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Online forums are web bulletin boards where users ask questions or share their feedback anonymously. These forums play a crucial role in building credibility for online brands and businesses, as forum users recognize the business’s efforts to reach out to the audience.
Moreover, the success of question and answer style forums like Quora, StackOverflow, and Yahoo! Answers have inspired numerous imitations. Interestingly, WordPress has its fair share of possibilities when it comes to adding a forum to your website. By adding a forum to your WordPress website, you can not only improve your brand’s visibility but also boost your sales and build a healthy relationship with your audience. If you are planning to add a forum on your WordPress website, here are some of the best plugins that can prove to be extremely helpful.
1. bbPress
bbPress is the standard forum solution for WordPress that is developed by Automattic. This plugin seamlessly integrates and is extremely easy to use, making it one of the best WordPress forum plugins available. With bbPress, you can manage everything about your forum within your WordPress Dashboard. The plugin is powered with various widgets, making it easier to implement a forum. bbPress also allows you to import forum posts from various other forum tools.
Impressive features of bbPress:
- Simple step-by-step installation guides you through your options.
- Supports multisite forums.
- Comes fully integrated with one central account.
- Easy to set up, use, and moderate.
- Allows registered users to make edits, flag spam, make stickies, and delete posts.
2. WP-Answers WordPress Q&A Plugin
The WP-Answers Plugin makes it easy for you to create a question and answer type of forum where people can sign up for a membership and answer questions to gain points or use their points to ask questions. It works very similarly to the Yahoo Answers website and can even automatically pull content from Yahoo Answers (questions and answers) and add them to your site, so you can get content up automatically without doing any work.
But WP-Answers is not just a plugin. It also comes with six highly optimized WordPress themes for creating a Q&A site and is enhanced with advertisement spots that are proven to maximize click-through rates and profits through programs like Google AdSense.
Other WP-Answers Features:
- Transforms WordPress into a Q&A type site.
- Point system encourages members to answer questions.
- Members get their own profile pages.
- Can automatically pull and post content from Yahoo Answers.
- Full advertisement management to help you make money from your site.
- Includes six themes in different colors.
- Tutorials and support available.
3. WPForo
WPForo is basically considered the ultimate WordPress social network plugin but has everything you need to power your forum of any niche. The plugin allows your users to connect and interact in various different ways.
The core WPForo plugin is absolutely free, but to get access to all the extensions of this plugin, you would have to purchase them. In addition to their WordPress.org page, WPForo comes with support via their own forum.
Impressive features of WPForo:
- Lets you create unlimited forums.
- Lets you choose from a wide range of layouts.
- Offers a number of customization options.
- Comes with helpful support.
4. CM Answers
Developed by Cminds, CM Answers is an ideal choice for those who are looking for a more question and answer style of forum. The plugin allows you to auto-create Q&A list pages and show settings depending on most user votes, most views, and most responses. CM Answers also comes in a premium version with additional features such as front-end text editor, access control, categories, comment support, multiple attachments, shortcodes, advanced authorship permissions, and much more.
Impressive features of CM Answers:
- Equipped with Advanced user access controls.
- Allows users to add tags to categories.
- Enables drag and drop attachments.
- Comes with a user-friendly dashboard.
- Supports multiple file uploads.
- Comes integrated with BuddyPress.
5. AnsPress
AnsPress is a profound and easy-to-use WordPress plugin that allows you to add a question and answer section just like quora.com and stackoverflow.com. Equipped with a range of customization options, the plugin allows you to change the look and feel of your forum. AnsPress also boasts one of the best interfaces among all the plugins tested.
The design is simple and clean with the amazing use of the color scheme for distinguishing between answers, comments, and questions. Comments can also be integrated with both questions and answers.
Impressive features of AnsPress:
- Integrated with Ajax-based form submission.
- Comes with a Theme system.
- Has moderate and Flag posts.
- Allows voting on questions and answers.
- Equipped with Advanced user access controls.
- Offers Email notifications to admins about posts.
- Allows users to add questions to their favorites.
6. Helpie FAQs
Helpie FAQs is a free plugin that is extremely lightweight and optimized for speed with an assortment of options at the disposal of the user. The plugin also offers an add-on that enables you to add questions in various different places on your website and share the Q&A section.
The plugin comes with easy options and an intuitive interface for all facets of the plugin. So whether you’re a beginner or a WordPress pro, adding a question and answer section to your site should be a breeze with Helpie.
Impressive features of Helpie:
- Unlimited FAQs.
- Easy to add and update items.
- Accordion or list display option.
- Responsive design.
- Sortable FAQs.
- Helpful support.
7. DW Question & Answer (Premium)
Looking to add a dedicated Q&A section to your website, à la Quora? Well, with DW Question & Answer Pro, now you can! You can use the plugin to create a forum-style section for your visitors to interact, or community-driven FAQ sections.
Visitors are free to ask their question on your site’s front-end by filling out the straightforward question form. This question form can be placed on a dedicated page or in any widget space. Plus, visitors can add basic styling to their questions using HTML.
To help visitors hone in on useful questions, DW supports built-in sort, search, and filter functionalities. The question listing page also displays the number of views, comments, and ratings that each question has generated, helping visitors identify the most active discussions.
DW also boasts lots of important features that benefit the site owner. This includes front-end question management, compatibility with any WordPress theme, and powerful anti-spam measures.
8. Sabai Discuss (Premium)
The Sabai Discuss Forum System employs a number of options to help you create a user-friendly and feature-rich forum. The plugin boasts various powerful features to build a modest yet professional-looking helpdesk/forum with ease. Webmasters can easily manage all forums, topics, and replies from the WordPress admin area.
From user profile creation to spam moderation, Sabai Discuss is packed with all the standard forum features. Additionally, since the plugin is translation-ready, it can easily be incorporated into websites in any language.
Impressive features of Sabai Discuss:
- Equipped with a standard WordPress image Uploader to allow users to upload images into their topics and replies.
- Creating threads and replies are extremely easy with an integrated WordPress text editor.
- Integrated with five custom shortcodes to add forum sections.
- Nine included forum widgets.
- As many as ten custom email notification templates.
- Highly customizable and allows you to change the style of the plugin pages to make them look exactly like your website.
9. Question Answer
The Question Answer plugin is a free plugin on the WordPress repository that will allow you to create your Question and Answer website. The theme already includes schema.org support, front-end submission via a shortcode, account page via a shortcode, it’s translation-ready, and will work with your existing theme (or any other theme). This plugin has a pretty nice layout/design by default, answers can be thumbed up or down, questions can be marked as “solved,” and as a site user, you can even subscribe and favorite questions. It’s a very robust and complete question and answer plugin for WordPress, definitely worth checking out!
10. Simple:Press
Simple:Press is widely touted as one of the most powerful and popular WordPress plugins that seamlessly integrates into the WordPress website. It can easily be adapted or adjusted for use on large as well as small forums. The plugin makes use of templates and themes to allow easy customization. Being extremely lightweight, Simple:Press reduces the load on the server while executing.
The plugin conveniently integrates with various other well-recognized services for extra conveniences such as TinyMCE, WP SEO, AIOSEO, Gravatars, SiteMaps, MyCred, ShareThis, Slack, and BuddyPress.
Though the plugin doesn’t have a great overall rating on WordPress.org, it looks like people are unhappy with the premium version. Stick with the simple, free forum, and you should be good!
Impressive features of Simple:Press:
- Allows all-inclusive search options.
- Offers Forum Stats, including an online list.
- Integrated with custom icons for forums and groups.
- All-inclusive selection of RSS feeds.
- Provides hidden ‘spoilers’ in posts.
- Renders optional WP shortcodes supports.
- Offers Email notification to admins of all the posts.
- Custom smileys, including uploads.
11. BuddyPress
BuddyPress is yet another popular forum WordPress plugin that boasts clean and secure code. The plugin is feature-rich and makes it convenient to integrate a range of social network features into a WordPress-powered website.
BuddyPress allows your users to easily create profiles and user groups and monitors other users’ activity streams. Thanks to the Groups feature, you can render your users the ability to build micro-communities. Plus, there are tons of free BuddyPress plugin extensions you can use to add extra functionality.
Impressive features of BuddyPress:
- Allows private conversations and makes connections convenient.
- Completely social media-friendly.
- Lets you build a community of any niche, including sports teams, schools, and companies.
- 100% fully responsive design layout.
Wrapping Up
There you have it, the top 10 WordPress plugins for adding a forum to your website. We hope you’ve found a plugin that will work great for your needs. Let us know which plugin you’d recommend or if we missed an awesome one on our list. Just leave a comment below!
