Wordpress + Membership Site: Which Forum Software is Best ?

Using Wordpress as a Member Site, I want to add a forum. I would like to use the existing members' names/passwords so once logged on they can post in the forum.

Is there any (good) forum software I can do this with?

Or, should I just accept that vBulletin should be used and accept the fact people will have to register twice? Will people mind (I know it would annoy me a bit).

At the moment I am thinking of SimpleForum http://simplepressforum.com/download/

 

Take a look at vbulletin + wordpress + vbulletin-wordpress bridge at vbulletin.org. The bridge integrates VB and wordpress into one seamless unit. And since this is going to be a paid site, your can use the payments feature built into VB. That will take care of the payments and moving the members from one usergroup to the other. Once you have it all setup, everything will be automatic.

Members will be able to purchase the paid subscription through vbulletin, they will then be put into the correct user group. The vbulletin group should be synched with the wordpress group through the bridge.

 

There's always bbpress as it;s designed for and written by the folks who do wordpress. Nothing fancy required to add on. Just have to tell bbpress where to find the wordpress site:

http://bbpress.org

The forum is very simple though.

 

VB is a good forum script. If you thinking for free/open source one look at bbpress

 

if you cannot afford VB, SMF is a very good free solution.

 

Be sure to review the licensing on SMF though as it may or may not work for you.

 

Go with the best: vBulletin

 

what could possibly be in the SMF user license that would preclude the OP from using it?

 

Didn't say the licensing would prevent the user from using it. I said that the poster may not agree with the licensing. With Wordpress, most scripts and addons are GPL'ed while SMF isn't and carries requirements different from the GPL.

 

SMF and some mod and theme creators require their copyright remain.
i can't think of anything else that might turn anyone off from using it.

 

bbpress is a forum script form the creator of wordpress.
it can be easily integrated with your existing wordpress blog by using the bbpress-integration plugin...

 

Thanks for all your feedback ... still mulling the options. I am a VERY slow decision-maker... i t's not until you've got/installed/configured/used something that you realise it was pants all along ... so hard to decide.

Simple Press is pulling at me at the moment, just for the shared memberlist I hope will be achieved.

 

well... i have been thinking about half a year, which forum should i choose. I tried out all of the plugin based forums, but they are not really the best... i'm thinking on moving to another cms (with inbuilt forum) but it is kinda hard, wordpress is so lightweight

 

The irony of that statement is amazing considering just this very morning, the default php memory limit for wordpress multiuser got bumped up yet again. This time to 64 megs.

A year or so ago, it was 8 megs.

http://trac.mu.wordpress.org/changeset/1887

 

well, it is for multiuser, so it is nearly the same as using multiple blogs, of xourse it needs resources.

For not to be off topic:
http://simplepressforum.com/

That one is the best plugin based forum out there i think... just the bridges can be better, or a very well coded bbpress.

 

i might add that to one of the private wp sites i have so family can post to it and stuff.

 

Regular wordpress is almost there as well. It's at 32megs:

http://core.trac.wordpress.org/browser/trunk/wp-settings.php#L12

The thing with simple press is that it's a plugin and it sits with wordpress. You should be able to get it to share themes and management with your site.

With bbpress, it's another program that you'll have to install and keep up on. While you can get it to share databases and the like, you have to set it up to do so. And theme it.

Really depends on your level of expertise and how much time, energy and effort you want to put into your site.