How to Make a Forum Website on WordPress

How to make a forum website, start to finish, on your own WordPress website with a WordPress forum plugin. This video maps the whole journey in six stages, shows the choices you have at each one, and proves each stage on a real screen: plan, the setup wizard, spaces, who can read and post, moderation, and topics and answers from the member's side.

Transcript

To make a forum website, you need a WordPress website and a forum plugin. Then you build it in six stages. Here is the whole journey. Plan on paper, then run the setup wizard. Create your Spaces, and set who can read and post. Set up Moderation, then open the doors to topics and answers. Stage one, plan on paper. Write what the forum is for, and list the subjects your members will talk about. Each subject becomes a space. Stage two, the setup wizard. It opens the first time you activate the plugin, with three screens: Basics, First Space and Done. Community URL Slug is the word after your site address. It starts as community. Default Community Type sets the kind of space you create first. Stage three, your spaces. A space is one discussion area, and its Type shapes it. Forum is open discussion with threaded replies. In Q and A, the asker accepts one reply as the answer. In Ideas, members vote, and each idea can carry a status on a roadmap. Feed is for short updates. This is the Add New Space form, with all four in the Type list. Category files the space under a section of your forum home. Here is that home. Each category is a section, with its spaces under it. Stage four, who can read and post. Each space has a Visibility. Public means anyone can find and read it. Private means signed-in people can find it, but only members can read it. Hidden means only members can find it. On the space form, Join Policy decides how people become members. Open, Requires Approval, or Invite Only. On its Settings tab, Who Can Post narrows it further, down to Admins Only. Require Approval holds each new post until a moderator approves it. Here is a private space, seen by a member who has not joined. The topics stay locked, with a box to send a request. Stage five, moderation. Any member can report a post, and new members start with daily limits. With Jetonomy Pro, auto-moderation rules, such as a keyword filter, can flag, hold or block a post. This is the Flags tab, under Moderation. Each row is one report, with its reason and who sent it. Valid, Trash, removes the content. Dismiss keeps it. Either way, the report is closed. Under Settings, the Permissions tab holds the limits for new members: posts, replies and votes per day. Members who take part earn trust levels, and level one lifts those limits. Stage six, open the doors. Here is the forum from the member's side. This is a Q and A space. Yuki asked which shoes grip on wet rock, and members replied. Each reply has arrows to vote it up or down, so the most useful one can rise. Because she asked, she sees Accept on each reply. One click, and it is tagged Accepted. Its author earns reputation, and the Leaderboard ranks members by it. Then members need ways back in. Search, and notifications. With Jetonomy Pro, an email digest of top topics can go out daily or weekly. Search looks through topics, spaces and tags, so the next person finds that answer. And the bell shows each member who replied to them, and who voted for them. The same stages build different sites. A support forum, where each question is marked Answered or Needs answer. A members-only forum, with the Private community setting. A question and answer site, where votes put the best reply first. Or an ideas board, with a public Roadmap. Your next step. Today, write what the forum is for, and list its subjects. This week, run the setup wizard, and create a space for each subject. Then post the first questions yourself, and invite your members. Jetonomy is the free forum plugin for WordPress. List your subjects today, and run the setup wizard this week. Get Jetonomy. The link is below.