Wbcom Designs – Birthday Widget for BuddyPress vs Discussion Board – WordPress Forum Plugin

Transform your BuddyPress community with the Birthday Widget! Know the upcoming birthdays of your site’s members and help them celebrate their special day. A little effort to greet community members keeps the saying alive: “community that celebrates together stays together”. Key Features: Smart Birthday Display * Show birthdays for all members, friends, or followers * Flexible time ranges: weekly, monthly, or unlimited * Today’s birthdays get special highlighting * Age display with customizable “Turning X” format Modern & Responsive Design * Clean, minimal design that works with any theme * Mobile-first responsive layout * Smooth animations and hover effects * Optimized for performance with smart caching Flexible Configuration * Multiple name display options (username, nickname, first name) * Customizable date formats * Optional emoji support * Send birthday wishes via private messages NEW: Automatic Notifications * Automatic birthday email greetings to members * Activity feed auto-posts for birthdays * BuddyPress notification support * Admin daily birthday summary email * Configurable send time and templates NEW: Display Enhancements * Zodiac sign display option * Confetti animation for celebrations * Centralized admin settings page Developer Friendly * Theme-compatible styling using CSS inheritance * Smart asset loading (only loads when widget is active) * Shortcode support: [bp_birthdays] * Extensive filter and action hooks * WPCS compliant code Performance Optimized * 30-minute smart caching system * Conditional asset loading * Minimal database queries * Zero Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS) Accessibility Ready * WCAG 2.1 compliant * Keyboard navigation support * Screen reader friendly * Reduced motion support Supercharge Your BuddyPress Community Love Birthday Widget? Check out our other free community plugins: Jetonomy — Next-gen discussion platform for WordPress — forums, Q&A, ideas, voting, trust levels. Free forever. GitHub WPMediaVerse — A general-purpose WordPress media platform plugin. Albums, galleries, and media sharing. GitHub Visit store.wbcomdesigns.com for more products and the BuddyPress Community Bundle.

Discussion Board is an easy way to add a forum to your WordPress site. It has a one-click installation and stacks of essential features that make it the leading WordPress forum plugin. In brief: Users can register and log in via a front-end form Users post new forum topics via a simple form Each forum topic is displayed on its own page where other users can reply WordPress forum plugin demo Test out a live demo version of our forum plugin here. Note that this demo includes some features only available with the Pro version. Feel free to register and post some sample content. One-click installation Discussion Board has a unique, one-click set-up. When you activate the plugin, it will automatically create the three pages you need to get your WordPress forum up and running: A log-in page A page with a form for users to post new topics A page to view existing topics. Your WordPress forum is up and running straightaway with no need to do any further configuration if you don’t want to. User management A key feature of Discussion Board is the ability to control separately who can view your WordPress forum and who can actually post to it. You can specify the required role for users to post new topics and, separately, you can specify the required role for users to view topics. So, for instance, you could allow anyone to view the content but only permit specific user roles to post content. Registration You can specify which role new users will be assigned when they register. You can also require users to activate their registration by verifying their email address – this drastically reduces spam registrations. In the Pro version, you also have the option to approve new registrations yourself if you want. Front end log-in Discussion Board has a complete front-end registration and log-in system. You can choose whether to use the standard WordPress system or keep everything on the front-end. Spam reduction As well as the restrictions over registration, you can limit the frequency that users can re-post. This will reduce possible spamming. As the owner of the site, you can also choose whether new topics should be published immediately or held as draft in order for you to moderate them. You can use standard WordPress settings to determine moderation levels for comments or set different rules for topics. Even more, you can block specific email addresses or entire domains from being able to register accounts. Styles Discussion Board is designed to work with any theme. You can update colors through the Customizer. Currently, there is a choice of three layouts, using either the standard WordPress archive layout from your theme or more classic forum layouts. Discussion Board should work out of the box with your theme. However, if you want to extend it and integrate it more closely, there are some optional templates supplied with the plugin that have hookable opening and closing wrapper tags so you can style the templates to match your theme. Shortcodes Discussion Board has a number of shortcodes. Some of these are installed automatically when you activate the plugin. Others are optional for usage around your site, including: [discussion_board_form] – displays a form for users to post a new topic (automatically installed) [discussion_topics] – displays a list of all topics (automatically installed) [discussion_board_login_form] – displays a log-in and registration form for new users (automatically installed) [discussion_board_login_only] – displays a log-in form without a registration form [discussion_board_registration_only] – displays a registration form without a log-in form [discussion_board_log_in_out] – displays a log-in / log-out link [is_logged_in] – use this shortcode to display content only to users who are logged in [not_logged_in] – display content only to users who are not logged in What can I use this for? You can use this plugin to create any type of forum that you like. Typically, this would include: Community forums School or other education sites Training websites Support forums Discussion forums Niche sites Discussion groups Question and answer sites Technical forums Ecommerce sites Bulletin boards Job boards WordPress forum theme Although Discussion Board should work with pretty much any WordPress theme, we developed Singularity – a free theme that integrates with Discussion Board. It’s available to download from the WordPress themes directory. Why have a forum on my WordPress site? There are many, many reasons to want to install a WordPress forum plugin on your site. In brief, these might include: SEO benefits – there are two key benefits to having a forum on your site. Firstly, you are benefitting from user generated content, where your users are writing your content for you and coming up with all kinds of keywords you never would have included in your content yourself. Secondly, users will spend longer on your site because of your forum, either writing their own posts or reading other people’s content. Google considers dwell time on a website to be a key quality metric. Get closer to your users – a forum is a priceless way of learning more about what makes your users tick, whether the forum is support-based or just a general community discussion board. Market more effectively – when users register for your forum, they are providing you with their email address, meaning that you have a great opportunity to market directly to people you know are interested in your offering. Documentation Full documentation and guidance on getting started with the plugin and on its features is here. Is there a Pro version? Oh yes, there’s a Pro version to give you even more possibilities with your forum. Features include: Multiple Discussion Boards for different subjects Set statuses for topics, e.g. ‘Resolved’, ‘Open’, etc Categories and tags Image uploads User profiles Topic following (subscribe to topics) Board following – subscribe to a board and get notified of all new topics and comments for that board Board permissions – set topics within boards to be post-only (so no replies) or author-only (only the author can view replies) Admin approvals – optionally require all new registrations to be approved by an admin WYSIWYG editor Check out the Pro version here. Contributing If you would like to contribute to the plugin, we’ve put together a guide on how to contribute.