Does anyone have experience creating a public forum for an online community using WordPress? I’m looking for the best forum software that integrates with WordPress.
For context and background, this individual wants the forum built like the World Economic Forum’s “My Forum” section, where you can participate in ongoing discussions and see the latest news or topics based on interests: [https://www.weforum.org/my-forum/]). She loves the functionality and visual aesthetic of this forum. I understand this is custom built, and am looking for a software that can yield this type of design + functionality on WordPress.
I attached a few screenshots from behind the login on WEForum and how the topics and discussion threads are visual (not just text based like help forums, for example).
Any information on what the best forum software to integrate with WordPress is for online discussions would be so helpful! I’m also not sure if its better to host externally and link out to it from her WP website or embed onto the website.
Any insight would be helpful as I do my initial research! Thank you in advance!
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I’d recommend bbPress and BuddyPress. They are maintained by the WordPress core community, so you can’t get more integrated 😁
*There are more popular forks of BuddyPress as well that cost money, like BuddyBoss.
Sending you good energy for your undertaking!
I was on the team at WEF about 10 years ago that built previous versions of these forums in Drupal.
This looks like a completely custom solution now.
When I left, they were starting to build a lot more stuff in WordPress, which is what I work in now, almost exclusively.
Everything there can be done with WordPress, primarily BuddyPress and some Members-based plugin solution.
If you don’t want to go the BuddyPress route, take a look at of the plugins that extend commenting in WordPress: wpDiscusz, etc, to make it more like a thread-based forums solution.