Expanding a your blog by building a community is a very considerable idea as it has many advantages. One of the best is that you can have more returning visitors who add fresh content continuously to your blog and that means more rankings, on the other hand this way your site can be an authority one within your niche. Overall, having a community is good for SEO and for traffic.
The best is that it is really easy to build a community with WordPress by using plugins. Here I would like to show you the best solutions for this purpose.
BuddyPress
This is surely the best solution that is made by the WordPress developers and can be integrated to your blog fast and easy. It comes with tons of features that are well-known from other social networks. The most important features are: activity streams, user groups, multi-site blogging so the members start their blogs, friend connections, detailed profile pages, built in forums and private messaging.
If you have been using WordPress you can learn to use it easily and can modify, customize easily by using the extra plugins. I think, this is the best solution.
| Review |   |
|---|---|
| All in one solution to add community options to WordPress | |
BBpress
If you need something simpler to add a community to your blog a good solution is to start a forum and for this I suggest to use BBpress which is also made by WordPress developers. It is an easy to use and optimized forum solution that you can integrate into your WP site easily. It can be also extended and modified simply by using plugins. Why I like it is that it is really easy to customize, allows anonymous posts and it is usually compatible with the other WP plugins I use.
| Review |  |
|---|---|
| Not as good as other forum scripts, but since it is made for WordPress it is the best solution | |
Other WordPress Forums
Mingle Forums – This is another widely used plugin to add discussion boards. It comes with many features that are useful for building community. However, it does not offer so much as the BBpress or Buddypress, but it offers the most important features.
| Overview | |
|---|---|
| Complete forum system for WordPress | |
Source: Mingle Forum Overview
Simple:Press – Great WordPress forum plugin with tons of useful features that help to build community. It is a lightweight, fast and secure way to add discussion boards to your blog. Some of the features: forum ranks and statistics, custom icons , email notifications, blog integration features, SEO options, security features etc.
| Overview | |
|---|---|
| Complete solution to add forum to WordPress | |
Do you other WordPress plugins or other solutions to add build a community to a blog? Please, share or submit your review on these plugins.
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Thanks you very much for collecting these solutions. I think adding some sort of community section is a good way to get returning visitors. I will add a forum to my blog as nowadays, forum posts rank rather well for longer keywords.