A few days ago I was asked to create a discussion board that me and some friends will use to hang out. I did not have all day so I needed something that I could setup fairly easy and quickly. In addition the machine at my disposal was an old PII 400 Mhz that also served as our teamspeak, OpenVPN and quake 3 server. For that old machine that is a lot to ask from but that is what we had and I had to manage with that. I needed an extra lightweight forum platform. After a quick search I settled with bbPress and as it turned out it was the right choice.
bbPress is a free discussion board platform from the creators of wordpress. I first heard about it when I was looking into wordpress forum options. It is developed to be integrated into wordpress without much hassle so if you are thinking about a blog with a forum this is a pretty solid choice. The whole idea behind bbpress is that it is stripped out of everything, having only basic functionality, in order to be as light as possible. You can extend its functionality via its plugin system later using only the components that you need.
Setting up bbPress is very easy and quick. All you need is the usual Apache,Mysql,PHP setup and a copy of bbPress. At first you need to create a new database for the platform and then unpack bbPress on your public directory or apache root. You then point your browser on the address that bbPress is and follow the install wizard. There you need to specify things like the database info and the name of your discussion board and that's it! The whole process can take like...10 minutes.
After the setup is over you have your brand new forum ready for posts. Heading into the admin environment you notice that there is not a lot to do but you knew that already. You can create new forums, change the theme and manage the posts and plugins. In my case that was not enough so I headed back to bbPress site to look for extensions. There I found a good selection for plugins to provide extra functionality and all where very easy to setup. Plugin setup usually requires unpacking the component in the plugin/ directory where bbPress is deployed and activation through the admin environment. For the forum I was creating I needed to setup a privacy system to make some forums invisible to unregistered users and also allow the use of avatars. Installing privacy component was only a matter of unpacking and activation. Avatar component required some code inclusion in certain .php files of the template I was using, but nothing stressful. All the instructions were laid out in the component's page so I had no trouble knowing what to do.
Our beloved old server managed to run bbpress just fine without any problems. If you need an easy to install, lightweight forum platform with extension capabilities grab bbPress without hesitation. You cannot go wrong.
bbPress is a free discussion board platform from the creators of wordpress. I first heard about it when I was looking into wordpress forum options. It is developed to be integrated into wordpress without much hassle so if you are thinking about a blog with a forum this is a pretty solid choice. The whole idea behind bbpress is that it is stripped out of everything, having only basic functionality, in order to be as light as possible. You can extend its functionality via its plugin system later using only the components that you need.
Setting up bbPress is very easy and quick. All you need is the usual Apache,Mysql,PHP setup and a copy of bbPress. At first you need to create a new database for the platform and then unpack bbPress on your public directory or apache root. You then point your browser on the address that bbPress is and follow the install wizard. There you need to specify things like the database info and the name of your discussion board and that's it! The whole process can take like...10 minutes.
After the setup is over you have your brand new forum ready for posts. Heading into the admin environment you notice that there is not a lot to do but you knew that already. You can create new forums, change the theme and manage the posts and plugins. In my case that was not enough so I headed back to bbPress site to look for extensions. There I found a good selection for plugins to provide extra functionality and all where very easy to setup. Plugin setup usually requires unpacking the component in the plugin/ directory where bbPress is deployed and activation through the admin environment. For the forum I was creating I needed to setup a privacy system to make some forums invisible to unregistered users and also allow the use of avatars. Installing privacy component was only a matter of unpacking and activation. Avatar component required some code inclusion in certain .php files of the template I was using, but nothing stressful. All the instructions were laid out in the component's page so I had no trouble knowing what to do.
Our beloved old server managed to run bbpress just fine without any problems. If you need an easy to install, lightweight forum platform with extension capabilities grab bbPress without hesitation. You cannot go wrong.
