bbPress is undoubtedly the best option one has when it comes to integrating Bulletin Board forums on a WordPress website. The functions of bbPress are all WordPress based, built on the core of WP, so this makes this solution a more practical, easier to implement and much more light weight. This makes bbPress work fast and avoids the caveats of other work-around ways to couple WordPress with Bulletin Board.
Plugin Installation
The great thing about bbPress is that installs flawlessly, like any other plugin actually. Simply head to the official page of the plugin, download it and follow the installation procedure.
From your Plugins go to Add New and then activate the plugin.
Creating a forum
Within the bbPress menu go to Forums – and select New Forum. The new interactive screen will look a little like the WordPress post edit. Start off by picking a name for your forum and type it in. Then provide a description for it and then press publish.
Getting your forum public
Now that your forum is created, you can make it public and accessible to the public quite easily. You need to create a new post page then title the page, and then include the [bb-forum-index] code in it. This will let WP know that your new page is the forum area.
A good idea is to turn off trackballing and commenting on this page to avoid issues, then head on to Appearance and Menu and add the page to the navigation menu. A quick test will show that your new tab/page will send you to the forum first page, the index page.
bbPress and WordPress themes
Within the Settings and General tab you will find a box you can tick that reads “anyone can register”. Once ticked, your forum will become available to anyone who wants to use it.
Registration will require that you create a new WP page that you’re going to title however you want, though Register is pretty common and then add [bbp-register] to it before you create it.
Password Recovery is a function created just the same. Create a new WP page and add the [bbp-lost-pass] code to it.
Widgets
A great set of tools accompany your bbPress forum plugin. The Appearance – Widgets include a Login Widget, which can be included in your sidebar, which acts as the URL for registration as well as the lost password interactive bit.
Management
Luckily, while bbPress is very easy to use and very simple to configure, it is also easy to customize. Within the forum settings page you will find a plethora of settings to choose from.
They range from editing, to throttling postings, to revisions, to favorites, subscriptions, topic tagging and anonymous posting.
You can choose all of the above and most settings are either on or off, or are time sensitive, depending on the function they offer. So pick and choose however you decide.
User roles and privileges
You can grant certain users privileges as you would with regular Bulletin Board forums. Here are the main functions and privileges a forum user can have:
Keymaster: At first, the keymaster is the owner of the blog but the function can be offered to others too. As a keymaster, you can create new forums, create, edit and delete topics and posts and so on.
Moderators: A user with moderation tool access will be able to use the moderation tools that are available.
Regular users: A participant is a registered user that can post, create and edit on the forum.
Spectators: users with read-only privileges.
Blocked: can spectate, but cannot participate.
A lot more functionality is available via other bbPress Plugins, but the basics are included in the core package, and allow easy creation and management of forums. Head here to see what other plugins are available and further edit your bbPress plugin forum.
Update: There are other options for forums and bulletin boards that don’t integrated directly with WordPress. The benefit of them is that it is often more secure to have the forum separate from your main website. Also by separating them you don’t bloat the database of your main website. If you want the forum installation separate from your main website I encourage you to check out phpBB (free), XenForo (not free), and vBulletin (not free) to see if any of them meet your needs.