WordPress is an astonishingly popular content management system for blogs and business websites. The platform versatility extends well beyond those basic uses.

In this WordPress Wednesday, we’ll take a look at 5 WordPress forum plugins. Forums may seem to be an outdated concept to some, but they are still quite applicable today.

Sites that use discussion forms for a variety of customer-centric purposes. Including feedback, support, product reviews. Which can generally encouraging a community around a product or service.

So online forums have grown more refined as well. Forums now incorporate tools like ranking systems, polls, and ways to more moderate users and stop spam.

Lastly, forums are a great source of indexable content, which helps you rank in search results. If you run a website on the WordPress platform, the quickest and easiest way to add a forum is adding a WordPress plugin so let us take a look at the following 5 forum plugins in this post.

1. bbPress

bbPress is the first plugin in this list. It uses the same core as WordPress to build your forum. So it integrates effortlessly with WordPress.

bbPress isn’t too rich in features. As it’s been built to be lean and fast, but many add-ons can extend the plugin’s functions. With a one-click install, it is simple to set up. And you can manage and moderate everything from one account. The templates are customisable. So you can get your forum to look the way you want.

You can source content for your forum with RSS feeds. Also, it helps users to create their forums and generate content. It comes with built-in support for Akismet.

bbPress is the plugin you need to add forums to posts and pages and to allow readers to leave a comment or to start a conversation. It is a great way to start a new topic and it encourages readers to join in the comments section allowing discussions to develop naturally.

2. wpForo Forum

The wp-Foro plugin can help you build any size of forums. This plugin offers three different layouts; a simple layout with forum and topic lists that show topic and post author avatars. An extended list that shows the next level of information as well, and a question-and-answer layout that serves as a discussion board.

The forum can be customised for colour, style and settings. It comes with options to fit in with your theme. You will find a built-in user group system with a user rating system. The drag and drop feature makes management easy. Also moderating the forum is easy with moderation tools. While users can create profiles, become friends and vote up or down any content.

The plugin is has a built-in SEO, a cache system, and anti-spam. Also you can migrate data from different forum plugins too.

3. Asgaros Forum

Asgaros Forum is a fast and simple forum plugin. This plugin is easy to set up a light-weight discussion forum. All you’ll need to do is create a new page and add a shortcode then you done!

To have access to the forum just add the page that you create to your site navigation. Thereafter, you can manage posts, topics, and guest postings, create subforums and user groups.

From the user edit screen on the dashboard, you can ban users. Additionally, you can track activity within the forum, upload files, moderate, grant permissions, and access stats.

Asgaros supports many languages and multi-sites and is developer-friendly with many hooks and filters.

4. Simple:Press

Simple:Press is an all in one WordPress forum plugin that you can get. The plugin comes with lots of features. You can now adequately approach the creation of a forum that will call for a grand addition to your site or blog.

In the plugin, you’ll find all sorts of stuff, such as forum groups, sub-forums, avatars, restrict user access, post moderation and lastly rankings. You do not need anything else other than Simple:Press to strongly manage and maintain a forum. It works with all WordPress themes, including multi-site networks and it easily integrates with other plugins.

5. Discussion Board

Adding the Discussion Board plugin is just useful for any type of website whether it’s Job boards, school websites, technical forums, e-commerce websites in adding a helpful forum is a useful option.

Once the plugin activates, it will automatically create pages and insert short codes to have a working forum attached to your site. The plugin allows you to permit users to log in and register on the front-end and cuts down on spam. While you can register new users in a specific role, assign various levels of access to different roles, and block registrations from specific emails.

The plugin comes with simple styles to match any theme, includes short codes for topic archives, recent topics, and log-in form. And allows you to include or exclude any icons. Users can make edits to their comments.

There’s a pro version of the plugin that adds additional features like multiple discussion boards, set status for topics, categories, and tags, image uploads, user profiles, and the WYSIWYG editor.