bbPress 2.0 was released back in September, with loads of changes and improvements. However, these changes, as usual, are far from enough to most blogger who want to run a forum. In this post, I will talk about several interesting and useful plugins that are compatible with the latest release of bbPress. But you should be aware that in order to have the best result from these plugins, you need to test them before put them on the productive sites. I will point out some notices along with the plugins below.
1. bbPress Post Toolbar
This is probably the first plugin you want to have for you bbPress forum. It adds a tiny editor bar above the textarea while editing or writing topics. It automatically applies HTML so it is compatible in the future (well, HTML is always compatible). The plugin also allows users to upload images to the server and of course, you can turn it off on the plugin’s setting screen. It’s a really handy plugin and it’s really helpful for average users who don’t know nothing about HTML. You can remove the plugin if you found something much better later (well, rarely), at zero cost.
2. bbPress Quotes
Folks who are familiar with forum will be happy to see this. Forum posts are not like comments, they cannot be threaded, thus this plugin comes handy. According to the author, the plugin adds the ability to quote bbPress forum topics and replies and a quote button to the end of replies is added so users can easily quote another user. The plugin writes HTML to the editor, so it is safe but without many features compared with another plugin that I am going to mention below.
3. bbPress2 BBCode + bbPress2 shortcode whitelist
These are the best BBCode plugins currently available out there. To most BBCode forum users, these are boosting their productivity. The best part is, the BBCode plugin adds support for BBCode markup not only to the bbPress forum, but also your WordPress blog posts, comments and even BuddyPress. However, you should be aware that when the plugin is disabled, BBCode will not function and the style will gone, leaving you a risk. Though you can use beautiful plugin like Search Regex to replace all these BBCode with respective HTML. Please note, this plugin has already included quote function which automatically apply user’s profile link. By default it will link to user’s bbPress profile, but if BuddyPress were installed, BP profile link will be added instead. Anyway, it’s totally up to you but it is really the best bbPress plugin I have tried.
The shortcode whitelist plugin is from the same author of BBCode. According to the author, it creates a whitelist of shortcode tags that can be applied to blog comments, bbPress forum topics and replies. You can also turn on some other shortcode that you allow your users to use.
bbPress2 BBCode bbPress2 shortcode whitelist
4. bbP Signature
This is another cool plugin provides you the common feature that is available across different forum softwares. You can use HTML to edit the signature and it will automatically shows up under your topics and replies. If you also installed BBCode above, you can use BBCode in the signature too.
5. bbPress Topics for Posts
This is a really interesting plugin. You may have seen websites using myBB or vBulletin package which give you the ability to create forum topics for the specific blog post you published. With this plugin, you can turn your blog into something like what those softwares can do. You can replace the blog comment section with forum topics and the readers will leave their comments as replies instead of comments. If you want to shift the focus from the blog to the forum, it is a good way to do. Also, it allows you to keep the blog post clean and focus all the discussion in the forum.
6. bbPress reCaptcha
Got a lot of spam, this plugin will help you out. The best way is of course to use plugins like WP-reCaptcha in the user registration form first since adding reCaptcha for forum may have no good for user experience.
7. GD bbPress Attachments
According to the author, the plugin allows you to implements attachments upload to the topics and replies in bbPress through media library and adds additional forum based controls. It’s a plugin from dev4press and you can check out their website for more interesting plugins.
One more Thing
Stephen from ServerPress mentioned in the comment section of his new search plugin for bbPress 2.0 forum. The plugin charges your WordPress blog’s search form and allows it to display both results from the blog posts, forums, topics, and replies. We all know bbPress uses Custom Post Types thus it is a bit nasty in terms of searching. Stephen’s plugin will make it right for you.
Apart from the Seach bbPress plugin, ServerPress also has another really nice application DesktopServer which helps you to set up test environment for WordPress, for both Windows and Mac users. WPMU has a in depth review here.
