Simple:Press Features

Listed below are just the main features of Simple:Press – there are too many to list them all! And if you don’t find just what you are looking for – scroll down further for details of our ever growing library of Simple:Press plugins that can extend the basic forum into new areas and enhance your users experience.

Forum

  • Theme and template driven
  • Plugin system to add features
  • Sub-forum support to any level
  • Optional post moderation
  • User level unread post handling
  • Forum ranks and badges
  • Image thumbnails and enlargements
  • User defined Signatures
  • Avatar uploads, Gravatar or WP
  • A toolset for common admin tasks

  • Comprehensive search options
  • Forum Stats including online list
  • Custom icons for groups and forums
  • Comprehensive selection of RSS feed
  • Custom smileys including uploads
  • Store components outside of plugin
  • Create hidden ‘spoilers’ in posts
  • Optional support for WP shortcodes
  • Email notification ofposts to admins

Integration

  • Fully integrated with WordPress registrations and logins
  • Supports WordPress standard and multisite
  • Uses Cookies to track returning members and guests
  • Complete uninstall/removal option
  • Comprehensive Administrative Options and Settings

Security

  • Powerful user group and permission system
  • Can create private and/or public forums
  • Optional ‘math’ spam prevention tool
  • Coded to use WordPress secure routines
  • Feature to prevent user access to wp admin
  • Private RSS feeds for members only

SEO

  • Creates pretty/seo friendly permalinks
  • Support for the All In One SEO Pack and Google XML Sitemap Plugins
  • Page and browser title settings
  • Canonical URL’s
  • Custom descriptions and keywords

Profiles

  • Extended member profile options
  • Each user can set their own timezone
  • Full Members Listing
  • Supports RPX/Janrain 3rd party login
  • Social network and IM identities

API

  • Extensive use of WP style action/filter hooks
  • Each display element contained in a template display function
  • Full access to the underlying api
  • Data inspection tool

Language

  • Fully localised for language support
  • Separate language files for forum and admin
  • Community driven translation site
  • Growing number of translations available

Plugins

In the same way that plugins can extend WordPress with new features to enhance your website, so Simple:Press plugins extend and enhance the forum. From full sub-systems – like Private Messaging – to administration tools – like our Admin Bar with built in Akismet support to prevent spam – there is an ever-expanding library of plugins available.

Available Plugins

Share This

Social sharing of forum topics and posts with Facebook, Twitter, Google Plus and more using the Share This service

Mentions

A Simple:Press plugin that allows users to tag other users in a forum post

Private Messaging

Allow your community to send private messages to you and to each other, giving them a personal space for their more sensitive communications. Includes the formation of personal Buddy and Adversary groups

Image and File Uploader

Add a sophisticated and easy to use image, media and file uploader so your users can add images and attachments to their posts. You have complete control over the type of files and the maximum sizes allowed

TinyMCE WYSIWYG Editor

Every forum needs a decent editor to allow users to express themselves and the TinyMCE editor is the same one that you probably use within WordPress to write your blog posts – just with a few forum-specific features like a Spoiler toolbar button

Post Preview

A published forum post always looks different than it did when editing it. This plugin will let your users preview their posts as they will look when they are saved and it shows them in-line without the need to reload the page

Subscriptions

Let your users be notified by email of new posts when they subscribe to a forum or a topic complete with on-screen, personalised notification as well. Your users can decide upon individual emails or a regular digest

Post by Email

Allows Admin and/or users to reply to posts they are subscribed to via email

Blog Linking

Automatically creates new forum topics from your blog posts and creates a link. Optionally creates forum posts from linked blog comments and allows for their display in the forum as well as displaying the topic posts in the comments section of the blog

Polls

Allows polls to be created in forum topics. Comes with several options for creating and full management for administrators

Ban from Forum

This Simple:Press plugin allows you to ban users from your forum by IP address, an IP address range, host name or user agent. You can also ban a member of your site by username and set a time to be banned

Post Thanks

Allows the thanking of posts and a point system that displays users rank based on number of ‘Thanks’ or other setting configured by Administrators

Uploads Viewer

As an extra add-on to the file uploader, this small plugin will allow your users to review all of their uploads, see small thumbnails of their uploaded images and to re-use images. media and files in new posts

Tags

Let your users define tags for their new topics which can aid forum searches and help look for related topics. Comes complete with an auto-suggestion feature and a very comprehensive tag management system

Add Identities

Allows for adding and displaying of new user identities (like the core facebook, twitter, etc identities)

CubePoints Integration

Integrates with the WordPress Cubepoints plugin to allow awarding of points for forum actions. With multiple ways to earn points

Post Rating

Utilising the traditional and familiar mechanics of either stars or thumbs up/down, this plugin will allow your users to rate individual forum posts, highlighting them at a glance for the forum community

Template Tags

An ever expanding collection of WP style template tags, widgets and shortcodes for displaying forum data in other areas of your site such as sidebars. Everything from recent and new forum posts to PM notification and the online status of admins

Google Sitemap

If you are concerned about SEO and getting your forum known in the wider world then this must have plugin automates forum site map generation in conjunction with the popular and most used Google XML Sitemap plugin by Arne Brachhol

Admin Bar

Helps admins and moderators manage the new forum posts all in one place – allowing for instant deletion or approval as well as offering a Quick Reply feature. This plugin also optionally adds Akismet support to help detect and deal with spam

Captcha

We are all plagued by spam every day but this neat and simple captcha plugin adds a random image drag and drop feature to the post save area that makes it hard to beat. Also available for user registration to help prevent those unwanted sign-ups

Font Resizer

You can never display your forums in a font size that pleases everyone. It will always be too big or too small for some. This simple resizer allows your visitors to set their forum display as they need it and uses a cookie to keep it that way

Custom Profile Fields

We commonly get asked for new data items to be added to user profiles and this makes that possible. Add text fields, select lists or checkboxes to individual profile panels complete with a simple to use template tag to make them available

Profile Display Control

We also commonly get asked if certain items on a users profile can be removed from the panels. This administrative plugin will allow you to optionally remove those data items that are of no interest so that you can focus profiles to your needs

Online

While, by default, the statistics area of the forum display will show you how many people are visiting the forum at any given time, this plugin will allow you to drill down deeper to show you what, exactly, all of those visitors are looking at

Gravatar Cache

Gravatars are a great idea giving users a unified avatar across a wide spectrum of websites. But each time one is used it means a trip to the gravatar server which can slow things down dramtically. This plugin caches them for great performamce

Topic Status

Creates user-defined status lists that can be assigned to topics. This is most useful for forums that are essentially Q&A or support vehicles where a thread will pass through various stages from being first raised right through to being resolved

Watches

Watches are like Subscriptions but without the need to send out bothersome emails. Essentially they act like bookmarks enabling your users to keep a ‘watch’ on a topic for new posts – which will show up for them in their watch list when they visit

QuickTags bbCode Editor

For those users who prefer a simpler editor to the main TinyMCE WYSIWYG editor – and prefer to compose their posts in bbCode – then this ‘Quicktags’ bbCode editor is based upon the same HTML editor available when writing blog posts

QuickTags HTML Editor

For those users who prefer a simpler editor to the main TinyMCE WYSIWYG editor – and prefer to compose their posts in HTML – then this ‘Quicktags’ HTML editor is based upon the same HTML editor available when writing blog posts

Profanity Filter

If you prefer to keep your forum posts free of profanities, or any other terms in fact, then this plugin can filter out words that you define and replace them with words and terms of your choice. Individually or en-masse with a single term

Report Post

This small plugin will allow you to let your users and visitors police your forum content and report any post that they find objectionable or questionable. Allows them to state their mind on any gven post and automatically emails you the report

Answers Topic

This Simple:Press plugin allows users who start a topic to indicate that a post within the topic answers the post or questions that originally started the topic

Display Featured Posts & Topics

A Simple:Press plugin for displaying and highlighting a list of featured topics or posts

Birthdays

Allows users to enter their birthday then display users birthdays for week or day

Language & Theme Switcher

Allows a user to view your forum in the language and theme of their choice with pre-determined fields that you setup

Post As

This Simple:Press plugin allows Admins, Moderators or specified users to post as another user

Auto Linking

A Simple:Press plugin for parsing post content and converting keywords into links

Topic Description

By default, all new forum topics consist of a topic name or title and their initial post. If you want to encourage your users to provide more then this will add a description field for new topics which can then optionally be displayed in the header

Policy Documents

Display an optional forum registration/usage policy and/or a privacy document from links in, by default, the forum footer. This plugin can also optionally enforce new users to accept the useage policy before they are allowerd to register on your site

Code Syntax Highlighting

If your forum ever needs to publish program code then syntax highlighting is a must have. Formats and colours the code and facilitates easy copying. It can also be used in your blog posts should you need it. Requires the TinyMCE rich text editor

Unanswered

If you need to keep tabs on all of your forum threads that have never received any replies then this plugin can add a new Simple:Press template and the necessary display functions to specifically show such a list. Requires the Template Tags plugin

Spam Registrations

Sadly, unwanted spam registrations are just a fact if life. This administrative plugin gives you the opportunity to periodically remove all registrants who have never posted to your forums, left a comment on a blog post or, indeed, authored a blog post

Prune Database

While Simple:Press will scale up to meet an ever-growing forum, there are times when some pruning might be felt necessary. This administrative plugin gives you the tools you need to clear out the dead wood and remove old topics quicly and easily

Display Forum Rank Information

A Simple:Press plugin for displaying the rank information of your forum

Don’t see what you are looking for?

Every user has something specific they are looking for. Often we can point them to a feature in Simple:Press that meets their needs but we also try and respond positively to feature requests whenever they make sense – either with core modifications or with a new plugin. Feel free to contact us if you have a specific query before you start to use Simple:Press.

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