What Is bbpress; bbpress Features and How To Use It?

What Is bbPress Plugin?

bbPress is a free, open-source WordPress platform software for forums. It can be installed on a WordPress site as one WordPress plugin. bbpress tutorial was developed by Matt Mullenweg, the co-founder of WordPress, as he was frustrated with the forum management software that ran the official WordPress support forums and its limitations. Since then, a WordPress-based platform has been designed and developed. On December 28, 2004, new forum software was released as bbPress v0.7.2.

At first, bbPress was designed to be the standalone piece of software with its database table as it could make copies of the code and start independent development. bbpress features were remotely stable and functional, but as bugs were discovered in WordPress, they became much harder to maintain. On September 12, 2011, it was decided that bbPress 2.0 should shift from being a standalone piece of software to a plugin for WordPress.

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What Is bbPress Used For?

bbPress can help you add a forum to WordPress, which will enable you to use many of WordPress’s native features. As your forum is a native part of your WordPress site, you can benefit from the WordPress user registration system and the vast selection of WordPress plugins available. Using a bbPress demo could also help understand the concept.

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bbPress Features

• Customizable templates
• Fully integrated
• User-friendly interface
• Light-weighted
• Multi-site forums
• Easy setup

Why choose bbPress?

Since bbPress was developed by WordPress for WordPress, the main advantage of bbpress features is that it uses the core of your existing WordPress – adding a community to any WP blog or website is as simple as adding a plugin.
bbPress inherits your currently active theme styles (where it can) and works well with most default WordPress themes. This software is lightweight and fast compared to other popular open source community software, has customizable templates, and works with most WordPress standard themes.

Who uses bbPress?

You are an excellent company when choosing bbPress to strengthen your WordPress community. Some of the largest companies and organizations globally have used bbPress since launching the software, such as Dropbox. Mojo Themes. 

Would you like to check out some of the other bbPress-sponsored forums before starting and creating your own social space or support desk? Take a look at some of the great emails that bbPress currently uses for meetings, support desks, client communities, etc.

Benefits of Using bbPress

• bbPress is a free app, and you wouldn’t have to pay a dime to use it.
• It is entirely open for all users, and you can download or modify all codes associated with this software with no limitation bothering you.
• bbPress is more like a community project, and many people could get involved in the process of operating it.
• Another advantage of the bbPress forum is that it needs a bit of code to run it, making it much faster and more secure than its rivals.
• More than 100 dedicated bbPress plugins could add functional features to your site.
• A well-run forum helps you generate traffic on general sites and gain a reputation in your industry.
• bbPress could work its magic the minute you install it, and when you decide to get rid of it, the deletion process will not harm your website at all.

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How To Use bbpress?

If you want to use bbpress to run a forum in WordPress, you should first learn how to install it.

Requirements to Install bbPress Forum

If you already have a WordPress site where you would like to add a forum, you can skip the section. On the other side, if you just get started, read on. First, you will have to register for a hosting web account. This is where all of the files will be held for your online WordPress site.

You would need to use a domain name, too. That will be the address on your website’s internet and what users should type in their browsers to find your online forum. You will follow the instructions and complete the installation once you have signed up for hosting. After setting up the WordPress site and installing all the plugins, you will be able to install the bbPress forum plugin. Now you are ready to launch your online community!

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How to Create a Forum With bbPress?

Here are the steps that you should follow to add forum to WordPress with bbPress. If you can follow these steps, you can get the job done with ease.

Step 1: How To Install bbPress Forum in WordPress?

 

One of the common questions that come to mind is how to use bbpress features? As mentioned above and earlier, the bbpress tutorial is a lightweight plugin designed to build a forum through WordPress plugins on an existing WordPress site or launch a new website. Integration is simple, and it can increase your website content significantly.

 

 

 

To learn how to add the bbPress forum to the page, follow these steps:

1. navigate to the Plugins list
2. Tap the “Add New” button and check for bbPress in the Folder.
3. Select it and click “Install,”
4. adding the plugin files to the WordPress code on the site.
5. Turn on the plugin then by clicking “Activate” under its name.

If enabled, it is possible to configure the bbpress tutorial for general forum setups. The plugin incorporates three different types of posts: individual pages, subjects, and responses. Those are displayed in your WordPress dashboard’s sidebar menu. You can set up only one forum on the same WordPress domain or add multiple forums. You will handle all aspects of the forums you build from your WordPress Admin Dashboard. Options include customizing the URL of your website and how it shows threads and topics.

As well as its standard configuration options, bbPress also provides a range of shortcodes and bits of code that can be directly inserted into a website or post to add highly unique functionality. bbPress shortcodes can be copied directly from the bbPress codex and pasted into any WordPress page to monitor how the website shows forums, topics, and responses. Shortcodes also allow users to add elements on specified pages such as search forms, login and register screens, and view forum statistics.

The bbPress forum also comes with five widgets, which can be attached to any WordPress theme’s sidebar or footer. These include a list of title choices, forums and lists of most recent responses and subjects, and a login feature. The login widget features a simple signup form containing shortcodes for registering and missing passwords in WordPress.

Step 2: Create the Main Forum Page

Upon installation of bbPress, you will be able to see the welcome screen. From there, you should develop the main forum page. There are two methods available to do it.

Method 1: Creating a Parent Forum With the Help of bbPress

You need to pick the Forum option out of three options that you can see. Then you can click on the button named “New Forum”. Now you will come to a new page, which has multiple options. This is where you should enter the forum name and description. Make sure that you indicate the forum as “Closed” so that no other person will be able to post on it. Once you are done with making changes, you can hit on the “Publish” button.

Method 2: Creating the Forum Index Page

You will need to come to a new page and then provide a suitable name for it. Then you should copy and below-mentioned code to the page.

“[bbp-forum-index]”

Next, you should go ahead and hit on the “Publish” button. Make sure that you stick to just one method out of these two. Otherwise, you will end up creating two forums on your WordPress site.
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Step 3: Add the Forum to the Main Menu

Now is the time to add a forum to the main menu. This is where you should get to the WordPress Dashboard, go to Appearance, and then pick Menu. You will need to click on the option named “Add Menu Items”. Then you can select the items that you want to add to the menu. Once you add items to the menu, you can hit on “Save Menu” button.

Step 4: Creating Forum Topics

To create forum topics, you will need to get to the WP Admin Dashboard, select “Topics”, and then pick “Add New Topic”. This is not mandatory because privileged users on your forum will be able to create forum topics independently.

Step 5: User Registration

You can allow interested users to register to the forum on their own. This is where you should get to the WordPress Admin Dashboard, click on Settings, go to General, and then select Membership. You can allow anyone to sign up with your website as a member. Then you can save the settings.

Step 6: Creating Lost Password Page

You will have to use the following shortcode to create the lost password page within the forum.

“[bbp-lost-pass]”
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bbPress Forum Roles

Now you know how to add a forum to WordPress with bbPress. You should also figure out that there are some roles for members in the forum. If you are a complete beginner to online forums, these roles will look unfamiliar to you. That’s why we thought of sharing more details with you on the forum roles. Make sure that you have a good understanding of these forum roles, as they can be beneficial in the future.

1- Keymaster

Keymaster is a bbPress forum that is pretty much equivalent to the WordPress admin. A person under this role will not just be able to create topics or edit topics but will also be able to create and edit other people’s issues. On the other hand, the key master can manage tags, create new forums, and change the global settings of the online forum.

2- Moderator

A moderator can access all privileges of the key master. However, a moderator will not delete other users who have signed up with the forum. Forum admins usually get moderators to moderate content published within the forum.

3- Participant

A forum participant will be a user who is capable of creating topics. Moreover, a forum participant can comment on the issues that are already completed as well.

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4- Spectator

A forum spectator will only be able to view topics. In other words, a forum spectator has read-only access to the topics. However, it is still possible to comment on the topics if the comments section is allowed. Or else, there is no possibility to comment on any subject as well.

5- Blocked

If a user is blocked, he/she will not be able to do anything on the forum. Some of the blocks are temporary, whereas others are permanent. A key master or a moderator will be able to block a user in the forum.

Things You Could Do With Bbpress

If you plan to build your online community or forum using bbPress, you may need to know about its capability.

Visibility Settings

You can set the visibility for each of your forums. A forum could be set as public where it’s open to the public eye, or it could be set as private where it is only visible to the registered users; it could be hidden so that only the key masters and moderators could see the forum.

Registration Settings

If you want users to register a post in your forum, you must determine whether the registration should be manual or automatic. It’s important to mention that automatic enrollment is much easier and faster for users, but it’ll give you less control over who is contributing and posting, leading to spam. Although manual registration requires a higher admin level, you’ll have complete control over the posting panel.

Access Setting

You can determine whether users need to be registered to use your forums or not; this way, you can control the registration process. You can choose the public viewing/ public posting, where anyone could view your website and leave a comment, or you could choose public viewing/ registered user posting; in this case, the public can view your website, but only the registered ones can post. The last option is private viewing/ registered user posting, where users should be registered if they want to view or post.

bbPress Plugins To Add Additional Functionality

Here are WordPress plugins available online as they come with unique features even a non-techy guy could work with.

bbPress Access

bbPress access is a type of WordPress plugin which enables you to restrict access to your forum page for some specific users. If you would not allow some users to access a page, you can redirect them to any page you want.

Pricing

bbPress Access pricing can charge up to $25 for general features and extended support up to 12 months; you will need to pay an extra $7.88. besides the basic version of this bbpress tutorial , you can pay $299 for a more featured package.

Smart bbPress verify

Smart bbPress verify is a WordPress bbPress plugin for people eager to sell their products as they can add a forum to ensure that the customers are required to enter a valid code to purchase their product.

bbPress Activity Tracker

It is a kind of WordPress plugin which could analyze and track all of the forum activities. It will alert you of any kind of cyber threats. bbPress Activity Tracker could help you enhance your forum as it could be an analytics tool for your forum.

Do BuddyPress and bbPress Work Together?

There are similarities between BuddyPress and bbPress WordPress, but there are differences. BuddyPress is designed in a way to help you build a sort of “social network”. It enables your users to:

• Build public member profile with details
• Send private messages to other members
• Join groups
• Receive notifications