How to Add a Forum in WordPress with bbPress

Bulletin boards and forums are good old reliable tools to build online communities.

While there are plenty of open-source forum software, integrating a third-party forum with WordPress can be a mess. That’s where bbPress comes in.

In this article, we will show you how to easily add a forum in WordPress with bbPress.

What is bbPress?

bbPress is a forum software built the WordPress way. It runs on top of WordPress, which is the best website builder in the world.

Just like WordPress, bbPress is extensible, and you can install add-on plugins to add more functionality to your forums. It is also very light-weight and faster than other popular open-source forum software.

What You Need to Make an Online Forum with bbPress?

If you already have a WordPress website where you want to add a forum, then you can skip this section. On the other hand, if you are just getting started then continue reading.

First, you’ll need to sign up for a web hosting account. This is where you will store all the files for your online forum.

You’ll also need a domain name. This will be your website’s address on the internet and what users will type in their browsers to find your online forum.

Normally, website hosting costs $7.99 per month and domain name would cost you around $14.99 per year.

This is a lot of money if you are just getting started.

Luckily, Bluehost has agreed to offer WPBeginner users a discount on hosting with a free domain name. Basically, you’ll be able to get started for just $2.75 per month.

→ Click Here to Claim This Exclusive Bluehost Offer ←

Bluehost is one of the biggest WordPress hosting companies in the world and an officially recommended WordPress hosting provider.

Once you have signed up for hosting, you can follow our guide on how to make a website for complete installation instructions.

After setting up WordPress, you will be ready to install bbPress and start your own online community.

How to Install bbPress

bbPress is available as a WordPress plugin. You can install it like you would install any WordPress plugin.

Simply log in to your WordPress admin area and go to Plugins » Add New . Search for bbPress and then select bbPress from results.

Install and activate the plugin. Upon activation, you will see the welcome screen for bbPress.

Creating a Forum with bbPress in WordPress

Once installed, bbPress adds Forums, Topics and Replies menu items in your WordPress admin.

First, you need to click on Forums » Add New link from the menu. This will take you to a screen similar to the WordPress post edit area.

Provide a title for your forum and enter a little description of it. Then press the publish button.

You can create as many forums as you need for different discussions and topics.

Displaying bbPress Forum in the Front End of WordPress

Now that you have created a few forums, it is time to display those forums on the front end of your WordPress website.

Create a new WordPress page. Give this page a title, like Forum, Community, Support Forums, etc.

After that, simply paste the following shortcode in your page:

[bbp-forum-index]

Don’t forget to click on the publish button to save your changes and make your forum page visible on your website.

You can now visit the page in a web browser to see a preview of your forums.

Next, you need to help users find the forum on your website. To do that, let’s put a link to your forum page on top navigation menu.

Go to Appearance » Menus and add the forum page to your navigation menu.

Users can now access the forum index page by clicking on the link in the main menu.

Integrating bbPress with your WordPress Theme

In most cases, you would probably want to open your forum for new registrations. To do that, you need to open your website for registrations.

Simply go to Settings » General, and check the box next to “Any one can register” to allow registrations on your website.

Don’t forget to click on the save changes button to store your settings.

Now that your website is open for registration, the first thing that your forum participants would look for is a registration page.

Let’s make one.

Simply create a WordPress page, and give it a title, e.g. Register. Add shortcode [bbp-register] and publish the page.

You can now preview this page. It will show a user registration form to all non-logged in users.

Another page your users would need is the lost password recovery page. This is where they will be recover their lost passwords.

Create another WordPress page and give it a title e.g. Lost Password. After that, add this shortcode [bbp-lost-pass] and publish the page.

Finally, you need to add a login form to your website so that forum users can easily login from anywhere on your website.

bbPress comes with a handful of widgets and one of them is a login form widget.

Go to Appearance » Widgets and simply drag and drop Login Widget to your sidebar or any other widget area.

You will be asked to provide the URLs for the registration and lost password pages you created earlier. After entering them you need to click on the Save button to store your widget settings.

Now a login form with links to registration and lost password recovery pages will appear in your sidebar. Logged in users would see their usernames and a logout link instead of the form.

Managing bbPress Forum Settings

Unlike other popular forum software, bbPress has a very simplified configuration page. To manage settings for your bbPress forums, go to Settings » Forums page.

The default options on this page would work for most forum websites. We’ll take a look at all of them, just in case you want to change anything.

The first option you would see here is to ‘Automatically give registered visitors the participant forum role’. You can select a user role or uncheck the option to manually assign user roles to each user when they register.

The next option adds a 10-second delay between subsequent forum posts to prevent forum flooding and spam. You can increase or decrease the delay period here.

The Editing option allows users to edit their forum posts 5 minutes after they publish them. You can uncheck this option but that would prevent your users from correcting spelling errors or edit their posts if they missed something.

After that, you’ll find the forum features section. From here, you can turn forum features on and off.

Below that, you’ll see forum display features. From here, you can select a bbPress template, number of posts and topics to display on forum pages and inside the forum RSS feed.

Finally, you’ll see options to select URL slugs for different sections and forum pages. Slugs are the SEO friendly URL names used by WordPress.

The default URL slugs are meaningful and SEO friendly out of the box but if you need to change them, then you can do so here.

Don’t forget to click on the ‘Save changes’ button to store your forum settings.

User Roles in bbPress

WordPress comes with its own user role management system which allows you to assign users roles with different permissions.

bbPress extends the WordPress user roles by adding its own five pre-defined user roles with different capabilities.

1. Keymaster – The website owner or the WordPress administrator is automatically assigned the Keymaster role when they install bbPress. A Keymaster can delete and create forums, can create, edit, delete all posts, topics, forums.

2. Moderators – Users with moderator user role have access to moderation tools, which they can use to moderate forums, topics, and posts.

3. Participants – This is the default user role, participants can create and edit their own topics and posts, they can favorite and subscribe to topics.

4. Spectators – Spectators have a read-only access to public forums, topics, and posts.

5. Blocked – When a user is blocked all their capabilities are blocked. They can still read publicly viewable topics and posts, but can not participate in the forums.

Extending and Promoting Your bbPress Forum

Now that your bbPress forum is all set up and running. It is time to learn how to extend and promote it.

Let’s start with the appearance first. bbPress works with any WordPress theme and themes can also add custom styles to bbPress.

All top WordPress themes come with custom bbPress styles to make your forum look beautiful.

For more choices, see our pick of the best WordPress themes for bbPress.

Next, you would want to add new features to your forum so that you can quickly get new members and grow your online community.

The following are some of the plugins that will help you grow your online forum much quickly.

1. RafflePress

RafflePress allows you to create viral giveaways and contests in WordPress. These interactive contests and giveaways are a sure-fire way to instantly get a ton of new users to your online forum.

See our guide on how to create a viral giveaway contest for more information.

2. MemberPress

MemberPress is the best WordPress membership plugin. It allows you to make money online from your forum by adding subscription layers to your online community.

For more information, take a look at our guide on how to make a membership website.

3. MonsterInsights

Want to know which forum topics and discussions are more popular on your website? MonsterInsights helps you easily track all your website traffic using Google Analytics.

4. WPForms

WPForms is the best WordPress contact form plugin. It allows you to easily create beautiful forms for your website. You can also use it to create custom login page, user registration page, or to add surveys and polls to your bbPress forum.

We hope that this article helped you learn how to add a forum in WordPress and how to install and configure bbPress. You may also want to see our complete WordPress SEO guide to help you get even more traffic.

If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.

The post How to Add a Forum in WordPress with bbPress appeared first on WPBeginner.

December 30, 2019 at 02:00PM

7 Best WordPress Portfolio Plugins for Designers & Photographers

Are you a designer or photographer looking for the easiest way to build a portfolio website in WordPress?

There are plenty of WordPress portfolio plugins that allow you to easily build beautiful portfolio websites.

However, finding the perfect portfolio plugin can be difficult for beginners. You will need to find a plugin that makes your work stand out, loads fast, and looks good on mobile devices.

In this article, we have hand-picked some of the best WordPress portfolio plugins for designers and photographers.

Choosing Between WordPress Portfolio Themes vs WordPress Portfolio Plugins

Many WordPress portfolio themes come with built-in functionality to create a portfolio website.

This makes many beginners wonder why would anyone want to choose a plugin when themes can do the job?

Themes in WordPress are only supposed to handle the visual appearance of your website. This includes colors, styles, layouts, and presentation of your content.

Plugins on the other hand are the proper way to add functionality to your WordPress site such as slider, contact form, and more.

Adding a portfolio comes under functionality, which is why we recommend using a plugin.

Using a theme for functionality ties your website with that theme. If you change the theme, then you will lose your portfolio data.

On the other hand, if you decide to use a portfolio plugin, then you are free to use it with any theme you want.

Having said that, let’s take a look at some of the top WordPress portfolio plugins.

1. WP Portfolio

WP Portfolio is the best WordPress portfolio plugin for photographers, freelancers, developers, and agencies. It allows you to instantly create portfolio websites from 40+ professionally designed portfolio templates.

It is made by the creators of Astra Theme, which is one of the best WordPress themes of all times. WP Portfolio brings the same ease of use to portfolios.

It comes with multiple style choices, layouts, supports all types of media, and can be easily customized without writing any code or CSS.

Most importantly, all portfolio layouts look equally great on mobile devices and work as elegantly as they do on laptops.

2. Envira Gallery

Envira Gallery is a premium WordPress gallery plugin. It allows you to create beautiful image galleries and albums. Already used by thousands, Envira Gallery is the best WordPress plugin for photographers and designers.

Creating a portfolio with Envira Gallery is quite easy. Simply create galleries containing your portfolio items with optional description and details. You can also group galleries into Albums or make filterable portfolio.

The plugin also makes it easy to add your portfolio anywhere on your WordPress site with the click of a button.

For detailed instructions, take a look at our guide on how to add a portfolio to your WordPress site.

3. NextGEN Gallery

NextGEN Gallery is a popular WordPress plugin for creating image galleries, albums, and photography portfolios. Loved by beginners and expert photographers alike, NextGen comes with an intuitive user interface to create galleries.

It includes multiple styles and layout choices with support for albums, filterable portfolio, columns, and more. You can also create portfolio carousel/slider, compact portfolio albums, and list or timeline style layouts.

4. Visual Portfolio

Visual Portfolio is an elegant WordPress portfolio plugin that allows you to create beautiful portfolio galleries.

It comes with multiple layout styles including masonry, grid, justified, tiles, and carousel. The plugin also includes a Gutenberg block which makes it even easier to add a portfolio anywhere you like.

Your users can also sort portfolio items using filters, which offers a beautiful browsing experience.

5. GridKit Portfolio Gallery

GridKit Portfolio Gallery is a simple WordPress photo gallery and portfolio plugin. It allows you to manage portfolio items in projects and make them sortable. It comes with support for new WordPress block editor with shortcode support for older editor.

The base plugin is very with limited layout styles and features. You’ll need the premium version to get access more styles and features.

6. Meow Gallery

Meow Gallery is a free WordPress gallery plugin with full Gutenberg block editor support. It allows you to organize your portfolio items in beautiful image galleries.

It ships with support for multiple layouts including masonry, grid, tile, and justified. You can select the number of columns you want to display. It also comes with several add-on plugins that can be used for additional functionality like lightbox, audio commentary, external links, and more.

7. Genesis Portfolio Pro

If you are using a StudioPress theme or any theme made for the Genesis theme framework, then you would want to try Genesis Portfolio Pro plugin.

It is made specifically for Genesis framework and provides a custom post type to create your portfolio items. It also comes with templates to display the featured image you set as the portfolio item in a grid layout.

It is a simple plugin and does not include many features of several other portfolio plugins. However, if you are looking for something minimalist, then it would get the job done nicely.

That’s all we hope this article helped you find the best WordPress portfolio plugins for designers and photographers. You may also want to see our list of 41 best free photography themes for WordPress.

If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.

The post 7 Best WordPress Portfolio Plugins for Designers & Photographers appeared first on WPBeginner.

December 27, 2019 at 12:00PM

How to Create a Dropbox Upload Form in WordPress

Do you want to create a Dropbox upload form in WordPress?

A contact form with a file upload option could be hard to manage if you are getting too many attachments. You can connect your form to Dropbox and upload those files directly to the cloud.

In this article, we’ll show you how to easily create a Dropbox upload form in WordPress.

Why Use Dropbox to Upload Form Attachments

Some times you may need users to upload a file attachment using a form on your website.

For example, a job board website may need a file upload option to upload CV or work samples.

A customer feedback form may need a file upload option so users can send screenshots. A photo contest website may need it for users to upload their entries.

As you receive files, you can store those files on your WordPress website. They will be added to your website’s wp-content folder.

However, if you are expecting to get a ton of entries, and they are not related to your actual website files, then it is a good idea to save them separately.

Uploading form attachments to Dropbox has the following advantages:

• Keeps form upload entries separate from your WordPress files
• Dropbox makes it easier to share those files with anyone and you’ll not need to give them access to your website.
• You can easily browse and manage form attachments from your Dropbox dashboard
• If you no longer need those files, then you can download, archive, and delete them.

That being said, let’s take a look at how to make a WordPress form with an option to upload files to Dropbox.

Creating a Dropbox Upload Form in WordPress

First you need to install and activate the WPForms plugin. For more details, you should check out our article on how to install a WordPress plugin.

Note: WPForms is a paid plugin built by the same team as WPBeginner, and you’ll need at least their ‘Pro’ plan to access the Zapier addon which we’ll be using in this tutorial.

Upon activation, you need to visit WPForms » Add New page in your WordPress admin area.

It’ll take you to the WPForms form builder page. Simply provide a name for your form and then select simple contact form template as a starting point.

WPForms will load the form template with commonly used form fields. You can click on any fields to edit it, and you can also drag the fields to rearrange them or add new fields to the form.

Next, you need to click on the ‘File Upload’ field located under the ‘Fancy fields’ section in the left column.

This will add the file upload field to your form.

Click on the ‘Save’ button to save your form, and your file upload form is ready.

Integrating Zapier with WPForms

Next, you need to connect your form to your Dropbox account.

We’ll be using a service called Zapier to do that. Zapier allows you to connect different apps to your website without writing any code. In this case, we’ll use it to build a connection between WPForms and Dropbox.

WPForms comes with a ‘Zapier Addon’ that you can use to integrate with over 1500 popular apps, including Dropbox.

To access this addon, you need to go to WPForms » Addons page. From there, you need to look for the Zapier addon and click on the ‘Install Addon’ button. It will activate the addon automatically.

Next, you need to go to WPForms » Settings » Integrations page in your WordPress admin area. From there, you need to copy the ‘Zapier API key’ that you will need to connect your WordPress website with Zapier.

Once copied, you should go to the Zapier website and login to your Zapier account. Then, click on the ‘Make a Zap’ button to continue.

There will be many apps available. Search for ‘WPForms’ and select it as a trigger app.

After that, you need to select ‘New Form Entry’ as a trigger event for the WPForms app. It will create a trigger on every form submission.

Now, you can go ahead and click on the ‘Sign in to WPForms’ button to connect your Zapier account with WPForms plugin on your site.

To connect Zapier with your website, you need to add your website URL and Zapier API key that you copied earlier.

It will display the WPForms account. Click on the ‘Continue’ button.

In the ‘Form’ dropdown, you need to select the file upload form that you created previously.

After that, click on the ‘Continue’ button.

Before going to the next step, Zapier will ask you to test the new file upload form to see if all the settings are working properly.

You can visit WPForms » All Forms page in the WordPress admin area and click on the ‘Preview’ link below the file upload form.

To make this test smooth, you should upload a file and also add dummy text in the message section. Submit the test entry and go to your Zapier account. Click on the ‘Test & Continue’ button.

Note: You can check the test entry in the ‘Find Data’ section.

If the test is successful, it will jump to the next step where you can integrate your form with Dropbox.

Connecting WPForms with Dropbox

First you need to visit your Dropbox account and create a new Dropbox upload folder. You can rename this folder as ‘WPForms Uploads’ or give it any name. All your file attachments will upload in this folder automatically.

Next, you need to go back to your Zapier account. In the ‘Do this’ section, you need to choose ‘Dropbox’.

It will ask you to create an action for Dropbox. Select the ‘Upload File’ option and click on the ‘Continue’ button.

After that, you need to click on the ‘Sign in to Dropbox’ button to select your Dropbox account and connect it with Zapier.

Upon connecting the account, click on the ‘Continue’ button.

Now, you need to configure the Dropbox file settings. It will ask you for 2 options:

1. The Dropbox folder where you want to save the file attachments
2. The WPForms file upload field

After setting up, you can go ahead and test your configurations. Click on the ‘Test & Continue’ button to continue.

Lastly, click on the ‘Turn Zap On’ button to store these settings. It will take a few seconds, and you will see the Zap status on the top rights corner of the screen.

Your online form with file upload option is ready to be added on your website.

Adding the Dropbox Upload Form in WordPress

To add the Dropbox upload form in WordPress, you can edit any page or post where you want to display it.

Simply add the WPForms block to the content editor and select the form you created earlier.

WPForms will load the live preview of your form inside the content editor.

You can now visit your website to the form in action. You can also test out the form by uploading a file and filling out the form.

That’s all.

We hope this article helped you learn how to create a Dropbox upload form in WordPress. You may also want to see our guide on how to run a giveaway contest in WordPress to boost user engagement.

If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.

The post How to Create a Dropbox Upload Form in WordPress appeared first on WPBeginner.

December 26, 2019 at 07:09PM