The How to site

Traditionally it has been quite hassle to integrate a forum to a wordpress powered site, using a number of such bridge hacks to integrate phpBB and SMF I know how much work and trouble it can be; if you even get it to work. One option has been to use bbPress, a Wordpress forum plugin which works nicely out of the box, but leaves a lot to be desired in terms of design and functions.

Therefore I was quite excited to find a plugin called Simple:Press forum, which is a forum with features and functions that is much closer to what you expect to find i a modern forum:

• ‘Pretty/SEO’ Friendly Permalinks. And the good news - should also be able to display links with the old url structure.
• Private Messaging - the second most regular request.
• Powerful User Group and Permission structure. Fine control over who can see and do what.
• New ‘QuickLinks’ dropdown on the Search Bar displaying recent and unread posts
• Bulk Moderate Posts needing approval and read new posts in one place
• Login Form bought into current page view
• Mass Deletion tool for the removal of old topics
• Many ‘Custom’ options: Up to three custom icons in login bar; set custom icons for all Groups and Forums; Use a graphic in place of page title; Create a special ‘editor’ message
• Redirect RSS Feeds to external services (i.e., FeedBurner)
• ‘Pluggable’ page rendering code allowing replacement functions and custom code routines
• TinyMCE V3 with much improved text handling and formatting
• Optional Image File Uploading (only using TinyMCE editor)
• Improved Notification, Messaging and form validations
• EMail Overrides and create text of New User Email
• Democracy Polls plugin support
• Images as Thumbnails that expand

I must say I was very very impressed both with the product and the support. I had an fully integrated forum up and running in under four hours and the result is very pleasing. I’d recommend anyone interested in adding a forum function to their Wordpress installation to check it out, and don’t forget to support the developer!

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