best wordpress forum plugin?

[staypositive]

any good suggestion?

 

[Gogol]

bbPress may be? Fair warning though, wp is not made to be a discussion forum; but a blog. You are much better off using something like Xenforo, or even Discourse (It's a free one, and awesome! It's not php though.) than trying to hack wp.

 

[SirLouen]

bbPress hands down.

I've been contributing to this plugin, so maybe I'm a little biased.
With extra plugins like GD bbPress Toolbox, bbPress is far away from the other alternatives.
If you pick any other, you will have to rely on their core maintainers, which are not always responsive enough if you need new features (although bbpress doesn't excel in this aspect neither)

From my point of view, after 2 years of the migration of my biggest forum (from SMF to WordPress), I have to admit, that there is no good forum solution for WordPress.
The best forum solution nowadays is Xenforo, but it's not free.

Also, I have to say that I'm in love with Akismet to ditch spam which fully integrates with bbPress. I'm going to migrate my second biggest forum to bbPress soon.
Also consider that my forums are around 10-30K MAU. If your forum is bigger in traffic, I would not consider WP by any means or you will need a huge server to keep it up (you can read some experiences in the bbpress support forum about this topic)

 

[R4v3nbl4ck]

You can use something like BuddyPress, but I would suggest a proper forum CMS. Some good ones I've used in the past are phpBB, SMF, vBulletin and IPB (first 2 are free, last 2 are paid). BHW is based on Xenforo but I have never used it.

 

[staypositive]

thx
heard a lot of good things on bb press
should i make the forum on subdomain or as folder?
e.g.
forum.domain.com
or domain.com/forum ?

the later will causes the site to load slower,

 

[hideath]

the later will causes the site to load slower,

none of the above will have an influence on the page loading speed,
having it in a subfolder is better for SEO purposes nothing more

also, choosing the forum app depends on the features you want them implemented,
xenforo is SEO friendly, have some cool & modern themes but doesn't have as many addons as for IPS

 

[Gogol]

the later will causes the site to load slower,

If it runs on the same "server" it will load slower no matter you use sub domain, or a folder. It's about how many requests the server has to handle per second (and related processes... and db.. and thousands of other parameters lol). Also, no serious forum software should actually allow you to run on sub folder. They always tend to ask for FQDN. If yours ask for that too, you will need virtual host.

 

[RedditBaronette]

I personally like bbPress , it's so much better compared to others I've tried.

 

[staypositive]

thanks all!
much appreciated!

 

[jaerehan]

Buddypress and bbpress are the most popular wordpress platform, I usually prefer. These wordpress are easy, simple and speedy. Best of all, you can use combine advanced features of these and create a rich forum.

 

[Mor Dov]

what about BuddyPress,WPForo Forum ,Asgaros Forum ? did you checked them ? at least its in top 2021.

 

[BrandedBacklink]

Mmmm... From my side, I personally use Ninja Form. Ninja Form is best form.

 

[Surewin]

My vote also goes to bbPress. I have tried BuddyPress too, but found it a little hard to setup/configure exactly how I wanted it. But bbPress was easy to install and setup. I needed to install a couple of the extra plugins to get exactly what I wanted...but that was easy to do.

I run another forum that uses SMF (non-Wordpress obviously), and that definitely has way more features out-of-the-box than bbPress. But the site I run that forum from is a straight HTML site I created years ago (before Wordpress became all the rage). The site I run bbPress from is a Wordpress site, so for me it made sense to extend the Wordpress functionality to add a forum via bbPress than to use SMF on that one. And if I was to setup another one, I'd definietly go bbPress again.

Re: sub-folder v's sub-domain. There's really no difference...and definietly no difference in load times that I've ever noticed (I've done both). For me it's more brand identity. What I mean is, where I use a sub-folder is usually where the 'main' site has a strong brand/well-known, and I'm attaching a forum to it. Where I've used a sub-domain is where the main site is less well-known or is a thin-site I've created for affiliate marketing for example. But...it's personal preference at the end of the day I guess.

 

[SEO JOKER]

Yes I would suggest buddypress is best popular forum plugin

 

[BuY PBN LinKs]

I'll prefer those plugins that are best for WordPress

• bbpress
• buddypress
• wpforo forum

 

[iamdora]

any good suggestion?

 

[iamdora]

These are some WP forum;

CM Answers
bbPress
DW Question & Answer
forum
Simpleress