Forums  and bulletin boards are very good tools to build online communities. There are many of  forum softwares available that you can install on your website but we will use bbPress.Are you asking why? bbPress used to be a standalone forum script from the creators of WordPress and has been around for years. Later it converted to  a standard plugin for WordPress so now you can use it to add-on a forum to your existing blog in very easy way. All you need to do is to keep reading, and we will show you how to add a forum to  WordPress.

Install the Plugin

bbPress is very easy to install. Simply go to Plugins » Add New in your WordPress admin area and  search for bbPress. Install and activate the plugin. Alternatively, you can download the bbPress plugin, then simply upload it to your plugins (wp-content/plugins) folder via ftp. You can download and use a ftp client like Filezilla  which is free to use.

Adding the Forum

Once installed, you will see Forums, Topics and Replies menu items in your WordPress dashboard. The first step is to create your  forum by clicking on Forum » New Forum. Enter a title and a description for your forum and hit  the publish button. You can add as many forums as you like. You can also add some child forums – these will act as the categories that members will post in (just select the parent forum from “parent” dropdown box and publish).

Adding Forum Widgets

To add widgets go to  “Appearance” > “Widgets” and use bbPress widgets.In my opinion the most important widget is the (bbPress) Login Widget (I will tell you why in a minute).

Display Forum in the Front End of WordPress

Now we have created a few forums, and we will display them on the front end of your WordPress site.All you need to do is to create a new WordPress page. Give it a name, like Forum, Community, or anything you like. Paste the shortcode below into your newly created page:

[bbp-forum-index]

Turn off comments and trackbacks on the forum page and hit the publish button. Now you need to include this page in navigation menu. Go to Appearance » Menus and the page to your menu.The page is now linked to your forums and anyone who clicks on it will be brought to the forum page.

Integrate bbPress with Your Theme

First of all you will need to allow registrations on your website.Just  go to Settings » General, check the box next to “Any one can register”.

Now we need to create a registration page which is very simple as well. Just create a WordPress page, and give it a title, e.g. Register. Add this shortcode to the page

[bbp-register]

and publish the page.

We will do the same thing with the lost password recovery page. Create, give it a title e.g. Lost Password and add following shortcode to it.

[bbp-lost-pass]

Don’t forget to hit the publish button.:-)

Now we will go back to the (bbPress) Login Widget and enter the URI(s) for the registration and lost password pages.Once it’s saved, load your site and you will be able to see the login widget in the sidebar.

Forum Settings

To change settings for your bbPress forums, go to Settings » Forums.
The first option “Disallow editing after” lets forum posters to edit their posts after publishing. Default setting is 5 minutes.
The second option “Throttle posting every” controls after how much time a new post should appear on the forum.Default is set to 10 seconds.
You can also choose how many topics and replies you want to show per page and you set custom slugs for single forums, topics, replies, tags, users, and views. If you change those, existing permalinks will also change.
Some other settings are “ allow users to subscribe to topics” or “add topics as favorites” or “allow topics to have tags”.

User Roles in bbPress

bbPress supports five pre-defined roles, everyone of them has different capabilities.See the list below.
Keymaster – Admin
Participant – Editor
Participant – Author
Participant – Contributor
Participant – Subscriber
You can also block user using the option Blocked.

That’s it.Hope, this article will help to set up your forum with no hassle.You can also extend your forums functionality by adding some extensions from many bbPress plugins.

Let us know if you have any problem of tips on this topic.

The post How to Add a Forum to WordPress appeared first on Wordpress Themes.

In order to convert post to page you will need to install and activate pTypeConverter plugin. Once the plugin has been activated click on Tools in your dasboard and the pTypeConverter submenu will show up.

Use of this plugin is straight forward.Click on the tab “Convert”, select your posts or pages and choose what you want to convert your items to.

The last step is to hit the convert button and you are done.

The post How to Convert Post to Page in WordPress appeared first on Wordpress Themes.

WordPress PopUp Plugin

First method is the one we are currently using on wpth.net and it’s based on free wp plugin called WordPress PopUp. This is multifunction plugin as it can be used to display not just your like box. The plugin can be used as very effective way to advertise your mailing list, special offer or simply to show ads via javascript ‘pop over’ on your site.

Some of WordPress PopUp plugin features:

• Display fancy pop up(s) (powered as a popover!) to visitors network wide, per site or on specific URLs
• Hassle-free interface. Creating your new pop over is as simple as adding a new post to your WordPress blog.
• Extensive options for customizing who sees your pop overs including logged out users, visitors who have never commented , search engine visitors.
• Includes optional hide a pop over forever.
• Ability to set the amount of time that passes between when the user hits your site and when the pop up displays
• Compatible with any WordPress theme. Customize the style and layout of your pop over to fit with your existing site design.
• Works perfectly with WordPress, Multisite and BuddyPress.
• Use this plugin on any WordPress project you like.

First download and activate WordPress PopUp plugin. Once activated go to an option on your dashboard that says “Pop Overs” and click “Create New”.You will now see popover settings page where you fill in the popover title, content of you popup window and also set the size and position.

This plugin also lets you set custom conditions where you can add rules to your popup such as show popup for logged in or out only, set the specific number of times or even show the popup only when the user arrives via search engine.

Facebook Page Promoter Plugin

Second method is to use Facebook Page Promoter Plugin which is limited to display Facebook like box popup only.It’s great way to grow your facebook community with a lightbox popup.

This plugin is very simple to use and set up.All you need to do is install and activate Facebook Page Promoter Plugin.

What you should see now is an option on your dashboard that says “Averico Settings”. After clicking on this and it will bring you to a setup page where you input your Facebook page ID. If you are not sure how to get the page ID, click on the following link Retrieve the Facebook Fanpage ID .

Once you have added your page ID, you can now customize the time delay after which pop-up box should appear. Also, you can select if pop-up box should appear on posts, pages or homepage only or set the styling options like size and color of the like box. Save it and you should see something like this.

Feel free to share your way of promoting you Facebook page.

The post Simple Facebook Like PopUp for WordPress appeared first on Wordpress Themes.

Would you like to see more of your content shared on Facebook? How other bloggers make it easy for people to share your site or blog content on Facebook? Some people use the Facebook Like Button, others the Facebook Recommendations Box or any other Facebook plugin.But how do you know what will work best for you?

Here are All Facebook Social Plugins Available on Facebook Developers Page:

Like Button

You will find this plugin in most of the blogs. Almost everyone on this plane has a facebook account so why not to use it to drive some traffic to your site.What is Like Button? The Like button lets a user share your content with friends on Facebook. Facebook Likes are tied to URLs. This plugin provides full URL of the article to the Facebook module, which effectively means that each of your article containing this tag will start a separate like. When the user clicks the Like button on your site, an article appears in the user’s friends’ News Feed with a link back to your website.You can customize the look of your like button by changing layout style, width, colours and font style.
Get Like Button

Send Button

The Send Button allows users to easily send content to their friends. Visitors will have the option to send your URL in a message to their Facebook friends, to the group wall of one of their Facebook groups, and as an email to any email address. While the Like Button allows users to share content with all of their friends, the Send Button allows them to send a private message to just a few friends.The message will include a link to the URL specified in the send button, along with a title, image, and short description of the link. With send button you can only change color scheme and fonts type.
Get Send Button

Follow Button

The Follow button lets a user follow your public updates on Facebook.If you choose to allow public followers, then those people will only see the content you share that is marked public. On the other hand, you will never be able to see your public followers updates unless they allow public subscribers to follow their profile and you subsrcibe to them.
Get Follow Button

Comments

Comments Box is a social plugin that enables user commenting on your site.People can directly comment on blog posts through their facebook accounts. They can also share what they have commented to their facebook page . “post to facebook” function allows user to post their comments to facebook account.
Get Comments

Activity Feed

The Activity Feed plugin displays the most interesting recent activity happening on your blog.It displays stories when users interact with content on your site, such as like, watch, read, play or any custom action.If someone logged into Facebook and landed on your site, they will able to see recent activities of their Facebook friends.If the user is logged out, the activity feed will show recommendations from across your site, and give the user the option to log in to Facebook.
Get Activity Feed

Recommendations Box

The Recommendations Box shows personalized recommendations to your users, whether or not the user has logged into your site. It appears in the sidebar of your website.For a logged in Facebook user, the plugin will give preference to and highlight objects his/her friends have interacted with.
Get Recommendations Box

Recommendations Bar

This is sort of a popup box that is shown to readers of your blog post as they scroll down your post.The expanded view will show the user a social recommendation of the next article to read on your site.It allows users to like content, get recommendations, and share what they’re reading with their friends.
Get Recommendations Bar

Like Box

This is a good way to promote your Facebook page to your readers by displaying a Facebook like box on the sidebar of the blog.It’s easy way to attract and gain Likes from their own website. The Like Box enables users to:
-See how many users already like this Page, and which of their friends like it too
-Read recent posts from the Page
-Like the Page with one click, without needing to visit the Page
Get Like Box

Login Button

The Login Button shows profile pictures of the user’s friends who have already signed up for your site in addition to a login button.It is the most common and accepted button most people will feel “comfortable” using.
Get Login Button

Registration

Facebook registration plugin enables users to register for a website regardless if they have Facebook account or not. However, if they have a Facebook account the registration form will be automatically prefilled with the user information from their Facebook account.The plugin is a simple iframe that you can drop into your page.Two advantages of using a registration plugin as opposed to simple “Login with Facebook” buttons is that you can request information from users and that users don’t need a Facebook account to register for our site.
Get the Registration Plugin

Facepile

The Facebook Facepile social plugin is very simple. It displays the profile pictures of everyone who has signed up to your site.
Get Facepile

Conclusion

All these plugins are helpful in driving great traffic to your blog. I hope this post will help you to choose one. What are your favourite social polugins? Share it with us.

The post Drive More Traffic to Your Content With Facebook Plugins appeared first on Wordpress Themes.

Plugins can extend your WordPress site to do almost anything.As of December 2012 there were more than 28,000 free plugins in the WordPress plugins repository that the community has to offer.But, do you really need all of them? If you are the person who tend to use many plugins, you should first learn why using too many of them will impact negatively on your website and readership.

Your WordPress site’s plugin health depends largely on the quality of the plugins you are using.

Too Many Plugins May Slow Down Your Website

Almost every plugin you use sends a server request when each of your readers loads the site.Imagine the effect of having fifty plugins when ten users are on your site. What about even more plugins and more visitors? Do you really want your site to be that slow?

Security Issue With Some Free WordPress Plugins

Some plugins, especially the free ones, can be exploited by hackers who can then hack into your site. Having your blog hacked isn’t fun, and it also mean you spend valuable time fixing it.I know you propably won’t know which plugin is safe and which one is not, so try to only install the minimum number of necessary plugins to keep your WordPress website secure.

Updates And Support For Free WordPress Plugins

Free plugins rarely last forever , especialy when the authors don’t have time to continue the development and support of the plugin, you may be stuck with something that doesn’t work. The plugins may not be compatible with latest WordPress version and you may not even get support for it from anyone else (unless you pay someone to do it for you). The more WordPress plugins you use, the higher the chances that this may happen to your site.

Conflicts Amongst Different Plugins

The more plugins you add, the more conflicts you’re going to get, especially with low quality plugins.If a plugin is not compatible with another one and you install both of them, you are introducing a problem to your site. It may not necessarily be the last plugin that you installed that is causing the conflict. It may be one you installed ages ago that is the source of the problem.

Tips for Selecting Plugins:

Don’t add plugins you don’t need.
- There are very few plugins that I would consider a “must-have” for every single WordPress site.Do not install the plugin unless it performs a necessary function for your website.
Watch your load time.
- Your WordPress site should load up in about 2-4 seconds.If it doesn’t, then you could have the plugin dragging your load time down.
See Who The Plugin’s Author Is.
– Is the plugin’s developer well-respected and known for producing high quality plugins?
Plugin Download Stats and Rating.
– Has the plugin been downloaded and rated high? Are there any conflicts / issues with it? Also check the support forums, if possible.

You should only use the WordPress plugins that you are really going to need, rather than installing them just because they are fancy.Nobody is going to debug your plugin conflicts for you (maybe somebody will if you pay them).The best to choose best plugins is to be selective, be vigilant, and keep it simple.

The post Are You Using Too Many WordPress Plugins? appeared first on Wordpress Themes.

1. Backup, Backup and Backup!

It is said that no website can be made 100% secure.So if someone wants to break into your site, he will.If someone hacked your site and deleted everything from the server, with functional backups you would be back online in a matter of hours.

So remember to backup your blog often (preferable daily)! I prefer to backup my sites to more than one physical locations.

2. Change The “Admin” User

One of the most common methods to break into a website is the brute force one. Brute force attack is when someone try to guess the name of the admin and, once he finds that out, he will use scripts to try thousands of password combinations with that user name.

If the main user in your blog is called “admin”, you make it easier for them to break into your site.

How to change admin user to something else? Pretty easy. Simply create a new user for your blog, and give it “Administrator” privileges. Then login with that user, and delete the “admin” user. If you have posts published with “admin” WordPress will ask you if you want to move those posts under a new user.

3. Hide Your WordPress Version

By default WordPress let the world know the version that you are running, and this information can be used against you, because hackers know the security holes on each WordPress version.

Hiding that information is not difficult though. First of all you want to disable the “generator” meta tag. You can do that by adding the following code to the functions.php file of your theme:

function hide_wp_vers()
{
return '';
}
add_filter('the_generator','hide_wp_vers');

The readme file is another place where hackers can find the version of your WordPress ,Simply access your server via FTP or Cpanel and delete that file.

4. Disable Folder Browsing

Another important thing is to protect your site’s folders.If people can browser your folders, they will be able to see a lot of informations, including what plugins you are running, what themes you have installed and so on. Such informations can be used to find security holes in your site and make it easier for hackers to break into your site.

If your web hosting is based on Linux, you can easily disable folder browser with a .htaccess file placed at the root of your server.
Just add the following line: Options -Indexes

If your hosting is not based on Linux, than upload a blank index.html page inside each folder.
That’s it.

5. Always Update

WordPress is an open source software, so its source code is public,and anyone can have access to it. This means that hackers are always looking for security holes.Sometimes they find them, but the WordPress community usually responds quickly and releases an updated version protected against
the new threats.

By running the latest WordPress version, you are minimizing the chances of having problems!

The post How To Secure Your WordPress Website appeared first on Wordpress Themes.

What is IFTTT?

IFTTT puts the internet to work for you by creating tasks.IFTTT is a service that lets you create powerful connections with one simple statement: “if this then that” .

How IFTTT works?

IFTTT lets you create connections between the 57 Channels. You can automatically tweet or share your new posts on twitter, facebook page or profile. You can pull posts from RSS into WordPress etc. See some channels below.

How to use IFTTT with WordPress?

First you will need to do is to create IFTTT account. IFTTT works with all WordPress.org self-hosted blogs and WordPress.com blogs . You MUST have XML-RPC enabled to work with IFTTT. To enable it go to Settings » Writing and enable XML-RPC.

Some of WordPress IFTTT Recipes

This a list of possible use cases with WordPress.For more browse through IFTTT recipes.

Email to WordPress
GMail label to WordPress
WordPress to Facebook Page
Facebook Page to WordPress
WordPress to Facebook Profile
Facebook Profile link to WordPress
Facebook Profile photo upload to WordPress
Instagram to WordPress (or only those tagged #blog)
WordPress to Instagram
WordPress to Google+
Google+ to WordPress
WordPress to Evernote
Evernote to WordPress
WordPress to LinkedIn
LinkedIn to WordPress
YouTube upload to WordPress
YouTube favorite to WordPress
WordPress to YouTube
RSS Feed to WordPress
WordPress to Tumblr
Tumblr to WordPress
Flickr set to WordPress
Flickr upload to WordPress
WordPress to Flickr
Twitter to WordPress
Twitter search results to WordPress
WordPress to Twitter
Vimeo upload to WordPress
Vimeo Like to WordPress
WordPress to Vimeo
WordPress to Bit.ly
Bit.ly to WordPress
Dropbox Public photo to WordPress
WordPress to Dropbox
Google Reader tagged item to WordPress
Google Reader starred item to WordPress
WordPress to Google Calendar
Google Calendar event start to WordPress
WordPress post to WordPress post (same blog/credentials)
SMS to WordPress
WordPress to SMS
Phone Call (.mp3) to WordPress audio post
WordPress to Phone Call

You can only authorize one account per channel within each IFTTT account. If you have 3 blogs, 3 Facebook Pages, and 3 Twitter accounts, you’ll need 3 IFTTT accounts.

The post Use IFTTT to Automate WordPress and Social Media appeared first on Wordpress Themes.

Black Friday and Cyber Monday  following Thanksgiving in the United States, are two of most craziest shopping days that bring crazy savings for consumers.Many premier online companies have come out with special discounts & offers. Below are WordPress related black friday and cyber monday deals. Most of these offers and huge discounts are LIMITED time only.

HostGator 50% OFF

Hostgator, the popular website hosting service, has announced a special Hostgator Black Friday 2012 Sale that will be available to all current and first time customers. Their promotion will begin just after 12:00 am / midnight, Friday, November 23, 2012, and will end on 11:59PM. Every hosting package will be 50% off. Price for shared hosting will start at $2.48 per month.Visit their homepage to get the deal.

ThemeJunkie 40% OFF

Theme Junkie is offering a promotion code that allows you to get 40% off for this black friday, This means you can get their 6 months for $29.4 or 1 year membership for just $41.

Use promotion Code: BLACK

Bluehost 50% OFF Hosting and a Free Domain

Bluehost is one of the oldest web hosting providers and is officially recommended by WordPress.org.With their 50% off their normal packages offer, you can get the hosting for as low as $3.95 per month. It also comes with a free domain name.

Visit Bluehost to get this deal.

WPEngine $25 OFF first 3 months of service

WPEngine one of the best WordPress managed hosting company is also offering a coupon for black friday and cyber monday.They rarely run discounts or use coupon codes on their site. The coupon is valid *only* from Thanksgiving through Cyber Monday
Use the code “blackcyber” when you sign up for WP Engine to get the savings.

StudioPress 25% off everything

StudioPress is behind the most popular theme framework, Genesis. They are having a Thanksgiving sale over in honor of Black Friday / Cyber Monday. That means for a short period of time, you can save a bundle on both StudioPress and Premise (complete sales and lead generation engine for WordPress).
Below is what you could get with this deal:
• Get the Genesis Framework for only $45.
• Pick up a Genesis child theme design for less than $20.
• Snag a Genesis / design combo and save close to $20 (or more).
• Wipe the entire shop clean by getting our Pro Plus All-Theme Package. Get Genesis plus all 46 current designs, plus every design we make in the future, and save over $950 off the retail price of just the existing 46 designs!

Get StudioPress Black Friday Deal Now

iThemes 50% off the Toolkit or 35% off everything else

iThemes are doing a 50% off on their WordPress web designer’s toolkit. This toolkit includes 160 WordPress themes, 20 plugins (including BackupBuddy), 400+ hours of training videos and 3-day-info packed WordPress developers course. Normally it costs $825, but until December 21st, you can get it for $412.50.
Head over to iThemes to check out this deal.

ManageWP 30% discount

ManageWP is the easiest way to manage all of your WordPress sites.You can Access, manage, update, and backup all your WordPress sites from one powerful dashboard.More than 30,000 users and 150,000 websites use ManageWP.

Go to ManageWP website to get this deal.

Templatic Premium Themes Club $100 discount

Templatic themes are all you Need to Build WordPress Blogs or Websites for Clients. This club membership offer is a perfect opportunity for those who want to use these themes on their own personal blogs or company websites.You will get access to all WordPress themes in Templatic themes, free future updates on each theme, multiple use for every theme and great support.

Get this deal by visiting Templatic website.

WooThemes 20% off all WordPress themes, plugins and extensions

WooThemes is a provider of high quality WordPress themes. They have a wide selection of products to choose from. You can find big variety of themes from magazine, portfolio, gallery styles to business and personal types.

If you spend over $200 we’ll give you a further 5% discount, $300 and you’ll get a 10% discount, or $400 and you’ll get a 15% discount. (This discount will apply automagically)

Use the coupon code “WOOMADNESS” on checkout.This discount also applies to our WordPress plugins and WooCommerce extensions!

WPZOOM 33% off

Wpzoom is offering high quality and functional themes at reasonable prices. Their themes come with a range of practical widgets that allow for the quick and easy uploading of all kinds of content.This Black Friday & Cyber Monday they are offering 33% OFF on all of our themes and subscriptions!
For example you will get a Developer pack which will give you access to 3 themes for only $99 or get access to all our 50+ themes purchasing a Standard Membership for $133.
Use code “BLACK2012“ which is valid until Monday, known as “Cyber Monday”, November 26!

Have a happy thanksgiving and take advantage of some of these limited time deals if you like.

The post Big Savings on WordPress Deals – Black Friday / Cyber Monday 2012 appeared first on Wordpress Themes.

Whenever you write a post you have to fill in many data among which one is “TAGS”. You know how boring and time consuming it is. So what to do? Is there anyway to do this automatically and save more time? Hm….Yes there is!! There is a plugin available that will auto-tag all your posts. The plugin’s name is Automatic Post Tagger (APT).It lets you to automatically tag your posts with pre-defined tags.This is a very useful plugin and saves a lot of time.Let’s see how it works.

Here is how it Works

First of all you will need to create a list of tags with related words for each of them.The plugin will then automatically add relevant tags to posts according to the keywords found in the title, content, and excerpt.For example the tag “cat” is added if you assign to it words “cats, kitty, meow” and they are found in a post by the plugin.
With APT you can set a maximum number of tags per post and bulk tag your existing posts. You can easily import or export your tags list as well.This plugin is a great solution for bloggers who want to save some time or run autoblogs.

How to configure

Install and activate Automatic Post Tagger plugin and you will see a new item under your Settings menu called Automatic Post Tagger. Check the default settings and once you are happy with your settings go ahead with adding tags .

You can add tag name and keywords from either the settings page, or you can add it from your posts write panel.

The post How to Tag Your WordPress Posts Automatically appeared first on Wordpress Themes.

InkThemes.com just released a new Video WordPress Theme named “VideoCraft” which you can run your own Video Site with. The theme lets you to Upload your own Videos or get Videos from Youtube, Vimeo and other sites.

VideoCraft Theme is based on Multiuser Platform and allows user submissions and Uploads. Also the Theme comes with its own Advertisement Modules using which you can places your Ads on the site.

It is not just a regular Video Theme! With VideoCraft you can run a professional user generated Video Site.The theme is equiped with User Registration Module and Video Upload Module which allows Users to upload their own video files and also allows to easily embed the Video by just through URL’s from sites like Youtube, Vimeo, MetaCafe or Dailymotion.With VideoCraft you can create your Video site with easily and quickly.

Some examples you could uses VideoCraft Theme for:

1. The theme is great option for sport fan clubs. You can build a Video Community around your interest.

2. Also very good for Entrepreneurs sites where you can add useful videos for people who want to build their business.

3. Great for educational videos site on specific Niche. Just upload your own videos and organize them to create a great video site to train people on a specific topic.

4. Link directly to the specific videos from Youtube, Vimeo, Dailymotion, MetaCafe or upload the videos to create your very own Channel at your very own site.

5. There are really no limits you can use this template for!

Main features of VideoCraft Theme:

Users Registration Module
Multiusers Video Submission Module
Responsive to all kind of Mobile & Tablet devices
Upload Own Videos
Embed Videos through URL from Youtube, Vimeo, DailyMotion, MetaCafe
Custom Widgets
Sidebar and Footer area supports widgets so that you can place any image, Video, Text or any thing you like to have.
Black & White Color Skin
Related, Popular and Recent Tabs
Multiple Page Templates (Blog Page, Contact Page)
Built-in Advertisement Module

Preview Buy This Theme

The post Create your Video Site With VideoCraft WordPress Theme appeared first on Wordpress Themes.