bbPress Plugin Review: Why It’s The Best WordPress Forum Plugin

Are you planning to add a community forum to your WordPress website for getting more user engagement? A WordPress forum plugin can help you to do this.

That’s today we’ll talk about the bbPress plugin the most popular free forum plugin developed by the WordPress community. Besides, you’ll understand the importance of adding the forum section to your site. In addition, you’ll get the entire information about bbPress step by step.

Before we get started, take a look out the below quick navigation that we’ll try to cover it.

Let’s stats our journey.

What Can A WordPress Forum Plugin Do For You?

A WordPress forum plugin is a piece of software that helps to build a community using a website’s users. Where WordPress site users or visitors can participate globally for sharing knowledge and experience with others.

In fact, you can imagine it as a platform of problem-solving, Q & A (question & answers), and a discussion board where people would like to talk to each other. In addition, if you are dealing with vast people you have to set up a forum on your website.

How To Start A Forum On Your WordPress Website

There are some advantages to establishing a community forum in a website.

Firstly, using WordPress forum software is a very effective way to provide customer support. A community means a lot of people stay on the same platform at a time. So you can easily reach tons of your customers at the same time. Most importantly, it’s a very fast and powerful way of serving users and solving their problems.

Secondly, it also helps your website development. Moreover, an online community helps your user engagement so it’ll be a great chance to grab more users’ attention. And when you’ll get your potential user that means your sale will be increasing rapidly.

Thirdly, having a forum is a great advantage of site ranking & performance. The more you generate and serving traffic the more go-ahead for world call rank. Plus it also creates a positive impact on your website SEO.

bbPress Plugin At A Glance

bbPress is forum software made by the WordPress community back in 2004. It was first published on wordpress.org from that moment it has been turned into a plugin and serves unlimited WordPress users in the glove.

bbPress is a free open-source WordPress forum plugin that can be used for unlimited sites by the same user. Therefore, it’s a very simple and easy-to-use software that allows any user to create their own forum community platform.

In addition, it also comes with the full integration of any popular WordPress themes as well as maintaining the same coding standard. Most importantly, if you have a WordPress website then you’ll able to build your forum easily by following some guidelines.

It has a very dedicated support team and they can help to solve any problem regarding this amazing tool. So you don’t need to worry about seeking solutions to your problem.

bbPress at a glance:

• Total download 7 million
• 300k active installation
• Page speed 99% faster than other plugins
• Over 10 years of experience
• Outstanding rating and review
• An issue in memory usage

For more info, you can easily see the below infographic where bbPress performance is measured by WP Hive.

Performance

bbPress is performing well for the past 10 years. It has been doing a great job in all the departments except for the use of memory. It uses 1625.77 KB of memory which is 90% more than other plugins.

But when you come to the page speed it rocks. Here bbPress is faster more 99% than other plugins that is a better page speed optimization result. In addition, it also has proven stats you can find the image below.

Ratings & Reviews

When you talk about the bbPress rating & review, you find the best results. Because it is specially built by the WordPress community and love by the people who already love WordPress.

In the next image you’ll its overall rating and reviews.

If want to see some more bbPress test result click the button below.

Why Should You Use bbPress For Your Website?

If you are looking for forum software for your WordPress site, you find a lot of them. But most of the WordPress forum plugin has to not enhance the functionality that the bbPress plugin has.

As we mentioned earlier bbPress is a powerful free forum-making tool. With this, you can easily make your own custom discussion platform for your valuable user. In fact, this software also allows many advanced extensions to increase your forum capability.

Besides, you find so many online video tutorials and blog posts about bbPress. Plus it has rich documentation that also will help your forum setup.

Pros & Cons of bbPress

You can find some pros & cons in all types of software. Here in this section, we’ll talk about some of the pros and cons of bbPress so that you can understand it better.

Pros

• bbPress is free open-source software and you can use it unlimited times.
• It easily compatible Easy integration with any WordPress themes.
• Maintain the same coding standard as like WordPress.
• Fast and lightweight.
• Loved by more than 300000+ users all over the world.
• It can be used in multiple sites and manage from one dashboard.
• It has more than hundreds of extensions for better customization.

Cons

• It allows only the basic features, so you need to install additional extensions for adding more functionalities.

bbPress vs BuddyPress

bbPress and BuddyPress are very popular forum plugins that used tons of WordPress site users around the world. If we compare these two super plugins side by side then it’ll be more understandable to you.

In the below image you see the difference between these amazing plugins. Here we show why they differ.

Memory Usage

In the use of memory, bbPress uses +1625.77 KB on the other BuddyPress uses +1740.82 KB. So the winner is bbPress because it reduces more memory space than BuddyPress.

Page Speed

Page speed is also an important matter of a website. Here we see BuddyPress is better than bbPress. Why? BuddyPress load faster than bbPress. So the winner is BuddyPress.

Rating & Other Criteria

Both of the plugins have own criteria and they are doing well eneoug in their fields.

Price

bbPress is a free software for their users. As it has not yet launched any premium version of their plugin.

So, you can easily download and install bbPress and try it for yourself.

Common FAQ You Might Have Regarding bbPress Plugin

Now we’ll cover some common FAQ that you need to know before star working with bbPress.

1. How to enable registration?

By default, It is always kept disabled by WordPress. To enable the registration system, you need to log in to your WordPress dashboard. Then go to Setting-> General and enable Anyone to Register.

2. How can I allow users to register on the site’s forum?

Your website users can register to your site by using the same registration WordPress provides. Besides, you also can use the supplied registration form shortcode you can find it here. After completing their registration successfully your users can participate in your forum.

3. How to prevent users from entering the WordPress backend?

It is up to you what type of users you will select to access your site’s backend. However, to prevent the users entering from the WordPress dashboard you can use this code. Where you’ll find the solution with an easy guideline.

4. How to install bbPress themes?

You might get the proper details if you read this article to install bbPress compatible themes.

5. How to set up my forums?

You can easily set up your dream forum by following two steps. First, you have to configure the forum setting.

Secondly, create some content for your forum. That all.

6. How to customize bbPress?

Everyone loves to customize the website in their own style. you can also modify the bbPress forum functionality. To do this visit here.

7. How to remove all the forum content and delete bbPress?

If you really remove of the content you have to follow the bbPress deleting process.

It’s very difficult to answer all of your questions at the same time. For more faqs of bbPress please visit its official faq page.

Conclusion

At last, we’re coming to the closing part of our statement about bbPress. We hope this detailed bbPress plugin review will help you learn a lot of the necessary stuff. We also believe that this guide will help you to make a proper decision about the making of a forum.

Besides, you may be able to understand the importance of forum software and how to set it up your WordPress site. If you have any queries regarding bbPress and its set up please comment us below now.

We’ll try to serve our best.