Bulletin boards and forums are good old reliable tools to build online communities.
While there are plenty of open-source forum software, integrating a third-party forum with WordPress can be a mess. That’s where bbPress comes in.
In this article, we will show you how to easily add a forum in WordPress with bbPress.
What is bbPress?
bbPress is a forum software built the WordPress way. It runs on top of WordPress, which is the best website builder in the world.
Just like WordPress, bbPress is extensible, and you can install add-on plugins to add more functionality to your forums. It is also very light-weight and faster than other popular open-source forum software.
What You Need to Make an Online Forum with bbPress?
If you already have a WordPress website where you want to add a forum, then you can skip this section. On the other hand, if you are just getting started then continue reading.
First, you’ll need to sign up for a web hosting account. This is where you will store all the files for your online forum.
You’ll also need a domain name. This will be your website’s address on the internet and what users will type in their browsers to find your online forum.
Normally, website hosting costs $7.99 per month and domain name would cost you around $14.99 per year.
This is a lot of money if you are just getting started.
Luckily, Bluehost has agreed to offer WPBeginner users a discount on hosting with a free domain name. Basically, you’ll be able to get started for just $2.75 per month.
→ Click Here to Claim This Exclusive Bluehost Offer ←
Bluehost is one of the biggest WordPress hosting companies in the world and an officially recommended WordPress hosting provider.
Once you have signed up for hosting, you can follow our guide on how to make a website for complete installation instructions.
After setting up WordPress, you will be ready to install bbPress and start your own online community.
How to Install bbPress
bbPress is available as a WordPress plugin. You can install it like you would install any WordPress plugin.
Simply log in to your WordPress admin area and go to Plugins » Add New . Search for bbPress and then select bbPress from results.
Install and activate the plugin. Upon activation, you will see the welcome screen for bbPress.
Creating a Forum with bbPress in WordPress
Once installed, bbPress adds Forums, Topics and Replies menu items in your WordPress admin.
First, you need to click on Forums » Add New link from the menu. This will take you to a screen similar to the WordPress post edit area.
Provide a title for your forum and enter a little description of it. Then press the publish button.
You can create as many forums as you need for different discussions and topics.
Displaying bbPress Forum in the Front End of WordPress
Now that you have created a few forums, it is time to display those forums on the front end of your WordPress website.
Create a new WordPress page. Give this page a title, like Forum, Community, Support Forums, etc.
After that, simply paste the following shortcode in your page:
[bbp-forum-index]
Don’t forget to click on the publish button to save your changes and make your forum page visible on your website.
You can now visit the page in a web browser to see a preview of your forums.
Next, you need to help users find the forum on your website. To do that, let’s put a link to your forum page on top navigation menu.
Go to Appearance » Menus and add the forum page to your navigation menu.
Users can now access the forum index page by clicking on the link in the main menu.
Integrating bbPress with your WordPress Theme
In most cases, you would probably want to open your forum for new registrations. To do that, you need to open your website for registrations.
Simply go to Settings » General, and check the box next to “Any one can register” to allow registrations on your website.
Don’t forget to click on the save changes button to store your settings.
Now that your website is open for registration, the first thing that your forum participants would look for is a registration page.
Let’s make one.
Simply create a WordPress page, and give it a title, e.g. Register. Add shortcode [bbp-register] and publish the page.
You can now preview this page. It will show a user registration form to all non-logged in users.
Another page your users would need is the lost password recovery page. This is where they will be recover their lost passwords.
Create another WordPress page and give it a title e.g. Lost Password. After that, add this shortcode [bbp-lost-pass] and publish the page.
Finally, you need to add a login form to your website so that forum users can easily login from anywhere on your website.
bbPress comes with a handful of widgets and one of them is a login form widget.
Go to Appearance » Widgets and simply drag and drop Login Widget to your sidebar or any other widget area.
You will be asked to provide the URLs for the registration and lost password pages you created earlier. After entering them you need to click on the Save button to store your widget settings.
Now a login form with links to registration and lost password recovery pages will appear in your sidebar. Logged in users would see their usernames and a logout link instead of the form.
Managing bbPress Forum Settings
Unlike other popular forum software, bbPress has a very simplified configuration page. To manage settings for your bbPress forums, go to Settings » Forums page.
The default options on this page would work for most forum websites. We’ll take a look at all of them, just in case you want to change anything.
The first option you would see here is to ‘Automatically give registered visitors the participant forum role’. You can select a user role or uncheck the option to manually assign user roles to each user when they register.
The next option adds a 10-second delay between subsequent forum posts to prevent forum flooding and spam. You can increase or decrease the delay period here.
The Editing option allows users to edit their forum posts 5 minutes after they publish them. You can uncheck this option but that would prevent your users from correcting spelling errors or edit their posts if they missed something.
After that, you’ll find the forum features section. From here, you can turn forum features on and off.
Below that, you’ll see forum display features. From here, you can select a bbPress template, number of posts and topics to display on forum pages and inside the forum RSS feed.
Finally, you’ll see options to select URL slugs for different sections and forum pages. Slugs are the SEO friendly URL names used by WordPress.
The default URL slugs are meaningful and SEO friendly out of the box but if you need to change them, then you can do so here.
Don’t forget to click on the ‘Save changes’ button to store your forum settings.
User Roles in bbPress
WordPress comes with its own user role management system which allows you to assign users roles with different permissions.
bbPress extends the WordPress user roles by adding its own five pre-defined user roles with different capabilities.
1. Keymaster – The website owner or the WordPress administrator is automatically assigned the Keymaster role when they install bbPress. A Keymaster can delete and create forums, can create, edit, delete all posts, topics, forums.
2. Moderators – Users with moderator user role have access to moderation tools, which they can use to moderate forums, topics, and posts.
3. Participants – This is the default user role, participants can create and edit their own topics and posts, they can favorite and subscribe to topics.
4. Spectators – Spectators have a read-only access to public forums, topics, and posts.
5. Blocked – When a user is blocked all their capabilities are blocked. They can still read publicly viewable topics and posts, but can not participate in the forums.
Extending and Promoting Your bbPress Forum
Now that your bbPress forum is all set up and running. It is time to learn how to extend and promote it.
Let’s start with the appearance first. bbPress works with any WordPress theme and themes can also add custom styles to bbPress.
All top WordPress themes come with custom bbPress styles to make your forum look beautiful.
For more choices, see our pick of the best WordPress themes for bbPress.
Next, you would want to add new features to your forum so that you can quickly get new members and grow your online community.
The following are some of the plugins that will help you grow your online forum much quickly.
RafflePress allows you to create viral giveaways and contests in WordPress. These interactive contests and giveaways are a sure-fire way to instantly get a ton of new users to your online forum.
See our guide on how to create a viral giveaway contest for more information.
MemberPress is the best WordPress membership plugin. It allows you to make money online from your forum by adding subscription layers to your online community.
For more information, take a look at our guide on how to make a membership website.
Want to know which forum topics and discussions are more popular on your website? MonsterInsights helps you easily track all your website traffic using Google Analytics.
WPForms is the best WordPress contact form plugin. It allows you to easily create beautiful forms for your website. You can also use it to create custom login page, user registration page, or to add surveys and polls to your bbPress forum.
We hope that this article helped you learn how to add a forum in WordPress and how to install and configure bbPress. You may also want to see our complete WordPress SEO guide to help you get even more traffic.
If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.
Amy says
I just installed and now I can’t access my webpage and the site is disabled. It says ‘the site isn’t redirecting properly’ and ‘Firefox has detected that the server is redirecting the request for this address in a way that will never complete. This problem can sometimes be caused by disabling or refusing to accept cookies.’ Any advice on how to uninstall if I can’t access my admin page? help!
WPBeginner Support says
You can use FTP to connect to your website, in your root directory delete the .htaccess file. Try to access your website. If this step does not solve your problem, then connect to your site using FTP again. This time, go to /wp-content/plugins and delete the bbPress directory. Once you are able to access wp-admin area, don’t forget to go to Settings » Permalinks and save your permalinks settings again.
Admin
Vladimir Vasquez says
Thanks a lot, just what I needed
Tyler says
Installed the forum, created topics and stuff but my theme is Hero, and the forum text shows up white so you cant see it, how do I change the colors on the forum plugin?
WPBeginner Support says
Please contact your theme support or if you know how to work with CSS in WordPress Themes, then look here.
Admin
rahul bonde says
I just added bbPress to my WP install and the WP logins now all work in bbPress but how can reply user in forum topic
watfordkev says
Great article – got me out of the blocks with bbPress, thank you!
Satheesh Lakshmanan says
Can any one tell me perfect buddy press site !
Olayinka Erinfolami says
Thank you for this important article which i find most helpful. I have created a forum but the topic i created for it is not coming up in the forum. Please what could be the problem?
Tom Muckian says
Wow, that was so easy! Thanks, you did a great job.
Aaditya says
really great work thanks…
can you suggest us support plugin for bbpress means how can we improve or include more bbpress options..
WPBeginner Support says
bbPress website has a plugins section. You can also search for bbPress plugins in the WordPress plugin repository.
Admin
Ashok Saini says
hi…this is really helped…great work….
thanks…
may you tell me, how to add topic in category…for example i want a category named as technology and then i want to add articles in this category…
i couldn’t find this option in bbpress..
WPBeginner Support says
Ashok you would create a new Forum in bbpress and call it technology then you or your users can create topics inside technology forum. You can create multiple forums and sub-forums.
Admin
Kevin says
Well done! I rarely post comments on how-to articles and perhaps I’m jumping the gun because I haven’t actually installed bbPress yet but your article has inspired me to get going on it.
Concise and informative without a bunch of “funny stuff” fluff. Hopefully, it goes as smoothly as your article reads. Thanks.
Rahul says
Tell Me This Program Is Run In Local Host Not Url
WPBeginner Support says
It can be run on both localhost as well as a live site.
Admin
sirmarjalot says
Followed these steps for setting up a forum on wordpress via bbpress. All works fine and looks great after playing around with a few of the options. But when registering a new user account – I never receive an email – obviously checked junk folder etc. Its really not much use without email working? I have contacted my hosting company about it – GoDaddy but have made no progress! Any ideas?
WPBeginner Support says
Do you get other email from WordPress? Like when a user leaves comment, or a new user registers? Try using Gmail SMTP server for your WordPress emails.
Admin
meraz says
this is very good or nice or beautiful or helpful article ever………
Gerri says
Thanks, This was an incredibly useful page.
Richard Macilwaine says
Hi and thank you. I followed your instructions and now have a forum set up on my site. I haven’t used it yet but just wanted to thank you and wish you good success.
tunio says
I have problem i have follow all the step, there are two forum in my forum page when i click any one form so nothing open, i want when i click any forum that forum should open and show all topic when i click any one top that top should open and show all information reply ete, i could not open any forum in forum page
Aftab says
i have a problem i install this forum and follow all steps but when the user click any forum topic this is error (Fatal error: Class ‘WP_Post’ not found in /home/rm1969/public_html/wp-content/plugins/bbpress/includes/core/theme-compat.php on line 375), can any one tell me how can i solve this problem i want that when user click forum the page of that post should open
WPBeginner Support says
Try reinstalling bbPress.
Admin
Kelli Sullenger says
I know this might be a dumb question but I am needing to edit the color scheme of the forum. With my current colors its very hard to read but I’m not sure where to do that.
WPBeginner Support says
WordPress themes use CSS to style themes. Go to Appearance » Editor. It will open your theme’s default style sheet. If it does not then look for style.css file in the list of files. Edit the color values in your stylesheet and save your changes.
Admin
Sakib says
Thanks a lot for your informative article. This is much important for me as I am thinking of making a forum in my blog.In this case your post helped me much.
Sakib
akash says
Hi, Thanks for such a nice info.
When user register into forum, He is able to see dashboard toolbar. I don’t know how it’ll work. Please help me. I don’t want to show give access any user to dashboard.
WPBeginner Support says
@Akash, you can password protect your wp-admin directory. Your users will be able to login, register, recover passwords, from the front-end as described in the tutorial above.
Admin
Solal says
Hi Syed,
Thanks a lot for this helpful tutorial ! I just have a small problem during the process. When I go to Settings » General, I don’t have any checkbox with “Any one can register”. Maybe it’s because I installed bbpress 2.4 (and WordPress 3.6.1). I’ve been through all the menus and haven’t found it anywhere. I thought it was not necessary anymore in 2.4 but when I asked my girlfriend to register to see if everything was working, she got an error message telling her that registrations are not open yet. So there must be something somewhere that needs to be checked but the question is where ? Thanks a lot for your help !
Solal
WPBeginner Support says
First deactivate all your WordPress plugins. Go to Settings » General and see if you can see the registration option now. If you can then this means one of the plugins installed on your system is causing the problem. Find out which plugin by activating them one by one and checking the general settings page. If a plugin is not causing the problem then try switching to a default WordPress theme like twenty thirteen or twenty twelve and see if this resolves the problem. If it does, then this means your theme is causing the problem.
If you are running a WordPress Network (WordPress Multi Site), then you will find this option under Super Admin » Settings » Network Settings.
Admin
Anke says
great write up, thanks. I have a question about the forum design. If you install it, will the forum always have a default bbpress design or would the fonts in the forum etc always be in line with what’s specified in the CSS for the rest of the site?
WPBeginner Support says
It will inherit some styling from your theme’s stylesheet but it comes with its own compact theme which can be modified. See Theme Compatiblity
Admin
Anke says
thanks so much guys! I installed my forum today, it all worked fine!!
Anil Anvesh says
that’s a great help I was searching for short code to integrate in to the wordpress page.
WPBeginner Support says
Use
[bbp-forum-index]in a page to display your forum index.Admin
Glyn says
How can forum participants add photos?
Jakub says
Thank you very much,very helpful for a beginner.Please is there any place where I can check all available,I don’t know how to call it,phrases like for example [bbp-forum-index]? I would like to know which can be used and how..thanks
Blade says
Hi! How and where can i translate the plugin, because my site is not in english?
Marcus Fant says
I’ve a question in regards to bbPress 2.3.2 – How do I get the Forum options to appear below my posts and such to select to create the *** thing? Is it under settings, sure. Is it under tools, sure. Is it on that main collapse menu list? No. I want to add a forum to my website badly and can’t even get to create a post.
What is possibly wrong? It’s a fresh install.
Natalie says
Hi,
The forums great thank you, easy enough to set up too. The one problem im having is the background on my site is black, and the text is white.
So when in the forum, the topics cant be seen in the white box as its white text. Im assuming this is why?
What can I do to make the topics black text?
Thanks
Benjamin says
Wonderful article. While I was testing it I noticed that when you click on either the “Register” or “Lost Password” button the message/instruction is displayed over the information that are already on the side. How do I fix this problem please.
Alia says
What a great, informative, clear overview! I have been banging my head against the wall for weeks trying to figure this out.
You are my heroes!
THANK YOU!
Abhisek says
How About MOOT Forums. ?
Helge says
Thank you so much for the article. Thought adding forums would be a coding nightmare, got it up and running in 5 mins thabks to you.
Only thing i cant seem to get right is the “allow anyone to register” in the Settings–>General area. I dont have that option. So for now, no-one can register and/or comment or post topics besides admins. Any ideas?
Buzz Brown says
This is a great article and helped me after hours of frustration.
But I have a problem. I’ve created forums but after posting a topic, instead of a reply box I get a “Comments are closed” message. I can’t figure out what’ wrong. Please help.
While I’m at it, is there a way to put a link in the forum so visitors can get to “new posts” only?
Thanks.
Helge says
I am finding myself with the exact same problem. I realised, once I am logged out – as a regular user I cannot create or reply to a topic. It only says “Comments are closed”. Ive been through various configs when it comes to the forum settings – to no avail.
Jeffco says
Thank you! Just configured mine and will making some changes. Really appreciate this post!
Dave Mull says
I’m a really new beginner to all this. Does the bbPress forum work both on WordPress.com and WordPress.org?
Editorial Staff says
No bbPress only works with self-hosted WordPress.org
Admin
Mike says
I was wondering if you knew of a way to customize the backend section of bbpress for users. Like removing the admin bar and removing the standard wordpress information on the profile page.
Aldi says
Thanks a lot .. this is helpful (y)
Gary Butterfield says
Hi there!
I want to use bbpress on my WordPress website, I have an issue though. My website is hosted through WordPress so it doesn’t have a plugins option, how do I go about creating a forum?
Gary
Gary Butterfield says
Reading one of your other articles I have found out that I’m unable to do anything with my site, I’ll have to look at mving it to .org
Robo ek says
Thanks for this great tutorial. Was wondering if with bbpress, we can add a link above the comment form like’ you must be logged in to comment’.
Gunnar Lindberg Årneby says
Am I blind or does bbPress still not support Facebook IDs? Why would any random guy coming to my site wanna register YET ANOTHER id when he’s probably already logged on to both FB and Twitter in other tabs of his browser?
Bb-team, let go of your pride and implement native support for Facebook (and G+ maybe?) now.
Editorial Staff says
Pretty sure you can use plugins like Simple Facebook Connect (which allows user login). Would need a little bit of customization. To clarify your point, this is not a pride thing. bbPress is an open source software. Anyone and everyone is allowed to make suggestions, create plugins and so on. There is another plugin like that can do this:
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/loginradius-for-wordpress/
Admin
Damien says
Just came here from the WPEngine tweet. I have to leave a comment to thank you for this article. I’ve been contemplating adding a forum to my site but wasn’t sure which kind of forum was best. You not only convicted me that bbpress was a great solution but you explained how to use it.
Thanks again.
Daniel Borg says
Can bb Press be used to replace a members area on a website, seeing that it has a registration portal to participate and hence can it be private to members only or do you have to put it insite a members area?
Editorial Staff says
It has potentials for it depending on what you want to do with it. It is great for private support or anything forum related. But if you are talking about premium content, then it is probably better to use another membership plugin.
Admin
Daniel Borg says
That’s great – thanks!
Vince says
Hi! I have almost the same installation as you but I’ve got a problem:
as a moderator or even a keymaster in bbpress, I don’t have access to the WordPress admin panel to Add forum or Delete forum. In the admin panel I only have “New – Topic” Or “Reply”. The only way I can add a forum is creating a specific page with the add forum shortcode, and there is no way to delete a forum. Would you have an idea for me? Thank you!
Editorial Staff says
Site admins are usually assigned the keymaster role. Are you talking about that you created a new user and just gave them that role?
Admin
Vince says
Thank you for answering!
Yes I created a new user, and give him the keymaster forum role, and I don’t change WP role, which is Subscriber by default. I want don’t want this user to modify anything else but the forum.
In bbPress User Roles and Capabilities is written:
Keymaster – can create, edit and delete other users’ forums, topics and replies. Can manage Tags, and moderate a forum with the moderation tools.
Moderator – can create and edit forums. Can create, edit and delete other users’ topics and replies. Can manage Tags, and moderate a forum with the moderation tools.
Indeed they have autorisations to create and delete forums, but the only way I found to create a forum is to create a new page with in it the bbpress shortcode
[bbp-forum-form] – Display the ‘New Forum’ form.
And I found no way to delete forums.
I thought moderator and keymasters would be allowed to see the forum menu in the wordpress admin panel, but that is not the case. Any idea on how to do that?
Nizam Khan says
Wow! This seems to be such an easy and great way to add forum in wordpress. Wonderful and detail explanation, it is very helpful. Thanks for sharing
Jay Castillo says
Thanks for this excellent write-up about bbpress, perfect timing as I’m about to deploy it, but I am still choosing between installing bbpress within my existing wordpress installation, or installing it on a new wordpress installation inside a subdomain like forum.foreclosurephilippines.com. I’m planning to use a subdomain for easier backup/restore and I want the forum and blog to be physically separate to isolate resource usage, security, etc. Do you think this is necessary or am I just being paranoid?
Another thing, for Genesis users, do we need to install bbPress Genesis Extend?
Offtopic: what happened to facebook login here in the comments section?
Editorial Staff says
It is a matter of preference really. If you want to utilize user registration in multiple ways (i.e have special perks for registered users), then it makes a lot of sense to have it altogether. It also makes it easier for registered users to comment (i.e have the same identity etc). If you don’t want that, then you can most definitely run it as a separate install. Security shouldn’t be an issue either way and if it is, then you have bigger things to worry about then this decision
As for bbPress Genesis Extend, it would be a nice addition. However it may not be required.
Lastly for the FB login, we decided to get rid of it mainly because not many people used it.
Admin
Jay Castillo says
Thanks for the reply guys. I deployed bbpress on my test site and I was done in about 5 minutes and I got it working fast and painless, thanks to your article!
With regards to security with bbpress, I almost forgot, I am a sucuri user, so it really should not be an issue right? I did notice that sucuri can sometimes be too strict where legit blog commenters are denied access and it seems it’s because they are using a common IP address that might have had rogue activities before (imagine a big company behind a firewall where thousands use one IP address, and with one rogue computer/user) and I see it might cause the same behavior with bbpress.
As always, thanks for the info guys, really helpful!
Editorial Staff says
Yup Sucuri keeps you covered. Unfortunately for the sake of a better security, it does sometimes block legit users.
Dave says
I’d like to follow-up on ethans comment above.
The BBpress plugin is tapping into the current WP database correct?
If so I imaging that it’ll be increasing the SQL size and usage a lot too. Especially with popular blogs/forums.
Has anyone done research this in regards to hosting issues etc? It would be great to install a forum as easy as this to coincide with WP in terms of memberships as well etc I just wonder if the resources are too much for many hosting platforms?
Editorial Staff says
Yes, you are correct that the SQL size will increase. But that doesn’t necessarily mean that resource consumption will increase. Resources required will increase as your traffic increases. Unless you are getting thousands of posts every hour, you don’t have to be worried about resource consumption.
Admin
Cesar says
Hi,
My blog is now open tu registrations. I’m just wondering if the old registered users will be able to log in to bbpress forums using the same credendials?
John says
Don’t know for sure, but I just added bbPress to my WP install and the WP logins now all work in bbPress.
Vajrasar says
Useful write up, as always.
Ethan says
I know you mentioned its light weight and faster then other forums available but do you have any extra advice on improving the speed. I have always found forums to be far to bulky.