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ForumWP’s homepage makes a bold promise: install it, skip the coding, and have a working forum in two minutes. So we installed it. What we found in the first session — and what a week of digging through changelogs, user reviews, and directory data turned up — paints a more complicated picture than the marketing suggests. This is our first-look review of ForumWP, covering the setup experience we tested firsthand and the trust signals every buyer should check before paying for Pro.

Transparency note: DiscussCamp is building its own block-native forum plugin, so we have a horse in this race. That’s exactly why we’re upfront about what we tested hands-on (installation and first-run experience) and what comes from public sources (the WordPress.org listing, changelog, user reviews, and official documentation). A full deep-dive follows once we’ve spent serious time with the frontend.

What Is ForumWP?

ForumWP is a freemium forum plugin from the team behind Ultimate Member, the popular membership and user-profile plugin. It launched on the WordPress.org directory in July 2019 and positions itself as the modern alternative to legacy forum software — AJAX-powered interactions, mobile-first design, and theme inheritance so the forum picks up your site’s fonts, colors, and button styles.

The Setup Experience: No Wizard, No Guidance

This is the part we tested hands-on, and it’s where our first impression soured. After activation, ForumWP offers no setup wizard. There’s no guided flow asking what kind of forum you want, no checklist pointing you to the next step, and no onboarding tour of the settings. You’re dropped into the WordPress admin and expected to find your own way to ForumWP → Settings.

The official documentation confirms this is by design. The installation guide is, almost verbatim: activate the plugin, that’s it, go to settings. For experienced forum administrators, that minimalism might be fine. But we approached ForumWP the way most buyers will — as WordPress users who haven’t run a forum before — and the first ten minutes felt directionless. There’s a real gap between the “get started in 2 minutes” marketing and the actual first-run experience, which leaves you to discover pages, shortcodes, and settings on your own.

To be fair, competing forum plugins are not universally better here. But an onboarding wizard has become table stakes for plugins in this price bracket, and its absence is the single clearest thing ForumWP could fix to improve conversions from its own free tier.

Features: A Solid Free Core With A Hard Pro Wall

The free version covers the fundamentals: forums, topics, and replies with sub-replies and sorting, topic search, forum visibility controls (public, private, hidden), user login and registration, member profiles, and email settings. A bbPress migration module is built in, which matters if you’re one of the many site owners looking for a bbPress alternative.

The Pro wall, however, sits lower than you might expect. These features all require a paid license:

• Likes and votes — basic engagement mechanics most platforms include for free
• Subscriptions — topic and forum follow notifications
• Post moderation — review-before-publish workflows
• Solved topics — the marker that makes support forums usable
• Photos, bookmarks, and private replies

Putting likes and moderation behind a $120/year paywall is a hard sell when wpForo and Asgaros Forum ship comparable engagement features in their free tiers. If your community needs any of the above — and most do — treat ForumWP as a paid plugin from day one and evaluate it at its Pro price.

The Block Editor Story: Read The Fine Print

ForumWP’s directory listing advertises 12 Gutenberg blocks — forums list, single forum, single topic, topics list, forum categories, login and registration forms, user profile, user topics, user replies, and more. On paper, that’s the strongest block lineup of any established forum plugin, and it’s why ForumWP earned the “best block support” nod in our block-based forum plugins roundup.

But the changelog wording deserves attention. The 2.1.3 release notes describe the addition as “Gutenberg blocks associated with ForumWP shortcodes” — which suggests these are block wrappers around the plugin’s existing shortcode system rather than natively built blocks with live editor previews and block-level controls. That’s a meaningful difference: shortcode wrappers make insertion easier but don’t deliver the Site Editor templating, inline editing, or per-block styling that a truly block-native forum would. We’re reserving judgment until we test the blocks on a Full Site Editing theme, and we’ll update this review with findings. For now: ForumWP has the best block story among established forum plugins, with an asterisk on how deep it goes.

Trust Signals: The Numbers Behind The Marketing

This is where the research got uncomfortable. Before paying for any plugin subscription, three public data points are worth checking: adoption, release cadence, and user sentiment. ForumWP struggles on all three.

Adoption Is Strikingly Low

After nearly seven years on the directory, ForumWP reports 900+ active installations. For context, wpForo counts its installs in the tens of thousands. Backing from a team as established as Ultimate Member makes that figure genuinely surprising, and it has practical consequences: fewer users means fewer edge cases discovered, fewer community answers when you hit a problem, and a smaller ecosystem of tutorials and integrations.

Development Went Quiet For Three Years

The changelog shows version 2.0.2 shipping in June 2021 — and the next release, 2.1.0, not arriving until October 2024. That’s more than a three-year gap in a period when WordPress itself changed dramatically. Development has resumed since, with five releases between late 2024 and April 2026, but those releases are almost entirely bug fixes and security patches, including four CVEs: three fixed across late 2024 and CVE-2025-13746 patched in December 2025. Prompt security patching is good. A roadmap of new capability would be better, and there’s little public sign of one.

Reviews Are Polarized, And Support Complaints Recur

ForumWP’s 3.6-star average hides a split: seven 5-star reviews against four 1-star reviews. Happy users praise it as a simple, clean forum for sites where the forum is a side feature rather than the main event. The critical reviews raise sharper issues. One reviewer in May 2026 reported the forum breaking entirely when Yoast SEO is active — a conflict with the most-installed SEO plugin in WordPress. Another, a paying Pro customer, reported broken subscription notifications and topic text collapsing onto a single line, with no support response after weeks of waiting. We haven’t reproduced these ourselves yet, but reports of slow support are a recurring theme worth weighing before you commit to an annual subscription.

Pricing: How Much Does ForumWP Cost?

The core plugin is free on WordPress.org. ForumWP Pro is sold as an annual subscription: $120/year for one site, $180 for three sites, $300 for ten, and $400 for unlimited sites. There’s no free trial, but two safety nets soften that: a 30-day money-back guarantee and a free 7-day sandbox site you can spin up to test Pro before buying. Note that some third-party roundups still list outdated prices — the figures above come from the official pricing page as of July 2026.

At $120/year, ForumWP prices itself above wpForo’s paid addons for a single site while offering a smaller ecosystem. The sandbox site is genuinely useful, though — use it before spending anything.

Our Verdict: Wait And Watch

Choose ForumWP if you want a simple, good-looking forum as a side feature of a larger site, you already use Ultimate Member, or you specifically need the best available Gutenberg block support in a shipping forum plugin today — and you’ve tested your SEO plugin against it in the free sandbox first.

Skip it if your forum is the heart of your site, you need engagement features without a $120/year subscription, or you want the safety of a large, active user base. wpForo and Asgaros Forum remain the pragmatic picks — our bbPress alternatives comparison breaks down when each one wins.

Our overall read: ForumWP is a plugin with good bones and worrying vital signs. The design instincts are right, the team is credible, and the block direction is the correct one — but the adoption numbers, the development gap, and the support complaints mean we can’t recommend committing an annual budget to it today without testing it thoroughly in the sandbox first. We’ll revisit this verdict after our full frontend deep-dive.

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Frequently Asked Questions

Is ForumWP Free?

The core plugin is free and covers forums, topics, replies, profiles, and registration. Engagement features — likes, votes, subscriptions, moderation, solved topics, photos, and bookmarks — require ForumWP Pro, starting at $120/year for one site.

Does ForumWP Have A Setup Wizard?

No. After activation you’re directed straight to the settings screen with no guided onboarding. The official documentation describes installation as simply activating the plugin and visiting ForumWP → Settings.

Does ForumWP Work With Block Themes?

ForumWP ships 12 Gutenberg blocks and added block theme compatibility fixes in version 2.1.0. However, the changelog describes the blocks as wrappers for the plugin’s shortcodes, so full Site Editor integration may be limited. We’re testing this in depth for an upcoming update.

Can I Migrate From bbPress To ForumWP?

Yes. ForumWP includes a built-in bbPress migration module in the free version, which moves forums, topics, and replies. Plan your URL redirects separately, as permalink structures differ.

Is There A Fully Block-Native Forum Plugin For WordPress?

Not yet. ForumWP has the most blocks among established options, but a forum built block-first — with native blocks for every element and Site Editor control over every template — remains the gap DiscussCamp is being built to fill.

If you’re searching for bbPress alternatives, you’ve probably hit the same wall thousands of forum owners hit this year. You switched to a block theme, opened your forum page, and found it broken. bbPress still works — but WordPress has moved on without it.

Most “bbPress alternatives” posts compare the same feature checklists. This one asks a different question: which forum plugins are ready for the WordPress you’re actually running in 2026 — block themes, the Site Editor, and Full Site Editing? We evaluated five alternatives (plus the honest option of keeping bbPress with a patch) against block editor readiness, migration paths, and long-term viability.

Quick disclosure before we start: we’re building DiscussCamp, a block-native forum plugin, precisely because of the gap this post describes. It’s not on this list — these are the plugins you can install today. We’ll be fair to every one of them.

The State Of bbPress In 2026

Let’s be fair to bbPress first. It’s an official WordPress.org project with a serious pedigree — created by Matt Mullenweg, maintained by the same lead developer as BuddyPress, and battle-tested on the WordPress.org support forums themselves. It’s free, lightweight, and stable.

The problem is direction. bbPress has sat on the 2.6.x branch for years, receiving maintenance releases while the rest of WordPress went block-first. The concrete consequences:

• Zero Gutenberg blocks. No forum block, no topic list block, no reply form block. Embedding forum content means shortcodes.
• Broken on block themes out of the box. bbPress relies on classic theme-compatibility templates. On an FSE theme, forums render incorrectly — or not at all — until you install the third-party Enable bbPress for Block Themes helper plugin.
• The fix isn’t official. That helper plugin comes from an independent developer, not the bbPress team. Reviewers on WordPress.org call it “essential” until bbPress itself adds block theme support. No timeline for that exists.

The contrast with its sibling project makes the gap obvious. BuddyPress — same team — ships 15 Gutenberg blocks and has supported block templates since version 11. bbPress’s block gap isn’t a WordPress limitation. It’s a project priority that never landed. (We covered this divergence in depth in our block-based forum plugins roundup.)

How We Evaluated These Alternatives

Every plugin below was judged on six criteria. The first two are the ones no other roundup applies:

1. Block theme compatibility — does it render correctly on an FSE theme without helper plugins?
2. Block editor integration — real Gutenberg blocks, or shortcodes in a Shortcode block?
3. bbPress importer — can you bring your existing topics, replies, and users?
4. Active development — recent releases and a visible roadmap.
5. Performance footprint — database design and front-end weight.
6. Total cost — what you’ll realistically pay for a working forum.

Quick Comparison

1. wpForo — The Default Upgrade Path

wpForo is where most bbPress refugees land, and for good reason. It’s the most complete forum system on WordPress: five forum layouts (including Q&A and threaded), usergroups with granular permissions, multi-board support, built-in SEO, moderation queues, and — as of version 3.0 — AI-powered semantic search and content filtering. Development is fast; the 3.1.2 release shipped this month.

Block editor verdict: the best among the established players, but not block-native. wpForo works correctly on block themes and offers some block integration, but the architecture remains shortcode- and template-driven at its core. You place the forum, then configure it in wpForo’s own admin panels — not in the editor. It coexists with modern WordPress; it doesn’t embrace it.

Migration: a built-in importer brings bbPress forums, topics, replies, and users across. This is the smoothest migration path on this list.

Pricing: the core plugin is genuinely free with no locked features. Paid addons (advanced attachments, embeds, ads, and more) are sold individually or as a bundle — the full addon bundle runs $290, though most forums need only one or two addons, keeping realistic costs around $100 or less.

2. Asgaros Forum — The Lightweight Favorite

Asgaros is the opposite philosophy: one shortcode, one page, done. Install it, drop the shortcode on any page — including a page built entirely with blocks — and you have a working forum in five minutes. It’s fully free, fast, and beloved for exactly that simplicity.

Block editor verdict: compatible by accident, not by design. Because the entire forum lives inside a single shortcode, it renders fine inside a block theme’s page content. But there are no blocks, no Site Editor templates, and no editor-level configuration. The forum is a box your block theme wraps around.

Migration: importers exist for moving bbPress content into Asgaros. Test on staging — Asgaros uses its own database tables, so the import is a one-way transformation.

Trade-offs: community features are thin. There’s no private messaging, limited profile depth, and a single theme. For a support forum or small hobby community, none of that matters. For an ambitious community site, it will.

3. ForumWP — The Strongest Block Story Today

ForumWP comes from the team behind Ultimate Member, and it’s the youngest of the established options — which turns out to be an advantage. Built in the Gutenberg era, it ships actual registered blocks for embedding forum content, loads a modern mobile-first front end, and pairs naturally with Ultimate Member for rich profiles and member directories.

Block editor verdict: the best on this list. Real blocks you can place and preview in the editor, not shortcode wrappers. It still isn’t a fully block-native forum — front-end forum screens run on its own templates rather than Site Editor templates — but it’s the closest thing to a modern-WordPress forum you can install today.

Migration: a bbPress migration path exists. It’s less battle-tested than wpForo’s importer simply because fewer sites have used it — run it on staging first and verify topic counts.

Pricing: free core with a Pro tier for advanced features. If you already run Ultimate Member, ForumWP is the path of least resistance.

4. Simple:Press — The Permissions Powerhouse

Simple:Press is the veteran of this list, and it survives on one genuine strength: the deepest permission system of any WordPress forum plugin. Granular usergroups, per-forum access rules, and separate mobile theming make it a fit for schools, companies, and membership sites with complex access requirements.

Block editor verdict: the weakest here. Simple:Press predates Gutenberg by a decade and runs its own theming system entirely separate from your WordPress theme — classic or block. That insulation means it doesn’t break on block themes the way bbPress does, but it also means zero integration with the editor or Site Editor.

Migration: its dedicated importer plugin handles bbPress, wpForo, Asgaros, and even standalone platforms like phpBB and vBulletin — the widest importer coverage on this list. The team also offers a paid done-for-you import service.

Pricing: free core; the Pro bundle with 70+ add-ons and premium support runs $199/year. Choose it for the permissions, not the modernity — development moves slower than wpForo’s or ForumWP’s.

5. Keep bbPress + Enable bbPress For Block Themes

Honest option: don’t migrate at all. If your forum works, your community is happy, and your only problem is block theme rendering, the free Enable bbPress for Block Themes plugin fixes exactly that. It enables the block editor for bbPress post types and lets you adjust bbPress content templates in the Site Editor. Users report it working immediately — activate it and your forums reappear.

When patching beats migrating: large archives where URL preservation is critical, communities resistant to UI change, or sites where the forum is a minor feature. When it doesn’t: you’re betting on a maintenance-mode plugin plus a third-party bandage, indefinitely. That’s a fine short-term play and a risky five-year plan.

If What You Actually Want Is A Community Platform

Some people searching for bbPress alternatives don’t want a forum — they want a community. If your vision includes activity feeds, member profiles, groups, and courses with discussions attached, look at FluentCommunity (modern, fast, built-in forums and LMS integration) or BuddyBoss Platform (the premium heavyweight, with forums built in — around $299/year before theme and app costs).

One caveat if blocks matter to you: neither is block-native either. FluentCommunity renders as its own React application, bypassing the block editor entirely. You’re trading bbPress’s classic-era architecture for a parallel-universe one — polished, but no more “WordPress-native” than what you left.

How To Migrate From bbPress Without Losing Your Content

The biggest anxiety in any bbPress migration is your existing content. Here’s what actually carries over and what doesn’t.

What importers preserve: forums, topics, replies, and user accounts move across cleanly with wpForo, Asgaros, ForumWP, and Simple:Press importers. Topic authorship maps to existing WordPress users.

What they don’t: URLs change (every plugin uses its own permalink structure), subscriptions and favorites usually don’t transfer, and attachment handling varies by plugin. Plan 301 redirects from your old bbPress URLs to the new structure — this protects both your visitors’ bookmarks and your search rankings.

The five-step migration checklist:

1. Back up everything — database and files, stored off-server.
2. Clone to staging and run the import there first. Verify topic, reply, and user counts match.
3. Map redirects — export your bbPress URLs, match them to new permalinks, implement 301s.
4. Test as a member, not an admin — register a test account, post, reply, subscribe.
5. Migrate live during low traffic, put the forum in maintenance mode during import, and keep bbPress data intact (deactivated, not deleted) for at least a month.

Which bbPress Alternative Should You Choose?

And the honest gap in the market: none of these — not one — is a truly block-native forum, where forum screens are block templates, forum elements are blocks, and the Site Editor controls everything. That’s the forum plugin we think WordPress deserves, and it’s exactly what we’re building with DiscussCamp. If that vision resonates, follow along — and in the meantime, any plugin above will serve you better than an unpatched bbPress on a block theme.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is bbPress Still Maintained In 2026?

Technically yes — it receives maintenance and security releases — but it’s widely regarded as being in maintenance mode. There have been no major feature releases in years and no shipped block editor support.

Does bbPress Work With Block Themes?

Not out of the box. bbPress relies on classic theme-compatibility templates, which block themes don’t provide. The free third-party plugin Enable bbPress for Block Themes restores functionality and lets you edit bbPress templates in the Site Editor.

What Is The Easiest bbPress Alternative To Migrate To?

wpForo. Its built-in bbPress importer transfers forums, topics, replies, and users, and it’s the most widely used migration path, meaning most edge cases have already been found and fixed.

Will I Lose My Forum URLs When I Switch?

Your content transfers, but URLs change because each plugin uses its own permalink structure. Set up 301 redirects from old bbPress URLs to the new ones to preserve bookmarks and search rankings.

Is There A Fully Block-Native Forum Plugin For WordPress?

Not yet. ForumWP offers the best block integration among established plugins, and BuddyPress (a community plugin, not a forum) shows what block adoption can look like. A forum built block-first — blocks for every element, Site Editor for every template — is the gap DiscussCamp is being built to fill.

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I’ve recently started planning a new WordPress forum plugin called DiscussCamp.

The idea is simple: build a forum plugin that feels native to the modern WordPress block editor. Before planning the actual plugin properly, I wanted to see what already exists in the WordPress ecosystem.

So I started looking for block-based forum plugins.

And honestly, the list is not very long.

There are many WordPress forum plugins, but only a few provide Gutenberg blocks or work nicely with block themes. Some plugins are still heavily shortcode-based. Some have added a few blocks for displaying forum content. And only a small number feel like they are moving toward a more block-first forum experience.

In this post, I’m going to list the WordPress forum plugins that are worth checking if you are looking for a block-based or block-friendly forum solution.

This post is also part of my own research before building DiscussCamp. I’ll be testing these plugins one by one to understand what they do well, what they miss, and what a truly block-based forum plugin should offer.

What Do I Mean by a Block-Based Forum Plugin?

Before going into the list, it’s important to clarify what I mean by “block-based.”

A forum plugin can be called block-based in different ways.

Some plugins provide dedicated Gutenberg blocks for displaying forums, topics, search forms, user profiles, or recent replies. Some plugins still rely on shortcodes but work inside the editor through a Shortcode block. Some do not provide blocks directly but try to improve compatibility with block themes.

For this post, I’m mainly considering plugins that meet at least one of these conditions:

• They provide dedicated WordPress blocks.
• They work well with the block editor.
• They support block themes or full-site editing in some way.
• They are important enough to test while researching modern WordPress forum plugins.

A truly block-based forum plugin should ideally provide blocks for things like:

• Forums list
• Topic list
• Single forum view
• Single topic view
• New topic form
• Reply form
• Search form
• User profile
• Login and registration forms
• Recent topics
• Recent replies
• Forum stats
• Member activity

Not every plugin in this list does all of that. In fact, that is one of the main reasons I wanted to create this post.

Quick Comparison of Block-Based WordPress Forum Plugins

Plugin	Block Support	Best For	My Research Priority
ForumWP	Strong	Simple forum with multiple Gutenberg blocks	High
Forumax	Strong	Modern community forum with Gutenberg blocks	High
wpForo	Medium	Feature-rich forum with some useful blocks	High
BC Forum	Basic	Simple Q&A-style forum block	Medium
bbPress + Enable bbPress for Block Themes	Limited	Testing bbPress with block themes	Medium
Asgaros Forum	Weak	Lightweight shortcode-based forum benchmark	Low
Simple:Press	Weak	Feature-rich traditional forum benchmark	Low
Discussion Board	Weak	Simple shortcode-based discussion board	Low

Now let’s look at each plugin in more detail.

1. ForumWP

ForumWP is one of the most relevant plugins to test if you are looking for a block-based WordPress forum plugin.

It is a forum plugin by the Ultimate Member team. The plugin lets you create forums, allow users to create topics, and let users post replies.

What makes ForumWP interesting from a block-based perspective is that it provides several dedicated Gutenberg blocks. These blocks cover important forum areas such as forums list, topics list, single forum, single topic, login form, registration form, user profile, user topics, and user replies.

That makes it one of the closest examples of a WordPress forum plugin that has already moved beyond shortcode-only usage.

Why I’m Testing ForumWP

ForumWP is probably one of the first plugins I’ll test while planning DiscussCamp.

The main reason is that it already provides blocks for different parts of the forum experience. I want to see how these blocks work inside the editor, how much control they provide, and whether the user experience feels native to WordPress.

I’m especially interested in testing:

• How easy it is to create a forum.
• How the forum blocks behave inside the editor.
• Whether the blocks provide useful previews.
• How flexible the design controls are.
• How login, registration, profile, and topic pages are handled.
• Whether the plugin feels suitable for a product support community.

My Initial Thoughts

ForumWP looks like one of the strongest candidates in this category. It does not seem overloaded with features, which can be a good thing for simple communities.

However, I’ll need to test whether it feels modern enough, whether it works well with block themes, and how much layout control site owners actually get through the blocks.

2. Forumax

Forumax is another interesting plugin for anyone researching modern WordPress forum plugins.

It provides Gutenberg blocks for displaying forums, topics, search, forum overview, and forum grids. It also seems to position itself as a modern community forum plugin, with features around discussions, forum management, and user engagement.

From a block-based perspective, Forumax is worth testing because it does not just rely on one general forum embed. It provides multiple blocks for different forum sections.

Some of its useful blocks include:

• Forum and topics tabs
• Topics list
• Forums with AJAX filters
• Single forum
• Search
• Forum overview
• Forums grid

Why I’m Testing Forumax

Forumax feels like a newer and more modern plugin compared to many traditional WordPress forum plugins.

I want to test how it handles forum layouts, how the blocks are designed, and whether it gives enough visual control to site owners.

I’m especially interested in:

• The quality of its forum blocks.
• How the topic listing experience works.
• How AJAX filtering feels on the frontend.
• Whether the blocks are easy to customize.
• How well the plugin works with modern WordPress themes.
• Whether its forum overview and grid blocks can inspire better layout ideas.

My Initial Thoughts

Forumax seems like one of the most important plugins to test for this research.

If I’m planning a block-based forum plugin, I need to understand how Forumax approaches the same problem. Its block list is not as broad as ForumWP’s, but the available blocks sound useful for building a modern forum homepage or topic browsing experience.

3. wpForo

wpForo is one of the most popular and feature-rich WordPress forum plugins.

It is not fully block-first in the same way I would expect from a Gutenberg-native plugin, but it does provide several blocks. These blocks are mostly useful for displaying forum-related elements such as forum tree, search, recent posts, recent topics, online members, topic tags, and user profile/notifications.

wpForo is important to test because it represents the mature side of the WordPress forum market. It has many forum features, multiple layouts, user profiles, member ratings, subscriptions, moderation, SEO features, antispam features, and more.

Why I’m Testing wpForo

Even if wpForo is not fully block-first, it is still a plugin that any serious WordPress forum research should include.

I want to test it for two reasons.

First, I want to understand what features users may expect from a mature forum plugin.

Second, I want to see where a block-first plugin could be simpler, cleaner, or more native to the WordPress editor.

I’m especially interested in testing:

• Forum setup experience.
• Available forum layouts.
• Topic and reply management.
• User profile features.
• Moderation tools.
• Search and recent topic blocks.
• How much of the forum experience still depends on plugin settings instead of blocks.
• Whether the forum design is easy to customize.

My Initial Thoughts

wpForo looks more like a full forum system than a block-based forum builder.

That is not necessarily a bad thing. Many users need a mature forum solution with lots of settings and features. But from a Gutenberg-first perspective, I want to see whether its blocks feel central to the experience or more like helper blocks around a traditional forum system.

4. BC Forum

BC Forum is a much smaller plugin compared to ForumWP, Forumax, or wpForo.

It provides a simple custom forum experience with threaded questions and answers. It supports AJAX-based comment submission, multi-level replies, admin approval, and custom styling/template support.

From a block perspective, it provides one block.

That means it may not be a complete block-based forum solution, but it is still worth checking because of its simple Q&A-style approach.

Why I’m Testing BC Forum

Sometimes smaller plugins are useful because they focus on a very specific experience.

I want to test BC Forum to see how it handles:

• Simple forum creation.
• Threaded Q&A.
• AJAX-based submissions.
• Nested replies.
• Admin approval.
• The single block experience.

My Initial Thoughts

BC Forum is not a complete competitor to larger forum plugins. But it may be useful for studying a lightweight approach to discussions.

For DiscussCamp, I’m interested in whether a simpler forum structure can feel better than a heavy traditional forum system, especially for product communities, support forums, and niche discussion spaces.

5. bbPress with Enable bbPress for Block Themes

bbPress is the classic WordPress forum plugin.

It has been around for a long time and is still an important benchmark when talking about WordPress forums. However, bbPress itself is not really a block-based forum plugin.

It relies on forum post types, theme compatibility, templates, and shortcodes. You can use bbPress shortcodes inside the Shortcode block, but that is not the same as having dedicated forum blocks.

That’s where the Enable bbPress for Block Themes plugin becomes interesting.

This helper plugin is designed to make bbPress work better with full-site editing and block themes. It helps fix display issues and provides a dedicated bbPress content template inside the Site Editor.

Why I’m Testing This Setup

I’m not testing bbPress because it is block-based. I’m testing it because it is the classic WordPress forum benchmark.

And by testing it with Enable bbPress for Block Themes, I want to understand what happens when an older forum plugin is used in a modern block theme environment.

I’m especially interested in:

• How bbPress works with block themes.
• What problems appear without compatibility helpers.
• How much control the Site Editor gives over bbPress pages.
• Whether shortcodes feel limiting.
• What users still like about bbPress.
• What feels outdated compared to modern block editor workflows.

My Initial Thoughts

bbPress is important because many people still know it as the default WordPress forum option.

But from a product planning perspective, it also shows the gap clearly. WordPress has moved strongly toward blocks and full-site editing, but the classic forum experience has not fully followed that direction yet.

That gap is one of the reasons I’m interested in building DiscussCamp.

6. Asgaros Forum

Asgaros Forum is a lightweight and popular WordPress forum plugin.

It is known for being simple, fast, and easy to set up. It includes many useful forum features such as profiles, notifications, reactions, uploads, search, polls, statistics, guest posting, approval, banning, reporting, moderators, permissions, and user groups.

However, Asgaros Forum is not really a block-based forum plugin. Its official setup still focuses on creating a forum page automatically or manually adding the forum using the [forum] shortcode.

Why I’m Including Asgaros Forum

I’m including Asgaros Forum mainly as a benchmark.

It may not be block-based, but it is still a good example of a lightweight WordPress forum plugin. Since DiscussCamp is also likely to focus on simplicity, Asgaros can be useful to study from a product experience perspective.

I want to check:

• How fast the setup feels.
• How clean the frontend forum experience is.
• How forum management works.
• What features are included by default.
• Where a block-based plugin could offer a better editing experience.

My Initial Thoughts

Asgaros Forum may not help much from a Gutenberg architecture perspective, but it can still help from a product simplicity perspective.

A good block-based forum plugin should not only provide blocks. It should also make the whole forum experience easy to understand.

7. Simple:Press

Simple:Press is another mature WordPress forum plugin.

It is positioned as an all-in-one, feature-rich forum plugin. It includes features like user groups, permissions, subforums, private and public forums, themes, customization options, and premium add-ons.

Like Asgaros Forum, Simple:Press is not something I would call a block-based forum plugin. It is more of a traditional forum system for WordPress.

Why I’m Including Simple:Press

I’m including Simple:Press because it represents the feature-rich side of the market.

While planning DiscussCamp, I want to understand what advanced forum users may need. Even if DiscussCamp starts as a simpler product, it is helpful to study mature forum plugins and see which features are essential and which ones can wait.

I want to test:

• Forum structure and hierarchy.
• Permission management.
• User group handling.
• Forum customization.
• Private forum options.
• Admin experience.
• How complex the setup feels for a new user.

My Initial Thoughts

Simple:Press may be too traditional for the type of plugin I’m planning, but it can still provide useful lessons.

The challenge for a new block-based forum plugin is not to copy every advanced forum feature from day one. The challenge is to create a modern forum experience that feels simple, flexible, and native to WordPress.

8. Discussion Board

Discussion Board is another simple WordPress forum plugin worth knowing.

It allows you to add a discussion board to your WordPress site. It is more lightweight compared to big forum plugins, and it can be useful for simple community or support use cases.

However, like many older forum plugins, it is more shortcode-oriented than block-native.

Why I’m Including Discussion Board

I’m including it as another lightweight benchmark.

It may not be a strong block-based option, but it can still help answer an important question:

How simple can a WordPress forum plugin be while still being useful?

That question matters a lot for DiscussCamp.

I want to test:

• How quickly a discussion board can be created.
• How topic creation works.
• How user access is handled.
• Whether the experience feels simple or limited.
• What a block-based version of this experience could look like.

My Initial Thoughts

Discussion Board is not the main plugin I’m looking at for block-based inspiration. But it may still be useful for understanding simple forum workflows.

What I’ll Be Looking for While Testing These Plugins

This post is just the starting point.

The next step is to test the plugins one by one and document what I find. I’m not only interested in feature lists. I want to understand the actual experience of setting up and managing a forum in WordPress.

Here are the things I’ll be checking.

1. Setup Experience

How easy is it to create the first forum?

Does the plugin create pages automatically? Does it guide the user properly? Does the setup feel simple or confusing?

2. Block Editor Experience

If the plugin provides blocks, I want to see how useful they are.

Do the blocks show a real preview inside the editor? Are the settings easy to understand? Can I build a forum page visually, or am I still forced to rely on shortcodes and plugin settings?

3. Design Control

This is a big one.

A modern WordPress plugin should give site owners some visual control. I want to test whether these plugins allow customization of layout, spacing, colors, typography, buttons, and other design details.

4. Block Theme Compatibility

WordPress is moving more toward block themes and full-site editing.

So I want to check whether these forum plugins work well with modern block themes. Do forum pages look good? Can templates be edited? Are there layout issues?

5. Frontend User Experience

A forum is not just an admin feature. The frontend experience matters even more.

I’ll be checking how users create topics, reply to discussions, search the forum, view profiles, and navigate between forums and topics.

6. Moderation and Permissions

A useful forum plugin needs good moderation tools.

I want to see how each plugin handles spam, approval, reporting, user roles, private forums, and restricted access.

7. Notifications

Notifications are important for community engagement.

I’ll check whether users can subscribe to topics, receive reply notifications, and stay updated when someone interacts with their posts.

8. SEO and Content Structure

Forums can be valuable for SEO, especially for product support communities and niche communities.

I want to see whether forum topics are indexable, whether structured data is used, and whether URLs are clean and readable.

What a Truly Block-Based Forum Plugin Should Offer

After looking at the current options, I think a truly block-based WordPress forum plugin should go beyond simply adding a shortcode wrapper.

It should provide dedicated blocks for the main forum experience.

For example:

• Forum List block
• Topic List block
• Single Forum block
• Single Topic block
• New Topic Form block
• Reply Form block
• Search block
• User Profile block
• Login Form block
• Registration Form block
• Recent Topics block
• Recent Replies block
• Forum Stats block
• Topic Tags block
• Solved Topics block
• Member List block

It should also work well with block themes and allow users to design forum pages visually.

That does not mean every small setting needs to be inside the block editor. A forum plugin will still need a settings area for permissions, emails, moderation, spam control, and advanced behavior.

But the layout and display experience should feel native to WordPress blocks.

Final Thoughts

The block-based forum plugin space is still surprisingly small.

There are some good WordPress forum plugins. There are also some plugins that provide useful Gutenberg blocks. But very few feel like they are fully built around the modern block editor experience.

That is exactly why I’m doing this research before building DiscussCamp.

For now, the plugins I’m most interested in testing are ForumWP, Forumax, and wpForo. ForumWP and Forumax seem the most relevant from a block-based perspective. wpForo is important because it is mature and feature-rich. bbPress, Asgaros Forum, Simple:Press, and Discussion Board are also worth checking as benchmarks.

This post is just the beginning.

Next, I’ll start testing these plugins one by one and documenting what I learn. The goal is not just to compare forum plugins, but to understand what a modern, block-based forum plugin for WordPress should actually look like.