bbPress is forum (also called message boards, bulletin board) plugin designed for using with WordPress sites. A few days back a SANGKRIT.net hosting owner emailed us asking how he can easily start using bbPress, most bbPress tutorials on Internet are very long and confusing. All he wanted to do is create a few message boards in his WordPress site.
bbPress has lots of features, customization options there are many free addon plugins.
In this tutorial we will be showing you how you can quickly start with bbPress and start creating forums i.e. message boards.
How To Use bbPress?
Login to your WordPress site then install and activate bbPress plugin. (Read: How to install a plugin?)
After activation follow the given steps:
Visit your admin area dashboard Forums -> New Forum page and give your message board (forum) a title & description (optional).
All created forums can be accessed by your users from yourdomain.com/forums page.
Screenshot showing all forums page:
Screenshot showing a single forum page with topics:
Screenshot showing forum discussions:
It enables your users to create new topics and post replies just like the official WordPress forums.
Customization Settings:
Forum options can be customized from admin area dashboard Settings -> Forums page. Also there are various free addon plugins you can use for extending bbPress.
Now bbPress 2.x plugin has built-in theme support. Hence you can use it with any WordPress theme but there are some themes like FirmaSite which provides you beautiful forums layout.