At last, I seem to have found a decent set of forum tools that plugs directly into wordpress! I have been looking for something that gives me some of the functionality of PHPbb but uses the WordPress user table in the database. Following a link to YellowSwordfish I happened across ‘sf-forum’.
I have since installed it on this blog, and you can get to it by following the ‘Forum’ links in the menu bar. It allows me to establish forum groups visible only to specific users or set up different ones open to public access. Currently, if you visit the page you will be able to see three forums related to the work I do as part of Cleveratom Limited. However, if you sign up to the site you’ll also see (as a subscriber) another forum dedicated to DVD technologies. Now, none of these are particularly high profile things for me to broadcast, but they do illustrate the power of the simple forum plug in.
The only caveat I would suggest is that to get the forum to appear you need to be sure that your page names match your database names – it took a few minutes for this to sink in and at first I was thinking I had not managed to get a decent forum… but hold fast! Get those names right and it appears beautifully.
Many thanks to Andy (I think) at yellow swordfish – a brilliant little plug in with lots of versatility.