bbPress
bbPress 1.0 has finally been released last week. But why do I use it? Why would anyone use it? Here are my 7 reasons.

It’s familiar

If you have any experience with WordPress 2.7 or older, you will feel right at home using the new bbPress admin. You imediatly get a sense that you already know how to use it, which is great.

It’s fast

Very fast, right out of the box, which is always important for users.

It scales

It has to scale, since it’s used for WordPress Support, which gets thousands of new messages daily.

It integrates with WordPress

Since it’s built on the same backend as WordPress, you won’t find any other forum software that integrates better.

It’s extensible

bbPress doesn’t include many of the features that other forum software have, but it has the same plugin architecture that made WordPress popular. That means you can add exactly the features that your users need.

It’s easy to brand

The theming system is similar to that of WordPress, so it’s pretty easy to tweak the design to make it your own. If not, you can always get a whole new theme from the interwebs.

It’s free

Last but not least, it’s free, as in beer – you don’t pay for it. It’s also open-source, being GPL licensed,  which is very important, at least for me.

So these are the 7 reasons why I’ll stick to bbPress.