Forum which one?

[slee]

I am looking to integrate a WordPress website with a forum but which one?
Is bbpress the best one to choose or is Simple press better or are there others I have not seen?

[chipbennett]

I am looking to integrate a WordPress website with a forum but which one?
Is bbpress the best one to choose or is Simple press better or are there others I have not seen?

I think, long term, bbPress is/will be the best choice for WordPress integration. That said, if you've not started using it yet, I'd wait until the dust settles (around the fall or the end of the year) before trying it for the first time.

[slee]

Thanks for the info Chip, I am looking to install it over the next week or so. I want to integrate it with a membership plugin so may try both and see how i get on.

[Ryan]

bbPress is currently the easiest to integrate logins for. For design/theme integration it doesn't really matter. Any half-decent forum software has it's own theming system you can use to integrate the HTML/CSS with.

For maximum future forwards compatibility I would stick with bbPress since it is pretty clear there will be a smooth upgrade path from bbPress 0.9 -> bbPress 1.0 -> bbPress 1.1 -> bbPress plugin. Having said that, there's usually some convoluted way to hop skip and jump your way from any other forum software through to bbPress (usually via phpB. You might lose some of the minor settings, but you can almost always get your posts, usernames and passwords transferred.

I currently use SMF on my support forum. It's a great piece of software, but it's future is bleak and I don't recommend starting a new forum with it due to the political turmoil the project is in right now.

[samh]

I currently use SMF on my support forum. It's a great piece of software, but it's future is bleak and I don't recommend starting a new forum with it due to the political turmoil the project is in right now.

As much as I loved the software, I'm starting to regret dedicating so much time to working on a full bridge with WPMU!

[slee]

I went for bbpress and I have been very impressed with it so far. I managed to wipe out a website on my first attempt but luckily it was only a test website. Starting from scratch was much easier and i had no problems it getting it to bridge.

[dgwyer]

Well, the forum you are all posting on is vBulletin and IMO is hands down the best forum script around. I use it on all my sites whether it is integrated with WordPress or not. If you need the two user databases integrated (tied in with a single login) then there are numerous third party membership scripts that will do the job.

However if you want to keep things simple (and the costs down!) and need tight integration with WordPress then bbPress will do the job just fine. Depends really on the level of features you need. If you need all the bells and whistles then vBulletin will keep you happy for a long time to come..

Just out of curiosity - Jeff, what motivated your decision to integrate WordPress Tavern with vBulletin rather than something like bbPress?

[Jeffro]

This article I wrote on WPTavern.com explains why I choose to use Vbulletin for WPTavern.com. In essence, what you stated sums it up pretty nicely.

http://www.wptavern.com/why-i-use-vbulletin