

Yeah, I’m sure it’s possible. It’s just how it’s currently setup, as Thierry has the forum setup separately from the main site :slight_smile:

(Andy McIlwain) #11

On the subject of bbPress: My only complaint is with the default styling. The text is too small, the width is too narrow. I’ve never had a decent-looking vanilla installation. :frowning:

As for alternatives, ideally if you’re not looking to share a user DB with WordPress:

Flarum, as already mentioned, is still in development - but it looks damn good. It reminds me of Discourse but with easier installation/configuration.

Muut is an embeddable forum (SaaS model) that has a richer set of features (e.g. private messaging). They were sponsoring WordCamps a few years back IIRC.

(Anna) #12

Hi.

I’m curently using the DW Question & Answer Pro and I think it’s great. This plugin helps my site to have a full feature question and answer system like Stack Overflow, Quora or Yahoo Answers.

Highly recommended to you!

(Leland Fiegel) #13

@anna, would you still recommend it without the affiliate link (which I just removed)? Please take note of the rules in the welcome thread.

It also appears you’re employed by the company that develops the plugin. Again, against the rules to be a shill. First and final warning. :slight_smile:

(Calum Allison) #14

To @ychan and others. Just wanted to let you know that @danieliser and I will be launching a new forum plugin for WordPress fairly soon. Just announced it today, you can read more about it here: https://jungleplugins.com/blog/were-launching-a-forum-plugin/

(Leland Fiegel) #15

@calumallison Sounds interesting! Any ETA on a beta or anything like that?

(Calum Allison) #16

@leland Hopefully in a few weeks. Will post here once we have a working demo/beta people can play around with :slight_smile:

#17

I highly recommend WPForo plugin for this. Simple, fast and pretty easy to config

(Naresh Devineni) #18

I had recently worked on BBpress for two projects . I have to say its awesome and flexible. Custom roles, Custom styling, Custom templates, compatibility with login plugins or content restriction plugins is a huge plus :blush:. If you are looking for custom features, then you have to write your own extension plugin for BBPress. Thats the only backdrop. But it plays well with most of the standard forum requirements.

#19

BuddyPress is great for building a forum, but I have heard good things about WPForo as well. I would suggest you try out BuddyPress first. It is simple to setup.

(Leland Fiegel) #20

I recently set up a forum using Discourse (this is what WP Chat runs on) connected to a WordPress site through the WP Discourse plugin. So WordPress users can login to the Discourse site with the same cookie.

You need to run Discourse on a separate server, and there’s minimal integration outside of single-sign-on, comments, and auto-posting new threads based on WordPress posts…but if all you want is a forum tacked onto a WordPress site, it offers the best experience IMO.

Also, Memberful can be used to make private forums based on paid membership levels. But I’m not doing that.

(Nick) #21

Is this still in the works?

Checked the blog but don’t see any updates :slight_smile:

(Yash Chandra) #22

I am getting SSL errors and can’t even load the page. Looks dead to me.

(Leland Fiegel) #23

Same. Bummer. :frowning:

Wonder if @danieliser or @calumallison can provide any additional info about this?

(Michael) #24

@ychan @leland if you have this, as did i, did you have the advanced tab near the back to safety tab? if so, click advanced and there should be an option to ‘‘continue to site’’ or words to that effect. I got to the new forum dev site ok.

(Leland Fiegel) #25

Hey Michael, you’re right. The site is still up but requires a security exception to get around the expired SSL certificate.

I’d still be curious to hear about the status of Jungle Plugins from the founders, because in its current state it does look “dead,” as @ychan put it.

(Michael) #26

What you say there I cannot argue with. Yea looks abit dead. so to speak. which is a shame.
I’m about to start jumping through all the flarum hoops to install that. as it looks fresh, clean, and tidy. Not content with that, but its in its 7th beta stage and so it looks very promising. So I’m taking a gamble but it looks worth it. Ill use bbpress as a possible backup. Maybe even copying some the topics over onto another database for the event ‘‘when’’ flarum breaks on the beta. ill do this daily so that my users will have something to work with when it finally does happen. Nice of the host company to allow me the database to do this mind.

so yea. i look forward to the future with flarum.