bbPress.org

Good Post Olympus,

I actually have installed and used bbpress, BuddyPress and SimplePress.

My recommendation is SimplePress is the best out of the box Forum for someones website. It comes canned with many features and you do not have to be an expert to use forums plus it has the social features.

Since forums are designed for people to interact. SimplePress is superior to get you going asap.

bbpress shortcoming include its too much focus on “developers” and not users. While Buddypress goes a step further then bbpress with regard to forums types and of course social media you still have to TWEAK a lot of it to work in your theme.

SimplePress has essential all the positives aspects of the other two plus a lot of built in features. It is truly an out of the box plugin it is so far “Simple” to use yet it is feature ‘RICH”. It is probably the most impressive Plugin I have used to date – I only installed it a yesterday and closed down my BBpress and BuddyPress.

So if you wont “forums” to really work out of the box fully featured then SimplePress is by far the smart choice. If you are a “developer” and want to customize to the ‘n’ degree then bbpress or BuddyPress. But with one important caveat. Customizing forums is analogous to gardening – you can make it different – but the real true measure of its value is not that it looks unique but the content of the forums and what is being discussed.