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What is a forum?

Its basically a message board that users/guests (if allowed) can come together and post on any subject that someone may want to read about. It can also be a great place to expose your site or blog, most have a signature feature which if used properly can really showcase your creation and draw in some extra traffic.

Why?

Why not, forums are there to use and be used. Some reasons for using a forum are as follows.

• Added Backlinks - Who doesnt want them
• Exposure for your blog or site - Thats what you want in the first place
• To make friends - You may want them or you may not
• To learn something new - You may think you know it all but we will all need help at some point

Whats a Signature?

On most forums you will be able to add what is known as a signature to your comments, all it really is, is a place to put something like a quote or a little picture that will appear below every comment you make. But for those with sites its a good way to add a link back to your site. It could be something like

http://stemble.com

http://stemble.com Get Your Blog Reviewed By Other Members

But if your clever use the tools provided and add an image with a link to the site or hide the link with in the text.

Blogsrecord Social Blog Directory

It can really benefit your site/blog, adds a backlink at the same time and can draw some questions from other forum users.

What are we Going to Use?

You can use anything you want really there are plugins to cross link forum posts with wordpress everywhere including the forum software I have listed below.

aterr
http://chimaera.starglade.org/aterr/

bbPress
http://www.bbpress.org/

Beehive Forum
http://www.beehiveforum.net/

blazeboard
http://sourceforge.net/projects/blazeboard/

Burning Boards
http://www.woltlab.de/

FUDForum
http://www.fudforum.org/

FusionBB
http://www.fusionbb.com/

IceBB
http://www.icebb.net/

Invision Power Board
http://www.invisionboard.com

k4BB
http://www.k4bb.org/

MercuryBoard
http://www.mercuryboard.com/

miniBB
http://www.minibb.net/

Monkey Boards
http://monkeyboards.sf.net/

MyBB
http://www.mybboard.com/

MyTopix
http://www.jaia-interactive.com/

OvBB
http://www.ovbb.org/

Phorum
http://www.phorum.org/

phpBB
http://www.phpbb.com/

punBB
http://www.punbb.org/

Quezza
http://www.quezza.com/

Quicksilver Forums
http://www.quicksilverforums.com/

Shiichan
http://wakaba.c3.cx/shii/shiichan

SMF
http://www.simplemachines.org/

Sylphagora
http://zero-soul.panicus.org/sylphagora/

tForum
http://tforum.hellings.info/index.php

UBB.threads
http://www.ubbcentral.com/ubbthreads/

UNB
http://newsboard.unclassified.de/

UseBB
http://www.usebb.net/

Vanilla
http://www.getvanilla.com/

vBulletin
http://www.vbulletin.com/

W-Agora
http://www.w-agora.net/

WSN Forum
http://www.wsnforum.com/

XMB
http://www.xmbforum.com/

Some are free others are a montly fee or you can buy a certain License for a different amount of features or the license is for a set period.

Its upto you if you want to buy or go for free, with me being the way I am (tight fisted) I prefer to go down the free route and a plugin I come back to time and time again is Simple Forum . What is Simple Forum, to put it a simple way it is a wordpress forum plugin simple to use and simple to set up, just the way I like it.

It is now Wordpress 2.3/2.3.1 compatible so go ahead and use it on your new upgrade or on your older version of wordpress.

When to Add a Forum?

• I dont think there is a right and wrong time to add one but you have to weigh up a few things first?
• Do you really need a forum?
• Will anyone use it?
• Is it going to be there just on show?
• Whats it going to be used for?
• Whos going to use it?
• Do you have enough readers to warrant a forum?

My answers to the above are that Im just showing how it is done, it is far to early for me to add a forum but for the purpose of this post I have done, so just watch how stale the forum is with so few readers and decide if you really want or need one.
Why have a forum just for readers when they can use the comment system in every blog. The easy answer is, they may want to ask something that isnt fitting with any of your posts and don’t want to use the Contact Form or prefer not to.

So as normal download the plugin and upload it to your site, for those who havent been here before read the following, anyone else can skip the block of text and carry on with the setup

Simply download the plugin and unzip it to a folder on your desktop. Ive created a folder called ‘MattNutts’ everything I will use for this site will be kept in that folder so its easy to get to and I know where everything is.

For this you will need an ftp transfer programme so you can upload the unzipped files to your webserver I use CuteFTP but there is plenty of others out there.

Simple steps to add the plugin and get it working.

1 Click on the link to download the file then extract the files to the folder you have created for the files.To create a folder right click the desktop and select new and then folder.

2 Start up your ftp software and enter the details for your server, these will most likely be Username, Host, Password and Site Name.

3 You need to upload the files to /wp-content/plugins if you have installed wordpress into a subfolder other than the Site Root (the first area your ftp will find) you will need to browse to it, it could be something like - wordpress/wp-content/plugins. The easiest way to tell if you are using a subfolder is to browse to your wordpress homepage for mine I just type in http://mattnutts.com yours could be the same but your site name or it could have extras after it like .com/wordpress or .com/myblog

4 When you see the folder open it so you are inside your plugins folder on your server then select the simple-forum folder and drag it over to the plugin folder, the upload should start and everything will transfer over.

After you have done that enter your admin area on wordpress and select ‘Plugins’ in the list search for ‘Simple Forum’ and click activate next to the writing.

To find the options for Simple Forum you need to choose Manage on the Main Menu in the admin area and then Simple Forum from the menu that appears below that.

The Setup

What you see next is just a few menus

• Manage Forums
• Manage Options
• Update Forum
• Permalink Manage
• Spam Users
• Visit Forum

Lets head to Spam Users first, there should be no need to use this as some users will sign up and not comment for weeks, so we will leave it as it is.

Onto Manage Options

• Users
• Global
• Forums
• Topics
• Posts
• Links
• Tags
• Style
• Uninstall

Not really a lot here that needs changing, if you want to add a friend as a mederator you can choose them here but they must be a member of your blog.

Under ‘Users’ you can choose who’s posts you will moderate before being published, allow signatures e.t.c

‘Global’ Allows youto set options for avatar, RSS Feeds and anything else that is used throughout the forums, these can stay as they are as they don’t need changing unless you really want to.

‘Forums’ is to do with what is displayed on the front page of the forum mainly and can stay as they are.

‘Topics’ Is the same as the ‘Forums’ section and is fine as it is.

‘Posts’ is what is displayed in a post and is all ready to go

‘Links’ is quite a good one it can add a message to your posts where readers can go to the forums and discuss the post indepth rather than just through comments.

‘Tags’ Can stay the way they are

‘Style’ is fine as it is unless you download a new skin and upload it for a change in the look.

‘Uninstall’ Does exactly what it says on the tin.

Now we can goto ‘Manage Forums’ after saving any changes that have been made.

You get 2 types in here a Group and a Forum, the Group is just the heading for the forum and the Forum is where all the posts will go.

For a start I choose Create Group and type a Group Heading there, for this Howto I will choose Categories, I then add a little description to explain what the Group will be about ‘Discuss Post Categories Here’

Then save it.

You then want to add a Forum using Create New Forum’ I am going to list my categories in here so I will do this for each seperate categorie.

I choose the group they go under as ‘Categories’ the one we made earlier and then add a Title (Category Title) and add a description as we did before.

Once you have set up your groups and forums you are now ready to view your forum, if you get a blank page or a 404 error, try updating permalinks in the Froum Options and in Options Permalinks in the admin area of wordpress.

Any questions just ask here or in the forum

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