how to add a forum to your wordpress website and why you should add one

mat t hewwo o dward.co .ukhttp://www.matthewwoodward.co.uk/tutorials/why-you-need-a-forum-how-to-add-one-to-your-wordpress-site/

Matthew Woodward

Why You Need A Forum & How To Add One To Your WordPressSite

Matthew Woodward - Tried & Tested SEOOn 16.12.13, In Tutorials, by

This tutorial will teach you how to setup a f orum onyour WordPress site in less than an hour!

I recently decided to add a f orum to the site whichof f ered a number of benef its. However it wasn’t allthat straight f orward to setup and took me a while to get everything working as it should.

So this step by step guide will make it a breeze f or you without any of the head ache!

Why Bother Adding A Forum?

I added WordPress f orums to the site to solve a problem. I was getting lots of emails everyday asking f oradvice which was eating into a lot of my time per day.

This was a problem because not only was I spending a lot of t ime doing that – but the answers I providedstayed locked up and weren’t f or everyone’s benef it.

So adding a f orum to the site solved those problems.

Other Benefits

There are a huge range of other benef its to adding a WordPress f orum-

User Generated Content – Every time someone creates a new post that creates a new page on thesite

Engagement – People have a reason to return to the site

Community – It allows my readers to interact and help each other

Helpful – The f orum is a valuable & helpf ul resource in itself as people discuss & interact

Long tail traff ic – All of these new f orum posts have potential to rank f or long tail searches

My Results So Far

I launched the f orum 40 days ago on the 18th October 2012. In that t ime-

126 users have signed up

64 topics have been started

279 replies have been made

Check out the traf f ic stats f or the f orums so f ar-

Not bad eh? The f orums now account f or 12.95% of my overall traf f ic and is highly engaged spending anaverage of 12 minutes on the site browsing 7.55 pages per visit.

On top of that Google also sent me 548 visitors to f orum pages-

Hopef ully your starting to see the long term benef its of having your own f orum!

Stats Update

As of the 21st February 2012 the f orum now has-

404 users

231 topics

954 replies

This has resulted in an extra 65,447 pageviews f rom 5,841 unique visitors.

Google alone has sent 5,052 visitors to the f orum that on average visited 5.15 pages across 7 minutes 30seconds.

You can keep track of the blogs & f orums growth via the monthly income & growth reports.

The User Journey

One thing I wanted to cover quickly is while WordPress does make it relatively easy f or people to register onthe site it doesn’t really provide the best user journey.

For example the login pages don’t match the design of the site and there is no obvious register/login/logout

links on most WordPress sites.

I also wanted new members to be added to my blogs mailing list.

I spent considerable time tweaking the user journey through trial & error and will show you my personalsolutions below.

Planning Your Forums

The f irst thing you need to do is decide what f orums you will of f er. You don’t want to be so specif ic that youend up creating lots of f orums that conf use the user, but you don’t want to go to general either.

For this site I personally went with-

E-Commerce

Hosting & Domains

Link Building

On Page SEO

Social Media

Video

Tutorial Requests

Take time to think about the f orums you will of f er and make a note of them, you’ll need this later on!

Installing BBPress

First of all download and activate the BBPress wordpress plugin.

Then go to Settings > Forums and conf igure to your personal pref erence.

Ensure that under the Theme Packages header you choose the bbPress Default option

I have included a screenshot of my settings below-

Creating Your Forums

Now f rom the WordPress Dashboard select Forums > New Forum

In the tit le area enter the f orum name and then add a short description in the content area.

Once your happy click on Publish and your f irst f orum will be up and running!

Repeat this process f or each of the f orums you want to create but don’t start using them just yet, there’s af ew more things we need to do f irst.

Tweaking & Additional Plugins

In order to make the f orums a bit more user f riendly and just better all- round there are a f ew plugins we needto install & conf igure.

If you want to add any other f eatures then check out the f ull list of bbPress plugins there are quite a f ew tochoose f rom!

GD bbPress Tools

This plugin add a range of f unctionality to the f orums including-

BBCode support

Quoting

Signatures

It also allows you to tweak a lot of the more advanced options.

Download, install and activate the GD bbPress Tools plugin.

Then head to Forums > Tools and tweak the settings to your personal pref erence.

Here are my settings, everything else I lef t at def ault-

Once that is done, you can move on to the next plugin!

Theme My Login

The user registration / login process doesn’t really deliver a consistent user journey but this can be f ixed withTheme My Login.

Theme My Login.

This will integrate the login f orm with your page templates seamlessly.

Download, install and activate the Theme My Login plugin.

Click on Pages > Add New and create a login page similar to the screenshot below. Don’t f orget to include theshortcode in the image below-

Once you have done that publish the page and in the URL make a note of the page ID.

http://www.matthewwoodward.co.uk/wp-admin/post.php?post=1137&action=edit

In the URL above the ID is 1137

Next go to Settings > Theme My Login and type the page ID in and tick all 3 options. Here are my settings-

If you click on Permalinks you can also def ine the slugs to use f or your login, register, lost password andprof ile pages -

If you click on Modules you can enable other settings/options modules to customise even f urther.

Personally I have-

Custom E-mail

Custom passwords (nothing additional to conf igure)

Custom user links

Theme prof iles

User moderation

E-Mail Options

Here you can customise the e-mails that get sent out upon new user registration, password resets etc

I have lef t everything at def ault except f or the new user registration e-mail which I have as-

Hi,

Thanks for registering on my blog!

Why not head over to my forum and join in with the conversationhttp://www.matthewwoodward.co.uk/forums/

Your username and password are below for your reference-

Username: %user_login%Password: %user_pass%

Thanks for signing up!

Matthew Woodward

You can put whatever you want in that e-mail, I plan to improve these by linking out to social prof iles & keycontent.

User Links

In the User Links settings click on Forum Participant and delete the dashboard line.

Themed Profiles

In the Themed Prof iles settings enable Theme Prof iles f or all users and restrict admin access to ForumParticipants-

Moderation

In the moderation settings choose if you want to enable e-mail conf irmation or not.

GD bbPress Widgets

Download, install and activate the GD bbPress Widgets plugin.

This add some new wordpress f orum based widgets that we are going to use alongside the next plugin.

bbPress WPTweaks

This will add a custom sidebar to our f orums that only displays on f orum pages / topics.

Download, install and activate the bbPress WP Tweaks plugin.

Go to Settings > bbPress WP Tweaks and select Page.php click on Save Changes

Next go to Apperance > Widgets and you will see the new bbPress sidebar on the right.

Add widgets to this as you please – see the screenshot below f or my setup-

Aweber Integrat ion

I also wanted new f orum members to be added to myAweber list. If you want to do the same then setup a newlist in Aweber.

Download, install and activate the Aweber RegistrationIntegration plugin.

I know it says the plugin hasn’t been updated f or a whilebut it still works!

Once installed go to Settings > Aweber Integration and addyour f orm ID and list name.

If you need help with that f ollow the instructions at thetop of the settings screen.

Redirect After Login

The only place people can login / logout of the site is inthe f orum sidebar. By def ault when people login they gettaken to the homepage which of f ers no benef it. Insteadthey should be taken to the f orum.

In your themes functions.php f ile add this code-

add_filter('login_redirect ', 'plugin_admin_redirect ');function plugin_admin_redirect($redirect_to, $url_redirect_to = '', $user = null) {return '/forums';}

Ideally though the user should be taken back to the page they logged in f rom but I suck at coding and couldn’twork that out.

Test Test Test!

That is the setup complete and hopef ully it didn’t take you all that long!

Have a browse around your f orums and check that everything is looking good and as you want it to.

Create a test user and go through the user journey yourself , ensure your test user gets added to your Aweberlist.

Start a test topic and post a test reply – if your happy delete all the test data.

If everything looks good then it ’s t ime to push your f orums live.

What I chose to do was add a link in the main navigation bar that reads ‘Ask A Question’

I posit ioned this on the f ar lef t as it will attract a lot of attention f rom the eye and if anyone wants to ask me aquestion they will see that option bef ore reaching the ‘Contact Me’ option which is purposely posit ioned on thef ar right (least attention).

This helps to ensure a steady new f low of users and questions while keeping my inbox clear f or my clients.

I also added 2 widgets to the sidebar that are visible across the rest of the blog, these are a list of the f orumsand a list of popular topics.

Want more great tutorials like this? Just enter your email and click “Sign Me Up!”

Peace Out

Well that brings me to the end of the tutorial – your WordPress site should now have a f ully f unctional f orumf or your visitors to enjoy.

If you get stuck then post a comment or better yet, jump over to the f orum

If you use this guide to create a new f orum let me know in the comments below and I’ll link it f rom this post!