I have few questions as someone trying to decide on forum software

We have a fairly large wordpress site and we want to expand the functionality by adding a forum. We have to deeply integrate the forum with our site. So we have few conditions that must meet.

  1. Is it possible to login to the forum using Wordpress credentials or vice versa?
    I gess it is a “yes” and possible with wp-discourse plugin.

  2. Does Discourse have sub-forum system? We will have creating a sub forum for every posts with API. Something like Steam forum.
    [All categories]
    …[article specific forums]
    …[Article A] subforum
    …[Topics/Threads]
    …[Article B] subforum
    …[Topics/Threads]
    People may visit the the subforum dedicated to the post directly from the wordpress post and create threads related to that post in the relative subforums.

  3. Is it 100% themable like WordPress themes? Most Discourse forums I see are very “default” looking. We would have ti match our site’s theme to make it seamless so is it easy to theme?

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Yes, You’re right, WP-Discourse plugin can help you achieve login capabilities.

I’m afraid not. This might be doable in a plugin but not in discourse core.

Yes, Discourse is 100% themable. You can style it however you like.

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If you number of articles is greater than 50, you should use Tags instead of Categories to group those. So you would have a Tag per article, and that would group topics about a specific article together.

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Sounds like a good Idea. Probably some modification is required to show tag as the title of the thread listing page? The amount of posts is around 11k

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But there is one caveat… after that every login must go thru WordPress. Sometimes it is wanted, sometimes not. The issue is, as I understand it, visitors coming from search results directy to forum.

How is that an issue? someone coming in from search and not already logged in can do so by clicking the login button in header. If someone is already signed in to the forum, their session is retained. What is the problem here?

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There is a #theme-component ready for that: Tag Banners

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Lack of trust when forcing to registrate using unfamiliar service.

Registering from parent site when browsing the accompanying forum isn’t “untrusted”.

The forum is on a subdomain of the main site and an extension of it. Like Blizzard/Steam forum. Why would there be a trust issue?

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Great! We are going to try it I think.

Why would it not? So, I’m googling how to enlight bling and find the answer from a forum Much Bling Talk. I would like to participate but registration would go thru site CryptoBigBuy, so do you really think I’ll start wondering

  • what are URLs
  • what would Blizzars/Steam do

The main point is that random visitor sees situation like that as force selling to site where hes/she/it was never going. Sure — that is nice way to force an user to accept two T&C’s instead one — and that is the main point for that, isn’t it :wink: Otherwise there would be no point to stop using other options…

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In your own example of Much Bling Talk that would lead to a completely different CryptoBigBuy platform, that could indeed in my opinion be unwelcomed, I think the “Blizzard/Steam forum” may be two separate examples (they both have their own website, and forums that are extensions of them):

(emphasis is mine)

Can you confirm @Jack_Sparrow so we all understand each other? :sweat_smile:

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Site URL:

Yes they are seperate examples of what functionality I am looking for.
For the identity issue, I am correlating Blizzard forum with bluzzard site. And Steam forum with steam site.
Another example is myanimelist.net and it’s forum.

As I said, my site itself is already established. I just want a forum as an extension to the site, it is same as installing Bbpress. If it is ethical to install bbpress with a WordPress site, it should also be ethical to use any other forum software as an extension of that site.

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How is blizzard creatin sub-forum (parent/child system) shown here? Plugin?
WoW forum
You can see sub forums like General Discussion, Oceanic General Discussion under COMMUNITY

Those look like nested sub categories to me.

Hey so how do I add a forum on discourseHub?

Do you have a link to those apps?

To WP Discourse? It is a WordPress-plugin and can be found via its repository.

But check out this: