Best format for small community.

condra

Hi guys.

I'm currently in the early stages of creating a small site and community for Irish people with chronic illness.

The goals are:
to have a place where relevant news stories are available
to facilitate nationwide social support for smaller local groups
to form a community where people can exchange information


Would Wordpress be the best choice for this? - I was thinking about using a Wordpress site for the articles and other information, and linking it up to a forum or Facebook Page.

Does anyone have any other suggestions?

Is there a way to create small forums within Wordpress?
Or indeed, is there a popular free forum service which can be integrated into websites with ease?

Thanks!

Freemancon

Hi Condra,

I think that Buddy Press is your best bet. This is a social networking platform that includes discussion forum abilities, building friend networks, blogging, and much more. It is also built on the Wordpress platform so has all the benefits of wordpress.org and its great community. Check it out using the link above.

If you would like more information, feel free to PM us any time.

Kind regards,

condra

Thanks for your reply. Buddypress and bbpress came up elsewhere on my search, so it seems to be a great idea.

I've been looking up a ton of options and I've whittled it down to Buddypress/bbpress or possibly a Facebook group.

I like the fact that a Facebook group is quick and easy to establish, and the fact that it would probably grow more quickly than a standard web based community, but part of me feels Facebook is a bit invasive, and their groups pages are a bit sloppy.

Freemancon

Ya...I think that you prob analyzed it right. You can start with an Facebook group and graduate to a full buddypress install once you have built a bit of a following.

condra

Thanks again Freemancon. Really appreciate the help.

Freemancon

condra wrote: »

Thanks again Freemancon. Really appreciate the help.

No Prob...glad to help...cheers

worc

Buddy Press looks like a decent option alright.

Just as another option you might want to have a quick look at if you wanted to go purely for a facebook and forum way (though it does integrate with wordpress too) is Vanilla forums, although I haven't used them myself I've been on sites that do and have heard a lot of support for it. You can make it so you have your facebook page and people can only sign in if they have a facebook account so I've seen bloggers talk of how it has kept spammy posts down - blog post going through benefits of vanilla.

Hope that might be of some help!

Eoin

I'd be careful using forums until you have the traffic. I think it takes a lot of active posters (not just lurkers) for a forum to succeed, and having no forum and some sort of simple chat / messaging type functionality would be better than a forum with no traffic.

condra

Worc thanks for the reply. Vanilla looks fantastic but bbpress might be easier for someone as intellectually lazy as me. I'll definitely look into it more though.

Eoin thanks for the response. Fortunately we already have a small but active community in a Yahoo group. Unfortunately, the Yahoo group system is completely antiquated!

Going back to the Facebook thing, I think I might use Freemancons idea of running both a Facebook page/group, as well as a separate dedicated forum, but use the Facebook page as a sort of traffic funnel.

edanto

Another option is to look at Groupsite - it does a lot of what you're asking for.

condra

Hi Edanto.

I've already started development with bbpress. So far it seems to do everything I need, quite elegantly. If I run into problems later I'll be sure to check out Vanilla, and Groupsite.

edanto

Good stuff, glad to hear it. Best of luck!

One difference with Groupsite though, is that there is no development required, it's a free hosted solution. Add ons like extra files storage etc and ad removal cost little monies as required.

condra

edanto wrote: »

Good stuff, glad to hear it. Best of luck!

One difference with Groupsite though, is that there is no development required, it's a free hosted solution. Add ons like extra files storage etc and ad removal cost little monies as required.

That does sound great. I was considering that sort of option early on. Actually, I probably would have gone down that road, had I known about the ability to change "Page" links in Wordpress by using a plugin.

bbpress is functionally superb, but very limited in terms of aesthetics.

edanto

I'd recommend you look at Groupsite - I don't know anything about bbpress by the way.

The thing I've found with Groupsite is that non techy people find it VERY easy to use, surprisingly so. The type of person, common enough, that is daunted by vbulletin and phpbb, will breeze through Groupsite. But again, it may not suit your needs, but it would literally take an hour to get a test site up and running and invite one or two potential users to bring it for a test drive.

I've found useability is about 10 times more important than anything else on a fledgling forum site.

Fair play to you for what you're doing anyways!

condra

Just a little update for anyone following.

I got bbpress up and running.
The initial setup was fairly painless, but out of the box, it's very basic....

...bbpress requires a lot of plugins and tweaking to get functionality that I had assumed would be there from the start.

With bbpress, you need a plugin:
to add support for smileys
to add support for signatures
to allow users upload avatars
to make the forums private (force login)
to allow users send each other PMs
to allow users post images
to set up a moderator-only section

Many of the plugins are buggy, and many of the available themes will break the functionality of your forum.

Everything is set up now and there are people migrating from the older forum as I write this, but if I were to do it all over again, I probably would not choose bbpress.

Hoku

Have you considered using phpBB3? It has a vast base of supporters and many working plugins. Most importantly - it's free.

In conjunction with a Facebook plugin and phpBBPortal, I think that covers most, if not all, features that you're looking for.
You can still use WordPress for the informative portion of the website. To prevent duplicate registrations, there are Single Sign-On plugins available for both platforms.