Available templates

Forum template

The Forum template turns a page into the front door of your discussion forums: your own introduction under the page title, followed by bbPress’s forum index, which lists every top-level forum with its sub-forums, how many topics and posts it holds and when someone last wrote in it. Forums are provided by the free bbPress plugin; the theme supplies the templates, the styling and a few settings. A sibling template, Forum simple, lays out the same forums as one table per top-level forum.

What the Forum template needs

  • bbPress installed and active. See Install plugins. The two forum templates only appear in the Template dropdown while bbPress is active, and a page left on one after bbPress is removed shows as an ordinary page.
  • At least one forum, created under Forums, New Forum. A forum with no sub-forums and no topics still appears in the index. Until a forum exists, the page shows “It looks like there are no forums here.”
  • Optionally the GD bbPress Attachments plugin, if staff should be able to attach images and documents to topics and replies.

Create the forums page

  1. Go to Pages, then Add New. Give the page a title such as “Discussion” or “Noticeboard”.
  2. In the Page Attributes box, set Template to Forum.
  3. Type an introduction in the editor: house rules, who to contact, what each forum is for. It appears under the title, above the forum index.
  4. Publish the page and add it to a menu. See Setup navigation menus.

Give the page a slug that differs from bbPress’s own forum root. bbPress already publishes an index of its own at the address set as Forum Root under Settings, Forums (“forums” by default, so /forums/). If your page’s slug is also “forums”, WordPress serves bbPress’s index at that address and only borrows your page’s title; the introduction is never shown. With a different slug you have both: your page with its introduction, and /forums/ as the plain index that bbPress’s own breadcrumbs and “Forums” links go to.

What the Forum page shows

From the top: the breadcrumb trail, the page title, your introduction, then the forum index. When bbPress’s Search setting is on there is a search box that searches forums only. The index is a table with the columns Forum, Topics, Posts and Last Post. Each row is a top-level forum: its name linking to the forum, its description, a “Subforums:” line listing its sub-forums as links, the counts, and the time and author of the latest post. Posts counts topics and replies together. Forums are listed in the order set by the Order box on each forum, then by name. Private forums are shown only to people allowed to see them and hidden forums to moderators, following bbPress’s own rules.

The page has no sidebar: the Sidebar box, the Page Sidebar widgets and the About this page widget are not displayed. See (Govintra) About this page widget.

Forum, topic and reply pages

Selecting a forum opens bbPress’s own page for it, dressed in the theme: the breadcrumb trail (Home, Forums, any parent forum, then the forum), the forum’s description, its sub-forums, its topics and the form for starting a new topic. Topics and replies follow the same pattern. The theme replaces bbPress’s stylesheet with its own, so forums match the rest of the intranet, including dark mode. With the Staff directory module on, the author name on every topic and reply links to the person’s staff profile rather than a bbPress profile page. See Setup the staff directory and Configure breadcrumbs.

Forum settings in the theme

Go to Options, then Modules, and switch on Enable user account support (its description reads “Provides support for forums (bbPress)”). It is off by default and the two templates work without it, but switching it on gives you three things:

  • A forum’s description, typed in the editor when you create the forum, is shown at the top of the forum’s own page. Without the switch bbPress shows it only in the index.
  • Images attached with GD bbPress Attachments open in the theme’s lightbox, and all the images in one topic or reply can be swiped through as a set.
  • A Forums tab appears on the same screen with one setting, Enable WYSIWYG in forums, off by default. On, the topic and reply forms use the visual editor instead of bbPress’s plain text box with formatting buttons, pasting is cleaned to plain text, and links, lists, quotes, code, images and simple tables typed in the editor are kept when the post is saved.

See Module settings and options. Everything else about forums, such as who may post, whether staff can subscribe to forums or favourite topics, topics per page and the forum root address, lives under Settings, Forums, which is bbPress’s own screen.

Forums in search results

Topics and replies appear in the intranet’s search results when Relevanssi is set to index them: under Settings, Relevanssi, Indexing, tick Forums, Topics and Replies, then rebuild the index. The theme’s search options have no forum-specific switch. See Search options and Stop something appearing in search results.

Housekeeping plugins for forums

Two optional Govintra plugins help keep forums tidy; neither has its own help page yet. (Govintra) Forum tidy permanently deletes topics and replies older than a retention period you set, together with their uploads, sparing forums you mark as exempt and topics replied to recently; set it up under Tools, Forum tidy. (Govintra) Forum upload titles labels files uploaded to topics and replies with “[FORUM UPLOAD]” in the media library so they are easy to find and clear out; it needs GD bbPress Attachments. See Available plugins.

Roles and the Members plugin

bbPress adds its own forum roles (Keymaster, Moderator, Participant and so on) alongside the WordPress roles, and new users get the forum role set under Settings, Forums. If the Forums, Topics and Replies menus disappear from the admin after installing the Members role plugin, that is a known clash between Members and bbPress’s roles, not the theme. See Roles and capabilities.

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