Some of you will be surprised that why exactly is the post not about the linux web server setup for WordPress blogs. The reason is that one of my very good friend Shridhar Pare, owner of Xisto Network gave me a visit. As you can imagine we had long discussions about web, web hosting and forums where the knowledge lives. This is one of the reason that why I’m writing about Forums and not writing about hosting.

In my earlier post, I’ve discussed that how bbPress should be a plugin for WordPress. While going through my Google Reader, I came across a post by Dougal Campbell where he asks the question that if users like the idea of using WordPress itself as forum! Even Justin Tadlock has dwelled upon this idea before and has created a mockup about his idea [via Patrick Daly]-

I’d thought about this before and I completely believe that it would be fantastic to use WordPress as the forum. It is easily possible to create a theme for WordPress that looks like a forum, P2 Theme is a great example where the full editor is made available directly in the theme, which is one of the major features of forums. Lets see that how WordPress can provide the major features and where it lacks -

Forum Features that WordPress can provide

1. Forums post can be made through WordPress posts.
2. Categories can be the Forum sections.
3. Comments can be the forum replies.
4. Member profiles is part of WordPress by default.
5. Fantastic editor that lets users easily share photos and embed videos [remember: WordPress 2.9.2 has oEmbed support]

Of course, there are other features that you can have with the help of plugins that are available for WordPress and here are some of them that will always be useful in case you decide to use WordPress as forum -

1. Akismet can help protect you from Spam posts.
2. W3 Total Cache can ensure that there will be less burden on server.
3. Gravatar can be used in place of Avatars.
4. All in one seo pack can take care of the SEO of the forums.
5. Then there are plethora of plugins related to social media that can help you in building forums.

Forum features where WordPress lacks

1. There aren’t possibilities of creating private forums.
2. Membership level management is not as powerful as one would like
3. Private messaging systems

Well these are some of those features that aren’t in WordPress and the trouble of all this will only be experienced by those forum administrators who have larger forums otherwise major features are already covered by WordPress. There are plugins like SimplePress and BuddyPress that can give you more advanced forum features, in fact SimplePress is a plugin that converts WordPress into a good forum system. I haven’t played around with it so I wouldn’t be in a position to comment on the performance of it however, with the long list of features, I was certainly impressed.

What do you think about using WordPress as forums? Will you prefer your favorite CMS for running forums or will you prefer to use commercial solutions like Invision Power Board, vbulletin etc or will you be interested in using an open source solution for the forums?

© mayank for Blog Design Studio, 2010. | Permalink

Related posts

• WordPressify your XHTML in 5 simple steps (1)
• What should one do if the WordPress automatic upgrade fails? (3)
• Why it makes sense to have permalink present in the feed footer (2)
• Check out the WordPress 2.7 backend pictures! (3)
• Plugin Week! Binny is on plugin development rampage (2)

Looks like most of the Automattic team is busy playing around with WordPress and of course, thats good for the future of WordPress. However, as WordPress has started to become popular as CMS, its limitations as compared to other enterprise level CMSes are coming up. Although, most of limitations are easily countered with the huge list of Plugins it has!

Forums are important part of any website and bbPress fills the gap that has been left in WordPress CMS. bbPress is one of the decent projects from Automattic team, however its future looked pretty gloomy as there was hardly any development on it. Lesser development on bbPress doesn’t make it the favorite choice for all the clients. As a design agency, we prefer to use WordPress and would love to stick to solutions provided by Automattic team. Good news is that from last few months, talks have been going on to ensure that bbPress project lives and that talks have been going on where Matt himself thought of converting it in a Core Plugin.

Reasons for making bbPress as Core Plugin

1. Why make more plugins for bbPress – Making bbPress as a plugin for WordPress will ensure that in the forums (plugin one), webmasters will be able to make use of the existing plugins of WordPress. For e.g. if I want to show blog’s popular posts in the forums, then I won’t have to worry as there are plugins that show popular posts on WordPress and they can be easily used in the forum too. However, it’ll be a pain to achieve the same result when it will be stand-alone bbPress.
2. Easier Theme interoperability – Of course, when we’ll have one theme developed for WordPress, it’ll work with bbPress (plugin one) too. In short, this all will result in lesser development time.
3. Use of powerful features of WordPress – There are many features of WordPress that are not part of bbPress and all of that will become simpler if bbPress can be converted as plugin. It’ll be easier to upgrade bbPress with WordPress automatic plugin upgrade feature. Media library is also a powerful feature of WordPress, that can be utilized in bbPress (plugin one).
4. Integration will be easier – bbPress as plugin will integrate pretty easily with WordPress and there will be no extra configurations required. Same users will be able to post in the forums and will be able to post on blog as well. This will surely help in creating better communities.
5. Better role management – Role management system will also improve tremendously. All the user management features required for the plugin will eventually make WordPress more powerful as CMS too. This will certainly help in establishing WordPress as the top choice for small to medium businesses.
6. Solid foundation for TalkPress – TalkPress, a hosted service for online forums (powered by bbPress). If bbPress as core plugin becomes success then embracing TalkPress for the world will be far more easier. It surely will act as stepping stone for TalkPress’ success.

What are you thoughts about bbPress and what it should really come out as. Will you like to see bbPress as stand-alone software or would you like to see it as a core-plugin for WordPress? Please share your views with us.

© mayank for Blog Design Studio, 2010. | Permalink

Related posts

• Microsoft & WordPress – Good Work MS! (4)
• LA Kings podcast blog (0)
• WordPress Help Center – Nice concept for quick solutions! (1)
• Is Dynamic CMS good or Static CMS? (5)
• Want to get that “brand new” blogging feeling ? (1)

Team Automattic has softly released TalkPress, that is going to be the online service version of bbPress. TalkPress will be same for bbPress, what WordPress.com is for WordPress.org. TalkPress is currently available for only few selected VIP members and is currently powering Health.com’s forums.

Matt has clarified it himself that they’ve used the domain TalkPress instead of bbPress.com for couple of reasons -

1. Domain name is not available – bbPress.com wasn’t available.

2. To avoid confusion – I know that how difficult it becomes for me to explain the difference between WordPress.com & WordPress.org to those who don’t have much idea about the service and software. For most people, WordPress = WordPress.com and now it’ll be way to easier for us to explain the difference between TalkPress and bbPress.

I’m pretty much excited to see TalkPress taking a wonderful shape and I’m sure that I’ll be much more interested in using this as a service rather than hosting it myself. Active forums can become a huge resource hog and thus can increase your hosting dollars (here are some of the WordPress optimization tips through which you can save your hosting dollars). I just hope that it becomes available as soon as possible.

I just hope that TalkPress will not be capped like WordPress.com or should have a complete paid package. This way, not only they’ll get to generate lot of revenue but it will also make bbPress and TalkPress popular too.

What are your thoughts on TalkPress? What do you think about the pricing strategy of Automattic when it comes to offering services?

© mayank for Blog Design Studio, 2009. | Permalink

Related posts

• Thanks to all the developers – You rock! (8)
• How to set up WordPress locally on your Mac OS X (10)
• Can anyone make a WordPress AIR Application? (3)
• “Who Sees Ads” trick increased email subscriber count by 180% (7)
• Design for Tasting.com network of blogs (0)

bbPress and WordPress are both from Automattic Inc., so it’s doesn’t take rocket science to figure out that they can be integrated quite easily with each other. It’s one of the advantage of choosing bbPress over various other free and commercial forum softwares. In this guide we’ll tell you that how you can easily integrate bbPress with WordPress.

After you’ve setup bbPress on your web host, the next major step is to integrate WordPress with it. Although, it may not be necessary depending on the way you run your blog. If you are the sole writer at your blog then you may be simply leave the integration part. You can treat both sections as two different websites.

1. Doing it the manual way : I guess the best documentation is written by BBPress staff itself and that there is no simple way than that. It puts you on the driver seat and gives you more control and understanding of the things and that’s far better than anything else. The guide tells you that how you can integrate the database and how cookies will be management.

2. Plugin comes as a saviour : There is a plugin which has been developed by Michael D Adams and this plugin can save you from the manual work which you need to go through that guide.

These are so far the best known solutions for integrating WordPress with bbPress and in case you know a better way, do share it with the community.

Extra : bbPress Showcase is an amazing resource and community when it comes to finding lot of plugins for bbPress and if you are in need of the support, then feel free to bump your question in those forums.

© mayank for Blog Design Studio, 2008. | Permalink

Related posts

• WordPress Blog Design Services (0)
• How to add custom metadata to your blog posts and why ? (1)
• (0)
• 5 changes in themes, which should be made by every wordpress user! (0)
• Search Engine Optimization (SEO) tips for WordPress! (5)

After a blog is launched one of the next step which bloggers take is to integrate a forum with the service as user generated content is something which any webmaster would love to have. There are some of the good blogs which have integrated forum with their blog.

Well, I’m sure that most of us have either tried or have given a thought of integrating the forum with the blog, so that the sense of community can be created around the blog and that we get our hands on free user generated content.

Now, the big question comes that which forum software should be ideal to integrate around the blog and why that particular forum software should be considered over others.

Forum software which make a mark -

1. vBulletin – vBulletin is a commercial forum software and one of the most acknowledged forum software. However, the price tag attached to it definitely gets you thinking if you are interested in making that investment. $ 180 for an owned license and $ 100 for 1 yr. leased license. Although, without a doubt this is the most comprehensive forum software.

2. Invision Power Board – IPB is another commercial forum software which has gained lots of praises from the web masters around the world. It’s feature packed and there are thousands of plugins available for it too and that helps in extending it to further levels. It also comes with a price tag of $ 149.99 or you can go for a hosted solution at $10/month.

3. Simple Machines Forum – SMF is a free and much powerful forum software and can be easily compared to vBulletin or IPB. It’s got lot of features and can be ideal for anyone who is interested in running a forum but don’t want to shell out some bucks for getting the software.

4. Vanilla – Vanilla is a free and open source forum software. It’s still at early stages, however it packed with Ajax and the developer community is pretty active around it. It’s very simple and easy to use and configure too. So, if you are looking for a no frills forum software then Vanilla can be your choice of the forum software.

5. BBPress – BBPress is a free and open-source software from Automattic the company behind WordPress and is one of the serious candidate as far as forum software are concerned. The benefit of this software is that it’s one of the lightest forum software and is easily extendable too.

Which one should I choose ?

Well, this is one of the trickiest question around as choosing a software isn’t easy when the choice is huge. The above listed options are some of the most known ones, although the list doesn’t seem to end at all. All these software are powered by PHP & MySQL and making a choice isn’t that simple as it can depend on lot of factors.

1. Support requirement : If you run a blog or a website which gets quite decent amount of traffic and that you want instant support for technical stuff then you should consider going for the commercial software.

2. The money factor : Both the commercial software comes with a price tag and if you are a small publisher and don’t think you can invest that much or are unsure about how the community will grow around the forum, then you can go for the free ones and then later you can change the forum with any of the paid alternative.

3. Resources matter too : Both the commercial software are good however, are not as light as Vanilla or BBPress, so if you don’t have huge webhost account then you should consider using Vanilla or BBPress.

Do you use any forum on your blog ? If you do, then which one you suggest and why ?

© mayank for Blog Design Studio, 2008. | Permalink

Related posts

• StudioWordPress Premiere (23)
• Simple Blog Design – listed in WordPress theme directory (7)
• VideoPress – Upgrade for hosting videos on WordPress.com (4)
• No more IntenseDebate for me too – even my patience level has gone! (14)
• How to integrate BBPress with WordPress! (1)