So you are in search of the best forum to place on your Wordpress blog? It took me a while, as I searched and searched and search, Wordpress forum plugin, Wordpress message board plugin, Wordpress bulletin board plugin and a lot of the search results were just people on a forum talking about what could be a good forum to add. I remember finding more than one, but the others had no demo page and once there is not demo page, I get turned off and I do not even try it at all.
So I ended up using XD Forum plugin for Wordpress. I had no major challenges in installing it. And since many forums are walls of text, I said to myself, forget the 800×600 resolution, the people who are going to view my site are mostly computer people anyway since it was for computer students, so I assume they should have at least 1024×768 resolution on their monitors, since a forum in 800×600 is not a good sight. So I looked for a good 1024×768 theme so the forum would fit in well and I decided to use TypoXP.
After following instructions given on their website, it was pretty straight forward and I had no problems at all following the instructions.
My first challenge was the forum was too wide and was causing the right sidebar to float below the main content. And to solve that problem, the whole forum goes inside a div tag and gives it a class named: narrowcolumn, just give that div tag a width and that should control the width of the forum and just make sure get it to the right precision you need to the pixel with the corresponding margins and paddings. It may be a bit challeging to those who do not speak in CSS and may be easier or harder with some Wordpress templates.
Once installed, you just create the groups (the general category separation of topics) and forums (subcategories of the groups) and you are done. The users that signup will come up with the thread topics. And if ever there was a hard time I have where I needed some thinking, it was thinking of how will I organize the groups and forums.
I really have no point of comparison if installing this plugin is easier than other plugins since this is my first plugin, but I was told it deserved a posting to share on this blog to all Pinoy Wordpressers, so here I am, sharing the information. Now it is time for the others to teach me new tricks too!
Check my implementation of XD Forum on Informatics Students, Where Informatics Students Worldwide Meet!
Hi
This is one of the best sites I have ever found. Thanks!!! Very nice and informal. I enjoy being here.