Vanilla Forums
At Vanilla, we believe that online communities should be unique, intuitive and engaging. Vanilla allows you to create a customized community that rewards positive participation, automatically curates content and lets…
Consider an alternative
Vanilla Forums shows warning signs in 2026 — compare the alternatives below before installing. It runs on 100+ sites, is rated 2.8/5 and was last updated 6 years ago, and scores 28/100 on our health check.
- Small user base (100+ active installs)
- Mixed reviews — 2.8/5 from 17 ratings
- No update in 6 years
- Only tested up to WordPress 5.3 (latest is 7.1)
How does it stack up?
Side-by-side on installs, updates, ratings & support
Daily downloads
Download spikes usually follow a new release — each site that auto-updates counts as a download.
Rankings
Where Vanilla Forums stands todayWordPress.org search rankings
Live position in the plugin search, top 100| Keyword | Position |
|---|---|
| community | >100 |
| forum | >100 |
| forums | >100 |
| vanilla | >100 |
| vanilla forums | #68 |
Version adoption
Share of active sites per release.
Rating breakdown
★★★★★★★★★★ 2.8 from 17 reviews
About Vanilla Forums
From the official readme · v1.3.1Description
Not a Vanilla Forum owner? Create one here
Community Forums Evolved.
At Vanilla, we believe that online communities should be unique, intuitive and engaging. Vanilla allows you to create a customized community that rewards positive participation, automatically curates content and lets members drive moderation.
Vanilla provides hosted and open source community forum software that powers discussion forums on over 500,000 sites. Built for flexibility and integration, Vanilla is the best, most powerful community solution in the world.
Vanilla focuses on easy integration with WordPress, and is the ONLY forum solution to provide a native mobile version for easy browsing and posting from any mobile device.
Vanilla benefits from the power of open-source, with over 10,000 developers contributing to the project and over 500 addons that can make your community do anything you need it to do. Vanilla is truly open-source, standards-compliant, and fully customizable.
Migrating to Vanilla from any other forum platform is a breeze, with ready-made exporters for vBulletin, phpBB, bbPress, and more.
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NEW: BLOG COMMENTS: Vanilla’s blog commenting system will kick start a community forum to help quickly build an engaged community of readers. This is a drop-in replacement for your native WordPress blog comments (and for other commenting tools like disqus or livefyre). New blog posts & comments will be mirrored in the forum, using all the power of Vanilla to keep your blog readership engaged and bring new pageviews to your site through your community forum.
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Easy to install: Add the Vanilla Forums plugin and instantly integrate your Vanilla Forum with your blog.
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Embed your forum right in your blog: No theming required. Install this plugin and define where you’d like your forum to appear.
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Add forum widgets to your blog: Place widgets throughout your blog with information like: recent discussions, discussion categories, and recent forum activity.
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Manage your forum in WordPress: Manage your Vanilla forum without leaving the comfort of your wordpress dashboard.
Installation
- Upload the
vanilla-forumsfolder to/wp-content/plugins/ - Activate the plugin through the ‘Plugins’ menu in WordPress
- Configure the plugin in the WordPress Settings > Vanilla Forum menu
See our handy installation video here
For developers
Is this your plugin? Show off the numbers.
Add a live badge to your site, docs or GitHub README. It updates on its own — no account needed.
Best Vanilla Forums alternatives
All community plugins →
FAQ
Vanilla Forums: quick answers
Straight answers, pulled from live WordPress.org data.
Live data from WordPress.org · checked Oct 14, 2026
Is Vanilla Forums free?
Yes. Vanilla Forums is free to download and use from the official WordPress.org plugin directory.
Is Vanilla Forums safe to use in 2026?
Vanilla Forums shows warning signs in 2026 — compare the alternatives below before installing. It runs on 100+ sites, is rated 2.8/5 and was last updated 6 years ago, and scores 28/100 on our health check.
How many websites use Vanilla Forums?
Vanilla Forums is active on 100+ WordPress websites and has been downloaded 112,509 times since it launched in February 2011. It was downloaded 112 times in the last 30 days.
Does Vanilla Forums work with WordPress 7.1?
Vanilla Forums is officially tested up to WordPress 5.3.26, while the latest release is 7.1.3. It may still work, but try it on a staging site first.
When was Vanilla Forums last updated?
The latest version, 1.3.1, was released on July 3, 2020 (6 years ago).
Who makes Vanilla Forums?
Vanilla Forums is developed and maintained by VanillaForums.
What are the best alternatives to Vanilla Forums?
The most popular alternatives to Vanilla Forums are Ultimate Member (200K+ installs), BuddyPress (90K+ installs) and Ultimate Member – reCAPTCHA (20K+ installs).
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