Easiest way to add forums to wordpress.com blog
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My wife has a young but already very active wordpress.com blog for people with epilepsy, called Epilepsy Talk – and her users are asking for forums. Right now she’s using the commenting feature to start topics of her own, but she and her people would really appreciate the features of a full-fledged forum plug-in.
I hunted around for options and was surprised to find that wordpress.com doesn’t seem to offer its own forum service, although wordpress.og has something. It LOOKS to me like her easiest path would be:
1. Download bbpress from bbpress.org
2. Find a third-party we host since wordpress.com surprisingly doesn’t offer web hosting either
3. Figure out how to get everything integrated with her blogI’ve been running my own websites using independent hosts, wordpress.com and SquareSpace for years, so I’m sure I could figure this all out and get her up and running. But again, I was kind of shocked to discover that wordpress.com doesn’t offer its own premium module that you could just activate with a credit card and get running.
MY QUESTIONS: Am I missing something? If not, who offers the easiest forum plug-in
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who’s the best host for her needs?
DETAILS: She just needs something very basic. She is NOT “tech brained” so simplicity is key. She of course wouldn’t be doing anything dodgy like adult material or MP3 downloads — she MIGHT eventually want to offer PDF downloads and streaming video for epilepsy reference material, but not to start with. Cost is not nearly as important to her as ease of use, but I’m assuming this will run something like $3-$8 per month.
My apologies if this is covered in a sticky or FAQ that I missed and BIG THANKS in advance for helping us out!
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You did not specify a blog address or reason for posting when you created this topic.
This support forum is for blogs hosted at WordPress.com. If your question is about a self-hosted WordPress blog then you’ll find help at the WordPress.org forums.
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If you forgot to include a link to your blog, you can reply and include it below. It’ll help people to answer your question.
This is an automated message.
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As you have figured out there is no “drop in forum module” as such – you can put a link to an outside forum, that is probably the easiest to do – I have no experience with the forums in the link below – but they are a combination of free and pay a bit for fancier stuff (no ads in at least one case)
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P.S. Support Bot is complaining that I didn’t specify a reason for posting or blog address. I’m not quite sure how to oblige him, but again:
1. This is a question about using wordpress.com
2. My wife’s blog address is epilepsytalk.com aka epilepsytalk.wordpress.com
3. I’m Arthur and my wife is Phylis. -
The supportbot sometimes gets confused but it tries to sort out non-WordPress.COM blog questions as sometimes 30% of the questions are for non-WordPress.COM sites.
I did look at the link you provided in your text and it went to a WordPress.COM site so that is why I answered your question.
I hope the link helped a bit.
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Actually did not look to see if this was your first question.
Glad the information helped – you be welcome.
The supportbot can confuse people when they see it – but sometimes sifting through a question to see if they are in the right forum can be a challenge –
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