I recently decided to install a new forum using BBPress, rather than other forum software like Simple Press I was using before. Unfortunately Simple Press was a forum that was just loading extremely slow. While I like like Simple Press is easy to install, and works right within Wordpress, the speed of loading was just extremely slow. For this reason, I switched to BBPress for my forum and already have seen loads of speed improvements.
The hardest thing with BBPress was creating a new template that match the template design of my wordpress theme. BBPress runs itself independent of Wordpress. This means you need to manage everything seperate including the design. I just changed the header of my BBPress theme and managed to make it look similar to the rest of my website sampleaday.com, view the forum here.
Installing A New Forum With BBPress
Rather than call my forum, just forum, I decide to take advantage of keywords and call it free-samples. This forum requires you to use mysql and install it much like you did with wordpress. Overall with it’s speed and ease of use, I would recommend choosing BBPress for a new forum.