I had set up a community website using WordPress last week. The website provides a forum (discussion board) for the members. We all know that there are so many online forums on the web that are using platforms like phpBB (free) and vBulletin (paid), but they do not impress me. The paid one especially, is just too much for me.

If you ask me why I use WordPress instead of a regular forum, the reason is because I need to publish news, blog posts, articles, and providing the ability for members to give their comments. We have all of those features on WordPress right?

Thanks to Andy Staines and Steve Klasen, and the plugin that he created called “Simple:Press“, I can have a forum on my WordPress Installation. Installing the plugin is easy, just like any other plugin that we use on WordPress. Simple:Press is using WordPress User Management for the membership system and user registration. To allow people to register, all we need to do is to tick the “anyone can register” under the WordPress Option.

Simple Forum has the “post linking” feature that gives the possibility to create forum topic posts that are based on blog entries and vice versa. This option is only available for members who are allowed to post on the blog, and it can be done while they are making a new topic post. To place the forum feed in the blog easier, we can use the RSS.

footnotes:
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