BBPress or SimplePress – Debate
BBPress or SimplePress – Debate
Well Guys, lets debate over BBpress and SimplePress as forum solution for wordpress. Today I am not going to give you any tips. I am really asking for your help and comments about the two plugins. Personally I would prefer BBpress simply because it is used by the wordpress website, developed by wordpress core group and tested really well. However, BBpress does not have enough core features that SimplePress has. We also do not have enough reliable plugins to make BBpress as good as SimplePress. SimplePress is also under active development and comes with tons of great features. Both BBpress and SimplePress are open source.
BBPress or SimplePress - Debate
Lets check out the features of both BBpress and SimplePress:
BBPress: Simplicity is the Goal
- Open Source, always and forever
- Less (code) is more
- Simplicity is a feature
- Speed and security are the foundation of any good user experience
- Put the user first
The BBPPress Website does not any more features than the above 5!
Simple:Press Forum is feature rich. The following list are just some of the main components:
- Fully integrated with WordPress user registrations and logins
- Creates ‘pretty/seo friendly’ permalinks
- Underpinned by a powerful user and permission system
- Can create private forums
- Forums can be ‘Members Only’ or can allow for Guests
- Private Messaging system
- Admins can allow for post moderation (approval)
- Built in Search tool
- Fully customisable skins and icons
- Most rendering functions are ‘pluggable’
- Member Profile updating – users can change own passwords
- Choice of Editors (RTE, HTML, bbCODE)
- Options Signatures, Signature Image, Avatars, and Rankings
- A variery of Template Tags – recent posts etc
- Progammable Hooks for user extension
- Optional Spam Prevention tools
- Optional Cookies to track Guests and Members
- Fully Localised for language support
- Optional and various RSS feeds and email subscription to topics
- Various display options to suit your needs and theme
- An Admin toolset to perform many tasks from within the forum itself
- Blog Posts and Forum Topics can be linked
- Support for the Democracy Polls plugin
- Support for the Gravatars 2 plugin
- Forum Statistics – including who is online
- Complete uninstall/removal option
- Support for the All In One SEO Pack Plugin (Browser title bar)
- View Admins New Post Queue from ALL views with ‘Quick Reply’
- Right-to-left language support in the TinyMCE editor
- Topic Status Tracking
- Custom Smileys
- RTE Toolbar Customisation
- Pre-registration Policy display option
- Post Ratings
- Add Custom Profile data items
- ‘Watched’ topics
- Multiple forum Admins
- Members List
There are only few websites that actively building and promoting BBpress themes. However, one major problem is that the BBpress themes are not usually compatible with your wordpress theme. There are only very few BBpress theme that are compatible with the WordPress Theme itself. Such as some themes made by Justin from ThemeHybrid. It seems that SimplePress has more themes to play with.
What is the result of the big discussion?
I am probably still NOT going to use SimplePress though it seems to have lots of features that you get from IPB or Vbulletin. But I have seen some older wordpress forum plugin development to dry out. They don’t even exist anymore. When you are using your core WP database, it is probably best to use a product by the AUTOMATTIC.
Well. I am not discouraging anyone. I am just asking if I should try SimplePress at all.
No One Debating! OMG!
Hmm… both is great plugins
But SimplePress is the best!
I wasnt even aware of simpepress until right now! sounds awesome. will have to try it out.
I just installed SimplePress and really am liking it so far. Ideally I would’ve wanted to use bbPress as I know it has less of a risk of losing support since bbPress has a much bigger community. Perhaps once bbPress is turned into a plugin for WordPress I will switch over.
I’m using Simplepress for now because it uses the same user database as my blog uses, but when they finally turn bbPress into a wordpress plugin (instead of a standalone platform) I plan to switch to that.
SimplePress forum plugin is so much better than bbPess. bbPress is too simple, plain, and the theme-selection is minimal at best. There is also the problem with limited plugins to increase the functionality of your bbPress forum, and the limited plugins they have are not updated often, so they typically don’t work upon installation.
I use SimplePress on all of my sites and have no intentions of changing (yes I tried bbPress but did not like it at all).