bbPress provides you with a timeless, simple, elegant and streamlined discussion board. Both public and private board, easy to use and built to scale with your growing community.
bbPress is simple, yet one of the most powerfull forum software, which is build by contributors to the WordPress platform.
Install bbPress
Using bbPress on GMEngine is fairly simple, and requires only few steps.
We have taken out the often most anoying steps, of manually downloading and uploading the Plugins, but instead make it possible to click and install automatically.
bbPress do have competitors, like Asgaros Forum, wpForo Forum and Simple:Press.
Here are the steps to follow, to start configuring bbPress:
- Sign in to your WordPress console
- Click Plugins
- Search for bbPress
- Click Install
- Save the settings
Creating your bbPress Forum in WordPress
Once installed as above, the Forums, Topics and Replies menu items is in your left WordPress menu.
First, click on Forums -> Add New in the menu, which will take you to a screen similar to the general WordPress post edit area.
Setup your forum with a title and a short description of it – finalize by clicking publish.
Enabling access to your Forum in the Front End area
Now your forum is created, it is a matter of enabling the front-end part on your WordPress website.
Now, create a new WordPress page and title it “Forum”, or “Support forum”, anything as you like to make it clear for the user what the purpose of that page is.
Now, add the Shortcode for bbPress into your page:
[bbp-forum-index]
Again, remember to click on the Publish button, to save the changes and make your forum visible for all your users.
It is a good idea to add it to your menu, so the users easily can find it. That is done in your WordPress Admin through Appearance -> Menus.
Letting new users participate in your forum
You can enable your forum for new registrations / new users.
Do this through your WordPress Admin by clicking Settings -> General.
Check the box next to “Membership: anyone can register”.
To enable the user registration create a new page on your website with the shortcode:
[bbp-register]
Create a page for "Lost Password"
Users sometimes forget their password, and you do not want to manually reset them every single time.
To avoid this, bbPress have made an shortcode, for a page where the users can reset their login.
[bbp-lost-pass]
Manage your bbPress Settings
It is usually super complicated to setup forum software, bbPress however have a very simple configuration page.
To manage the settings, go to Settings -> Forums.
The standard configuration is a blueprint of the most commonly used, but you can change things if needed.
We suggest the Flooding is enabled with a 10 seconds delay, to avoid spammers from adding topics and replies through automated scripts.
The Edition option controls for how long the user can change their forum post after they are published. You can uncheck this option, but it would prevent users from correcting typo mistakes, or add additional to their posts.
User Roles
bbPress extends the already existing user roles from WordPress, by adding its own five user roles with different settings attached.
1) Keymaster
The keymaster is the owner of the website, or an administrator. The keymaster can create and delete forums, and create edit and delete all posts topics and forums.
2) Moderator
Can access to the moderation tool, to moderate forums, posts and topics.
3) Participants
Can create and edit their own posts.
4) Spectators
Only with read access in the public forum threads.
5) Blocked
Without access to any features or readabilities.
Other cool plugins
While bbPress is one of the smartest Forum plugins, we suggest you combine it with W3TC – W3 Total Cache.
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