Simple:Press: A Fully Scalable Forum Plugin for WordPress
Looking for a solid plugin option for adding forums to your WordPress site? You may not have heard of Simple:Press, since it’s not available in the WordPress plugin repository. bbPress tends to dominate the plugin space for forum plugins, so I wanted to introduce you to another option, just in case you’re looking for something a little different.
Simple:Press has been under development for the past six years, steadily becoming a full-featured WordPress forum plugin that can scale into the thousands.
Simple:Press Features:
Simple:Press boasts all the robust capabilities and features of a standalone forum, seamlessly integrated into WordPress. Here are just a few of the most important features:
Fully integrated with WordPress user registrations and logins
Supports WordPress 3.0 standard, Multisite and BuddyPress
Optional Cookies to track Guests and Members
Comprehensive Admin Options and Settings
Underpinned by a powerful user and permission system
Can create private and/or public forums
Optional Spam Prevention tool
Optional post moderation (approval)
User Signature and Avatars
Forum Statistics – including who is online
Admins Unread Post list with Quick Reply
Subscription and Watched topics
Image, Media and File Uploader
User defined Topic Tags
Fully customizable skins and icons
Extended Member Profile Options with ability to add custom Profile data items
Extensive set of Template Tags for showing forum data outside forum pages
Custom icons for forum/topics
Custom Smileys and Badges
Simple:Press is completely localized for language support and there’s a growing list of translations available. It’s also created to be SEO friendly with optimized permalinks, page and browser title settings, and custom descriptions and keywords.
Why would you use Simple:Press instead of bbPress?
Many of you might be wondering why you might use the SimplePress plugin instead of bbPress, which seems to be the standard around these parts. Simple:Press has more features built in. While bbPress is widely used and has a large community of people contributing, many of its add-on features are only available through additional plugins at the moment. Simple:Press offers all the features you would expect from forum software in one package.
If you’re the adventurous type, go ahead and give Simple:Press 5.0 Beta a spin. SP V5 requires WordPress 3.3+ and will not work with any other versions. For the latest updates, make sure to subscribe to the Simple:Press blog.