REQUIRES: PRO PLAN OR HIGHER • Last updated: Mar 12, 2026 • ~4 min read
The Forums section allows administrators to create, organize, and manage discussion forums from the Dashboard. You can create standalone forums or nest them under parent forums, and control visibility, permissions, and structure. This manual walks you through creating forums and managing existing ones.
Tutorial Video
Accessing the Forums Section
Navigate to your WordPress Dashboard, go to BuddyBoss > Settings > Discussion Forums > Forums.
The panel displays all existing forums with their name, privacy, discussion count, reply count, author, and last post activity. Use the Search forums field to locate a specific forum, or the Bulk Actions dropdown to manage multiple forums at once.
Creating a New Forum
Click Create New Forum to open the forum creation form. Configure the following fields, then click Save to add the forum to your directory:
- Forum Name: The display name of the forum.
- Permalink: The custom URL slug for the forum.
- Forum Description: An optional description using the Visual or Code editor.
- Status: Controls whether members can actively post discussions – Open or closed.
- Visibility: Determines forum accessibility – Public, Private, or Hidden.
- Parent Forum: Nest this forum under an existing parent forum to build category and subforum hierarchies.
- Order: A numeric value that controls the display order of this forum in listings – lower numbers appear first.
- Feature Image: An optional image uploaded from the media library. BuddyBoss recommends a minimum size of 1500 x 300px.
Managing Existing Forums
Each forum has a three-dot menu with three quick actions:
- View: Opens the forum on the frontend to preview how members see it.
- Edit: Modify the forum’s settings, description, visibility, and structure.
- Delete: Permanently removes the forum. Use with caution, as deleting a forum may also affect related discussions and replies.
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