Want a quick simple forum added to your WordPress blog?
I’ve written a number of times before about integrating blogs and forums and the similarities between the two and we recently had the opportunity to add a simple forum to a WordPress blog over at The Fight.
Everything you see in the forum has been done using WordPress and the implementation time is actually incredibly quick.
Instead of having to install, configure and maintain a separate piece of software (and integrate the design), just three new theme templates were created: one for the main forum page, one for the threads and one for the comments form.
Logins are handled using the WordPress login system and comment moderation becomes simple for the administrator – for not very active forums, they can receive all comments via email, use Akismet or other spam protection (in addition on that forum, only registered members may add comments).
In this forum, currently only administrators may add new topics and subtopics – but this can be changed using the different user levels. What’s also quite nice is that the built in search can work across the entire site.
Additional features such as user profiles with contact forms could quickly be added thanks to WordPress and common contact forum plugins.
Adding a forum like this is certainly not for every site, but should be on your options if you’re after something very simple.
your thoughts
Donovan
This is a fantastic resource that I will pass onto several people who are running wordpress installs and could benefit from a forum. Well done!
Christyk
Now that is a very interesting approach to creating a forum using what’s already included with WordPress. I had already founding a nice plugin but I don’t think it covers spam protection like using the comment system would. I’d have to think it through a little further to understand how you set things up, but worth looking into. Thanks for sharing!
Christy
xurizaemon
@wepouys – what i think cre8d have done is twist wordpress’s arm into being a forum solution as well. after all … what’s the difference between a blog + comments and forum comments? seems like “disappearing” the blog post is the key
nice solution. over at http://monarch.org.nz/forum we use bbPress, which is a spin-off of WordPress. it’s a pretty cool forum software, and integrates nicely with WP’s registration etc.
i like this simple approach too, which keeps it all neat for the site admin – just managing comments from users.