Upon activation, bbPress will add menu items to the WordPress backend menu. These are:
- bbPress creates three custom post types and adds them to the navigation menu: Forums, Topics, and Replies. Use these menu items to create and manage your forums.
- A sub-menu found at Settings > Forums. Customize these settings for greater control over bbPress.
These guides will help you configure and set everything up.
Forum User Settings
This area defines the privileges and restrictions for the bbPress forums.
Disallow editing after
Set this to the time (in number of minutes) to limit post editing. Once the time limit has been reached the forum post no longer be available for editing to forum participants. Administrators and bbPress Moderators can override this setting at any time.
Throttle posting every
Set this to the minimum time (in seconds) between posting new replies in bbPress forums. This is useful to help stop spamming or other attempts to interrupt the normal flow of the forum.
Anonymous posting
Any site visitor can post a new topic or reply without the need of logging into your site. They will still be required to enter a name and email to post, but will not be required to create a username or password and will not be shown in the list of WordPress Users.
Auto Role
Select the default role for bbPress forum members to be assigned, the roles are Keymaster, Moderator, Participant (Default), Spectator and Blocked. For full details of the permissions assigned by these roles please User Roles and Capabilities.
Forum Features
Revisions
WordPress stores a new version of posts each time a draft is saved or a post is edited and republished. Enable or disable this for bbPress topics and replies here. To learn more about revisions, check the WordPress codex article on Revision Management.
Favorites
Forum participants can “favorite” any topic. These topics are available later for review from the participant’s forum profile. Additionally a custom RSS feed is available allowing participants to stay up to date on topics that are important to them.
Subscriptions
Forum participants can elect to subscribe to a forum or topic. They will be notified when a new topic is created in a subscribed forum or a new reply is posted to a subscribed topic. Subscribed forums and topics will appear on their forum user profile.
Topic Tags
This will disable topic tags site wide and will no longer show topic tags associated with each topic or the topic tag input form.
Search
This will enable forum wide search allowing users to search for forums, topics and replies within your forum.
Post Formatting
This will add the toolbar & buttons to the textarea to help with HTML formatting, the defaults are ‘b’ (bold), ‘i’ (italic/emphasis), ‘link’ (URL Hyperlink), ‘del’ (strikethough), ‘img’ (Link an image via URL), ‘ul’ (Unordered List), ‘ol’ (Ordered List), ‘li’ (List Item), ‘code’ (HTML/PHP/SQL Code for preformatted text) & ‘close tags’ (Closes any unclosed tags).
Auto-embed Links
Enable forum participants to embed links from YouTube, Twitter, and others by simply pasting a link into their topic or reply. This is done using the WordPress oEmbed API. More information and a full list of supported sites can be found on the Embed Codex page.
Reply Threading
This will allow your users to reply to specific replies, providing context to the discussion in a ‘threaded’ view. This will also remove topic pagination so the topic and all replies will only be a single page.
Allow Global Access
In a WordPress Multisite install bbPress is activated on individual sites. Allowing global access will permit all users from across the network to post topics and replies on the forums for this particular site.
Topics & Replies Per Page
Topics – How many topics to show per page.
Replies – How many replies to show per page.
Topics & Replies Per RSS Page
Topics – How many topics to show per RSS page
Replies – How many replies to show per RSS page
Forum Root Slug
Forum Root – Used to prefix custom root slugs onto forums
Forum Prefix – Used to enable forum prefixing with the Forums base slug in Archive Slugs
Forum root should show – Sets your forums to display an index of your forums or a list of the most recent topics.
Single Forum Slugs
Forum – Used to prefix forum root slugs
Topic – Used to prefix topic root slugs
Topic Tag – Used to prefix single topic tag root slugs
Topic View – Used to prefix topic view root slugs
Reply – Used to prefix reply root slugs
Search – Used to prefix search root slugs
Forum User Slugs
User base – Used to prefix user root slugs
Topics Started – Used to prefix user created topics slugs
Replies Created – Used to prefix user created replies slugs
Favorite Topics – Used to prefix users favorite topics slugs
Topic Subscriptions – Used to prefix users subscriptions slugs
bbPress creates three new menu items in the WordPress backend to manage your three custom post types.These are:
- Forums – Contains all the topics and replies that were created in the forum.
- Topics – Topics are created within forums, they are the subjects that are being discussed.
- Replies – Replies are the actual discussion taking place. They are created within topics and if threaded replies is enabled can be a reply to other users replies.
This guide will help you create each post type, structure categories for your forums, and explain any other attributes to customize each post type.
Creating a Forum
To create a Forum follow these steps:
- Navigate to Forums > New Forum.
- Give your forum a name.
- Optional: You can add text to the description area to describe your particular forum.
- Adjust any additional forum attributes.
Types: choose whether you are creating a forum or category.
Forum – Can contain topics and be the parent of other forums.
Category – Can only contain forums (no topics). Use for organizing your forums.
You may, for example, have a Category “Open Source Software” with the Forums “bbPress” and “WordPress”.
Status: choose whether the forum is open or closed.
Open – Forum users can create new topics in the forum.
Closed – Closing a forum disallows any new topics to be created and also disallows any new replies to any existing topic in a forum. If it is a category or a parent forum of other forums, closing the category or parent forum will close all their child forums.
Visibility: Decide whether your forum is public, private or hidden.
Public – Anyone can see these forums
Private – Only logged in registered users can see these forums
Hidden – Only Moderators/Admins can see these forums
Parent: Forums can have a hierarchical structure. If your forum is a sub-forum of another Forum or is the child of a category, add the parent here.
Order: This determines the order in which the forums appear. Adjust each forum with sequential numbers to reorder your forums.
When you are happy, click Publish.
By default, your forum will be located at http://yourdomain.com/forums/forum/yourforumname
To adjust the default slugs, visit Forums > Settings
Creating a Topic
With your forum created you can start adding topics. You can add a topic from the frontend or from the WordPress backend.
Adding a Topic from the Front End
Navigate to your Forum on the frontend. If you’ve just set up your forum it will have no topics yet.
Give your topic a name and add some content to it.
You can add tags for organizing your topics, and you can make the post sticky or super sticky.
Sticky – Posts will stick to top of the Forum which it is in.
Super Sticky – Posts will stick to the top of all Forums.
You can also select to subscribe to replies via email.
Once you post the Topic it will appear on your Forum.
Adding a Topic from the WordPress Backend
To add a Topic from the WordPress backend,
- Navigate to Topics > New Topic.
- Give your topic a title and some content.
- Adjust any additional topic attributes.
Type: Indicates the topic type to be either sticky or normal.
Normal – This will be the default type of the topic, this will not stick the topic anywhere.
Sticky – Sticks topics to the top of the single forum that they are in.
Super Sticky – Sticks topics to the top of all forums on your site.
Status: Indicates the topic status.
Open – A normal topic without any restrictions. This topic can be replied to by all forum users on your site.
Closed – Restricted from any further replies from Participants. Moderators and Keymasters are able to still reply to these closed topics though.
Spam – Marks the topic as spam. The topic will now show up in your spam queue.
Trashed – Places the topic in the trash, from which you can delete it permanently.
Pending – A topic awaiting approval to be published.
Forum: Choose the Forum you want to add your topic to.
You are also presented areas to input topic tags, password protect topics, set a topic to private for only Admins/Keymasters.
When you have finished creating your topic click Publish.
Creating a Reply
As with topics, replies can be added from either the frontend of your website or from the WordPress Backend.
Adding a Reply from the Frontend
To reply from the frontend, navigate to your forum and click on the topic you wish to reply to.
Add your reply. You can also choose to be notified of follow-up replies via email.
When the reply is added, you’ll see that it’s been added to the WordPress Backend at Replies > All Replies
Adding a Reply from the WordPress Backend
To add a reply from the WordPress Backend,
- Navigate to Replies > New Reply.
- Give your topic a title and some content.
- Adjust any additional reply attributes.
Forum: Choose the forum for the reply to be in.
Topic: Input the ID of the topic you want the reply to be in.
Reply To: This is useful if you have threaded replies enabled. You input the ID of the reply that you want to thread under.
Your reply will now appear on the frontend of your site.
You’ve now got everything you need to get started with creating Forums with bbPress!