It was July 13, 2010 that the rebirth of bbPress began, and on September 21, 2011 it was re-released entirely as a plugin for WordPress. By using custom post-types, taxonomies, and the rest of the existing WordPress codebase, bbPress immediately became the easiest forum software to integrate with your existing WordPress powered site.

Since then, moving bbPress.org to use the new software has been a constantly pending (and urgent) task. I set aside the entire weekend to make it happen, and what you’re looking at now (and immortalized in the screen shot below) is the result.

bbPress.org – Powered by bbPress 2.1

My main goal was to maintain the old look and feel as closely as possible, to keep things familiar and show off how a little smoke-and-mirrors help duplicate the bbPress 1.1 style. The only exception is when viewing a single topic, the main post is separated out from the replies to give it the importance it deserves.

I also wanted to open it up and let it breathe, so there’s a bit more white-space between the elements.

Lastly, I switched the typeface to a ‘Helvetica, Arial, Sans-serif’ stack, and bumped up the size through-out, hopefully making it a little easier to scan and read.

Props to Ben Dunkle for the bbPress icon set, and Chelsea Otakan for a little design inspiration.