This tutorial will show you how to add a forum to a WordPress blog. - Adding a forum to a WordPress blog has a number of benefits and the reason I initially started mine was simply to add a place where people could ask questions about my articles and tutorials or any questions that related to SEO and internet marketing, instead of using my contact page. While I’ve nothing against people contacting me through my contact form, I thought the forums would be a more appropriate place as other people could benefit from any answers I gave.

1. jackkarter.com http://jackkarter.com/how-to-add-a-forum-to-your-wordpress-blog/
How To Add A Forum To Your WordPress Blog
Forums are a great feature of any blog for a number of reasons. The reason I initially
started mine was simply to add a place where people could ask questions about my
articles and tutorials or any questions that related to SEO and internet marketing,
instead of using my contact page. While I’ve nothing against people contacting me
through my contact form, I thought the forums would be a more appropriate place as
other people could benefit from any answers I gave.
Reasons You Need To Have A Forum
There are a number of reasons why you would want to add a forum to a WordPress
blog. Because you are on this page, you have decided to do just that and have your own reasons but I’d thought I’d
add a couple of reasons you may not have thought of.
Interaction: It brings your readers together in a central location. Readers can interact, get to know each other and
share experiences and knowledge. Having this kind of resource can only benefit your website.
Questions: It can reduce the number of questions directed to you personally. In many cases, experienced
members are happy to participate and answers questions adequately on your behalf.
Content: It adds additional content to your website. The more relevant content you add to your site, the more
authority and traffic your site will get.
Branding: By repeatedly answering questions, you raise the awareness level of your branding.
Expert: By answering questions, you will be perceived as an authority on the subject.
Redirection: It allows you to redirect people who ask questions about a brand or product to an article on your site
where you may have affiliate links.
Content Source: You will often find, the similar questions popping up which can give you material for an article or
tutorial.
Product Promotion: You can have specific advertisements in specific forums forums which lead to a higher CTR
then you would normally expect.
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Forum Platforms
There are a number of different platforms available for WordPress but it’s really a matter of personal choice. Some
of them can be quite sophisticated with lots of features and others are quite simple to install and use. For this
exercise, I’m going to use bbPress but feel free to choose one from the following, all of which you should be able to
install from your cPanel. Personally, I suggest you start off with bbPress. You can install it and have it running in
minutes.
bbPress (Recommended)
phpBB
Simple Machines Forums
MyBB

2. Advanced Electron Forums
Vanilla Forums
PunBB
FluxBB
Phorum
FUDforum
MiniBB
Lets Get Started!
Ok, once you have downloaded your bbPress plugin and any others you want to use, install and activate the
bbPress plugin. Once you have done that, you will see This Image. Click “Go to forum settings”I generally leave all
the settings as standard here.

4. How easy is that! You have now installed a basic version of bbPress. Now we can move on to creating our forums,
topics etc and installing any additional plugins. In your sidebar, you will see some new tabs that relate to your
bbPress forums. Click the one that says, “Forums”, then click, “Create New Forum”.
Once you have clicked that button this page will appear. Fill in the title of your “Forum” and your “Description”.
Try to include your keywords in both as it’s good for search engines when indexing your website. You will want to
appear in the results for as many of your keywords as possible.
If you look to your right, you will see the “Forum Attributes Box” . If this is a “sub-forum” of another one, select
the “parent here and make any other changes you feel are necessary. Depending on where you want the forum to
appear in your list in terms of priority, you can set this here. 0 being the top forum, 1 being the second in the list etc.
Once you are done, hit “Publish”.
Just to explain if you don’t know anything about forums. You can have Forums, and other Forums
inside those with Topics inside. For example. You might have a Parent Forum called “Search Engine
Optimisation”. As a Sub-Forum inside that, you might have “Keyword Research”. Inside that Forum,
you might have a “Topic” you or a participant created, called “The Best Keyword Research Tools”.
Conversations are held within the Topics and not the Forums themselves.
Go ahead and create all the Forums you think you will need and add any sub-forums. If you wish, you can get the
conversation started by creating some topics. Questions are usually a way to get people involved. “What are your
favourite link building tools” etc. Click on “Topics” and then select, “New Topic”. Add the title of your question, the
details of your question, select the parent Forum and decide if you want it to be a “Sticky” Topic by selecting
“Type”. A sticky Topic is one thats always at the top and never moves down as other Topics are added. Then hit
“Publish”

5. To add a link to your Forums in your Menu bar and view them, click “Appearance”, then “Menus”. Add a custom
link, give it the URL of http://youerdomainname.com/forums/ (assuming you haven’t changed the “Forum Root”
which is normally, “Forums” in the settings page) and give it a title, like “Forums” or whatever you like. You
should now have a new forum up and running.
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Suggested Plugins
There are a lot of additional extras you can get with bbPress forums that come in the form of plugins. This is a list I
suggest you use to enhance the overall user experience of the forum and make the managing of it a little
easier. These are additional recommendations and not part of the bbPress plugin.
You can download all of these plugins in one go, as well additional as bonus materials you might find
useful, by clicking any of the social sharing links at the bottom of this page, or by clicking this quick-
link.
WP User Avatar: This plugin enables you to use any photo uploaded into your Media Library as an avatar. This
means you use the same uploader and library as your posts. No extra folders or image editing functions are
necessary. In addition, it allows users to use their Avatars as well and not just the standard forum images. Click to
reveal settings
bbPress Moderation: To help reduce spam in bbPress forums, this plugin will change the status of new topics and
replies to ‘pending’. Any pending topics/replies will be shown as ‘Awaiting Moderation’ until the administrator
approves publishes them. Click to reveal settings)
Sidebar Login: Sidebar-Login adds a useful login widget which you can use to login from in the sidebar of your
WordPress powered blog. No Settings Required.
GD bbPress Widgets: This comes with some widgets you can add to the sidebar of your forums. No Settings
Required.
GD bbPress Tools: This useful plugin allows you to add additional features including, BB short codes, quote reply
or a topic, user signatures with BBCode and HTML support, custom views, topic search, tool bar menu, and limit
access to the BBpress admin side. Click to reveal settings
GD bbPress Attachments: Attachments for forum topics and replies are handled through WordPress media library.
You can control file sizes from the main plugin settings panel, or you can do it individually for each forum you have
set. You can limit number of files user can attach for each topic and reply. Plugin can embed list of attached files
into topics and replies, and images can be displayed as thumbnails. All upload errors are logged and topic/reply
author and administrators can see those errors. Click to reveal settings
bbPress WP Tweaks: bbPress WP Tweaks replaces regular sidebar with forum specific sidebar. When forum page
loaded then forum specific sidebar will be displayed. If nothing in forum sidebar then regular sidebar will be shown.
If no sidebar displayed then change default template from plugin settings. you can choose which forum wrapper
template to use in plugin settings page. Click to reveal settings
bbPress Support Topic: A checkbox will be displayed to topic authors in order to let them define their topic as a
support one. Once on the topic page, the author, group admin / mod, or super admin will be able to manage the
status of the topics (Resolved, Not resolved, not a support topic). If you run bbPress 2.2.4, then the administrator
will also be able to manage the support topics from the Topics backend menu. Once on the admin edit screen of a

6. topic, in the first right metabox, he’ll be able to manage the status of the topic. No Settings Required.
Theme My Login: This plugin themes replaces the WordPress login, registration and forgot password pages
according to your current theme. It creates a page to use in place of wp-login.php, using a page template from your
theme. Also includes a widget for sidebar login.
TML General Settings Click To Reveal Settings
TML Email Settings Click To Reveal Settings
TML Redirection Settings Leave As Default if you wish
TML User Links Settings Leave As Default if you wish
TML Re-Captcha Settings Add If You wish by getteing your code here
TML Security Settings Click To Reveal Settings
TML Themed Profiles Settings Click To Reveal Settings
TML Moderation Settings Click To Reveal Settings
Jazz Up Your Forum With A Template
The out of the box bbPress works fine and looks ok. Some of you might want to have a forum that has a different
look and feel. Head over here for a list of templates .
Redirection Isssue
Whatever I tried, I could never get bbPress to redirect the forum users back to the page they were before they
logged in, they would always be redirected back to the landing page. Turns out it’s a bbPress issue. I found two
solutions to this.
1. Add this code to your login-form.php before the final </form>. (This one redirects back to the topic they were
on before logging in. Works in most themes but not all.)
<input type="hidden" name="re" value="<?php echo
"http://".$_SERVER['HTTP_HOST'].$_SERVER["REQUEST_URI"].'?'.$_SERVER["QUERY_STRING"];
?>" /> <input type="hidden" name="_wp_http_referer" value="<?php echo bb_get_option(
'uri' ) ?>" />
2. Add this to your function.php file (this one redirects back to the forum front page)
add_filter('login_redirect', 'plugin_admin_redirect'); function
plugin_admin_redirect($redirect_to, $url_redirect_to = '', $user = null) {
echo(the_permalink()); return '/'; }
Have Any Questions?
If you have any questions about this article and implementing a blog onto your website, head over to the forum
thats addressing this particular post here or if you have any general comments, scroll down to the comments box
and add it there, I’d love to hear your opinion on the subject!
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