If you run WordPress and are thinking of adding forums to your site you might be interested to hear that bbPress 0.72 has been launched in the last day or two. I’m yet to play with it but you can see it in action here and it seems to have all the things you’d need – plus it integrates with WP.
If anyone’s given it a go and would like to write us a review shoot me an email and I’ll link up to it.
I have mentioned before that I use Movable Type and it is starting to get painful watching all of these great plugins added to WordPress.
Does anyone have any experience moving a couple or three blogs from Movable Type to WordPress including templates? Can I manage multiple blogs from one interface yet?
[…] If you are using wordpress blog and have good readership. You can now add forum to your blog. Today while reading this article in problogger.net I found that bbPress 0.72 has been launched. Some of the cool features of bbpress are: […]
Is it really that good to run a forum these days? In my experience as a normal user looking for stuff, or support it is usually a hassle to have to register to a forum that I will probably only ever use once in my life, or until the support issue is resolved.
But even for discussion purposes. Isn’t the commenting thing so much better, faster and simpler (hahaha, I copied our local bank’s slogan) than forums?
I would love to hear some more input on this though!
I’d like to hear too because bbpress has had very little attention on it in terms of development in the past year (I subscribe to the mailing list) and though progress had been made on WP integration, I’ve heard it’s still pretty cumbersome. Before I go to bbpress I want testimonials on
1) Ease of setup
2) Integration with WordPress
Those are areas that were rusty before. It’s important to note it has yet to reach the 1.0 release so I’d still think of this as highly beta.
[…] Vía | Problogger. […]
How about this for a definitive answer adrian: It goes both ways. I visit a couple of forums about toics in which I have great interest. I visit those all the time. I familiar with the other regular posters. I’m back there often, usually daily. Other fourms I have posted once at when just wanting a specific piece of info or solution to a problem. So I think a forum might still be worth it to build connection if you have a topic that people can get passionate about. That said, I don’t have one.
Allthough I used an older version of bbPress (http://www.tractorfan.nl/wp-forum/ and http://www.oldtimerfan.nl/wp-forum/ and tweaked the code to suit my needs I can say that bbPress looks good and has a lot of potential. Glad to see this piece of software evolving (it’s been out for a while now, but not much happened).
i stil find the installation process a tough one. … i just couldn’t get it running. when it does run, all the urls in the forum are broken….
[…] Vía Problogger. […]
I’ve been waiting for this!
Here is what the default forum looks like.
http://www.maximumpcguides.com/forum/
The installation was a little harder than WP (but still very easy). I haven’t tried integrating it with my WP site yet. I’m waiting for a latter build for that.
It’s always good for a man’s reach to exceed his grasp, or so I’ve been told.
The comment vs forum question is a good one and there is no easy answer. One of the reasons modern blog software grew in popularity so quickly is because it’s so easy to throw a comment at the end of a blogger’s post. Advantage: comments
but the downside is, if a post draws many comments it’s hard to follow the long chain and after the popularity dies down, when you go back on a string comment a few days old, will anyone even see what you’ve posted, let alone find it in the future. Advantage: Forum.
What we really need is a hybrid. A forum software that rides ‘behind’ the main blogging interface and collects comments as they are made … but automatically collects them into an ordered forum environment for those who are interested in carrying the discussion on into the future.
OK designers, there’s your challenge.
WordPress has a number of forum plugins listed and bbPress is not one of them. I have not tried to use it but looking at the documentation I get the impression that its only integration is that it uses your blog user data.
Perhaps a better choice might be WP-Forum, WordPress plugin at fahlstad.se. I found this forum plugin on WordPress and if it works as well as his photo gallery plugin, I am sure it will do the trick. I nearly installed it over the weekend so I would be interested if anyone has tried it.
Joe – I’ve recently added WP-Forum to a site I’m working on that isn’t quite ready for primetime, but I can tell you that it was very simple. The setup was quick, the options integrate nicely into the WordPress Dashboard, and it is simple to match up to your current theme.
Dave Starr, yeah, I agree, that would be perfect! I have myself had many such experiences where I find an article that I want to comment on, and ask questions etc, and then seeing the actual date of the article and when last people posted, decided to rather go find my info elsewhere.
But then, aren’t there many plugins for wordpress for instance that sort of notify people about new comments and stuff ( sorry, I’m a bit new to this )?
My only problem is, forums are SUCH a hassle for the average user. It also looks so forumey! hahahaha
But, I suppose it IS still earlyish days, and we could see some interesting if not awesome developments to come! *crossing fingers* I mean, just about everything else is getting attention!
Surfing on to look at the one Brent posted with the default forum – i think its nice! I personally haven’t had much experience with forums, haven’t been following bbPress at all – didn’t even know of its existence! But this really looks simple and to the point! Great!
I was able to get WP up and running on my site, but for the life of me couldn’t get bbPress working. :( I had to resort to PHPbb because it is pre-installed by my hosting company. I would have preferred bbPress or SMF because I really want RSS feeds for threads – but in the end, I must choose simplicity and good time management over “perfection”. :)
Thanks for the heads up on this one – you never cease to surprise me with your helpful stuff!