So you have finally decided to add a forum to your WordPress site. Well, that’s pretty good. Here, we showcase you as much as Ten Best WordPress Forum Plugins that can make your task pretty easy.
These WordPress Forum Plugins would ease out your work of running a forum on your site or blog. Here, we have collected 10 Best WordPress Forum Plugins that will allow you to build a forum on your WordPress site easily.
If you are wondering how to build a forum or question and answer website, you need not to worry about this any longer. Here, we would be showing you some options of Forum Plugins for WordPress that surely would enable you to include forums into your site easily and flexible.
We have showcased 10 Best WordPress Forum Plugins that would make your work of selecting a suitable Forum Plugin a lot easier. All the Forum Plugins that we have showcased hereunder have been carefully selected to bring to you only the best forum plugins available from the lot.
Besides their unique feature set, each of the forum plugin shown below is easy to use, easy to install, lightweight, flexible, secure, stable and solid. They are feature-rich, advanced and powerful. These Forum Plugins are easily integrated with the WordPress site or blog.
Having a forum in your blog is a great way to increase user engagement on your site. Forums provide an excellent opportunity for the users or visitors to your site to start conversations or discussions on topics that are interesting to them. In turn, you get repeat visitors to your site and thus can improve your website traffic.
So have a look at the 10 Best WordPress Forum Plugins shown hereunder, and we are hopeful that you would find a suitable forum plugin matching your requirements.
10 Top WordPress Forum Plugins
1. bbPress Best WordPress Forum Plugin
bbPress is one of the simplest ways to add a forum to your WordPress site. bbPress has been developed by Automattic (the folks behind WordPress) and turns out to be a powerful WordPress Plugin. It allows you to integrate forums in your WordPress blog or site easily.
The bbPress plugin is easy to set up and install. It is simple to set up with a one-click install. bbPress is absolutely easy to moderate, as well as fast and clean. Moreover, it lets you create multisite forums, as well.
bbPress is thoroughly lightweight and gets tucked conveniently inside your WordPress admin. bbPress allows you to manage forums, topics, and posts right from your dashboard.
With bbPress, you can enable users to register before posting. You can even make the forums private and restrict access to only specific users.
Best of all, bbPress employs the same coding practices as WordPress and so it works smoothly with WordPress and with all WordPress themes. So, you don’t need to modify it to make it compatible with any theme.
bbPress is lean and fast. You can even extend the plugin’s functionality by using the add-ons. bbPress also comes with built-in support for Akismet so that you can keep spam out of the way.
All in all, bbPress turns out to be one of the best plugins for adding forums to your WordPress posts and pages. It encourages readers to start a new topic and allow interesting discussions to develop.
2. Simple:Press Free WordPress Forum Plugin
Simple: Press is a completely free third-party WordPress plugin that can scale and match the needs of any forum. You have to download its zip file and upload it to your WordPress plugin area. Moreover, the company has a nice forum of their own to help you in the set process.
Simple: Press comes with a huge plugin library which can be used to add functions. Moreover, Simple: Press is superbly light and fast. It allows you to create sub-forums and moderate comments.
Plus, Simple: Press integrates with many plugins and services such as BuddyPress, Gravatars, Sitemaps, TinyMCE, and Share This. It even comes with many themes and templates making customization easy.
Simple: Press allows you to create public and private forums. You can even implement a permission system. You can come up with powerful user groups and enable private RSS feeds for members only. Plus, you can use image thumbnails, custom smileys, enlargements, and custom icons for groups and forums.
The plugin offers comprehensive search options, forum stats, email notification of posts to Admins, and optional support for WP shortcodes. As a member, you can have access to the plugin’s support forum and have one-on-one help and discounts to the library of plugins.
Simple: Press is one such WordPress plugin that comes with continuous development and improvement. So, Simple: Press comes out to be a thoroughly versatile, feature-rich, and easy-to-use WordPress Forum Plugin.
With Simple: Press, you can create multiple nested forums. You can start with one forum and expand to as many as you need easily. It offers extensive customization options with a wide selection of themes and color options. It comes with a variety of statistics and key operational metrics.
Plus, it’s easy to use. You can start with only a few clicks once you activate the plugin. All in all, Simple: Press is one of the most feature-rich WordPress Forum Plugins out there.
3. BuddyPress Online Community Plugin
BuddyPress comes as a free WordPress Plugin. The BuddyPress plugin is more of a social network plugin which offers a base for forums. It’s an official WordPress plugin (just like bbPress) with WordPress coding standards.
So, BuddyPress easily integrates with WordPress and is compatible with most WordPress themes and plugins.
BuddyPress comes as a WordPress Plugin to turn your WordPress site into a social network, including forums. It allows registered members to create their discussion groups, social connections, activity streams, and profiles. They can create usernames and profiles, manage groups, and even post messages in a forum-like format.
With BuddyPress interface, users can send out friendship requests. They can make special groups for things such as sports teams, schools, and companies.
Moreover, the interface is easy to navigate. You do not face any trouble to launch it on your website. You can use BuddyPress to have a standard forum section on your website for building relationships on a more social level. So, BuddyPress is the go-to solutions for online communities.
It has all the cool features that you typically find on a social network such as Facebook. For example, BuddyPress has an activity stream with which you can view what your friends are up to.
So, the plugin turns your website into a complete social network. BuddyPress has been translated into various languages around the world. The plugin allows you to add your custom fields.
Plus, notifications are offered for both the Admins and the users. So, users receive notifications when someone interacts with them. Plus, the admin can send out messages to the entire community.
4. DW Question & Answer WordPress Plugin
DW Question & Answer comes as a free WordPress plugin for creating a question and answer site with WordPress. However, DW Question & Answer also has a premium version that offers more functionality.
It creates a complete question and answers system. So, DW Question & Answer allows you to create a question and answer forum on your WordPress site. DW Question & Answer allows users to add categories or tags to topics. You can mark the topics as “Open” or “Answered” so that user can come to know whether the question has been resolved.
Moreover, DW Question & Answer comes out as an excellent option for creating a support forum for your products or a general topic. That said the plugin is not for creating a regular discussion forum. However, you can create a question & answer site with WordPress. It can well be used in the form of support forum.
It gives an SEO boost to your site as Google goes on to index the user-submitted content. You can have question categories and tags. Users can vote and comment on answers, and select the best answer. They can search using keywords, and can even follow specific questions or answers.
So, the DW Question & Answer Plugin is all about making a community like Quora or Yahoo Answers. It also offers the notification and voting system. The best answers end up being shown first. It includes a Captcha for keeping out spammers.
DW Question & Answer uses a minimalist approach and has some cool features such as reCAPTCHA and shortcodes. It has a powerful email notification system and even supports multiple languages. So, DW Question & Answer lets you create powerful question & answer system on your WordPress website.
The plugin has four add-ons:
- Embed question and Social Sharing
- DWQA Markdown
- Leaderboard
- Captcha
It comes with a neat and clean backend with minimalist design.
The best part is the fact that the plugin is available in free as well as premium versions. So, you can start with the free version and later upgrade to its premium version when you need a more powerful WordPress forum for your growing business.
5. AnsPress – Question and Answer
AnsPress comes as a free question & answer plugin that adds a proper “question-and-answer” system to your WordPress site. It’s a fast and developer friendly Question & Answer Plugin for WordPress. AnsPress allows you to create a Q&A network similar to Quora and StackOverflow.
The plugin can be used as an FAQ site or even as a support ticket forum. Moreover, AnsPress supports Multilanguage, Shortcode, reCAPTCHA, email and push notifications, and lots more.
It’s a highly customizable Q&A plugin for WordPress. AnsPress is very fast compared to other QA plugins. Its source code follows WP coding standards. AnsPress allows you to add question and answer section in your WordPress site easily. It is undoubtedly one of the best options for having a forum section in your WordPress site.
AnsPress enables you to add, edit, sort, answer, and vote on questions. It also provides added features such as labels, marking favorite questions, and a user points system. Its latest release has improved a lot, and you shouldn’t find any major issue working with this plugin. Moreover, AnsPress is frequently updated coming with more features based on feedback from our users.
AnsPress is being used by many popular companies and sites at scale. So, if you want a flexible and customizable forum plugin, AnsPress is surely worth considering.
6. wpForo Forum WordPress Discussion Forum Plugin
wpForo comes as a modern and features rich WordPress forum plugin. It is suitable for all types of discussion forums.
The plugin has three modern and responsive layouts:
- Extended Layout: It features a classic forum layout
- Simplified Layout: It features a light and modern design
- Question & Answer Layout: It is used for providing support by answering users’ queries
Moreover, the wpForo plugin has five wonderful premium add-ons.
These add-ons are:
- Embeds
- Ads Manager
- Advanced Attachments
- Private Messages
- Blog Cross-Posting
The free plugin along with these add-ons make wpForo a perfect WordPress community plugin. So, wpForo is yet another best forum plugin for WordPress. It’s an easy and light forum solution for your WordPress website. wpForo offers everything you need to run an efficient & professional community. It is designed for small as well as extremely large forums.
wpForo is well integrated with BuddyPress and Ultimate Members plugin. It features Drag and Drops forum management system. It offers advanced forum user profile system. Plus, it’s loaded with many more powerful features.
7. Groups Forums Premium Forum Plugin
Groups Forums is a powerful forum system for your WordPress blog or site. It is a lightweight, easy to use, secure and solid Forum Plugin for WordPress.
You can maintain unlimited forums. Users or members can post or reply to topics in a forum while the forums are visible to the public. It supports theme templates, includes shortcodes and numerous other features, as well. It is highly customizable too.
Some of its key features include:
You get front end and back end topic submission. There are topic moderators and topic assignees. It can be used as a Support System with the fully automated topic assignment.
Users can subscribe to a topic and can leave a reply. You can have customizable comment notifications with Groups Notifications. You get many theme templates for topics and forums. It includes widgets and shortcodes.
8. WP Pro Forum System
The WP Pro Forum System is another very popular and reasonably priced WordPress Forum Plugin. It allows you to add a forum to your website the easy way!
With WP Pro Forum System, you can have a clean and user-friendly forum to your website. Moreover, it creates a professional looking forum with ease. The forum works on the frontend of your website. However, the Admins can manage all topics, replies, categories, forums, and tags from the admin area itself.
WP Pro Forum System is translation ready. The .mo/.po files are included. Plus, the custom filters are included. You can translate items on your forum using the plugin. You can even have images on the frontend of your website.
There are plenty of custom page styling options. Plus, the integration with WordPress is flawless. So, if you want to add a forum to your WordPress site the easy way, then WP Pro Forum System can surely prove a good choice for you.
It is powerful yet easy to use forum plugin for your WordPress Site. It has tons of features which allow you to have a professional looking forum on your WordPress site. Moreover, forum management functions are pretty swift.
9. Sabai Discuss Plugin for WordPress
Sabai Discuss for WordPress is one of the best WordPress Forums Plugin. It’s a Premium Q&A Plugin for WordPress. Sabai Discuss for WordPress comes with a minimalist design.
Moreover, the Sabai Discuss for WordPress functions more like a Q&A plugin. People can type in a question on your WordPress site, and all other users can help the person out, just like a forum.
So, your WordPress website can develop as a knowledge base once you start to build up questions and answers on your site.
The plugin allows you to have categories and a reputation system on your site. Users can ask and answer questions on your site. It has a fully responsive and flat design.
It allows searching questions and answers by keywords. You can even filter questions and answers by custom fields. One can have featured questions. You can set up favorite questions and answers. You can close/reopen questions.
Users can ask and answer questions similar to Yahoo Answers and Stack Overflow. It is ideal for building a question and answer website, discussion forum, or even a helpdesk portal for WordPress.
It allows users to build profile pages. You can even have a user reputation system. It has tons of other features, as well.
10. ForumEngine
ForumEngine is a premium WordPress Forum Theme. The ForumEngine plugin keeps up with the latest design trends offering simplicity and ease of use thereby focusing on the usability aspect.
ForumEngine is powerful and highly customizable in the frontend. It has been optimized for more social interaction. It comes with a simple and modern design. There’s the user badges system to access or change status on your forum. The live notification system allows users to catch every important action on your site.
It is optimized to give your users a pleasant social interaction. It provides powerful front-end controls and easy administration. Moreover, ForumEngine is highly customizable in the front-end.
Users can reply to questions or can even click to like or dislike a topic. It allows you to easily manage all the general information of your site in your admin panel.
It is compatible with WordPress SEO Plugins. ForumEngine enables you to build your online community without any worries.
Though we have listed some of the best Forum Plugins available in the market, we would like to know your opinion. Do you know some other useful forum plugins? Do let us know about it and tell us your take on our post of 10 Best WordPress Forum Plugins.
We look forward to your reply and suggestions.
I have used BuddyPress Plugin, which is a great tool for integrating social networks and forums to the website.
Great list I am a fan of BuddyPress personally but all are worthwhile options. Thanks for sharing it with the community.
From all the WordPress forum plugins bb press seems to be the best because of its easy installation process and strict access. The functions and platform used by the bb press are the same as that of WordPress.
Buddy press is the best plugin. It’s easy to install. Thanks for sharing.