Hi There.

I am brand new to bbpress. I am starting a site that has functionality similar to a question/answer site (like stackoverflow). Is bbpress still the best option for that?

Details: It seems like bbpress is a great plugin, but I have concerns because:
(i) it looks like some people have had issues with bbpress’s speed as the bbpress-created forum grows, and

(ii) bbpress generally seems meant for inserting a forum onto a wordpress site as just one feature, not as the entire site itself. For example, bbpress.org (this site) has a number of different types of pages, and the forum is just one type. What if, instead, the whole site was the forum? Like on stackoverflow, where the entire site is geared toward the question/answer forum. In that case, the forum might be getting more traffic and forum performance would be more important, because it represents the entire site experience.

Is bbpress the best choice for creating this type of question/answer site, or should performance concerns lead me elsewhere? The main alternative I see is to build the site not based on a forum plugin, but based on other more targeted plugins geared toward allowing users to create posts, and then linking those posts together in a forum-like way.

Any info on this is much appreciated.

[@robin-w Moderator 6 years, 9 months ago]

the wordpress forums run on bbpress, for instance

https://wordpress.org/support/forum/how-to-and-troubleshooting/

this one has 39,000 pages of 15 topics per page, so maybe give it a speed test !

No reason why you shouldn’t just run a forum on a site – up to you

[@w3215 Participant 6 years, 9 months ago]

Thanks. I hear version 2.6 has a big focus on performance improvement. Is the beta of 2.6 “close enough” to be used on a live site?

[@robin-w Moderator 6 years, 9 months ago]

I haven’t use it myself, but lots do.

[@w3215 Participant 6 years, 9 months ago]

Thanks.