Wordpress enters forum software market
December 31, 2004Wordpress, an already established name in blogging software, is turning it’s sights on community forum software, with the development of bbpress.
According to their current frontpage introduction:
bbPress is focused on web standards, ease of use, ease of integration, and speed. Most software in this space is focused on features like avatars or file attachment and if that’s what you’re interested in, bbPress probably isn’t for you. We’re focused on keeping things as small and light as possible for the explicit purpose of creating a community around support.
However, as most of the larger forum software developments are already W3C compliant to at least transistional XHTML, and as most modern webmasters are used to the extensive features offered by developers such as vBulletin, phpbb, and IPB, it ermains to be seen what bbpress can actually offer.
After all, the major forum software brands developed their extensive range of additional forum features precisely to cater to the demands of users and webmasters, who sought to personalise and extend their community experience.
How bbpress expects to be able to successfully turn the clock back to a time when forum software was expected to deliver much less, and successfully deliver this, remains an interesting experiment. So far it is difficult to see how offering less will make the product attractive in what is an already demanding market.