A drastic measure, but a timely one.

Don’t be misled – it is a fantastic plugin. In fact more than a plugin, it is a very special application. But sometimes, you have to take a hard decision to ensure you efficiently fulfil your purpose.

Community websites are the best way to explore, expand, and exploit your web business opportunities. A forum emphasizes that sense of community, so am I mad to get rid of it?

To understand, you need to be clear about the purpose of your forum, and clear about your alternatives.

I chose the forum route because I was unhappy with the limitations of commenting. My research told me that Simple:Press Forum was the best option for a WordPress site. However, I did not want to stop WordPress comments as they are popular with many people.

Moderating comments and a forum becomes tedious as conversations become fragmented and spam control is totally different. Keeping web pages “on-topic” with a clear keyword driven focus is as important to visitors as it is to search engines, and having two separate conversation streams makes that focus difficult.

Though the Simple:Press forum offers excellent member management, none of my sites is a true membership site. I encourage contributors to maintain good debates, but membership really equates simply to access rights. In my case, these are simple – visitors either contribute, or they read.

Despite it’s name, Simple:Press is quite complicated. Both from it’s extensive feature list, and ‘under the hood’ it is far from simple.

I realized I could get what I need by enhancing WordPress comments, plus a few other tweaks. I will describe these in more detail later.

For now, it’s goodbye Simple:Press. Nice knowing ya, and when I need a membership site, I know where to look.