We’re pleased to announce that we’re now offering one-click installs of WordPress developers’ forum software, bbPress. Message boards are a great way to promote visitor interaction and can be a useful tool to discover what your visitors are interested in, who they are, and what else they want to see from your site.

bbPress is open source and focused on speed and security, meaning you don’t have to worry about slow loading pages or the risk of being hacked. The streamlined software is also lightweight and efficient for better use of space and bandwidth. bbPress is easy to install thanks to our one-click install solution, and the user-friendly control panel also means less work for admins and moderators once you’re up and running.

bbPress enjoys many similar customisation elements to WordPress so you can develop and install themes and plugins (e.g. for ratings, video and private forums) to customise your forums. Furthermore, bbPress can be integrated with WordPress so users signing up to your message boards can also be users on your blog without having to register separately. This is especially useful for multi-author blogs, blogs with regular commenters and those looking to build up integrated site communities from an existing WordPress blog.

If you have a Home Pro or Business Pro hosting plan, you can now install bbPress just like any other one-click install. Go to your eXtend control panel, scroll down to one-click installs and install from there. If you’re a reseller, you can choose which of your hosting plans to offer bbPress on. Just log into your Reseller Control Centre, scroll down to the CGI/PHP Scripts section, check the ‘Bbpress – Fast Forum Software from WordPress’ box and click ‘Update’. You will then see the bbPress one-click install option available to add to your reseller hosting accounts.

To find out more about what bbPress has to offer, check out bbpress.org.