I am looking to add a forum to my wordpress blog, I was looking at BBpress but then saw a new one called WPForo it looks nice and simple, BBPress is the long standing forum mod but I am looking for a forum simple doesn't bloat has good safety anti spam features and you can ad Adsense to it.
Hi @wolfkinara,
I found this answer at Quora, But I made it better:
Here are the main criterias to choose a WordPress forum plugin.
- Support and Stable Updates
- Make sure the forum plugin is SEO friendly. Because forums are mostly used to increase for SEO and engagement.
- Performance is important. Make sure a forum plugin works well with thousands of posts and visitors.
- Spam protection. Forums are the most spammed placed. Find the best protected plugin.
- Style and Design customization. Plugin should be very easy to customize or even it should be ready to use without customization.
- Forum should bring all features for a simple community (built-in registration, login and password reset pages).
- Rich member profile features. member activity, etc…
- Easy moderation tools for forums and topics.
- User Roles and Forum Access control. This makes life dozens time easier.
- Responsive Design, Mobile friendly and RTL ready (for RTL users)
- User engagement. Member reputation, badges, post likes, social login and etc…
So lets see this for the mentioned WordPress forum plugins, the red is bad / absent, the orange is poor, the green is excellent.
bbPress - 1 (+/-), 2 (+), 3 (+/-), 4 (+), 5 (-), 6 (-), 7 (-), 8 (+), 9 (+/-), 10 (+/-), 11 (-)
wpForo - 1 (+), 2 (+), 3 (+), 4 (+), 5 (+), 6 (+), 7 (+), 8 (+), 9 (+), 10 (+), 11 (+)
Both are ready to use plugins. bbPress is an easy and light plugin for simple discussions, it also can be used for any kind of discussions but it requires more customization and additional plugin installation, also it doesn't have standard pack of forum features. wpForo is full-fledged platform. It’s like an “all in one forum pack” for small and large forums and communities.
I took some time doing this research before I set up my forum.
Wpforo was recommended everywhere, and it seemed the most modern and fresh forum software not just on wordpress, but any other forum platform.
I downloaded it, liked it, bought all the paid add ons too, and I am glad I did.
There is very little this software does not do, no notifications, but you can use it alongside BB press for that kind of thing. I use just Wpforo, and its quality.
And any time there is a problem, or you cant figure something out, the guys here are always happy to help.
Wpforo for the win! lol
