Use WordPress as a Forum!

[the_dead_one]

I’ve created a theme for WordPress that turns a WordPress blog into a forum. You can see it in action here.

It contains these features:

• Lists Posts by date of last comment (instead of published date) (included as a page template)
• Unread topics are highlighted and can be used to filter posts list (included as a page template)
• A hierarchical Forum list (included as a page template)
• AJAX Comment Preview (can be turned off)
• Comment QuickTags (can be turned off)
• Forum-looking Layout
• Pages and Categories can be used as Tabs (configurable)
• RSS 2.0 Feed of forum posts (can optionally be included in the theme or replace the main post RSS feed link)

I’d be interested to know if there is any interest for me to release the theme.

It is currently dependant on at least one plugin, but I plan to add another page template that removes the dependancy. You can read some more about it @ my blog.

[foxycp]

It’s looking good m8, I’m very interested in this project.
Would like to get my hands on it…

[Just Thomas Misund]

Yes. Release. Definately.

WordPress has got what it takes to power forums, projects like yours are very welcome. I just released a plugin to list posts by last comment date with forum-like use in mind. I would really like to have a look under the hood of this theme.

[the_dead_one]

I’m just tidying up the theme now for release. I’ve added “Sticky” posts and an admin options menu.

As for the last-comment-date, I do in two (to three) SQL queries and it’s not particularly optimised very well. I’ve also hacked the loop too. I think if I continue to do work on it, I’d concentrate on this part.

[the_dead_one]

Version 1 is ready for public consumption! Grab it on my blog here.

[the_dead_one]

Version 2 is out. This one contains a custom posting template wrapped in a page template, so the theme is totally stand-alone.

[cinestar]

I love the idea, but is there an easy way to get the forum-like functionality without the ugly forum look? I’ve tried for years to turn a forum into a decent looking CMS.

Personally i preffer the first post of any forum post to show up as like a clean article and the the reply and subsequent thres just the way they already do in word press. Would this be possible? Or at the very least only do the forum layout for certain category as opposed to the entire blog so we can still make use of standard page and post views in our sites. It seems if you turn the entire thing into a forum then you would still end up with the same problem we have today where you still need two installations one cms and one forum in order to run a community site. Much better to work from a single user database if ya know what i mean.