I have a few websites built using WordPress as my CMS but there is one feature WordPress is lacking and that’s a decent forum for robust discussion on topics with features like file sharing and all the other wonderful toys bulletin boards have to offer. BBpress.org is weak at best and not even compliant with the latest version of WordPress.

I have been using Simple Machines Forum for my message boards for over 2 years now and it’s a wicked piece of software you can download for free and build a great website with. I love the admin features you find in SMF and I really like the packages feature that allows you to so easily add on features and even updates. Downloading new packages and adding a new feature to your forum has never been easier and the online template mods make site changes fast and easy. The ease of use and numerous features has allowed me to make some heavy modifications to my default forum installations.

One of my favorite mods is to combine my two favorite site building software applications using some modified software bridges to join them. The first is a WordPress plugin that merges the WordPress login and creates a new forum member for each blog user who to join. The combined accounts allow one login to post comments on the blog and topics in the forum. This plugin is the one I use to bridge my WordPress blog users and SMF forum members but its modified using some tips I got here in the SMF forums and it only works by using the SMF_Wordpress package installed in your forum that you can download here.

This setup allows my members to use both sections of the site with one login but they do still have two profile pages. The bridge links select fields from the WordPress users page with the SMF members profile. The SMF profile has more options but with a little custom coding you can add these to your WordPress blog and create a very customized look.

This worked fine for me until I came to realize that what I really wanted was for each new blog post to have a forum topic for discussion of each article and to handle comments from the blog. I found a plugin for wordpress that does just that and now I am hoping to have it customized to do even more. The SMF Commenter takes each new post from your blog and creates a new topic for your forum so long as they are installed in the same local database. It creates a link back between the post and the topic and helps move traffic from both sides of the site. I’m hoping to show the discussion of each topic on the blog home page with some future modifications but for now I have to settle for a simple link between the two.

It is however really nice to have the automatic topic creation for each new post. This only works on posts made from within WordPress Admin. If I make a post using something like Performancing for Firefox then I have to save it as a draft and then manually post from within WordPress to get the plugin to create the topic but that’s good enough for the sites I have that need this.

If you have any other ideas on integrating WordPress and Simple Machines please make a comment and let me know.

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