Creating a Blog-like Forum using WordPress

[bossar12]

Hi

I have spent about 2 days researching the issue and still can not say if it is possible or not.

What I`m trying to build:
A Blog-like forum where authors (registered users) can create new posts and leave comments to other posts

Yes, this sounds like a forum. Here are the functions I need and are not available in forums

1. Nice blog-like template (I want something like https://blog.ted.com) where each posting is displayed in full and is not grouped by default into topics
2. Tagging at the post/ comment level (bbpress allows tagging the topics but not the posts) [posts inside the same topic can’t be assigned different tags]
3. Tag Cloud (bbpress has it but see previous point why it’s not sufficient)

Here are the solutions I’m considering:
1. Using Slashcode and having fun finding a perl guy who’d incorporate Tag Cloud and other needed features
2. Using WordPress and finding someone to write a plugin that would reroute Authors to a separate “post” form avoiding giving them access to the control panel
3. Using forum software (bbpress, PunBB or Simple Machine) and adding missing functionality

My personal preference would be using WordPress/ BBPress as I do like it’s slickness and ease of maintenance

What would be the best solution from your point of view?

Thank you very much in advance

[emmadw]

My main concern would be that the post nearest the top of the page is that that’s been most recently posted – not necessarily the most recently commented on. If someone comments on a post that’s not at the top, few – if any – people will know.

If you have a look at Elgg & look at the communities there (like group blogs) you’ll see that tyou can select “forum view” – which shows the most recently commented post first, or blog view, which has the most recently posted post first.
(see e.g. https://elgg.org/mod/forum/forum.php?owner=5 – where at present the blog view & forum view both have different first posts).

For WordPress to work well like this, I guess you’d need a plugin that would let you re-order posts & switch between most recently commented & most recently posted.

[bossar12]

Emmadw

Thank you very much for the link and suggestion
It seems to be exactly what I`m trying to achieve.
As far as I can tell – elgg has about 80 % of the things I need including tag cloud.

I`d strongly prefer look and feel of WordPress but you just gave me another option to consider ??

Thank you

[gspark]

This would be a great addon to wordpress the ability to convert some of it to the look and feel of a forum with all the wp perks a category is just a topic and a post is just a post and a comment is just a reply