Some time ago, I wrote about Simple:Press – The Forum Plugin for WordPress. When I first posted about this plugin, I hadn’t yet made use of it, but shortly after, I experimented and quickly became a huge fan. Yes, there are other solutions out there, but Simple:Press has the power and flexibility of other open source forum solutions, while integrating seamlessly with your existing WordPress users and database.
The Forum Plugin for WordPress
Better still, the development of this plugin has been non-stop since it’s creation, so you can be fairly certain that it will continue indefinitely. Just look at some of the features:
- Fully integrated with WordPress user registrations and logins
- Creates ‘pretty/seo friendly’ permalinks
- Underpinned by a powerful user and permission system
- Can create private forums
- Forums can be ‘Members Only’ or can allow for Guests
- Private Messaging system
- Admins can allow for post moderation (approval)
- Built in Search tool
- Fully customisable skins and icons
- Most rendering functions are ‘pluggable’
- Member Profile updating – users can change own passwords
- Choice of Editors (RTE, HTML, bbCODE)
- Options Signatures, Signature Image, Avatars, and Rankings
- A variery of Template Tags – recent posts etc
- Progammable Hooks for user extension
- Optional Spam Prevention tools
- Optional Cookies to track Guests and Members
- Fully Localised for language support
- Optional and various RSS feeds and email subscription to topics
- Various display options to suit your needs and theme
- An Admin toolset to perform many tasks from within the forum itself
- Blog Posts and Forum Topics can be linked
- Support for the Democracy Polls plugin
- Support for the Gravatars 2 plugin
- Forum Statistics – including who is online
- Complete uninstall/removal option
- Support for the All In One SEO Pack Plugin (Browser title bar)
- View Admins New Post Queue from ALL views with ‘Quick Reply’
- Right-to-left language support in the TinyMCE editor
- Topic Status Tracking
- Custom Smileys
- RTE Toolbar Customisation
- Pre-registration Policy display option
- Post Ratings
- Add Custom Profile data items
- ‘Watched’ topics
- Multiple forum Admins
- Members List
Get Simple:Press here. If you’re using this plugin, or about to try it out, the WPM readers would be happy to here of your endeavors. Feel free to leave your comments below:)
5 Comments
Sounds like an interesting little tool, I’m going to go download it and run it on my localhost wordpress and play with it.
Offtopic; I’m glad you appreciate being on my list.
Daniel Whites last blog post..Becoming a Mega Affiliate in Niche Markets
Hello, I’ve actually been looking for you to install this since I first read your post (honestly a few days, maybe a week or two ago, top. How is the forum going since you installed it? DO you have a link for it?
Thanks for the info!
.-= Michael Kory Woods´s last blog ..Illions Real Estate Blog and Forums =-.
Hi Michael,
Unfortunately, I haven’t had an opportunity to install this latest version yet, mostly because I don’t have a real reason to host a forum at the moment. I see that you have it installed though. What did you think of the installation/configuration process?
It was straightforward enough, but pretty quickly (before I made any meaningful changes) I ran into a MySQL error for which I couldn’t figure out the reason, ended up uninstalling, which didn’t appear to affect any other WP tables adversely, and re-installing, haven’t been able to recreate the problem since and I repeated the steps when it stopped working (including changing settings, adding forums, updating information and user registration). I’m liking it for it’s ease, simplicity and functionality (I’ve also tried bbpress, which I’d say was clean, simple and straightforward, but lacked a lot of functionality) so far, but I do have to complain about its use of screen real estate, it takes up quite a bit of room and no theme so far is really thinner than any other.
.-= Michael Kory Woods´s last blog ..State and National Real Estate Exams =-.
Simple:Press is a buggy son of a gun, whether you use firefox or IE the admin tables are all jacked up, wonder what browser they were designing for… You create a new forum and they have a cute ajax status window saying created but nothing shows up unless you refresh the page, that might throw an end user no? It has all the options one would want but unless it works seemlessly what’s the point? I know it’s free but by vers 4.X I would assume the basics like an interface design working in the two largest browsers. Guess I will keep looking for a forum that is easy to explain to clients and isn’t full of bugs or I can shut my pie hole and write my own.
.-= MM´s last blog ..Red Olive joins the cause to help protect children. =-.