All the forum software listed above are standalone forum scripts, but if you don’t want to manage a standalone forum software or want a forum alongside your already existing website, WordPress can help you.
WordPress is a popular content management system (CMS), and a lot of developers have created community forum plugins for WordPress that lets you create a fully functional forum in few clicks.
Some of the most popular WordPress based community forum plugins are, bbPress, wpForo Forum, and Asgaros Forum to name a few. These plugins act like add-ons and work with your existing WordPress installation.
wpForo Forums
wpForo Forum is a WordPress plugin that lets you create a fully functional community forum right on top of your WordPress installation. It has all the features you need and is free to use.
Installation of wpForo Forum is like any other WordPress plugin. It has three types of Forum layouts, to begin with, but the layouts can be changed at any point of time without breaking the forum.
Administrators can customize the look of the forum by changing color, adding menu items along with sidebar widget for proper website look. wpForo also offers excellent user management that lets you set custom login and registration URL, user rating system and profile management.
The premium add-ons to wpForo allow you to embed media content, create polls, user customization, private message features and manage ads.
Asgaros Forum
Asgaros Forum is a simple yet functional WordPress forum plugin for those wanting to extend their website with a lightweight discussion board without compromising on features.
Users can create profiles by registering on the forum, get notifications, create new threads and reply to other users threads.
Asagros Forum offers a basic structure and content management system for administrators. In addition, it also provides basic user management features including access to the member’s list, permission management, and statistics. You can also add your own theme via FTP client.
Discussion Board
Discussion Board is another WordPress plugin that can add community forum functionality to your WordPress website. It comes with a host of features and delivers on its claims.
Users can register on the forum, post new topics and create a new page for separate topics.
On the user management front, the admins can control user action, assign roles to new users, limit spam registration, choose from three layouts and work with shortcodes.
There is a Pro version of Discussion Board as well that allows the users to add categories and tags, set topics as solved or open, customize user profiles, upload images, manual approval by admin and WYSIWYG editor.
bbPress
bbPress is an open-source community forum plugin developed by Automatic, the same company that runs WordPress.org and .com. The plugin allows you to create bulletin boards while focusing on ease of integration, latest web standard, and speed.
bbPress is an easy going WordPress extension that lets you create community forums with few clicks, but not a very ideal plugin to manage large communities.
Wrapping Up!
If you want a sophisticated gaming forum software or just a community forum software in general then phpBB, Discourse, and MyBB are some of the best choices.
However, if you simply want to extend your website with community forum functionality, try Discussion Board, wpForo Forums and Asgaros Forum plugin for WordPress as it is less resource hungry and also easier to maintain.
For those using Joomla can try Kunena or EasyDiscuss while the Drupal users can check out Advanced Forum.
That’s about it. Hope we were able to help you find the best forum software with this guide. Do let us know your pick in the comments.
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