Using WordPress as Forum Software

WordPress as a Forum
I was looking around the web and noticed most forum software does not index well with the search engines.  Then I started thinking that WordPress does SEO (search engine optimization) great and will ping many different services.  This makes WordPress great for spiders.

So I started searching the web for people who had built WordPress into a forum.  And sure enough I came across this posting.  The Dead One has do all the work and shared his results.  Thanks Dead One!

Check out the demo or the forums to see it in action!

It was exactly what I was looking for.  WordPress hacked into a forum with a custom theme.

I’m installing it today on a couple of sites to test out and modify.  Has anyone else built something like this?  Post us your thoughts.

TDO Forum Wordpress Theme (v3) [thedeadone.net]

Downloads: TDO Forum Wordpress Theme (v3)

This theme turns your Wordpress blog into a Forum!

Download it now!

This graphically simple theme turns your Wordpress Blog into a Forum. Categories are treated as individual Forums and a Post (with it’s comments) is treated as a Topic (aka thread). It has a number of powerful features built in such as listing posts on the front page, not by latest date, but by last commented on date. See the full list of features after the cut (or just below).

Version 3 is tested for compatibility with Wordpress 2.5 and the display of individual topics is tweaked to be more forum like

Check out the demo or the forums to see it in action!
Features

* Simple layout easy to modify and customize
* 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)
* Gravatars for posters and commenter’s (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)
* Posts can be made “sticky”
* Can set different URLs to create posts for different categories
* Hide categories from the forum list
* Theme Options page within Wordpress Admin UI
* Custom Posting Template
* And all for free!

Technorati Tags: wordpress, forum, theme

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