About vBulletin and phpBB design: I'd encourage you to take a fresh look at what those platforms actually look like today: vBulletin — You can see a live demo here: — It still feels dated with a layout that hasn't fundamentally changed in many years. Many communities had a well-known discussion about vBulletin's release, and the general consensus was that it still feels behind modern web standards. To tell the truth there is no significant changes in XenForo design either. phpBB — Their default "prosilver" theme has barely changed in over a decade. You can see it yourself on their official demo: The reality is that traditional forum software like vBulletin and phpBB has largely stagnated in design. What looked modern in 2010 looks outdated today. wpForo 3.0 is a WordPress-native forum that benefits from the entire WordPress ecosystem modern themes and now AI-powered features that none of these traditional platforms offer.

Hi @veganostomy and @memphisguru, Thank you for your feedback! Please note that all AI features are disabled by default. You should connect to AI Service to turn on the AI features. Even after the connection every single AI feature in wpForo 3.0 is optional and fully controllable. Nothing is enabled by default without your permission, and you have granular control over which features to turn on or off through the wpForo AI Features admin page. But I'd also like to clarify that AI in wpForo is not mainly about robotic replies on your forum. The real power is in the dozens of behind-the-scenes features that make the human experience much smoother: Semantic search that helps your members find answers even when they don't know the exact keywords, Instant topic summaries so users can catch up on long discussions without reading 200 replies, Smart suggestions that point people to existing answers before they create duplicate topics, Real-time translation that lets your community speak across 100+ languages, AI-powered spam and toxic content moderation that keeps your forum clean without constant manual work from you and your moderators.   Forums have always been the richest source of real human knowledge on the internet, millions of genuine questions, answers, and discussions written by real people over many years. AI thrives on exactly this kind of content, and wpForo 3.0 uses it to make all that collective knowledge more accessible and useful for your members. The result is that people find what they need faster, engage more deeply, and keep coming back, which is exactly what brings new life to forums. So think of AI in wpForo not as a robot replacing human connection, but as a powerful tool that amplifies it. You stay in full control, and your community stays human.  

Hi gVectors, I am using wpForo on my website where I publish various news and related content. Unfortunately, I have a few individuals who, over the course of several years, have systematically copied everything I publish and reposted it on their own copy-website. These individuals have not registered as users on my website or in the forum, but I have identified their IP addresses. I would like to emphasize that I do not want to restrict the content so that it is only available to logged-in members, as this would have a significant negative impact on my website. Of course, I could simply block the unwanted IP addresses, but that would only be a temporary solution. They would just continue using other IP addresses. My idea is therefore to solve this challenge in a different way: by allowing me, in the wpForo admin area, to enter unwanted IP addresses and assign an optional delay to them—so that these visitors can only see forum posts after a specified time delay. Such a delay could, for example, be measured in hours or days. Would it be possible for you to implement such a feature either directly in the forum or as an add-on?Ideally, this functionality should apply consistently across the forum itself, forum listings, widgets, and RSS feeds. Thank you very much in advance—and thank you especially for a great forum. Kind regards KFJ1972

I agree. Ours has been running for five years, with a decent sized community and it’s scaring nicely: We’ve also purchased quite a few add ons as we’ve grown to improve the user experience. highly recommended, and looking for 3.0.

Hi there!   You have created a really good add-on, and I would like to work with gVectors in the future to purchase its extended functionality, but I have encountered a question that is causing me some confusion. When registering on the forum, the user's Login is used by default as their Nickname. In turn, the user's Nickname is used as the default URL Address Identifier. For example: I registered on this forum with the username “Dum.” My nickname automatically became @dum. Now, when you go to my profile page, the URL Identifier will be displayed in the address bar, which means that my Nickname will be displayed in the address bar and, consequently, my Login will also be displayed there. In addition, my nickname and login will be displayed in the forum footer, in the “Our newest member” line. I am attaching screenshots. I am not allowed to change my Nickname after registration. This means that all users will still be able to find out my Login by simply going to my profile page, as my Login will be displayed in the address bar. Okay! To avoid a similar situation on my forum, I added an additional “Nickname” field to the registration form so that users could immediately set a Nickname for themselves during registration that is different from their Login. But wpForo still sets a Nickname that's the same as the Login. And again, any user can see my Login in the address bar when they go to my profile page. However, I encountered another problem. Everything goes fine during registration. A new Nickname, which differs from the Login, is set directly in WordPress, but it is not set in wpForo. Okay! I decide to check if I can change the user's nickname on the profile page in vpForo. I change the nickname and it changes in WordPress. Everything is fine. Then I decide to check if I can change the forum user's Nickname using the WordPress dashboard. I change the Nickname in WordPress and... the Nickname does not change on the wpForo profile page. I reread several times all the similar topics on your forum that I could find. I cleared the cache as described here I don't have any caching plugins installed. I deleted user caches. I synchronized users, updated their statistics, and flushed permalinks. Nothing helped.   !! The reason why wpForo does not respond to nickname changes in the WordPress dashboard is as follows: When changing the nickname in the WordPress panel, an entry is made in the table $wpdb->usermeta with the meta key "nickname". In turn, when changing the nickname on the wpForo profile page, changes are made to the table $wpdb->users with the meta key "user_nicename". WordPress table relations allow to replace the "nickname" metakey when the "user_nicename" metakey changes. As a result, when changing the nickname in the WordPress dashboard, only the value of the usermeta table changes, while the users table retains the value set by wpForo. In this thread, @robert says that all WordPress plugins (e.g. BuddyPress) and even the WordPress use Nicknames in user profile URLs? So, please let me know if this is a security issue why thousands of plugins and the WordPress use the nickname in public places, in the user @mentioning and in User URLs? If you click on Article Author link on a regular WordPress article you'll go to WordPress user page. Just take a look on the URL, it consists of your nickname. So the nickname is already public, even disabling wpForo will not help you make nicknames private (unless you use custom solutions). Indeed, nicknames are used for display in user URLs, and there is no problem with this, PROVIDED that the nickname is not equal to the Login. This thread provides a good example of users mistakenly entering their email address in the “login” field, making it accessible to all other users. Usually, when people register an account somewhere, they expect that their login will be known only to them and will not be displayed publicly. So, the fact that the email was displayed in the address bar in this case is definitely not a user error.   So yes, it's a real security vulnerability.   This raises several questions: 1. Are you planning to change anything with the algorithms for displaying user URLs? Although you claim that there are no problems with this, the forum has quite a lot of topics with complaints about the display of Logins in the address bar and requests to fix this. However, you have been ignoring this for several years. Do you really think that displaying the login in the address bar is normal? Taking into account the changes that have occurred in legislation on the protection of rights, the described problem does not make wpFor attractive. 2. Please tell me where I can find the function that is responsible for relationship nicknames on the vpForo user page with wpdb->users -> "user_nicename". And can I use this function to change this relationship to a relationship with $wpdb->usermeta -> "nickname". Since there is currently no other solution than to hide user logins from public access without using custom solutions. And then at least by adding a new field to the registration form, it will be possible to achieve the desired result. 3. Or perhaps you can suggest another way to solve this issue that could be implemented now?   Thanks!                       < span style="color: #666;"> Attachment :  screen_1.JPG

@robert Oh, thanks for replying back to me. I find this news rather upsetting as I spent quiet a lot of effort making the AI moderation plugin for wpForo over the past 3 months. Yesterday I did a major re-write of how the moderation will be handled with different hooks, which I haven't yet uploaded to github, because it would be without first testing it a bit. Perhaps will your team will be interested in contacting me, and look at how we did things differently? I was hoping to capitalize on the opportunity by creating a free plugin with a premium version. I did this after my website did not have any AI moderation features, and given that it has been 3 years since AI first became popularized, I reckoned that the AI moderation features were not in development.

Dang... I was really hoping there was something I could do on my end by tweaking and/or adding code. I think I am really wanting bits from both the RecentTopics.php and RecentPosts.php widget to display what I am looking for. Recent Topics has the link to first unread built in, but will not show the most recent comment. I am also not fond of it showing the topic creator and when it was created. Especially when a topic could be 5 years old. The Recent Post widget shows all the info I want, but will not link to the first unread post. I currently use the shortcode, but using it entails a lot of hiding unwanted content within the CSS and with the behavior of jumping down the page to the most recent post even if there is content above it. A problem I describe earlier this year in THIS THREAD. So I have been investigating any option I may have to get the dates and behavior that I am wanting. But no success.   Has there been any thoughts of moving away from the Legacy Widgets for wpForo? The legacy widgets are getting more and more difficult to use along side of the newer Gutenburg Blocks. This I not just wpForo, there are still a tons of plugins that still use them and it gets harder and harder to work with them. I have noticed there are times when I save a wpForo widget and those changes do not actually save. Sometimes I have to go in to the backend and change the value in order to get something to save. So I just think that these Legacy Widgets are running out of time fast on Wordpress.    

I have WPforo on my site, but the forum has been closed for years. I just discovered a problem on the home page and can't find answers to my questions on Google. I have some strange code on the home page that should display avatars, but instead I get this (see screenshot). If anyone can help me solve this problem, thank you. < span style="color: #666;"> Attachment : Screenshot_2025-10-28_15-21-19.jpg

I have been using WP Dark Mode by WPPool for a few years. It's great site wide but you are correct about the text box. I have never been able to get the text box to work and gave up a long time ago. < span style="color: #666;"> Attachment :  Screenshot-2025-10-24-at-1.00.49-PM.png

@wpforo-support Thank you for the suggestions. I will try these potential fixes. Also do you know any developers who are very famiiar with wpforo problems? Over the years, about 99 percent of the problems I have on my website involve wpforo. That is expected, my forum is large and somewhat busy, so I am not blaming the app, which I love. But most developers don't know how to figure out what is wrong. I I need a developer who understands wpforo.com plugin and how it integrates with a wordpress website. I would so appreciate finding someone who can help. The "like" button also hadn't worked for at least a year.

Hello, To start off, im an extremely green newb when it comes to WP. Been a sys admin for over thirty years and built a couple of web sites but im really on a sever learning curve with this. Im trying to insert the wpforo latest posts on my frontpage but I cant seem to make it work with the NewsMash theme. No matter what way I try to insert into the home page, it keeps coming up in a column and not the page width. Ive tried making it a widget and then inserting it, I tried to edit a new template, I even got desperate that I tried using an ad inserter to put the code in and each time I end up making the site a mess. Can someone give me some pointers on doing this and make no assumptions I will know how to do everything so I can make this work? I would really appreciate it. Screen shot of the site attached. < span style="color: #666;"> Attachment :  utvspot.png

Here is what I envision. A developer, or one of the people here who are very familiar with the database structure here, would compose an SQL query that would do the following: Join the appropriate tables that would contain all the fields in the members list. Select all the users Display the fields that are in the members list, the sort doesn't matter, I'll do that in the csv or a spreadsheet. Execute that query and let me export that list to a csv. As a bonus, select all users more than 2 years since last login (or never) AND who have zero posts. For those users add them to the usergroup "Flagged". Execute that query and let me export that list to a csv. Then I can modify that query to delete all those users after I review in a spreadsheet. I would test this query in my mirror website before doing this in my main production website. For someone familiar with the database tables, and with SQL, this shouldn't be that difficult or even time-consuming. I understand SQL and phpmyadmin I just don't have a mind to write code. There is some implied context and knowledge, for example, there is no 'users' table with the 'wpforo' table prefix, so I assume it uses the Wordpress users tables (users and meta). But how is the wpforo ID related? IDK. How do you display the "Display Name", "Login", "Email"? And then display the wpforo info (I think) such as "Group", "Status", "Last Login", and "Forum Posts"? You have to 'join' the appropriate tables and I don't know all the relationships and contents (fields within the tables). This is the secret sauce that I need someone to figure out and build the SQL query. It should be relatively easy for someone familiar but impossible for a mere mortal like me. With tons of respect, Jerry in Houston, Texas

I don't see any option to export the members list. Can someone build an SQL query I can run in phpmyadmin to export the entire members list to a csv file? My goal is to review that list and modify the query to change the usergroup to "flagged" for any member who has not logged in within 2 years and has never posted. Once I have those in that usergroup, and do a final review, I would like to delete them all. Is this a reasonable approach to cleaning out old members?

I could not find a way to automatically close topics after a certain time period, so I'm suggesting the idea here. One way to help initiate discussions in a community forum is by encouraging new topics to be created by the users. New topics get more attention, especially if you are sharing new topics in various social media channels. In my experience running a forum since 2010, if a user adds a post to an old topic from years ago, it doesn't get the attention that a brand new topic on the same subject would generate. My suggestion would be to have settings for allowing topics to close after a specified time period. Even better, it would be great if that time period could be based upon the date of the last reply in the topic, rather than the original topic date. Perhaps there would be a secondary setting that would allow the admin to set the time period from the original topic date or the latest reply date. For example: let's say a topic is started today, 2025-08-01 and is followed by several replies over the course of a week or so. The last reply is posted on 2025-08-09. A couple of example scenarios could be: Set the auto-close date to 1 year after the original topic date. This would mean that the topic closes on 2026-08-01. Set the auto-close date to 1 year after the last reply date. This would mean that the topic closes on 2026-08-09. Using example scenario #2 above would allow the topic to prove its staleness for one year after the last reply, thus making it feasible to close it permanently. Thank you for your consideration! 😊

I have been using the standard Kadence Theme header on my site for a few years now. The wpForo links within the menu work great. But now I am wanting to use the Kadence Block Header that is build a bit different. I have it built on my staging site, but I am having problems with wpForo menu shortcodes for menu links. For instance on my current site using the old school theme menu, the login link (and other wpForo dynamic links) will properly populate the /%wpforo-login%/ dynamic link. So that link will look like this on the live site. But on my staging site in my attempt to use the Kadence Header Block instead of the standard menu, the /%wpforo-login%/ dynamic link does not populate and the link ends up looking like this. This obviously bring a user to a page that gives a 404 Bad Request error. So I thought I would start here and see if there is anything I can do on the wpForo side. Has anyone troubleshooted a Block Header vs a standard WP header? The Kadence Block Header allows much more customization vs the standard one which is why I would love to use it. Thoughts? Main site link: Stanging site link: More info on the Kadence Header Block