forum review

SimplePress is on of the leading WordPress plug-in forum’s.  What makes this forum so popular is the easiness of you turning your blog into a fully functioning community, and, it’s all free.

Installation Score: 10/10

The installation of the forum was easy as 1..2..3.  It actually only took me three steps.  Upload the contents to the plug-in folder, activate the plug-in then click install.  Then about one minute later you have your fully functioning forum, that is not even true, about 20 seconds later and you have your fully functioning forum.  I could not ask any better from the installation.

User Friendliness Score: 8/10

The user-friendliness was nice.  The forum is incorporated into a page with my blog surrounding it.  Easy to find log-in links and how many PM’s you got ect.  I could not see the user not having any trouble with it.  It was very easy to select an avatar (It uses Gravatar) and really simple to create a signature.  The only bad thing I have to say about it is it overlaps my Tweetmeme plug-in therefore causing a bit of confusion and untidiness.

How Intimidating is the Admin Panel Score: 7/10

The admin panel is a small page inside your WordPress Admin panel.  Small but powerful.  It was very easy to use with AJAX sliding menus.  If you were an experienced forum administrator you would want more from you admin panel.  I like to customize every single detail on my forum but there was only a few options per section.

How Efficient is Moderation Score: 5/10

You were able to report posts.  When reported I was sent an email with the report and a link and comments of the post.  It was kind of buggy as there were “/”‘s before the ” ‘ “‘s if that makes sense.  I see no sign of an infraction/warning system or even the ability to ban users.  I tried the wiki and found no success.  Every forum needs some sort of warning system to keep their users inline of the forum rules.

Layout Score: 5/10

Lay out seemed really nice.  It was surrounded by the blog so users could drift off and read an article while they were waiting for topics to be posted in.  The only problem was the Tweetmeme plug-in.  On the main forum page the forum overlaps the “retweet” making the forum look untidy.  I can’t really give them points for layout since they actually using the users WordPress’ theme – maybe that was actually cleverly thought out.

Customer Support Score:8/10

There was nice customer support.  There is a fully function Wiki, Support Forum and Bug tracker.  Everyone seems to be constantly updated meaning the staff is working hard.  I don’t think the demand yet is in need of a ticket or phone service just quite yet.

Overall Score: 7/10

The forum was a well thought out idea.  In my opinion you cannot replace an old traditional vBulletin forum and I don’t think you could every have a full-blown out forum like Digital Point for example.  There is a few bugs that need fixed and few features that need added for this plug-in to contend with leading forum software such as MyBB, SMF and PHPbb3.



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