Frequently Asked Questions
Page not found / 404
If you get a Page not found or 404 error when trying to view a new topic after you have freshly installed the plugin, you need to visit Settings > Permalinks on your site so that the permalink structure is updated. You don’t need to change anything or click save on that screen, just visiting it is enough. See also Settings Permalink Screen.
Is there a demo?
The demo is here. You can register a user account there to post topics and replies. To prevent spam, all topics and replies are moderated.
How is it built?
Groups Forums uses a single Custom Post Type for topics and leverages WordPress’ taxonomies to provide forums and topic tags.
It also makes use of the standard reply system with slight enhancements to provide notification and subscription features.
One of the principles behind the plugin’s architecture is to be light-weight and simple, using a minimum subset of components to provide a fully functional forum system.
A design requirement is to make it automatically integrate with any theme, while customizing the look should still be as easy as possible through WordPress’ template system. The idea behind this is to break free from the usual and forced look of common forum systems.
Conflicts with other plugins or themes?
Make a backup of your site and database. Don’t test on a production site, work on a copy of it.
Use one of the default WordPress themes (for example Twenty Twelve), disable all plugins except Groups, Groups Forums and optionally Groups Notifications.
If the messages do not show up after that, activate other plugins one at a time to check if the messages show up. Eventually activate the original theme last.
Once you know which plugin or theme is causing the conflict, get in touch with its author to make them aware of the conflict, also leave a comment here indicating your current version of WordPress and the plugins activated. Use pastebin to post a link on large messages.