Hence, bbPress is for sure the first choice for a forum solution on WordPress. Using bbPress plugin is very easy. You can easily install and set up the plugin to create a great discussion forum on your website.
It has separate pages for forums, topics, and replies. The plugin is suitable for small as well as large communities and all types of discussion forums. No doubts, it is yet another best forum plugin for WordPress. The plugin comes with five wonderful premium add-ons.
The free plugin along with these add-ons make it a perfect WordPress community plugin for building an awesome community. To creating WordPress forums using this plugin, install the plugin from the official WordPress plugin repository and activate it. Next, the plugin will ask you synchronize users and create the user profile if you already have over users.
Learn More and Download wpForo Plugin. It lets you create powerful question and answer system like Quora or Stackoverflow on your WordPress website. The plugin uses a similar system like the WordPress posts that you can order the questions by tags and categories. DW Question and Answer plugin has a very neat and clean backend with minimalist design.
You can set notifications for a new question, new answer, and comments. Discussion Board is an incredible WordPress discussion plugin which is a good alternative to the other forum plugins mentioned here. It is an ideal solution for adding a discussion board, message board, question answer WordPress support forum etc. The plugin adds a new post type and lets you add front-end registration and login form.
The website users can post questions and reply to the topics posted by others. Unlike other plugins discussed above, Discussion Board has options to user roles like in standard WordPress settings.
You can decide who has access to your discussion board; permission to post comment, view comment. The plugin works closely like WordPress membership plugins. In addition, Discussion Board features automatic setup feature, anti-spam fields, shortcodes , etc. After installing the plugin, it automatically adds three pages i.
It has a simple and user-friendly interface so that anyone can easily configure the settings easily. CM Answers is a questions and answers plugin for WordPress. In other words, it is an amazing forum plugin for WordPress with an ability to create discussion forums where users can add questions and answers in a stack overflow style. As the website owner, the plugin enables you to control the user roles and capabilities.
You can decide who can view and post the questions, answers, and comments. Besides, you can have moderation options by which you can decide whether the posts be auto-approved or need moderation. In addition, the admins can customize the questions and answers, filter the posted content, and also track the user actions.
It has multiple setting tabs including general, appearance, thread, labels, moderation, access control, notifications etc. Take your time to study the plugin features and pick the one that best fits your needs. Concluding, if you want a free simple solution, bbPress is surely the best one. So, there is barely any chance of not getting any feature you need.
Last but not the least, if you have a WordPress website, you may also find these plugin collections useful:. Apart from copywriting, she loves travel, music, and adventures. She is a passionate learner and a dreamer. Follow her on Twitter. Your email address will not be published. Invision Power Board is a premium forum program best suited for businesses. Although, it can still be great for individuals who are public figures or for those who want to be social media influencers.
Not only can you use this as a forum, but you can also use it as a support ticket system, eCommerce platform, CMS, file-sharing system, a blog, and more. Invision Power Board is also incredibly flexible, meaning you can even customize the activity feed on a per-user basis. Its admin panel is intuitive, striking and lets you control absolutely everything about your forum.
The forum itself also has an eye-catching, natural design and layout. It uses cloud hosting to ensure your forum loads quickly. For example, you can install a plugin to let users mention other members on other social media platforms, like on Twitter. Automatic daily backups, and unlimited staff and community members also come with all plans. There you have it: Not only are these the best forum software, but some of them are the best free forum software options as well.
Your next steps for building a forum would be:. Were you able to choose the forum software best suited for your needs? What are you looking for in forum software? What do you consider to be the best forum software or the best free forum software?
Share your thoughts in the comments below. Jenni McKinnon Staff Writer. Twitter Facebook. Last updated: Dec 7, 5 Comments. Admins can place new topic forms, login forms, and topic lists via shortcodes. To control spam and abuse, Discussion Board also lets you set limits on how many times users can re-post, approve or deny new topics, and block certain email addresses and domains from creating accounts on your site.
All of the above features are included in the free version of this plugin. WordPress admins looking for a more advanced form plugin can try wpForo Forum. This feature-packed option comes with three forum layouts: simplified a basic, minimal forum , extended a more traditional look , and a question-and-answer format.
Beyond appearance, wpForo forums allow essential forum functionality, plus extra features like member ratings, badges, topic tags, social sharing, and a drag-and-drop interface for forum management. While less established than other plugins on this list, Simple:Press is a powerful alternative and boasts perhaps the best-looking forums out of any option on this list. Its threads are clean and customizable, with simple colors that complement your content.
You also have tight control over permissions and forum members, and many other perks you can find on the download page. However, Simple:Press is really made to be a premium tool. Closing out our list is Sabai Discuss, a premium forum plugin designed for question-and-answer boards.
These features make Sabai Discuss ideal for support sections of your product website, or as a knowledge base in which the best answers are voted to the top. Plus, responses to common questions will be indexed by search engines — when your product users search for a solution in Google, for example, your support pages are more likely to rank.
You can also lock and pin any forum. To let you manage the users, it has a powerful user group and permission system. Your users can create extended profiles with timezone, and a lot more. It features 3 design layouts for your forum: Extended, Simplified, and Question and Answer layout. Each layout has a unique design and features. Using this plugin, you can easily create modern forums where your users can participate, get support, as well as contribute.
Users can post questions, give answers, vote, subscribe to topics, and receive notifications, share topics on social media, etc. Asgaros Forum is a simple WordPress forum plugin you can use on your live website. The basic free plugin comes with enough features to quickly setup a Stack Exchange like forum on your website.
It enables users to post questions, answer the questions, vote, upload files, subscribe categories, send private messages, etc. As the admin, you can customize questions, answers, filter out unwanted content, and manage the users. If you want additional features like anonymous posting and payments, you can buy the plugin addons. You can create your own social network using this plugin. Similar to BuddyPress or Facebook, it allows your users to create profiles and activity wall, add friends, set email alerts, join forums, and more.
The plugin is designed to work with any WordPress theme or plugin. This allows you to add it to an existing WordPress site. Unlike normal forum plugins, it allows your users to vote the answers, so that the best answer comes to the top and the less meaningful answers go to the end.
For more details see our tutorial on how to create a question and answers site in WordPress. WordPress discussion board is a free plugin you can use to create a forum. Using this plugin, you can allow front-end registration and login system to attract more users.
To avoid spamming, it has options to restrict repost, moderation for comments, etc. Regardless of your choice of online forum software, you will need extra hosting resources to run a successful online community. You can install all these WordPress forum plugins on a shared hosting plan. You can even run a forum quite effectively for a while on the same starter hosting package.
If you are just starting out and want to test the waters, then we recommend using Bluehost. They are one of the top hosting companies in the world and officially recommended WordPress hosting provider. However, as more visitors use your forum, it will slow down your website and may even crash it. In that case, you will need to upgrade to a managed WordPress hosting plan.
We recommend using WPEngine. They are one of the top managed WordPress hosting companies in the world. Our second choice would be SiteGround. They are an officially recommended WordPress and bbPress hosting provider. Need help moving your website? See our article on how to move WordPress to a new hosting server without any downtime. We hope this article helped you find the best forum plugins for WordPress. If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials.
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