A website’s community often serves as its lifeblood, and what would be a better way of fostering a community than through a forum? Forums serve as a venue for discussions among your site’s users, and it’s where they talk about everything from today’s weather to different ways that you can improve your site.
If you run a WordPress site (which is pretty likely, since more than 43% of websites use it), you may be familiar with plugins—these handy little pieces of software simply “plug in” to your site (hence the name) and fulfill a huge variety of functions, such as improving your site’s security, organizing its content, and yes—even creating and moderating a forum.
In this handy article, we’ll list the 8 best plugins for setting up a forum on WordPress, what to consider when choosing a forum plugin, and some very useful tips for running your own forum. If these topics sound like something right up your alley (or you just want to grow your website), then read on!
Signing up with the best web hosting provider might not mean much if you can’t grow a community around your site, and there’s no better way to grow a community than by using a discussion board or forum.
Having a dedicated forum for your site and its users results in numerous advantages, such as the following:
Everyone wants to be heard, and there’s no better way to be heard on a website than by speaking out on its dedicated forum. Here, they can ask questions about your products or website, or simply have general discussions with other users about how their day went—anything goes, as long as they follow the rules set by the site’s administrator (a.k.a. you).
Your forum can be as relaxed or as strict as you want, and the topics can range from simple question-and-answer posts to knowledge-sharing and product support discussions. As we said, anything goes—it’s your forum, after all.
A forum also helps facilitate user engagement and participation—if your users feel like they’re part of your site and its community, they’ll be more likely to visit your site again, purchase your products (if you have any), as well as endorse your site and its goods to their friends and family.
Finally, having a forum helps with your site’s SEO. Higher Logic, a cloud-based community platform, states that “since posts in online communities are written in the words of your customers, they have a huge impact on SEO.”
By fostering discussions and nurturing your site’s forum and its community, you’ll help your site rise through the search results ladder, which helps bring more visitors to your site and grow its community (and revenue) even further!
Using a WordPress plugin saves you both the time and money required to develop a forum on your own. You’ll be able to easily create and moderate your site’s very own forum using the plugins that we’ll list below—what’s more, some of them are even available for free!
Now that we’ve answered why you should use a plugin for your forum, let’s move on to what plugins to use. Without further ado, here are the top 8 plugins that we’ve found for making and managing a forum:
https://wordpress.org/plugins/bbpress/
Clocking in at a whopping 200,000+ active installations, bbPress is the uncontested king of forum plugins. Made by the creators of WordPress itself, bbPress is completely free and very easy to set up, letting anyone with even the most basic of WordPress knowledge establish and moderate their very own forum.
It is a simple and fast plugin that lets you create a forum with as little fuss as possible. However, that simplicity is a double-edged sword: it only offers a very basic set of features, which may turn off those that want a bit more control over their discussion board.
This somewhat-anemic feature set can be remedied by downloading one of bbPress’s many extensions and themes, which let you expand its basic features as well as spice up its relatively bland looks.
We’d recommend bbPress for WordPress newbies who just want to dip their toes into developing and moderating their own forum.
For more advanced users, however, you’re better off just installing a plugin that has a more comprehensive catalog of features and themes by default instead of combing through bbPress’s numerous extensions and themes just to find the right one for you.
https://wordpress.org/plugins/asgaros-forum/
With 10,000+ active installations, Asgaros Forum is a simple, feature-rich, and free alternative to bbPress. It’s also lightweight, which minimizes forum slowdowns and any other associated issues.
Asgaros Forum even lets you view and track forum statistics, manage posting permissions, and set up polls, among plenty of other features. Unfortunately, however, Asgaros Forum doesn’t have any extensions—once you’ve used all of these features, that’s it—you can’t add any additional functionalities.
You can try out Asgaros Forum just to test how it “feels” compared to something like bbPress. It’s quite easy to set up and has a hefty set of features, so why not try it out and see which one you like more?
https://wordpress.org/plugins/wpforo/
WpForo Forum is a free, slightly more advanced alternative to bbPress, allowing you to set up a forum where users can ask questions, vote on polls, subscribe to specific threads or topics (and get notifications), share discussions on social media, and so on.
WpForo offers four different forum layouts to choose from:
This plugin even works with BuddyPress (which we’ll discuss below), allowing you to have a forum and a social network for your users!
One downside to WpForo Forum, however, is that you’ll need to pay for more advanced features, such as ad management and polls. Also, newer users may feel overwhelmed with WpForo’s more advanced settings.
On the other hand, more advanced WordPress users who find bbPress to be a bit too simple might find themselves right at home with WpForo Forum’s more complex set of features. If this sounds like you, then take WpForo Forum for a spin—you might like what you find.
https://wordpress.org/plugins/simplepress/
Simple:Press claims on its WordPress page that it “brings enterprise-class forum capabilities to your WordPress site.” It isn’t kidding—it easily supports thousands of users and comes with a formidable set of free features:
To make the most of your Simple:Press installation, however, you might need to pay for its premium version ($199 per year for one website), which will let you inspect detailed analytics, run ads, and utilize plenty of other features, such as:
We highly recommend Simple:Press’ premium version for sites that already have a sizable user base, as a large number of users helps spur forum activity and discussions. If you’re just starting off, however, you’ll be better off with a simpler and more lightweight plugin.
https://wordpress.org/plugins/wp-discussion-board/
Discussion Board is a plugin that greatly simplifies the process of adding a forum to your WordPress site—it boasts a unique, one-click setup option that automatically creates the following pages to help you set your site’s forum up as quickly as possible:
You can tweak these pages to your liking, or leave them as they are—either way, your forum has all that it needs with these pages.
The free version comes with a simple yet useful set of features, including:
There’s also a Pro version available for $89 per year, which boasts a wider array of functionalities for your site, such as user profiles, media uploads, categories and tags, and widgets!
If you want to set up a basic forum for your site quickly and effortlessly, then Discussion Board might be a pretty solid plugin for you.
https://wordpress.org/plugins/buddypress/
Next up is BuddyPress, which offers a pretty unique feature: instead of managing your own forum, what about managing your own social network? BuddyPress—which is totally free, by the way—lets you do exactly that, allowing your users to create their own profiles and groups, add friends, and even send private messages to each other!
If you want a user-focused experience that allows your site’s users to foster their own sub-communities and groups as well as engage with one another on a level that’s quite simply unachievable on a simple forum or discussion board, then look no further than BuddyPress.
https://wordpress.org/plugins/cm-answers/
CM Answers is yet another unique forum plugin: it’s exclusively dedicated to a Q&A format. Think about sites like Stack Exchange or the now-defunct Yahoo! Answers—if you’ve ever wanted to set up a discussion board that’s solely for asking and answering questions, then CM Answers lets you do just that.
It allows your users to post questions and answers, vote on them, leave comments, and even upload files! As an admin, you can customize questions and answers, filter out any unwanted content, add your own answers, and easily keep track of users’ actions in your forum.
You can also purchase add-ons if you want some additional features, such as in-site transactions and an “ask an expert” feature.
We think this goes without saying, but if you want to build a discussion board that’s not just for asking and answering questions, then you’ll have to look elsewhere.
However, if you want a simple forum that’s built for Q&As and nothing else, CM Answers is the plugin for you.
Sabai Discuss is a premium alternative to CM Answers and offers an even more comprehensive Q&A-focused feature set for a one-time fee of $24. These features include, but are not limited to, the following:
With all of these features (and plenty of other ones), look no further than Sabai Discuss if you want a highly versatile, dedicated Q&A plugin that’s also very affordable!
You might be thinking, “Wow, that’s a lot of plugins. Which one should I pick?” Relax, we got you—here are the most important things to consider when picking a forum plugin:
When running an online forum, there are several best practices to keep in mind to ensure its success, such as the following:
As we’ve stated, weigh your options carefully! The best forum plugin for you depends on what you want to do with it.
For example, determining the purpose of your forum helps you pick between a dedicated Q&A plugin, like CM Answers, or a plugin with a broader scope of features, such as WpForo Forum.
If your site has a relatively small community, you’ll be fine with a lightweight plugin with a simple feature set, such as bbPress. But for a larger community, you might be better off with a plugin that has a more comprehensive set of functions, such as Simple:Press.
Keep your forum’s purpose and community at heart, and you’ll be able to capitalize on all of the benefits (and potential profits) that a forum brings!
Are you still yearning for more knowledge? Do you want to create (or upgrade) your own ecommerce site to better cater to all your users? Then check out our guide on the best ecommerce plugins for WordPress!
