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WordPress Blog And PhpBB Forum Integration
Many blog owners have started to build their own forums, both to foster a community around their niche and also to benefit from user-generated content and traffic. Although paid forum software like VBulettin would be the best choice if you had a proper budget, the easiest way to get a forum up and running is to use PhpBB, a free forum software bundled into most Cpanel web hosting accounts.
Installing PhpBB is as easy as installing WordPress via Fantastico, and just by entering a few variables everything is done for you. All you need to do then is to login, create your forums and sub-forums, and get yourself a new forum "skin"
That is usually a major headache if you’re running WordPress and you want your forum to have the exact layout your WordPress blog does. The most common way to do this, if you’re not a coder or designer yourself, is to get a freelancer to build you a new PhpBB theme based on your WordPress blog’s CSS file.
However, Brian Gardner has made it extremely easy for regular people like you and me to perfectly blend our WordPress blogs with PhpBB, if you’re using any of his wonderful Revolution themes.
This is how your WordPress blog / PhpBB forum pair would look like with the Revolution CMS theme:
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WordPress Blog Theme
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PhpBB Forum Skin
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This is how your WordPress blog / PhpBB forum pair would look like with the Revolution Pro Media theme:
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WordPress Blog Theme
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PhpBB Forum Skin
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This is how your WordPress blog / PhpBB forum pair would look like with the Revolution Magazine theme:
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WordPress Blog Theme
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PhpBB Forum Skin
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This is how your WordPress blog / PhpBB forum pair would look like with the Revolution City theme:
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Wordpress Blog Theme
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PhpBB Forum Skin
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As a result I can get massive site that looks professional and clean.
You can see the updated list of all available PhpBB forum skins or themes here. If you don’t have any Revolution WordPress theme, I recommend that you at least get the single-user license to the Revolution Magazine theme or the Revolution CMS theme. It’s a great bang-for-buck and with just a few changes you can make your blogs look great..
How to Create A Single Login for WordPress / PhpBB
One thing most site owners want is to create a single user id and login for both the WordPress blog and PhpBB forum. Before you even try to do this, consider for a while if it’s really worth your time:
- Does your blog require registration? Unless you require people to create their accounts and log into your WordPress blog before making comments on the blog, there is no use trying to integrate with PhpBB.
- Can you handle tech stuff? If you cannot, or don’t have access to someone who can help you, be prepared for nightmares when you upgrade WordPress or PhpBB, or both.
If you decide to integrate, then what you need is a PhpBB / WordPress integration tool called "WP United". Although WP United is free to download and use, it may requires a certain amount of fiddling around before you get it right. Plus, once you DO get it right, make sure you don’t regularly update WordPress or it might just all break down.
According to the site:
WP-United is a new integration package that glues together PhpBB, the leading open source bulletin board, and WordPress, the popular blogging tool.
WP-United is for PhpBB users who want to integrate WordPress into an existing community — perhaps using it as a content management system for articles, perhaps to offer their members personal blogs, or perhaps as a portal page. The choice is yours!
WP-United ties WordPress to a PhpBB community, with login to WordPress (optionally) handled automatically by the integration package.
View a useful forum topic here on WordPress / PhpBB integration issues.
12 Comments »
Gobala Krisnan is a direct-response marketer turned blogger who makes over $10,000 a month from his blog empire. If you want to make money online from blogs, he is the only person who can reveal the secret of merging time-tested direct marketing strategies with web 2.0 traffic. Read more about him >>
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the integrated system is a multiple streams of income.
Question: Is this a good solution to the everyday bloggers need for more discussion amongst readers?
Answer: I’m not so sure it is. Forums take a lot of maintaining to keep active and are sometimes difficult to manage if you are the only administrator or if you are not experienced with forums. I’ve been making forums since Suddenlaunch came out with their free hosted software, and I can tell you it is not easy to keep the site active.
Rather than having to take on a whole new responsibility for writing forum posts and keeping discussions on course with what your blog is about, make your blog more discussion friendly. Allow comments to be posted immediately and moderate them as they come in. Put rewards in for faithful commenters, and allow people to see that your blogs are just as much a discussion board as a forum is.
Having a forum means that unless you already have a very active community of readers and commenters, you will not be getting anyone posting in it but yourself. Build a faithful community before adding in a forum…and even then be wary of overloading your readers with more “stuff” that makes them think about what to do rather than what you have to say.
although i’m not use PhpBB forum right now, usually integration will make our sites looks better..
Oh I didn’t know that Brian design a theme for phpBB too. Thanks for the heads up. I’ll take note of it. The Pro Media is superb in my opinion.
Yan
[...] to get an idea of what a WordPress forum might look like when integrated with a blog, check out this post over at Profit Blogger. It includes some information as well as screenshots of integrated WordPress forums, using the [...]
[...] WordPress Blog And PhpBB Forum Integration [...]
Can the integration tool be used to tie in PhpBB Forum to other systems aside from WordPress Blog?
I’m afraid this one is for WordPress only
Another super powerful blogging tips for everyone, especially me. If I know how to integrate the wordpress blog and PhpBB together, I think I will be making a lot of money just provide this service to the subscribers. So I think this is yet another niche business everyone can involve in. See you guys in the next level with this integration.
Hi guys,
just want to introduce myself on http://www.profitblogger.com, hope this is the right category for that purpose.
Cheers,
Max
I agree that the integration is only necessary if you require people to register to post comments. If anyone can comment, they will only require one registration anyways. Although having matching themes/layouts would be attractive.
-Nate
http://100wordrants.com
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