[Kroy Ellis]

I’m new to WordPress and BoldGrid. I need to create a forum-based website. Is there a forum plugin or theme you recommend that works with BoldGrid? The best one I’ve found is wpForo. But I don’t know if it works with BoldGrid/Crio.

wpForo Forum

[Jesse Owens]

Hi Kroy

Thanks for the great question, and thanks for choosing the Crio WordPress SuperTheme.

I don’t have a ton of experience with wpForo, but I did give it a spin in our BoldGrid Cloud WordPress testing platform, and it seems to work well with Crio. Click here to give it a try yourself.

Here on BoldGrid’s forums, we use the venerable bbPress plugin, which is the same software that runs the WordPress.org forums. It’s probably the most popular forum software for WordPress out there, but it doesn’t come with as many features out-of-the-box as wpForo.

[Kroy Ellis]

Thanks Jesse. Installed!

One more question (for now) — Along with the forum, I need the front page to display news articles. (This is for our condo/home owners association.) I don’t see any themes so far that are what I have in mind. It would be something simple like this one…

https:// [link redacted] .com/

Does BoldGrid have a theme that would be best to build the site like this along with the forum?

Thanks for all your help!

[Kroy Ellis]

Actually, the links would be news excerpts leading to internal pages, not like on the sample website. And not very many of them.

[Jesse Owens]

Hi Kroy-

Just to be sure I understand what you need, you’re looking for a single front page that has:

• Links to your blog posts (internal news articles)
• wpForo forums
• Possibly other content suitable for a front page

Please correct me if I’m wrong about that. It sounds like your best bet will be to stick with the Crio Theme, but use dynamic block components to display the content on your front page.

That will give you the most control over how it looks, and allow you to accomplish the newspaper column-type layout in the site you mentioned.

First, you’ll use a Post List component to show your news articles. Here’s a quick video explaining how to use a Post List:

Notice that the Post List component includes the ability to add extra columns, like in the site you mentioned.

Then, you can also use the wpForo components to display your forum content. You’ll find several wpForo components in the same way you found the post list component in the video above:

[Kroy Ellis]

Thanks for providing all of this Jessie. This and the video were helpful.

I’m getting a bit more familiar with WP and BoldGrid/Crio. Still a ways to go. Quick background — I’m coming from 90s desktop website technology. e.g. http://www.marycraig.org.

“Best bet — Crio theme.” Assuming any Crio theme will do. I think I understand your lessons on dynamic block components and the post list component. Still in unfamiliar territory here, but I believe I will use that.

I did some more hunting for a theme that is closer to what I have in mind. The first sample site is the idea (columns not needed at this point), but this theme is even closer.

http://preview.themeforest.net/item/hewo-modern-newspaper-html-template/full_screen_preview/22069158

I prefer news pages vs typical blog style. So far at least. I’m behind the times, so I maybe missing the advantages of the blog approach that’s used by everyone else.

For our condo/HOA association — more like a newspaper than a blog. With news article excerpts under each link. Just a simple one or two pages (plus the contact and maybe about us pages). No fancy stuff needed and not many photos. The above theme (or similar) would give me what I need to put it together without the side columns and bottom section.

And the forum for discussions on whatever topics owners want to discuss.

So do you recommend that I go with a Crio theme? Or go with the theme I found (or similar)?

Thanks for all this assistance Jesse! I’d be almost clueless without some pointers for getting started. Once I get the hang of it it looks like most of it (and another site that will follow) will be pretty easy, especially with everything on these forms and all the documentation you have! The whole BoldGrid/Crio system is really amazing!

[Jesse Owens]

Hi Kroy-

Needless to say, I’m a little biased toward Crio, but I’ll try to give you the best advice I can.

We describe Crio as a “SuperTheme.” What we mean by that is that we created it to be the most customizable, flexible theme available on the market today. You can use its advanced features to create just about any kind of website design you want. However, it may take some work on your part to achieve the look you’re going for.

Themeforest (for the most part) tends to focus on themes designed for a specific niche, like a “newspaper” design as you’ve picked out. That means that a theme you pick out from there may be faster or easier to set up to accomplish your goals, especially for folks who are new to WordPress website development, like you describe yourself. It’s very likely a more “out-of-the-box” experience than Crio would be.

There are some other factors to consider as well.

Crio’s core open-source version is available for free on the WordPress.org repo, while ThemeForest themes are proprietary. That means:

• If you choose Crio, you’ll always be able to get the latest updates to the theme, regardless of whether you keep your subscription after it expires.
• If you choose a ThemeForest theme, updates are tied to your subscription, so you won’t have access to updates if your subscription ever expires.
• Updates can include things like bugfixes to work with new versions of WordPress, fixes for security vulnerabilities, and even new features.

Also, please note that the link you mentioned is not a WordPress theme, but an HTML template. That means it might be a little more familiar to you as a self-described “90’s desktop” developer, but in the long run will be more difficult to maintain and update with fresh content.

Hopefully this gives you a better understanding of the choices, Kroy! In the end, you’ll need to decide what best suits your needs, and there are definite pros and cons to both. Please let us know if we can help you out further, we’re happy to help!

[Kroy Ellis]

How much would it cost for someone to create a basic (very basic) version of the ThemeForest newspaper theme using Crio?

[Joseph W]

Hi Kroy!

Unfortunately BoldGrid does not offer web design services, but you might have some luck finding someone to help you replicate the ThemeForest design with Crio in our user community, Team Orange. Although if the newspaper theme from ThemeForest is the exact design you are going for then you might be best served by using it instead of attempting to imitate the design with Crio.

[Kroy Ellis]

One other advantage of Crio may be that it will be easier to make minor or major changes to the site design in the future, no? (And I tend to try and improve on site design over time.)

[Joseph W]

Hi Kroy!

Both Crio and the Post and Page Builder offer a tremendous amount of customization options that allow you to tailor your website’s look to achieve your design goals, and making major or minor changes in the future will definitely be easy if you choose to build your website with those tools. Integrating forums into the HTML template from ThemeForest also has the potential to be challenging if the developer of that theme does not have a solution for that functionality.

Please let us know if you have any other questions for us!

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