Revolutionary Forums Documentation

Stand up a fast, self-hosted community with boards, topics, threaded replies, reactions, subscriptions and a real moderation queue, plus a developer API to extend every part of it, all without leaving WordPress.

Revolutionary Forums is a complete, lightweight community engine for WordPress. It pairs a clean, theme-aware front end with a serious back end: boards hold topics, topics collect threaded replies, members add reactions and subscribe for updates, and everything passes through configurable spam screening and a moderation queue.

Whether you want a small support board next to your docs or a full multi-board community with reputation and badges, you build it the same way: create boards in the admin, then place the forum on a page with the [revolutionary_forum] shortcode or the dedicated Gutenberg block. There is no bbPress dependency and no third-party service.

Tip: The forum uses your existing WordPress users. Anyone who can already log in can post, so members never create a second account just to join the conversation.

Revolutionary Forums installs like any standard WordPress plugin. You can install it from the bundled .zip archive or directly from the Revolutionary Plugins hub.

Upload the plugin. In your WordPress admin, go to Plugins -> Add New -> Upload Plugin and choose revolutionary-forums.zip. Click Install Now.
Activate. Once installed, click Activate. A new Forums menu appears in the admin sidebar.
Run the setup wizard. On first activation the wizard creates the forum database tables, registers the rewrite rules, and lets you pick a parent page for the community.
Verify your license. Paste your license key under Forums -> Settings -> License to unlock automatic updates, premium features, and priority support.

Heads up: The forum relies on pretty permalinks for its board and topic URLs. If your site is set to plain permalinks, switch to Post name under Settings -> Permalinks and save once to flush the rewrite rules.

Let's create a board, place the forum on a page, and post the first topic. The whole thing takes about two minutes.

Create a board. Go to Forums -> Boards -> Add New. Give it a name like "Getting started", an optional description and icon, and choose which roles may post in it.
Place the forum. Create a page, add the Revolutionary Forum block or paste [revolutionary_forum], and publish. This page becomes the home of every board.
Start a topic. Visit the page while logged in, open your new board, and click New topic. Add a title and body, then post.
Try a reply and a reaction. Reply to your own topic to see threading, then tap a reaction. Reactions and reply counts update live without a page reload.
Set notifications. Under Forums -> Settings -> Notifications, confirm the from-address and turn on reply emails.

That's the full loop: board, page, topic, reply. Everything else in this guide builds on these same pieces.

Boards are the top-level containers for discussion, and topics are the threads inside them. Boards can be nested, reordered with drag-and-drop, and restricted to specific roles. Each board surfaces its topic count and the latest reply so members always land where the activity is.

Object	What it is	Key settings
Board	A category that holds topics, optionally nested under a parent board.	Name, slug, icon, parent, allowed roles, read-only
Topic	A discussion thread started by a member inside a board.	Title, body, tags, pinned, locked, board
Reply	A response to a topic, optionally nested under another reply.	Body, parent reply, accepted answer
Tag	A cross-board label for filtering and search.	Name, slug, color
Reaction (Pro)	A one-tap response (like, helpful, idea, and more) on any post.	Enabled set, sort weight

Topics can be pinned to the top of a board, locked to stop new replies, and featured to highlight them site-wide. Question-style boards add an accepted answer control so the best reply floats to the top, which turns busy threads into a self-serve knowledge base.

Replies support nesting, quoting and @mentions. Mentioning a member notifies them, and quoting pulls in the referenced text so the conversation stays readable even on long threads. Authors can edit or delete their own posts within a window you configure.

Reactions are a lightweight signal that helps good posts rise. Enable any subset of the built-in set (like, helpful, idea, celebrate, and more) under Forums -> Settings -> Reactions. Reaction counts feed a member's reputation score, which you can surface on profiles and use to unlock trusted-member permissions.

Members can subscribe to an individual topic or an entire board. When a new reply is posted, subscribers receive a notification by email, on-site, or both, depending on their preference and your global defaults.

Topic subscriptions: follow a single thread; auto-subscribe anyone who replies, if you choose.
Board subscriptions: get notified of every new topic in a board, ideal for announcements.
Digest mode (Pro): batch notifications into a daily or weekly email instead of one per reply.

Every member controls their own subscriptions and notification channels from their profile, and each email includes a one-click unsubscribe link, which keeps you compliant and your mail out of spam folders.

The moderation view under Forums -> Moderation is mission control for keeping discussions healthy. Reported posts, queued submissions and flagged content all surface in one place, with one-click actions.

Approval queue: hold posts from first-time members until a moderator approves them. Toggle on per board.
Reports: members flag a post; it appears in the queue with the reason and reporter.
Actions: approve, hide, lock, merge, move to another board, or ban the author, all from the row.
Audit log: every moderation action is recorded with who did it and when.

Moderation respects WordPress capabilities, so you can appoint trusted community members as moderators without giving them full admin access.

Revolutionary Forums layers several anti-spam defenses, all invisible to legitimate members:

Honeypot field, a hidden trap that bots fill in and humans never see. Enabled by default.
Rate limiting, caps how fast a single account or IP can post, which stops flood attacks.
Time trap, posts submitted implausibly fast are flagged for review rather than published.
Keyword & IP blocklist, reject posts containing banned words or from blocked addresses.
First-post approval, route brand-new members through the moderation queue automatically.

Flagged posts are never silently deleted, they wait in the moderation queue so you can review false positives and approve them with one click.

The plugin maps forum actions to WordPress capabilities, so you control exactly who can do what. Grant these capabilities to existing roles or a custom role to build community moderators.

Capability	Allows
`revforum_create_topic`	Start new topics in boards the user can access.
`revforum_reply`	Post replies to existing topics.
`revforum_moderate`	Approve, hide, lock, merge and move posts, and ban authors.
`revforum_manage_boards`	Create, edit and reorder boards and their settings.

Tip: To create a "community moderator" role, clone the Editor role and add revforum_moderate. They can keep threads tidy without ever touching plugins, themes or site settings.

Embed the forum anywhere using the shortcode. With no attributes it renders the full board index; pass a board slug to embed a single board.

// Render the full community (board index, topics, replies)
[revolutionary_forum]

// Embed just one board, sorted by latest activity
[revolutionary_forum board="getting-started" sort="latest"]

In the block editor, search for "Revolutionary Forum", insert the block, and pick a board (or leave it set to the full index) from the inspector sidebar. You can also render the forum from PHP in a template using the revforum_render() helper function.

Developers can extend nearly every part of the forum lifecycle with WordPress actions and filters. Use the revforum_new_topic action to run custom logic whenever a topic is created:

add_action( 'revforum_new_topic', function( $topic, $board ) {
    if ( 'support' === $board['slug'] ) {
        my_slack_notify( 'New support topic: ' . $topic['title'] );
    }
}, 10, 2 );

Use the revforum_post_content filter to transform a topic or reply body before it is saved or rendered. Other commonly used hooks include revforum_new_reply, revforum_reaction_added, revforum_post_reported, revforum_answer_accepted, and revforum_user_can_post (override posting permissions).

Most issues come down to permalinks, caching or email delivery. Work through these first:

404 on board or topic pages: re-save Settings -> Permalinks once to flush rewrite rules, and confirm permalinks are not set to plain.
Forum not displaying: confirm the shortcode or block is on a published page and that no page cache is serving a stale version.
Reply emails not arriving: the reply is still saved, check the topic. If posts exist but no email, install an SMTP plugin and authenticate your sending domain.
Reactions not updating: usually a JavaScript conflict from another plugin or theme. Check the browser console and temporarily disable other plugins to isolate it.
Spam getting through: turn on first-post approval and the time trap, and add offending keywords or IPs to the blocklist.

Tip: Enable Forums -> Settings -> Logging to record posting, notification and moderation events. The log captures the exact reason an action failed.

No. You can create unlimited boards, topics, replies and members. Everything lives in your own WordPress database, so the only practical limit is your hosting storage.

Yes. Interactive actions like posting and reacting run over AJAX with a fresh nonce per render, so they stay compatible with full-page caching. If you cache aggressively, exclude the forum action endpoint or enable cache-safe mode under Settings.

Yes. The importer reads bbPress forums, topics and replies and recreates them as boards, topics and replies, preserving authors and dates. Custom bbPress add-ons and their data are not migrated automatically.

Yes. You can disable IP storage, set retention windows, and the plugin integrates with WordPress native data export and erase tools, so member data requests are handled in one place.

No. The core forum, boards, topics, threaded replies, basic reactions and spam protection are fully functional on the free version. Pro unlocks subscriptions, accepted answers, reputation, profiles and the full moderation queue.

DOCUMENTATION

Getting started

Boards & topics

Replies & reactions

Subscriptions

Moderation & spam

Developers

Introduction

Installation

Your first forum

Boards & topics

Replies & reactions

Subscriptions

Moderation

Spam protection

Roles & capabilities

Shortcode & block

Hooks & filters

Troubleshooting

FAQ

Frequently asked questions

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