Can WordPress Be a Good Community Platform or Forums?

Paula Derrenger

Paula Derrenger

@paulad
Updated: Jul 25, 2025
Views: 395

I’m seeking opinions on using WordPress as a community/forum software along with a blog. I am helping my friend create a blog around self-care. We wish to have a section on the website to join the website and interact with each other, ask questions openly without hesitation.

For blog, WordPress is a no-brainer. But adding a community around a WordPress blog is tricky. So far, we have explored several plugins like bbPress, BuddyBoss, Ultimate Member, SureMembers. But none of them offers anything close to what we want -

  1. Blog and forum on the same platform

  2. Shared login within blog comments and forum

  3. Simple UI and UX - this is where we are stuck

The plugin ecosystem solves the first two problems, but none of them are simple to use. Each plugin focuses on building a social network; which seems like an overkill. We want a simple place for interaction that feels like a natural extension of the blog.

I’d appreciate your thoughts on using WordPress as a community or forum platform.

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  • Kaustubh Katdare

    Kaustubh Katdare

    @kaustubh-katdare • Jun 17, 2025

    Hi Paula - WordPress is an excellent blogging platform and a CMS. The 'post type' feature (available to developers) allows WP to be customized infinitely. Back in 2016-17, I was able to build an entire forum system on the top of WordPress Multisite.

    Almost all of the WordPress community/forum solutions are plugin-based. This creates several problems. If your friend does not have technical help available; I'd refrain from self-hosting WP+Community solution. It gets tricky quickly. Unless you are using the official WP community plugins, it's not unusual to run into plugin upgrade issues.

    I am not a big fan of WordPress's commenting system. You'll need to rely on additional plugins like Disqus or others; but that may not be compatible with the community plugin.

    An advantage of WP-based forum is that you get some good control over the SEO. WP along with a few SEO plugins can help you build an organic forum.

    If your friend is building an article system along with community, I'll recommend Jatra. You can have channels dedicated to articles and some to QnA. Plus, we'll be happy to enable newer post-types if the blog demands.

  • Rohit Kapoor

    Rohit Kapoor

    @rohit • Jun 17, 2025

    WordPress is not a good platform for community or forum. As Kaustubh mentioned, it's a nightmare to manage compatibility issues with different third-party plugins. WordPress is best used as a blog or content management system; but not as a forum.

  • Kaustubh Katdare

    Kaustubh Katdare

    @kaustubh-katdare • Jul 25, 2025

    @Rohit - WordPress nails the SEO part; but I do have an issue with the plugin-based systems. I recently spoke with a therapist from US who was looking to build a community of people in the therapy niche. She chose WordPress with a very popular community plugin; which I don't want to name.

    The result - after 4 months of painful customizations and tweaks - she got the platform ready; but could not get any member.

    Even though your community is on WordPress - it may not be optimised to attract organic traffic. Plus, matching the themse with that of your community plugin is a nightmare.