Discussion Board is an easy way to add a WordPress forum to your site.
Discussion Board is an easy way to add a forum to your WordPress site. It has a one-click installation and stacks of essential features that make it the leading WordPress forum plugin. In brief:
Test out a live demo version of our forum plugin here. Note that this demo includes some features only available with the Pro version. Feel free to register and post some sample content.
Discussion Board has a unique, one-click set-up. When you activate the plugin, it will automatically create the three pages you need to get your WordPress forum up and running:
Your WordPress forum is up and running straightaway with no need to do any further configuration if you don’t want to.
A key feature of Discussion Board is the ability to control separately who can view your WordPress forum and who can actually post to it. You can specify the required role for users to post new topics and, separately, you can specify the required role for users to view topics. So, for instance, you could allow anyone to view the content but only permit specific user roles to post content.
You can specify which role new users will be assigned when they register. You can also require users to activate their registration by verifying their email address – this drastically reduces spam registrations.
In the Pro version, you also have the option to approve new registrations yourself if you want.
Discussion Board has a complete front-end registration and log-in system. You can choose whether to use the standard WordPress system or keep everything on the front-end.
As well as the restrictions over registration, you can limit the frequency that users can re-post. This will reduce possible spamming. As the owner of the site, you can also choose whether new topics should be published immediately or held as draft in order for you to moderate them. You can use standard WordPress settings to determine moderation levels for comments or set different rules for topics.
Even more, you can block specific email addresses or entire domains from being able to register accounts.
Discussion Board is designed to work with any theme. You can update colors through the Customizer. Currently, there is a choice of three layouts, using either the standard WordPress archive layout from your theme or more classic forum layouts.
Discussion Board should work out of the box with your theme. However, if you want to extend it and integrate it more closely, there are some optional templates supplied with the plugin that have hookable opening and closing wrapper tags so you can style the templates to match your theme.
Discussion Board has a number of shortcodes. Some of these are installed automatically when you activate the plugin. Others are optional for usage around your site, including:
[discussion_board_form] – displays a form for users to post a new topic (automatically installed)
[discussion_topics] – displays a list of all topics (automatically installed)
[discussion_board_login_form] – displays a log-in and registration form for new users (automatically installed)
[discussion_board_login_only] – displays a log-in form without a registration form
[discussion_board_registration_only] – displays a registration form without a log-in form
[discussion_board_log_in_out] – displays a log-in / log-out link
[is_logged_in] – use this shortcode to display content only to users who are logged in
[not_logged_in] – display content only to users who are not logged in
You can use this plugin to create any type of forum that you like. Typically, this would include:
Although Discussion Board should work with pretty much any WordPress theme, we developed Singularity – a free theme that integrates with Discussion Board. It’s available to download from the WordPress themes directory.
There are many, many reasons to want to install a WordPress forum plugin on your site. In brief, these might include:
Full documentation and guidance on getting started with the plugin and on its features is here.
Oh yes, there’s a Pro version to give you even more possibilities with your forum. Features include:
Check out the Pro version here.
If you would like to contribute to the plugin, we’ve put together a guide on how to contribute.
Discussion Board list of topics (includes some Pro features)
Example topic with replies (includes some Pro features)
Login / Registration page
Discussion Board list of topics with latest topics sidebars
Archive layout of Discussion Board list
Classic Forum layout of Discussion Board list
Table layout of Discussion Board list
Discussion Board will automatically create three pages for you:
There are further, detailed instructions for the free and pro versions on the website.
There’s a demo here. Note that this demo includes some features only available with the Pro version. Feel free to register and post some content so that you can see how it works from the user’s point of view.
In the first instance, ask them to check their spam/junk folders. If you’ve tested and you’re certain emails aren’t getting through, use the Postman SMTP plugin or similar to assist the delivery of email from your site. It’s a more reliable way of ensuring emails are sent and received.
No.
In your dashboard, just go to Settings > Permalinks. Then everything should be fine.
We’ve included a helpful log-in / log-out shortcode to display a log-in / log-out link. Use a plugin like Shortcode Widget and add the [discussion_board_log_in_out] shortcode to your sidebar or other widget area of your choice. The plugin also automatically displays a log-out link under the new topic form.
Be careful if you are copying and pasting the shortcodes – you might need to delete <code>
tags. Click on the ‘Text’ tab in your content editor to see if these tags are there.
<a>
tag after Lost Password link