I am currently wondering whether I could add forums to roumazeilles.net (you can give me your opinion on this). It would extend the possibility of commenting posts with even more freedom since people could even talk to each other on issues choosen quite freely.
Requirements
For this,I started to check what solutions are available for a WordPress web site adminsitrator in order to stay well integrated into the original web log, with an interface as simple as possible, but providing a very good protection against SPAM (even if you nearly never see them, SPAM messages are still a pain in the neck requiring permanent attention and tools to protect the web site against the flood).
Comparison
The table below give a general idea of the characteristics that I tried to check in the various products I found good enough to be detailed.
| RS Discuss | XD Forum | WP-Forum | bbPress | |
| Integration of WP themes | Undocumented | Based upon a xdforum.css file |
— | Around 20 files very similar to a WP theme |
| WP user integration | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes (with the support of plugins) |
| Topic lock | Yes | ? | ? | ? |
| Most recent update | 2006-08 | 2006-12 | 2006-12 | 2007-02 Still in development |
| Online help | No | No | No | Yes |
| Support forum | Yes | Yes. | Only comments to 1 blog page | Yes |
| French language | No. Translation is possible in a file |
No | — | No. Translation is possible in a file |
| Protection against SPAM | — | — | Uses WP words | Yes. Still sensitive to lurkers (registered users, not willing to post) |
| PHP support | — | — | PHP5 (5.1.0RC1) PHP4-compatible |
— |
Others
Conclusion
For the time being, I would favor bbPress because it is supported by a very active community and because -even if edges are still rough- rapid progress can be observed going in the right direction.
See also
List of plugins for WordPress forums.
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