Hello wpForo Team,
I hope this message finds you well. I am writing as a Professional plan subscriber to report a few issues I have encountered with the recently introduced AI features, along with some feedback and feature requests.
Bug Reports
1. Automated Topic Generation – Delay Issue
The Automated Topic Generation feature appears to be running with a noticeable delay. I suspect this may be related to a WordPress timezone mismatch, though I am not entirely certain. If there is a known fix or workaround for this, I would greatly appreciate your guidance.
2. New Topic Creation – Not Responding
When I attempt to trigger New Topic Creation manually as an administrator using the "Run Now"(i use korean, so not sure enlgish term on it ;)) option, there is no response or visible action. No new topics are being generated. This feature does not appear to be functioning at this time.
(Note: Auto Reply to Topics works correctly when triggered manually — topics are generated as expected.)
3. Bot Reply – Menu Bar Not Appearing
I have enabled the Bot Reply feature in the settings, and while other Bot Reply sub-menus are visible and active, the Bot Reply menu bar itself is not appearing on the forum front end.
I do have significant customizations in CSS and JavaScript on my site, which I considered as a potential cause — however, since other menus are displaying correctly on that class field. I believe this may be a separate issue. Further investigation may be needed on your end.
Feature Requests & Feedback
IP Display for Administrators
First, I want to express my sincere appreciation for your positive response to my earlier suggestion regarding IP address display for administrators. I would love to know if this feature has been added to your update roadmap.
Prompt Input for New Topic Creation
The Auto Reply to Topics feature includes a prompt field (up to 120 characters), which allows me to guide the AI output to some extent — and it works quite well. I would love to see a similar prompt input option added to the New Topic Creation feature, as it would allow for much more relevant and controlled content generation.
General Feedback on AI Features
Overall, I am genuinely impressed with the direction these AI features are heading. There is a lot of room for growth, and I want to thank the wpForo team for building and offering these capabilities. I look forward to seeing how you develop.
One Additional Request (PS)
I would like to humbly ask whether it might be possible to make the AI Chat feature available under the Professional plan, even in a limited capacity. In my view, AI Chat is effectively a killer feature that could drive significant user engagement.
My site is currently operating at a loss, so upgrading to a higher plan solely for AI Chat is financially difficult at this stage. That said, I fully understand that as usage grows, a plan upgrade would be a natural next step — I just hope there may be room to experience the feature at the Professional tier for now.
Thank you sincerely for your continued support and development efforts.
Best regards
Hello wpForo Team,
Regarding New Topic Creation, I am happy to report that this issue has been resolved on my end. That said, I would like to share some honest feedback from my experience with the feature. Defining a clear theme for the generated topics proved more challenging than I expected, and the difficulty increased noticeably depending on whether the content was in English or Korean — consistency across languages remains a hurdle. Since the AI is essentially creating content from nothing without external context, there are naturally some limitations in the output. I believe the feature would benefit significantly from more proactive use of web search integration, as well as a larger prompt input space to give administrators greater control over the direction of generated content.
On the other hand, I have been genuinely impressed by the Auto Reply to Topics feature — it has surpassed my expectations in terms of quality. It appears to make effective use of the forum's internal content (RAG), and the replies feel contextually relevant and well-constructed. I believe this feature will only get better as the forum grows and accumulates more posts, and I look forward to seeing that development.
Regarding the Boxed Layout, I have one small UX suggestion: it would be a wonderful improvement if clicking anywhere within the box area directed users to the corresponding forum, rather than requiring a click specifically on the title. This would make navigation feel more seamless and intuitive.
Thank you sincerely for your continued support and development efforts.
Best regards
Hi @helloman,
Thank you very much for the detailed feedback!
Please see my comments below.
1. Automated Topic Generation – Delay Issue
The Automated Topic Generation feature appears to be running with a noticeable delay. I suspect this may be related to a WordPress timezone mismatch, though I am not entirely certain. If there is a known fix or workaround for this, I would greatly appreciate your guidance.
The delay you're experiencing with Automated Topic Generation is normal and expected behavior due to how WordPress cron works. This is not a bug or timezone issue - it's a fundamental limitation of WordPress's scheduling system.
WordPress doesn't have a "real" cron system. Instead, it uses a pseudo-cron that only runs when someone visits your website. Here's what this means:
- No guaranteed execution time - If your task is scheduled per hour but no one visits the site more than one hour, the task won't run until first visit.
- Depends on site traffic - Low-traffic sites experience longer delays because WordPress cron needs a page load to trigger
3. Bot Reply – Menu Bar Not Appearing
I have enabled the Bot Reply feature in the settings, and while other Bot Reply sub-menus are visible and active, the Bot Reply menu bar itself is not appearing on the forum front end.
...
I'm sorry but I didn't follow you, what do you mean saying "Bot Reply Menu Bar".
IP Display for Administrators
First, I want to express my sincere appreciation for your positive response to my earlier suggestion regarding IP address display for administrators. I would love to know if this feature has been added to your update roadmap.
This is not added yet.
Prompt Input for New Topic Creation
The Auto Reply to Topics feature includes a prompt field (up to 120 characters), which allows me to guide the AI output to some extent — and it works quite well. I would love to see a similar prompt input option added to the New Topic Creation feature, as it would allow for much more relevant and controlled content generation.
You can use the Topic Theme/Focus field, it's very close to the Reply Generator's "Response Guidelines" field.
I would like to humbly ask whether it might be possible to make the AI Chat feature available under the Professional plan, even in a limited capacity. In my view, AI Chat is effectively a killer feature that could drive significant user engagement.
I'm sorry but this cannot be changed. The feature-to-plan relationship is a very large structure and based on a large infrastructure dependencies. The whole AI service is already designed this way and cannot be easily changed, this may even break the business model not only the technical aspects.
Regarding the Boxed Layout, I have one small UX suggestion: it would be a wonderful improvement if clicking anywhere within the box area directed users to the corresponding forum, rather than requiring a click specifically on the title. This would make navigation feel more seamless and intuitive.
This will be available in wpForo v3.0.0 today.