Looking for The Best Forum Plugins for your WordPress Website in 2022?
In computing, a forum is defined as a website or web page where users can post comments about a particular issue or topic and reply to other users’ postings – Google’s English Dictionary.
Think about the world’s most popular forums… Quora, Reddit, Nairaland, and how much traffic they get per month, and their content is all UGC (User Generated).
Adding a Forum to your Website or Online Store where people can talk about stuff in your niche, ask questions and get answers from the community can go a long way in building trust and getting you more organic traffic.
In this article, I’ll review the 7 best Forum Plugins for WordPress, make sure to read each of their reviews so you can find one that best meets your requirements.
wpForo
wpForo is the number one best WordPress Forum Plugin in 2022, it’s used on over 20,000 WordPress Websites and keeps growing over the days.
The wpForo Forum plugin For WordPress was developed by gVectors Team and it comes with modern, elegant, and cross-device responsive designs that’ll effectively set up your forum for success.
This WordPress Forum Plugin integrates with several profile-building plugins so that your site visitors can create stunning profiles on your forum and then interact with it.
wpForo Features
We’ll now take a look at some of the spectacular features of the wpForo Forum Plugin for WordPress:
- Multi-Language Support
- You can Migrate from Other Forums.
- Six sets of Forum Color Styles including Dark version(s).
- Built-in SEO Functionality for Forums.
- Drag and Drop Forum Management System.
- 4 different Forum Layouts and Designs.
- Built-in Forum/topic Subscription.
These features and many more are what you’ll get if you install, activate, and set up the wpForo Forum Plugin for WordPress.
Asgaros Forum
Asgaros Forum is the second best WordPress Forum Plugin, it is used on 10,000+ WordPress Websites and was developed by Thomas Belser.
The Asgaros Forum WordPress Plugin is lightweight, feature-rich, easy to set up, fast and seamlessly integrates with WordPress to bring your dream of owning a forum to life.
Some WordPress users regard the Asgaros Forum Plugin as the best WordPress plugin for adding a Forum to your Site, let’s take a look at some of its features.
Asgaros Forum Features
Here’s just about the key features of the Asgaros Forum for WordPress:
- Simply Content Management.
- Powerful Editor.
- SEO Friendly.
- Uploads.
- Notifications and Feeds.
- Polls, Widgets, and Statistics.
- mCRED Integration.
- Customizable Responsive Theme.
- Ads Management.
- Guest Posting.
With these features and many others, I think we can come to terms with that Asgaros Forum is in some way… The best WordPress Forum Plugin.
bbPress
Currently being used on over 300,000 active WordPress Websites, bbPress is the most popular and trustworthy WordPress Forum Plugin.
If indeed you’re looking for an elegant, timeless, feature-rich, and streamlined discussion board, don’t dare to look further since you’ve found bbPress.
Simplicity is bbPress’s watchword yet the plugin is infinitely powerful because it is easy to integrate, easy to use, and built to scale.
bbPress Features
Let’s take a look at some of the best features of the bbPress Forum Plugin for WordPress that makes it so unique:
- Guest Posting.
- Subscription to Forum and Topics.
- Auto-Embed Links.
- Advanced Post Formatting toolset.
- Auto User Roles.
- Reply Threading.
- Revisions.
- Lightweight Plugin.
- SEO Functionality.
These are just some of the amazing bbPress Forum Plugin features. You can install and Activate this plugin on your website and see more of its features.
BuddyPress
BuddyPress is the second most famous WordPress Forum Plugin, it’s active on over 200,000+ Websites and is often compared with bbPress.
If you’re looking to build a social network-like forum, you should look no further as BuddyPress comes bundled with features that’ll help you build a powerful yet outstandingly simple Social Network Software.
With BuddyPress, your site visitors can create an account on your site, create groups and converse with other users, users can also chat privately as they do on other social networks like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc.
BuddyPress Features
Let’s now take a look at the powerful and dynamic features of the BuddyPress WordPress Forum Plugin:
- Built-in support for Akismet.
- Theme Compatibility API.
- Built-in Support for bbPress.
- Available in Multiple Languages.
- Activity Streams
- @mentions, threaded commenting, and direct posting.
- Extensible Groups.
- Advanced User Settings.
Left for me, I’d choose BuddyPress as the very best WordPress Forum Plugin, it’s certainly one of the oldest and is still functional to date, updated weekly or so.
Discussion Board
With more than 2000 WordPress Websites currently using this exquisite WordPress Plugin, it’s fair to add it to ebukaval.com’s list of the best Forum Plugins for WordPress.
The Discussion Board WordPress Plugin is a relatively easy way to add a forum to your website, with a One-click Installation capability and a range of rich features, you’ll build yourself a great WordPress Forum in no time.
With the Discussion Board WordPress Forum Plugin, visitors on your site can signup via a frontend form and post via a simple form, and other users can interact with their posts.
Discussion Board Plugin Features
Here are the extensive features that the Discussion Board Forum Plugin for WordPress comes with:
- One-Click Installer.
- User Management Tools.
- Spam Reduction.
- Frontend Login.
- Styles and Shortcodes.
- Different Style Combinations.
These features and many more will help you build any type of forum you wish like Question and Answer sites, Discussion Groups, Niche Sites, Technical forums, etc.
PeerBoard
PeerBoard is a forum and community WordPress Plugin, currently being used on hundreds of WordPress Websites to create a perfect community.
With the PeerBoard WordPress Forum Plugin, you can embed a fully functional forum on your WordPress Website, and create an amazing community.
This plugin is designed for Creators, brands, companies, and organizations, generally every person or group of people who wish to create a thriving online community.
PeerBoard Plugin Features
Let’s take a look at some unique features of the PeerBoard WordPress Forum Plugin:
- SEO Improvement
- Member Groups.
- User Profiles.
- Public or Private Spaces.
- Built-in Tools.
- Multiple Languages supported.
- Real-time Threads.
- Moderation tools.
If you’re looking to build a stunning community, the PeerBoard WordPress Forum Plugin is simply ideal for you.
Website Toolbox Forum
Website Toolbox is an intuitive plugin that lets you easily create a fully functional forum without touching a single line of code.
A few benefits of using this plugin to add a forum to your website include instant setup, Mobile-friendly design and layout, White Label, Fully Customizable, and SEO Friendly.
Website Toolbox Forum Plugin Features
Let’s take a look at some of the features of the Website Toolbox Forum Plugin:
- Ad Network Integration.
- Subscription Support.
- Instant Messaging for all Users.
- Chat Room.
- User Reputation.
- Create Polls.
- Share Multimedia files.
- Easy Theme Editor.
- Moderate Content and Users.
- Import or Export your Forum Settings, posts, and users.
These features and many more make this forum plugin a great alternative to other plugins mentioned before, it’s the last reviewed in this article and certainly not the least good.
Final Thoughts
In this article, I’ve reviewed the best forum plugins for WordPress, so you can easily choose the one best suited for you.
I recommend Discussion Board as it’s fast-growing and is used on about 2000 sites. Some of the other plugins that have lots of users are attacked by bots that attach Backlinks in a spammy way.
In my experience with wpForo, the plugin worked great, and even though I used Google Captcha to protect my site it still got attacked by 250 bots in a day which created profiles and started linking to some web pages.
I immediately deactivated the plugin and deleted my forum then which was created by wpForo. I used the steps in THIS ARTICLE to fix the bot traffic that was hitting my site.
Do note that I’m not saying that wpForo is the worst Forum Plugin for WordPress, some of the biggest forums like the H-Educate forum all use this and they get up to 500 monthly visitors.
If you have any questions regarding the best WordPress Forum Plugins, feel free to ask me in the comments section and I’ll be happy to get back to you.
