WordPress Plugin Forum

All about the WordPress Plugin Forum

This article does 3 things:

1) We review the TOP WordPress Forum Plugins and recommends the best WordPress Forum Plugin

2) and this article  tells you HOW to install the Recommended WordPress Plugin for a Forum.

3) Finally, this WordPress Plugin Forum article will give you a link to a WordPress Forum about WordPress Plugins and other WordPress Tools

is keyword density relevant?

 

The WordPress Forum Plugin Review

So First, What is the BEST WordPress Plugin for adding a Forum to your WordPress Blog?

Here are the ones we have used and reviewed.

Our Top Recommendation for a WordPress Forum Plugin Is:

WP Forum Server   -Wordpress Plugin Forum

Is based on the WP-Forum Plugin. The admin panel is very similar if not the same (I did not do a side by side as it was unnecessary.

Here are the tabs that are In the Admin Panel tab after you install the plugin

(You can click on this link to read our article on WordPress Plugins if you are not familiar wit finding and installing a wordpress plugin)

1)Skins Tab:  You can choose one for 5 or 6 skins (look and feels) for your forum. I am using the WP Forum 2.0 skin,

2) Categories and Forums: You need to set up at least one Forum and One category. You can set up more if you like. These are where forum posts are grouped by subject.

3) Moderators: You need to have at least 1 moderator. Someone with Admin authority to delete posts, answer questions etc.

4) User Groups. Again set up at least one user group. With time you can ad more if you need them.

5) About -

NOTE: There are 2 things you have to do that you won’t find on the plugin admin tabs:

1) You must create a new blank page. Call it whatever you want. And paste the following at the top of the page:

<!--VASTHTML-->

Without this you won't have a forum! This page is where the forum gets posted to.
I called mine "Forum".

2) You must put that Forum page you just made in your menu so people can find it!

Thats it for our WordPress Plugin Forum #1 recommendation.

The other top WordPress Plugin Forum choices and a straight to the point review (based on actual usage):

The Mingle Forum Plugin

What a pain in the butt.

You do NOT get the information you need to make the plugin work from the plugin installation or from the plugin admin panels.

I had to go to the plugin sites to find out several key things you had to do to make it work and after wasting hours and hours and hours over 2 days on 2 sites gave up and uninstalled the  plugin.

The WP-Plugin

Is very basic and also does not tell you everything you need to know in the admin panels.

Those things are the same as the two mentioned in the WP Forum Server Plugin recommendation above.

I am sorry but leaving out key info like that drives me nuts!! If you use a wordpress plugin it should run in a default mode out of the box (thats why its called a plugin. you plug it in and it should work) if possible and if not, it surely should tell you what you need to do to make it work properly in the admin panel that it provides!

The WordPress Plugin Forum – final plugin is The Tal.ki forum plugin

Is the easiest to install and feature rich. BUT has a major drawback. Read on.

IT is a WordPress Plugin Forum that is hosted at another site. I am not nuts bout adding another hop and another failure point to your blogs content. It seemed noticeably slow to bring up the forum once you clicked on it!

Slow is death on the Internet. You lose visitors.

BUT it is a very  nice looking, feature rich and easy to install plugin.

But the “Options” panel, when I installed it did nothing. But the install notes say you modify it there. But later on you find out that you modify it as the admin on the Tal.ki forum page that it automatically creates for you.

You can click on this link to go to our WordPress Plugin Category to read many more wordpress Plugin How to and Informational articles!

OK thats it for this WordPress Plugin Forum Article

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6 Comments

  1. Pjerky says:

    Umm, how the heck did it take you 2 days and countless hours to setup Mingle? I just found it the other day and had it up and running in 3 minutes and it only took that long because I didn't yet have it setup to install plugins directly from within WordPress, so I had to download, decompress, and FTP it to my server.
    Simple and easy. Then you create a page and drop in the [mingleforum] key onto the page whereever you like.  And that is in the readme file in the plugin and on the WordPress plugin page under installation.
    Like I said, 3 minutes or less. Then you just create your categories, create the forums below the categories, setup a few moderators, and have fun. It offers skinning features as well.
    So… are you amatuers?
    -Pjerky (and yes I am a jerk sometimes)

  2. admin says:

    It did not take me that long to set it up because I NEVER GOT IT TO WORK!

    For the pruposes of reviews I follow the instructions of the plugins.

    and for Mingle, I stand by what I said about Mingle "You do NOT get the information you need to make the plugin work from the plugin installation or from the plugin admin panels."

    I just installed it on another blog to see if you are correct, I DO NOT SEE A README file anywhere in the install proces  or in the panel tabs.And I do not see where it tells me "Then you create a page and drop in the [mingleforum] key onto the page whereever you like"

    It does show me all the options yo must configure but all of these have a default value setting leading one to believe that it will run right out of the box with everything set to a default setting.

    Except for the magic page that is required for it to run apparently!! WTF?

    And it did not work installing it without this info and once  I did  this it still did not allow people to post. don't know why and no longer care.

    It may be the pest plugin in the world but there is a big BIG flaw in the installation and set up process and I will not recomend it therefore!

  3. Barry Harmon says:

    Hi,
    I put up ForumServer.  Things went along well until I got to setting up a Moderator.  I can't figure out where and how to specify a moderator, which I need to do, so the plugin tells me.
    I've tried all over the moderation page and there is nothing I can find that does the trick.
    Any ideas?
    Thanks,
     
    Barry Harmon

  4. Mike says:

    How'd you miss the setup videos and guides for Mingle Forum on the standard installation page? Do you need help finding your ass too?
    http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/mingle-forum/installation/
    Mingle Forum is no doubt the easiest Forum plugin out there. Cartpauj has done an awesome job with it!

  5. Carol49h says:

    I don’t know if this really is the best place to post this in but I’m definitely searching for a person here on wordpressblog101.com to give me some data on the best way to make a living by writing or blogging. I see a great deal of folks generating funds by writing and I just can not figure it out. It would definitely aid if some of you could give me some advice on what to complete or exactly where to go to to get the information. II thank you so much in advance.

  6. admin says:

    I would start out by going to a website called “warriorforum.com”. I have no financial interest in that site but I spend a lot of time their reading. It is a website for online marketers and ecommerce people who are making money on the web.

    Yes I am actually starting to make some decent money on line.

    Here are the basics (and read some of my articles on this website in the “how to wordpress category”):
    1) To make money online you need a website. WordPress is the best place to start as it is the easiest and FREE!
    2) You need to focus your website on a “niche”. an area that you enjoy or know a lot about or at least are willing to spend a lot of time researching and writing about.
    3) You need to get people to find your website. People are called traffic. Without it you make no money!
    4) SO you need to learn how to do “keyword research” and how to write an article using “on page SEO” and then you need to get “backlinks” to the pages of your website. These three terms all are involved and take a while to learn but without them you are just one of millions of websites hoping people will find you.
    5) You will need to do some social marketing (twitter facebook etc.) but that is easy for most people to pick up as they use those things already.
    6) And you will need to keep at it and keep learning. It takes a while.
    7) Don’t believe people who try to sell you software saying it is all automated and you will make a fortune overnight. THEY ARE LIEING. You can get software to generate websites but without good on page SEO and good content and without doing the three things I mentioned in item #5 you are going to have a tough time getting people to find your website!

    Anyhow that is enough to get started with. If you get into it and have more specific questions ask me here and I will try to help!

    Mark

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